I don’t do well by myself. Today I dropped the Tiguan off at the Eurocar repair shop to have the back brakes replaced (after only 65,000 miles — whatever happened to quality?). The owner of the place very kindly offered me a lift home, which offer I gratefully accepted.
And then it all went pear-shaped. You see, I always drop the deadbolt on the front door when I leave the house because I go out through the garage.
You know where this is going, right?
Yup; the garage door opener is still in the Tiguan, ten miles away, and my front door key is useless because deadbolt.
So I sidled off to the apartment complex manager to see what could be done. Long story short: nada. For security reasons, there is no universal remote for the garages, and as with the front door, the patio door is likewise deadbolted. I am marooned for the next four hours or so, and I don’t like it.
Follow my reasoning, here: if I had a wife, she’d be at home to let me in, with a steaming cup of consoling coffee withal, and I wouldn’t be sitting here typing on the complex’s public computer with only the lovely Claudia in the office to look at, listening to the canned “boom-tsss, boom-tss, boom-tss” background music supporting the usual helium-voiced Black chick singing crap lyrics in nigh-incomprehensible Ebonics.
Or maybe it’s Taylor Swift singing. I’m not sure because tinnitus makes it difficult to hear anything through the World’s Cheapest Speakers echoing through the hard-floored hard-walled curtainless office complex.
This wife thing may seem to be something of an extreme remedy for the (very) occasional circumstance of locking oneself out of the house; but there are plenty of other reasons, such as the fact that my last sexual encounter with a woman was during the Bush presidency (and don’t ask which one, either). Another reason for me to have a wife is that I am absolutely sick of my own cooking — a man can only eat so much steak, shrimp, toasted cheese or -chicken sandwiches, coleslaw, lamb vindaloo, Jarlsberg cheese, bacon & eggs, grilled boerewors, baby back ribs, grapefruit segments, sausage rolls, steak ‘n kidney pie, ice cream, and baked beans on toast for so long before he dies of the dreaded Gastric Boredom. Some variety, in other words, is needed.
Speaking of need, I need a drink, but of course old-fashioned hospitality has disappeared because offering a cocktail to a man in dire straits is nowadays something Only Hitler Would Do, or so I’ve heard. If I had a wife, I’d never have that problem because anyone I’d marry would know that when I need a drink, I need a drink and that’s the end of it.
So I’m announcing today that I am now in the market for a wife, on a first-come first-served basis, so to speak. And while all offers will be closely scrutinized, I should remind all lonely desperate needy partners that I am, to put it very mildly, a terrible prospect and you would be better off hooking up with Hitler. Or something like that.
Unless Maintenance somehow manages to find some way into my apartment and gets me inside, in which case never mind.
(aged 15, at Faro Airport in Portugal)
