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I wrote this many years ago...attempting the sort of Edgar Allen Poe type of writing wanting to be very descriptive and aloof..anyways..here goes:
Cleanliness is next to godliness..ceptin sometimes!
I want to tell you right away that I am not a neatness fiend. I am impressed with neatness, however, the greater the neatness the greater the fascination. That is because I am not neat. Before going any further, I must impress upon you that I am not neat. Now on with my story.
Each blade of grass that made up the lawn of the house looked more starched and ironed than mowed. The hedges surrounding the house were cut in perfect 90-degree angels, and the edges of the walkways could only be described as honed. The house itself was a crisp white with razor edged black trim. The car parked on the stark white, spotless cement drive, reflected the sun like a mirror. I could almost picture the occupants of the house; sitting, straight backed, their hands folded neatly in their laps, clutching a starched, white handkerchief to despoil any unwelcome particle of dust that might be unlucky enough to find its way into their ward.
That such starkness was achieved not by familial collaboration, but by the toil of a single being was amazing in itself, but when I discovered the person was a woman I found it even more incredible. So much so, I had to devise a ruse to encounter the exceptionally immaculate woman.
In the beginning I planed, with foolishness as my guide, a simple chance meeting of two human beings.
I stopped her in the grocery store, feigning ignorance of whatever produce I was fondling at the time; she quickly diverted my queries to the smiling, cherubic, silver haired woman, who knew a great deal about all manner of produce. By the time my flora education was complete, my target had finished her shopping, driven home, parked her hygienic car, purified and repackaged her purchases.
At the service station, I attempted to strike up a casual conversation while the attendant was pumping her gas. As I was referring to the weather, she opened her window. Not noticing the attendant placing the nozzle back in its cradle, I leaned toward the opening, smiling, expecting some sort of rejoinder. She handed me a crisp 20-dollar bill in payment for the gas, and without a word, drove her auto to the hand car wash at the rear of the station.
What a wonderful opportunity, thought I, I would reservedly saunter over to her and explain her err when she mistook me for the station attendant. Surely, thought I, she would enjoy a conversation while waiting for her car to be sanitized. When I reached the rear of the building, I found her engrossed in conversation on a portable phone. I waited until I began to feel as a bellhop must during a prolonged wait for a non-forthcoming tip, at which time even leaving is uncomfortable. To ease my discomfort, when her car emerged from the washing station, I picked up a rag and began drying it.
Upon her departure, I gathered my dignity and realized that this was no ordinary woman and that I must devise a plan as extraordinary as she.
Being a man of means, and knowing the house next door to her was for sale, I contacted the real estate agency named on the sign to inquire about purchasing the property.
To impress upon this woman that I was worthy of her attentions, I hired a landscape architect to mirror her yard. I purchased all new furniture, making sure each piece was covered in plastic or in boxes to dramatize the organization and skill intendance with my move. I hired maids, leery of my instructions to park down the street and enter through the side door concealed from her house.
Every morning at exactly 7:15 A.M., she exited her house. And every morning at exactly 7:15 A.M. I opened my front door to retrieve the morning newspaper, and greeted her with a nod and a smile. She never acknowledged my existence.
After one month of nodding and smiling every morning at exactly 7:15 A.M., I was surprised to see her dressed in a starched, pressed, white jumpsuit, running a push mower across her lawn. I hastily cleared the mess that had accumulated since the maid had been there the day before, dressed in my most sterile apparel, went to the back shed, and retrieved my own push mower.
I neatly arranged that I would pass with my mower at the same opening in the hedge she passed. When my attempt at conversation was once again quashed, I dropped the handle of my mower and stalked around the hedge to her side.
After informing her we had been neighbors for more than a month without the slightest hint of acknowledgment, she acquiesced.
To the contrary, she insisted, she had watched me as I scrubbed my drive, watered my shrubbery, cleaned my windows, and trimmed everything in sight and she was impressed with my neatness.
This was so much more than I had even hoped. For cognizance, I prayed, recognition, I received.
Iced tea was what she invited me in for, into her own personal domain to share tea.
I prayed my excitement would not betray me by converting to unpalatable perspiration as she opened the door to the enclosed porch.
“Please,” she said so graciously swaying her arm, indicating that I should enter first.
As my brain was trying to grip reality, my mind was excusing the odor as that of a strong disinfectant.
The instant the second door was opened, my ordinarily superior brawn failed with that vision, and I was easily toppled by the sharp shove she administered. By the time I had rolled over to face her, she had already closed and bolted the door, and held over me a machete, which could have been used to cleave into the inner most reaches of the Amazon.
The walls were covered with blood and feces, the other must have been human tissue, and the rug under my own body was sticky. There were assorted body parts suspended in liquid filled jars adorning the tables, and several corpses, some whole, some not, all crawling with worms, hung by meat hooks on the walls as if artworks.
Not at all the décor I expected to find.
“Neatness,” she said, “neatness is my bane. I abhor it. Detest it in all manner and mode. For years,” she explained, “unending, unendurable years I sat, straight backed, hands folded neatly in my lap while my father unmercifully beat me for the least indiscretion. A crumb,” she said, “spilled from my plate would be cause for my father to draw blood with his belt. Blood was the only substance that could soil my clothing. Blood, I must wear it like a scarlet letter until I had perfected neatness.”
Pleas for my life went unheard as she ranted of her childhood. My insistence that I was not what I appeared to be, that when you came right down to it, I was quite the slob, was not absorbed by her.
She then introduced me to her father, one of the less complete cadavers, with maggots moving freely between the nose cavity and his former mouth, hanging from the wall with a large mirror hung opposite him. “So,” she said, “he could see how truly uncomely he had become. I introduced the maggots to him myself,” she boasted, “and they are doing quite well.”
Her attention, which I so aggressively sought in the past, was then unfortunately focused on me, forcing me to admit my true self.
“I am in all actuality an unmitigated slob,” I attempted to explain. “My entire existence since I first laid eyes on your manicured lawn was a lie. I used my money first, and then my charm to dupe my way into my current position.” I insisted.
“They all claimed that,” she said, “before they died.”
“But proof,” I insisted, “I could furnish proof that I was nothing more than a scum sucking, slatternly, slime not even fit to adorn her walls.”
Having never gained her attention before, and certainly not expecting to disrobe in her presence, in my haste to hazard an encounter with her, I had not changed my underwear or socks, nor had I changed them the day before, nor the day before that.
“Would that,” I beseeched, “be proof enough?” As I removed my shoes and dropped my trousers.
The saffron colored, stretched, split underwear sagged insecurely from my waist. My toe, framed by a dingy sock, complete with untrimmed, dirty nail, protruded proudly. No soldier under scrutiny of an Inspector General was more adequate to the test at hand than I.
While she was bent over in laughter, and before she could compose herself, I was out the door. While still on the enclosed porch I realized my other neighbors might see me in this state of disarray. I very briefly considered my alternatives and escaped to the street.
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