House Sitters

I had to go away once. I asked my friend, Simon, to house sit for me. He's one of those people that are always taking things apart and putting them back together. He wants to know how everything works and if he's worthless or not. He is also manic depressive.

When I returned from my trip the front door was unlocked and my house seemingly unoccupied. I was not upset because I noticed he had fixed my stereo. I knew because he'd left it blaring Billie Holiday's Gloomy Sunday in the kitchen.

Almost everything in my living room had a green sticker on it. Which meant Simon had taken apart the object and reassembled it and that it was in working order. When I walked into my kitchen to turn off the restored stereo I saw where the depressive side of Simon's disorder had kicked in.

There were screws and circuits everywhere. All of my appliances had been gutted and abandoned. But I wasn't too worried about it. I knew what I was getting into when I asked Simon to house-sit for me. I also knew he'd come back with a pad of green stickers and return everything back to it's original condition or better.

Then I found my dog.

Woofy Howelson was only the second thing in Simon's life that he dismantled permanently. The first being his marriage. I found him later in the bathroom. He had covered himself in red stickers and wrote very bad poetry on the walls with his watery shit. He had not had a solid bowel movement since the divorce.


Two weeks later I was asked to attend a conference in Manhattan. I asked Simon's brother, Stoney, to house sit as Simon was busy at therapy. Stoney is an obsessive compulsive kleptomaniac. He has to steal everything 3 times and return it twice. He's never been caught. Making him the greatest living thief. Possibly the greatest of all time.

I gave Stoney the job as house sitter knowing that he was also the world's biggest coward. That's why he can be the greatest living thief and poor enough to eat Chairman Meow's cat food for breakfast. I asked him once, "Why don't you get rid of the cat and save some money?" He said without him he'd starve to death.

Stoney is afraid of death. That's not what makes him a coward, that's what makes him human. He's also afraid of bees, the dark, prime time television, viral marketing, men in cheap suits that speak in tongues, and most of all prison. He'll never take anything worth more than fifteen dollars.

Knowing this I slept soundly each night I was gone. Sure that I wouldn't even miss whatever Stoney had taken.

I vomited in the taxi that took me home. As soon as it stopped I started. Stoney had stolen my front door. I'm not sure who stole everything else. I was kicked out of the cab and around the head a bit.

I woke up the next morning exhausted and sore. I looked up from my lawn and felt relief beyond explanation. There, right where it should be was my front door. It was all a dream and everything would be fine. I picked myself up, opened the door, and began to vomit.

It was the most surreal part of my life. I was unsure of the whereabouts of my belongings and my consciousness. The door was gone, the door was there, there door was gone, an aggressive transient was there, the door was back!, Stoney had done it again and left me a blubbering mess of a man questioning his reality and whether I had been raped or seduced by Florence the Boxcar King.