My flatmate Dean is old and retired, like me, but he still works Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays, in the kitchen of a swanky hotel’s restaurant, downtown. He’s a Seahawks season-ticket holder, so his schedule sometimes varies during football season.

All this I know despite not caring and never asking, because Dean tells me, often.

If we see each other on a Saturday morning, any Saturday morning, he’ll say, “Today is my Monday!” and explain that it’s the first day of his three-day work week. If we see each other on a Saturday night, he’ll switch to past-tense. “Today was my Monday!”

If we see each other on any Sunday, Dean will say, “Today is my hump day!” unless there’s a home game for the Seahawks, in which case he’ll spend five minutes explaining which day he’ll be working to make up for having Sunday off.

If we see each other on any Monday, Dean will say, “Today is my Friday!”

What’s the number of times that “Today is my Monday!” etc can be cute, or clever, or something you want to hear? Your answer doesn’t matter; Dean’s answer is infinity. If I see him, he says it. I have never lived a weekend in this house without hearing what day it is for Dean, at least two days out of three.

It is good, though, knowing that on Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays, once he’s gone to work I can enter the kitchen with no hesitation, knowing I won’t the victim of a conversation with Dean.

♦ ♦ ♦

I’m the world’s most introverted introvert, and Dean is the world’s most extroverted extrovert. Sharing a house for almost three years now, no matter how I avoid him, he’s always there, talking at me.

When I see him in the kitchen, he talks.

Any time we pass in the hallway, he talks.

When he’s in his room, he usually leaves his door ajar, to better hear when anyone passes, so he can rush out of his room to talk at them.

He does this with my other flatmates, Robert and ‘L’, but I guess they don’t mind. I mind.

Dean is so persistent, always wanting to talk, it’s clearly more than merely introvert vs extrovert. He’s mentally ill, genetically incapable of understanding that we’re not buddies and never will be. Seriously.

Knowing it’s a ‘condition’ means I can’t deck him. Means I probably shouldn’t even yell at him, though I have, a dozen times, and many, many other times I’ve walked past and ignored him as he spoke at me.

♦ ♦ ♦

One fine day, coming back from the bank, I was riding the bus and looking out the window, and didn’t notice that Dean had boarded the bus.

“Mind if I sit here?” asked a familiar but very unwanted voice, interrupting the solitude of my ride.

Dean sat without waiting for my answer, else he’d still be waiting.

Usually my backpack is on the seat, but having some human decency the backpack goes onto my lap if the bus is crowded, so’s someone can sit, if they don’t mind sharing the seat with a fat guy. The bus was fairly crowded, so my backpack had been in my lap, so now I was riding the bus with Dean seated beside me.

He cannot be with anyone without talking, so he began talking, and then talked, and talked, and talked. About? Swear to god, and I did, he was talking about rutabagas.

I fantasized about shoving Dean off the seat, into the aisle, but didn’t, and won’t. Always I tell myself, be patient. As frustrating as the man can be, he’s only trying to be nice, and anyway, it’s a mental thing, for both of us.

Soon I’d be in my bedroom with a closed door between us, and for all his talkativity, Dean respects the door of my room. He’s never had more than a few sentences to say, once that door is closed.

Whenever Dean is talking, closing my door is what I look forward to, and I was dreaming of that closed door as he prattled on and on about rutabagas, on the bus.

We were ten minutes from home, and I listened, even asked a question about rutabagas, which he answered at tediously tedious length.

The roots and leaves are both edible, he explained. And he had prepped a rutabaga soup at the hotel restaurant a few days earlier, and everyone — customers, employees, even strangers passing on the street — had sent their compliments to the chef.

When nothing more could be said about rutabaga soup with smoked cheddar and rosemary, he began talking about football, and as he droned on and on, I remembered an escape strategy.

We live on a hill, and usually I get off the bus at a stop that’s not the closest to home, because I’d rather walk two blocks downhill than one block uphill. During previous involuntary bus rides with Dean, I’d gotten away at that earlier stop, and he’d ridden on to the next stop. It gets him home faster, and he’d be waiting in the kitchen to talk at me, but that’s better than walking to the house with him.

This was the first time, though, that he’d sat right beside me on the bus. When I rang the bell, I had to say, “Excuse me, Dean” to get past him and out the door.

“Certainly,” he said, “I’ll accompany you.”

“You should stay on the bus,” I said.

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to walk home alone.”

“I would,” I said, but he chuckled like it was a joke, and started talking about football as we stepped off the bus.

Gotta live with the schmuck, and it could be worse, so you’d have thought we were old friends as we walked together two blocks home. All the way, Dean talked at me about football. When we crossed the street together, I unlocked the door, we walked into the living room together, then into the kitchen, and still he was jabbering about football. Then I unlocked my bedroom, stepped in and closed the door behind me. Talking right through the door, Dean finished his boring story about a boring football game, but then he was gone.

Until next time, anyway.

11/19/2024