They say men need a partner. Someone to keep them in check, to balance the chaos. Someone to remind them to take out the trash before their home turns into a breeding ground for Satan’s larvae. But I wasn’t interested in balance. I was interested in saving fifty bucks.
It started simple. I had a new duplex in Bend, a prime spot right next to McMenamins, where the beer was cold, and the bartenders knew my name. Life had structure—Friday nights were for clam chowder with my son, Sundays were for hiking with my daughters, and every other waking moment was spent figuring out how to avoid responsibility while still keeping up the illusion of being a functional adult.
So when I looked at my bills one day and realized I was paying for trash service at both my restaurant and my residence, I had a brilliant idea: screw the duplex’s trash pickup. I had a truck, I had a dumpster at the restaurant—why not just toss my garbage there and pocket the savings? A real entrepreneurial move, a financial masterstroke.
At first, it worked great. The kids would visit, the house stayed clean, and I was convinced I had gamed the system. But then, as these things go, I got distracted. I spent a few weeks out of town, rotating between the South African Amazon blonde I was probably supposed to marry and the occasional escape to Portland, where the beer was stronger, and the women didn’t expect much from me.
Then one day, I came home. Opened the door.
And stepped into the putrid, rotting bowels of hell.
Jesus Christ.
I had forgotten about the trash. Three bloated bags of it, ripening in the kitchen like corpses in the sun. The smell punched me in the face before I even stepped inside. The kids gagged. I gagged. The refrigerator milk had swollen like a goddamn balloon, threatening to burst. I grabbed the bags, ran them out to the truck, and that’s when I saw them—tiny, writhing, pale little bastards dropping from the bags onto the floor.
Maggots.
Fucking maggots.
At first, I thought it was just a few. A dozen, maybe. But no. As I started picking them up, I realized they were everywhere. Like a horror movie directed by a garbage man. They had spread—into the carpet, under the breakfast nook, into places I didn’t even want to think about.
The kitchen floor was alive.
I grabbed a broom and swept them into a pile, threw them outside like some offering to the gods of poor life choices, doused the floor with alcohol, and figured that was the end of it. The kids played Xbox, I cracked a beer, and we spent the day out—hiking, hitting the breweries, pretending we weren’t living in a crime scene.
Then we came home.
I opened the door.
And the flies.
A thousand of them. No, more than that. A black, buzzing, swirling nightmare covering the windows, trying to escape, their little newly-formed wings still drying from their glorious birth into this world of decay. And worse—when I looked down, I saw them. Emerging. Crawling up from between the fibers of the carpet like something out of The Exorcist.
I had created a breeding ground for hell itself.
I grabbed the wet vac.
For two hours, I sucked up flies, larvae, the remnants of my poor judgment. Some had already started to fly, darting at my face like tiny kamikaze pilots avenging their maggot brethren. The vacuum filled up with them—hundreds, maybe thousands—turning and writhing inside, a goddamn Noah’s Ark of filth.
And as I stood there, drenched in sweat, my home finally free of the infestation, it hit me.
This is why men need a partner.
A woman—any woman—would have forced me to take that trash out. Would have given me that look when I said, “Hey, I’m saving fifty bucks by not having trash service.” Would have reminded me that basic sanitation is more important than a beer budget.
Instead, I had this—a house of horrors, a biohazard crime scene, a lesson in why I shouldn’t be left alone with my own ideas.
And you know what?
I still don’t regret saving the fifty bucks.
