Pensjonat Pod Klonami 1: Meet the family!

[muckefuck]

In the three years and change since we moved in here, I've lost count of how many people we've offered use of our guest room to. In all that time, less than a half dozen have taken us up on it: my parents, my ex, and two friends of monshu's. And none of them have stayed for more than three days (which, as we all know, is the time after which both friends and fresh fish begin to become offensive).

Well, starting today, we have our first medium-term guest--and he's already broken something. In the parlour, in full view of two siblings and his sister-in-law. Poor boy will never live that down again! He's an old colleague of the GWO's who just got a job on the South Side (and by "old" I mean that he left the institution some years ago; I shudder to contemplate how much younger than me he is) and yet perversely has decided he wants to find an apartment up here. Trying to do that long-distance wasn't working out--who knew how hot the rental market was up here?--so my man offered him the bedroom and he's here now.

I've actually been looking forward to an opportunity like this. For a while now, I've been considering the possibility that we might have to have someone move in, whether through need on their part or on ours, and I've been wondering how that would work out in practice. You can adjust to almost anything for just a few days, but weeks or months is a different matter. There's tonnes of space in this place, but it's not exactly well laid-out for hosting a border: there's no door between the den and the parlour, you have to walk the length of the apartment twice in order to get from the guest room to the kitchen (unless you want to go outside), you can always hear someone walking above, etc.

And EB seems like a good candidate: young and flexible, but mature and mild--a good gay Midwestern boy whose parents done raised him right. And the contrast between him and his family is absolutely classic. His brother is a big ol' clueless bear who likes huntin' and fishin' and thinks there are "too many people" in Chicago. His goals while he's here are visiting a downtown firehouse so he can get a free t-shirt (I did not know that was a professional courtesy) and eating some Italian beef because he saw Big Al's on Guy Fieri's show or something. (They were talking about the Sears Tower until they found out how much it would cost.) As they were leaving, he and monshu had this classic exchange:

Gay Urban Foodie: You're welcome to have dinner here. I made bolognese.
Big Country Dude: What's that?
Me (translating): Red sauce, with meat...meat sauce.
GUF: Except Northern style, not Southern style.
BCD: *cracks up*
Me: *doubles over laughing*

Earlier he showed me his dog-chewed wallet and we discussed where he might go to replace it:

Good Gay Midwestern Boy: You can get a wallet for ten dollars at H&M.
BCD: Too expensive[*].
Me: How many head of hogs would you have to sell to get enough money for a $10 wallet?
BCD: Someone stole a hundred-and-fifty head of hogs out by us. I think they said the total loss was $50,000. It was two weeks before the guy noticed them missing.
Me: That's crazy.
BCD (conspiratorily): I think it was an inside job.

I cannot express how disappointed I am that he won't be joining us for cocktails tonight. Instead it sounds like they might go get drunk at Tommy Nevin's, since their hotel is right across the street. But the newest resident of Pod Klonami could be joining us if he feels up to it--and stand up to having the tale of his destructive capacities revealed to a new crowd.


[*] I'm not always great at reading country deadpan, but I do think this was tongue-in-cheek.