dishes
He was always doing the dishes, even if there were only two dishes.
He’d fill up the sink and take a half-n-hour, everyday, at least five
times.
It bugged the shit out of us. I asked him once if he thought something terrible would happen if he didn’t do the dishes. He just looked me
straight in the eye and said, “no, no! I just like doing dishes!”
He’d scour the apartment, which was huge, ten large rooms, looking for
dishes. And it wasn’t all crazy. He’d find ‘em…under sofas, in the
beds, in the closets, dishes with dried jam, ossified peanut butter,
two-week-old-calcified-mashed-potatoes, shingles of gravy with bugs and rot, and they all stank…
”Big deal!” we said. "So what?" we said. "Let 'em go!" we said.
No one cared but him, assiduously. He’d fill up a huge garbage bag, take it to the kitchen and do his thing.
Said it made him feel better cleaning things up. Go figure. He even
came home for lunch, ten miles from work or class everyday to do a
sink-load.
His own room was a mess, as was his life, but the dishes, my god, they were clean!
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