House Guest

Weeks ago, I ran into my old high school friend, Antonio. He said that he was now married, and just had a baby, and for old time’s sake, he invited me to his Catskill home for the weekend. Admittedly, I’m a poor houseguest, but I had not left the city for ages, so I borrowed a car and met Antonio and his family at their cabin… and as expected, it did not go well.

Each morning I start the day by practicing Kung Fu kicks, and I accidently kicked in the window of my bedroom. I apologized, but Antonio’s wife, Karen, was really angry and that anger expanded exponentially, when later that afternoon, I accidentally drank her breast milk.

“What’s the big deal? You can make more can’t you?”

I said this from the couch while watching cartoons, and Karen nearly pounced on me. Fortunately Antonio stopped her. They went outside and spent the rest of the afternoon raking leaves. I have a phobia about raking leaves, and since they were upset, I thought it was best to give them some distance, so I stayed on the couch, and around four o’clock, Antonio came inside and inched his finger at me.

“Will you step outside for a minute?” he said. “ I want to show you something.”

I followed him to the front yard, and by the entrance, beside a tulip bed, was a human turd.

“Did you do this?” asked Antonio.

“Of course not,” I said.

“Well I didn’t do it!” said Karen. “The baby didn’t do it, and Antonio didn’t do it, so who did it?”

“I don’t know. A bear maybe?”

“We haven’t seen any bears around here.”

“Well, there are bears in the Catskills, in case you didn’t know.”

For a while we discussed the possibilities, but Karen was completely unreasonable.

“You’re not normal,” she said. “You haven’t done a normal thing since you got here and I don’t feel safe with you in my house.”

“Maybe I’m not normal,” I said, “but at least I don’t make false accusation, and at least I don’t hold a grudge because of a broken window and a little breast milk.”

She was touchy about the breast milk. She went inside to load their gun, so I figured I better pack my things. On my way out, I asked — as politely as I could — if I could take some of the leftover lasagna, but Karen said no, which just shows the type of person she is.

Not only that, but as I was pulling out of the driveway, a giant black bear came out of the woods as if to prove my point. It was incredible. I knew that Karen and Antonio saw the creature, because I could see them watching through the window that I broke in the guest bedroom. I figured that settled the matter. I figured that Antonio would call and apologize for his wife’s behavior, but he never did. Instead he began gossiping and told a mutual acquaintance about the window, the breast milk, and said that I was a pooper, even though he knew the latter was not so. It really made me mad. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so one weekend I drove back to their cabin, and in the middle of the night, I pooped in front of their door. I guess that was petty, but I have feelings, and I guess I’m the type that holds a grudge after all.