The cadaver in my kitchen
I woke up to a stench of death. It was bad. Real bad. I jumped out of bed, still half asleep. Like an airport security dog, I wandered around the house, sniffing the air and trying to find the source of the smell. It was coming from the kitchen. I checked the fridge, the oven, the sink, the dishwasher, and the cabinets. Nothing. I was getting desperate. Then it hit me: the trash. Of course. (Why didn’t I start there?) I tiptoed up to the garbage can and slowly lifted the lid. A million flies came out, smacking me in the face like tiny bullets. The smell was now overpowering. Like the foul scent of a two-week-old cadaver. I haven’t met one before, but my brain was convinced that I was about to face a very expired human. God help me.
I pulled the kitchen window wide open and tried to expel the flies. It took a good half hour for most of them to vanish. Dozens decided to hang out for the day. The smell was still there. Strong and putrid.
I now had to do the most challenging. Take a look inside the bin to verify which body part I would be dealing with. Fortunately, I was wrong. The fetid air was coming not from human remains, but from the rest of a melon that I had partially consumed three weeks prior. It was at that moment that I learned an important lesson. You don’t leave melon leftovers in the trash for three weeks. Never. News to me.
I now live alone. It’s the first time this happens in the 46 years of my existence. And I love it. Hardly anything is more incredible than waking up in the morning and hearing the voice of nobody. No wife, kids, or roommates. The few sounds will come from the birds, a bit of traffic, and the occasional domestic brawl a few apartments away. I turn on the espresso machine and walk around free, semi-naked, nipples to the wind, contemplating a new day under the weight of nothing but a pair of underwear.
No blessing comes without its troubles, though. Despite the magnificent life as a lone wolf in heart of Europe and one of the most beautiful cities in the world, a curse threatens me daily. I am talking, naturally, about house chores. My fellow friend, however successful in life you might be, nothing prepares you for the daily duties of a single man’s apartment.
As you now know, it all starts with the trash. You see, in my silly mind, I was under the impression that as long as the trash bin in your kitchen is not full to the brim, you should just leave it there, untouched. The melon of death taught me otherwise. It turns out, the trash goes fully anti-social just after a few days. Depending on what’s inside, things can get really nasty.
And don’t think you can just toss it out at will. There’s this thing called “The Trash Truck” that comes to your address on very specific days with the sole mission of collecting garbage. That means you have to time your trash-making with their trash collecting, or you will be forced to share a roof with hell cologne.
Trash is just the beginning. As I started having meals at home, I noticed a fascinating phenomenon. After a while, dirty plates, glasses, spoons, forks, and knives start to accumulate in the sink. Unreal. Until now, everywhere I lived the sink would just reset on its own, every night, coming fresh and clean in the morning. Not anymore.
The same goes for the laundry. Unless you add your dirty clothes to this big white box, add a few chemicals, and turn the button around a few times, they will never return clean.
Even things I was completely familiar with took me to task in the new life. The microwave is a good example. I’ve been operating those since I was a kid. Food in, press start, wait for the beep, food out. No frills. What I didn’t know was that, if you forget to remove the food, it will stay there indefinitely. And just like the melon, eventually, it turns bad. The other day I “cooked” a piece of ready-to-eat salmon and completely forgot about it. The next day, upon opening the little door, there it was. I looked at it and thought “hey, how lucky, let me just heat this again”. Pressed the button, got the plate out, and, voilà, I had lunch. Later that day, a strange feeling in my stomach gave away a clue that I probably made the wrong move.
There's cleaning too. Making my own bed is not nearly enough. I now have to clean the entire place. For some strange reason, dust accumulates over time. And there goes Rodrigo on the vacuum machine (took me hours to figure it out). Some places need a good scrub, others need to be washed and even polished. Insane. Oh, you have to buy a lot of stuff too. Even toilet paper doesn’t self-stock if you can believe that.
All those tasks, combined with a lot more that I am leaving out to spare you, fellow reader, from unimaginable anguish, make living alone a job for very few heroes. And a hero, my friend, as it turns out, I am not. This is why, even before I finished writing this Cabra Mail, I took it upon myself the responsibility of doing the only thing anyone in my position should do. I hired a maid.
Rodrigo Bressane
Paris, France
PS.: Before you go, you should follow me on Twitter, where you can see precious tweets such as this one.