Classic NYC Story

I made pasta. While the water was boiling, I asked him if he wanted to get Chinese food instead. “That costs money,” he said. Good point. So I made pasta. I would have grilled some vegetables too, but his pantry is in a disarray, and I couldn’t find a knife. I can admit to wrong: perhaps I should have asked him to find me a knife, but it didn’t occur to me. You know me and asking for help… I think also maybe I didn’t make enough pasta. I inadvertently made only enough for one-and-a-half people. My mistake. I made myself the half-person and gave myself about a third of what I gave him. (I know that doesn’t add up to one and a half. I don’t care either.)

A little while later he asked me if I still wanted that Chinese food. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. I guess I really should have grilled those vegetables, huh? He asked me if I would go out to the store. I said “no.” “So what do I get out of it then?” “You’ve got a girl in your bedroom with no underwear on.”

I swear, this whole time I thought he was joking.

Eventually he got up and started putting on his socks and shoes. He was quite serious; he wanted more food. Oh, okay. He asked me if I wanted any. I said “sure.” After all, I had only had a bird’s portion of pasta, right? So he left and went to the Chinese food store, and it was all fine, actually, except that just before leaving he made this bitter comment:

“I guess you expect me to do the dishes, too, right?”

Strangely enough, come to think of it, I did indeed expect him to do his dishes in his house. But I complied. I did the dishes. And then I left. I put my underwear back on, gathered up my things, and left the house just as he was coming back in. Nobody gets to talk to me that way.

As I walked out, he said what some of you may be thinking: “It’s fucked up that you would leave just because he asked you to do the dishes.” Newsflash to him and all the rest of you haters: he would not have elicited the same response had he said something like “hey sweetie, could you take care of the dishes while I’m at the store?” In retrospect, I think that’s what was playing in his mind while his passive-aggressive sulking about his worthless house guest was coming out of his mouth. Mind, this particular worthless house guest was just wagging her perfect booty before his conspicuously undeserving eyes, and had just an hour or so prior cooked without having been asked… but also had made the fatal error of dirtying the dishes without thinking about who was going to wash them.

I had clearly outstayed my welcome. I had become a problem. I left.

I’ve noticed it’s not always that I follow through on leaving. I almost didn’t, you know. I was still inside the threshold when he started to make me change my mind. He said “Look, if I said something that was untoward, I’m…” and then he walked away. I think I’d still be in Harlem now if he had finished his sentence.

Words are important.

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