You should probably not have Opened your House to me.

[x_los]

I have hot fantasies about getting adequate notice before I have to go into work. A secretary calls and silkily intones, “could you do some open houses… next week?” “Oh,” I answer, shaky, breathy, surprised by the force of my desire, all trembling acquiescence, “yes, yes, YES! I AM AVAILABLE NEXT WEEK!”

But no. Woken from a solid sleep by my mom insisting I go show three properties in a row, preferably like, an hour ago. So if I could get on building a time machine, that would be best, but failing that, I should be in the car driving out towards Kansas City in under three minutes.

So the resulting process involves:

1) me trying in vain to find an outfit that I don’t despise,
2) cramming what looks like a plausible breakfast down my throat as I’m going to be working until 4:30 with no time for such fripperies,
3) realizing I’m completely out of gas, and
4) have to drive over to my dad’s office, where I’ve forgotten my purse,
5) my car refusing to start or jump until I find a battery charger it likes the color of,
6) having to take my sister and the kid she’s agreed to baby-sit to the pool,
7) begging my other sister to print me out directions and grab the keys from my mom’s office, where she too has been called in to work,
8) running into my father’s office with no explanation past the identical bemused expressions of he and his dog screaming something that may have resembled greetings and farewells to both,
9) getting gas,
10) picking up the papers and keys from my sister, and
11) getting stuck in an absolutely inexplicable traffic jam between Columbia and the Midway Exit. I mean, what? Since when is there a FULL-STOP traffic jam on that highway?

So I end up half an hour late, get to the house, and discover they’re the lovely, super-paranoid species of people that feels the need to get a sooper-dooper difficult to disarm security system for their house crammed thick with possessions no self-respecting thief would ever want to steal. Their decoration includes the world’s most heinous duvet covers. If I were a Scottish clan member and these duvet covers were representative of my clan tartan, I would fellate the Dress Act of 1746 in gratitude for banning the wearing of same. The wall pictures are a mix of weird Asian appropriation (interior decorating a overseas tour of duty?) and the sort of chintzy ‘Hollywood Backlot’ painted collection of vaguely recognizable profiles, which represent a cheap exercise in diffuse masturbatory nostalgia, passed off as art. And let’s not forget the ceramic figurines of leprechauns, because god knows they’ll haunt /my/ dreams. Bored cherub throw pillows. Cheetahs in various attitudes. Dolphins wearing sunglasses. A charming odalisque with a sort of Titian touch to the coloration. A generous coating of my vom (I have added frame).

The lighting consists of an obscure system of panels and switches designed to allow no one under the age of sixty to turn on a fucking light anywhere in the home. My job, as the person running this open house, is to turn on every light in the home. Lovely. And naturally no one’s come to my little shop of horrors.

I do like:
1) the forest green trim inlay on the kitchen cabinets, and
2) the sleek vintage Ford Maverick someone’s working on in the garage, not least because it offers a ready means of escape from the house where taste came to die.

Am I the cuntiest cunt-waffle ever to be dressed in maple syrup and butter? Yes. Are these the most threatening sofas since Terror of the Autons?

I’m certainly not sitting in them.