once weekly, usually on Saturdays
Let’s see what happens when your host (me) has nothing to say, and instead it’s open mike night. Step right up, speak your mind, tell a story, sing a song, whatever.
7/28/2025
Anything goes #38
6 responses to “Anything goes #38”
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Diane The Hoarder
I met an old lady at the farmer’s market last week. She was a bike messenger in New York when I was a taxi driver back in 1974. We talked a lot about New York and art—when I told her we had a Lichtenstein we were going to auction off for a hundred grand or so to pay for my mother’s assisted living she said, “Lichtenstein?! It should go for five million!”
She had bought a lot of cheap Hilltop land and buildings when it was going dirt cheap and then sold it when the price went up dramatically. “I hated to see those trees get cut down,” she said about a few acres she had once owned there. “I’m down to just my own small house now which I own free and clear.”
I ran into her again a few days later at Metro Market, the yupscale grocery, and we sat around outside talking with our tiny free coffee, she had already had four or five.
“I may be seventy-five,” she said, “but I have the body of a thirty-five year old.” She was very overweight with swollen ankles, her face still attractive and it looked like she shaved. “I fell down the stairs of my Victorian and broke my leg in four places. I was in bed for a year and a half and that’s how I got fat. It really set me back. The guy who bought it was this prominent local gay politician, he ripped me off.”
“Well, what body part in particular feels like thirty-five?” I asked.
She thought for a moment or two and then said, “My skin. And I still have very nice breasts and…” she hesitated. “And I never had children so I’m still very tight. My boyfriend is long and not too wide so we fit together well.”
“I was wondering about ‘elder sex,’” I said. “What’s that like?”
“Oh, I still get wet,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I’m not trying to…”
“I have a way of getting people to tell me things. I’m very curious and ask a lot of questions. When’s the last time you had sex?”
“I saw my so-called boyfriend a couple weeks ago. He comes and goes, works on the railroad.”
I told her how we were going to pay six thousand a month for assisted living for my mother. “I could never pay that much,” she said. “Well, you have a house,” I said. “What’s that worth?” “Four hundred thousand, though I paid much less.”
“What? I thought you said it was small?” “It’s in a very desirable neighborhood, the North End here in Tacoma.”
“You could trade that house in some day and live at Toby Jones, that’s the most expensive old folks home in town, a couple steps up from my mother’s. You have to have $350,000 in cash or assets to get in there, then you can stay for the rest of your life.”
“I would never do that, live in a place like that! I’d rather just walk into the woods,” she said.
“Well, that’s what my mom said too, that she would never leave her home, but when the time came…”
A couple nights later she called me from her bed in the backyard and described the little forest there shared by four property owners. I told her I was bored and wanted to come visit her. I have to admit I was curious about what a pair of thirty-five year old tits looked like on a seventy-five year old woman. My oldest lover had been fifty-four ten years ago when I was also fifty-four so that would be a stretch, but I was bored and lonely and trapped, sitting around all day and visiting my mother for an hour or two in the afternoon, waiting for my sister to come back from France in a couple more weeks.
She didn’t invite me over but a couple days later I got a call. “It’s raining! My stuff in the backyard is getting wet! It’s been a terrible day,” she moaned. “That guy who bought my Victorian wanted me to clear out the rest of my stuff so I had to miss my film club. Could you come by? Or could I come where you are?”
“Well, I guess I could help you cover the stuff in your backyard,” I said.
“I just need some company for a while,” she said. “Could you bring a snack?”
“Probably not the snack but tell me your address,” I said.
She gave me the directions. I grabbed the vape pin, then went back upstairs and got a condom. I had bought ten of them in Mexico and had nine left.
I stopped at Metro and got some peanut butter-chocolate gelato and a big fresh chocolate chip cookie. There were all these cute young women with pretty faces and fine asses checking out their items as I stood in line with mine. I imagined that my seventy-five year old woman was certainly once a cute young girl.
I got lost a couple times but finally found her house. She opened the door and I threaded my way through the cluttered living room: she was a hoarder!
“I think we can find a place to sit,” she said. There were two seats around the kitchen table and I took one. Two or three cats jumped on the table and moved back and forth. It looked like they were eying me guiltily as if they knew they were out of line and I might be the authority figure they feared who would tell them to get off the table and behave.
“Some guys come by a few hours a week to help me move stuff around,” she said. “All of this is from my Victorian.” She was wearing a diaphanous night dress and I spotted her famous and sizable ‘thirty-five year old’ breasts within. “This is just my most comfortable clothing,” she said.
“I think the mistake you made was bringing all the stuff into this house instead of dealing with it. There is something wrong here,” I said, studiously avoiding saying ‘mentally ill.’
The cats patrolled the table and I was very uncomfortable with all the stuff around. I couldn’t imagine going through the process of finding a clean bowl or two so I kept the cookie and ice cream in my raincoat pocket. After a while she said, “Let’s go sit on my bed.”
Her bedroom was just as cluttered as the living room, dining room, and kitchen. She sat back on the bed and I was on the end leaning back against a pile of clothes or towels.
“Are you comfortable?” she said.
“Well, yeah, if these clothes are clean,” I said.
She took a takeout container from the side table and started to eat. “This is so good! Metro saved my life.” She saw me looking at the picture of the young woman on the side table and said, “That’s my aunt. She died because of a hospital mistake.”
“I think I know what’s going on here,” I said. “You get people to help you but you’re such a control freak that nothing ever gets done.”
“That’s not true at all,” she said. “I did exactly what my lovers told me to do and I got some really bad advice. My so-called boyfriend wanted to marry me. He said lets buy a house in Hot Spring, Montana. Then he changed his mind and said I had too much stuff, that all he needed was a bed and a chair.”
“Well he sounds like a liar,” I said.
“And an alcoholic,” she said.
“Well, yeah, that goes with the drinking. I had an alcoholic girlfriend once so I went through all that. No more alcoholics! Look, I could come back later and help you clear some stuff out.”
“It’s all going. I have a plan. I have lots of room to put it all in the basement and upstairs.”
“Here’s an idea, why don’t you just clear out your bedroom. Make this one room your sanctuary. I’ll help you or do it for you. Then maybe go room by room. I used to do home reorganizations, I even had a card and a blog.” (clutterkings.blogspot.com)
“You’re making me feel bad,” she said. At that moment all my issues were sublimated and I felt good. Even though I felt bored and lonely and trapped, I wasn’t her.
“Well I’m just being straight-forward. Your house makes me feel very uncomfortable.”
“I didn’t invite you over to…”
“It doesn’t matter what your intentions were. I’m an individual and I react however I do.”
“I’m working on it, little by little.”
“Well, I like to just get in there and do it all at once! So if I come back here in a year it will be all cleared out?”
“Yes!…I want you to leave now.”
I instantly jumped up off the bed, wove my way through her stuff, and went out the door to the car. She slammed it behind me.
A couple days later I sent her this email:
Hi Diane!
I know my bluntness turned you off but what you have to realize is I’m on your side…
here’s the thing: when you invite someone to your house it can be interpreted as a cry for help…
and I want to answer the cry (altho of course you will deny there is a “cry for help.”)
I would love to help you in a little way…
remember my idea of creating a sanctuary in your bedroom?
I could assess the job and then clear it out completely and make it a sanctuary. right now your sanctuary is probably your bed in the backyard, si?
It is not my business but I have a drive to do good, and I bet after a day (or two) I would have your bedroom pristine, your stuff put away, and etc…
(and if that works out we can see about the basement, upstairs, shelves, etc for the rest of the stuff, si? But really, just one little thing at a time is my way…)
I would ask only for a fat sandwich from Metro for my work and you would have to promise to keep your bedroom sanctuary nice and uncluttered…
that is my offer, if you decline that’s fine—I tried!
Hope you are well and if you still need that barcalounger hauled I would be happy to help…
E
I never heard back.-
No idea where or even when, but I’ve read this before and loved it both times. Even without a sex scene, she’s glorious and the whole thing is sweet like a grapefruit. You seem like a bit of an accidental saint, too. Makes me wistful for the wilted flower that we didn’t get to sniff.
Were you once the Deal With It guy? Now you got me trying to figure whether I’m a hoarder, but I think hoarders imagine value in their piles of rubbish. I don’t imagine value; I’m just to lazy to take out the trash.
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yeah, that was the name of my clutter blog, Deal With It, a moment in time…
i like that one but it’s too dirty for the ava…
(yeah, i’ve had a “saint moment” or two, who hasn’t?)-
Was is an actual business, or just fun fiction?
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i did actually clear out a disaster cabin once in Texas,
my first rule was: clear everything out and start at the top,
scrubbing the ceiling, etc…
photo: the cabin
well, couldn’t find the cabin photo, but here’s a conversation i had
on the property:I was staying with my friends in Austin and when I came into the house from their guest cabin the first morning the wife asked me how I slept. “That has got to be the most uncomfortable mattress I’ve ever slept on,” I said.
“Oh, no one has ever said that before,” she said.
“I’m wondering if you give your guests that bed so they don’t stay too long,” I said.
(I believe honesty is always the best policy, and yes your ass DOES look fat in that skirt.)-
But hey, it’s a sexy skirt and I look sexy in it.
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