Look, there’s just one thing I want you to know, okay? It’s all your fault.
“Sure, you can have the place,” you said.
“No really, it’s fine,” you said.
“For the weekend? Absolutely,” you said.
And then you said it: “just clean out all my stuff first, okay?”
“It’ll just get in the way.”
You rotten sonuvabitch.
So we got our party supplies and our drinks and our friends and our drinks and our drinks, and we all went out there. Because we trusted you.
And then we opened the door, and were face to face with stuff. All your stuff.
“Just clean out all my stuff first, okay?”
Well yeah. There was no room in there otherwise, was there?
Jenny, she figured it’d be no big deal. We’d get some bags, get some bent backs, get your stuff in the bags. Garbage bags’d do fine, for that stuff.
Well, the bags got filled, the backs got bent, but when we’d emptied out the whole fifty-bag box, guess what we were still stuck with? More stuff.
So, more bags. There was a store right down the corner. Got a couple of boxes.
So, more stuff. ‘Nuff said.
So, square one. Again. With more stuff.
Where’d you get all this stuff, anyways? You never struck me as that much of a packrat. But fuck me, I’ve seen hoarders with less of it. I’ve seen millionaires with less of it. So much damned stuff.
Steve just moved a few days ago, still had time left on the truck. It was a big truck, too. Steve also has stuff, you see.
He pulled it up, said we could fill it up. Just until the party was over.
So we filled it up and up and up and up ‘till the door couldn’t close. With stuff.
Now how’d you guess that wasn’t good enough, huh?
Well, Steve was real mad after the truck got full up, and we had to take out some of the party supplies and drinks and calm him down, him and Joey. So while we were doing that, Joey said that what we should do is just shovel it all out, worry about the cleanup later. And hey, we’ve all had worse ideas while we’re drunk, right? Right.
So we took the snowshovels from your garage, and we started shovelling your stuff. Out the windows, out the doors, THROUGH the window in one case…
(Steve said it was an accident, and we don’t believe him, and neither should you).
Didn’t matter. Too much damned stuff. Ankle-deep and sometimes it looked like it was rising.
We were getting desperate. Well, Bob got more than desperate. All that stuff. He said hey, your house has a metal frame, right? And stuff burns damp, right? And we could just soak down the walls first, right? And you had fire insurance, right?
So, right?
Stuff don’t burn damp.
Stuff barely burns at all.
I swear to you that we dumped every bottle of charcoal lighter fluid, oil, machine oil, and olive oil we could find in the house and in our cars all over that stuff. We went through sixteen books of matches, four lighters, and your little candle-lighter.
Stuff smouldered. And it smelt like a horse’s armpit, if that armpit were in an elephant’s asshole. The smoke could be seen for miles, but if you wanted to catch wind of a spark, you’d need a microscope.
Well, after we’d finished coughing
-and wheezing-
-and stomping-
-and smothering-
-one of us must’ve said “hey, let’s try it going the other way, and that’s why we turned on all your faucets and showers and flooded your toilets and ran your hoses.
Because if you can’t fight stuff with fire, water’s worth a try. Right?
Right!
Wrong.
The stuff thickened like concrete. A lot of it had congealed by now, and separating stuff A from stuff B was going from hard to impossible. There were no stuffs now. Only Stuff.
Steve had gone missing in the fog, I guess. I guess he did.
I mean, we didn’t notice him going missing. But then he came back in a bulldozer, so I guess he went SOMEWHERE.
Drove that thing in full throttle, foaming at the mouth. I didn’t hear a word he said, but I suspect if I’d had it would’ve driven my ears black and blue.
He hit the stuff. The stuff hit back.
That big old yellow bulldozer that looked like a child’s my-first-Tonka rumbled, roared, shrieked, and started smoking from every jowl.
We pulled old Steve out and started trying to back it up. That’s when we realized there was more to it all than smoke.
It burned a lot better than the stuff did.
Electrical fires, slow-burning fires, all that loose damp and muck from the stuff….it was one helluva brew, let me tell you that.
Especially since Karen dropped some of our party supplies in there by mistake.
We all got a little distracted for a while. And then the cops showed up, went in without gas masks, and well, they got a little distracted too.
And once we’d woken up, the stuff was set.
Dead set.
In every doorframe.
You ever try to claw through taffy with your fingernails?
Well, it’s not as bad as stuff.
The fire department got us out. Blunted six axes on the stuff and gave three firefighters chronic back pain for a week.
But the good news was there too. You know those chemicals they use as fire retardants in fire extinguishers? That stuff?
Turns out it disagrees with your stuff. It disagreed with it all the ways down the drain.
Then the fumes disagreed with everyone else all at once. Lord-a-mercy that thing did not sublimate cleanly.
So.
We’ve cleaned out your stuff.
We didn’t even get the weekend.
And we’ve all got damaged lung tissue.
And the fire department, the police department, and the department of health and safety are all mad at us.
So that’s why you’re going to step the hell up and fork over the cash for fifty-nine paintjobs on the cruiser force and firetrucks. And quit trying to pass the blame here. If you’d had more self-control when it came to stuff, none of this would’ve been an issue.