a universal truth about men (maybe)

Wake up this morning and go into the bathroom.  The sink is dotted with tiny black stubble hairs.

Next I walk into the living room.  Alexander’s computer is on the floor, in a tent position.  A wrapper of candy he bought at Duane Reade at three this morning is on a table.  Across my living room sofa are two abandoned shirts, still on the hangers from the cleaners.  The third he took and wore last night. That shirt sits crumbled up on a chair in his bedroom.   The plastic holding the three laundered shirts together is on my dining table.  A half-drunk bottle of Poland Spring water is on a living room side table.  The pillows on my sofa are tossed randomly about.  The place is a mess.

I’m reading and loving Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  Both the story and the writing are excellent.

The book is about a woman (Amy) who disappears from her husband (Nick).  Here is one of Amy’s diary entries two years before her disappearance.  The words in parentheses are mine; the italics are Amy’s.

I have never been a nag.  I have always been rather proud of my un-nagginess.  So it pisses me off, that Nick is forcing me to nag.  I am willing to live with a certain amount of sloppiness, of laziness, of the lackadaisical life.  I realize that I am more type-A than Nick, and I try to be careful not to inflict my neat-freaky, to-do-list nature on him.  Nick is not the kind of guy who is going to think to vacuum (fluff up the sofa pillows) or clean (the toothpaste off the bathroom counter) out the fridge.  He truly doesn’t see that kind of stuff.  But I do like a certain standard of living--- I think it’s fair to say the garbage shouldn’t literally overflow (the piled up newspapers in the living room should be brought to our basement for recycling), and the plates shouldn’t sit in the sink for a week with smears of bean burrito dried on them (the Cuisinart Griddler shouldn’t sit on the counter for hours with the unwashed crusted-over grill plates).  That’s just being a good grown-up roommate.  And Nick’s not doing anything anymore, so I have to nag, and it pisses me off:  You are turning me into what I never have been and never wanted to be, a nag, because you are not living up to your end of a very basic compact.  Don’t do that, it’s not okay to do.

I read this excerpt to Alexander.  He is not amused.