2009 has been a bad year for cleaning, but I’ve learned a lot about it.
It all began in May when my friend and I were forced to clean the house that I privately refer to as “Graceland.” We’d spent the better part of a year partying in Graceland, from about June ’08 until May ’09. As days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months, that place started to resemble anything but paradise. It had been cleaned before, but the clutter always accumulated faster than it could be managed, and the place generally resembled its former landfill-like state in less than a week’s time.
Graceland was the quintessential punk rock house, without the punk rock. Broken windows and whiskey bottles, hundreds of empty beers, dozens of busted strings and drum sticks, rotten burritos, empty pizza boxes, salsa verde soaked into the carpet, an assortment of cigarette butts on the basement floor, and the grubby basement sink we affectionately referred to as “the downstairs bathroom.” At first it hurt every part of my soul to be around that kind of mess, but by the end of the year it started to grow on me.
My favorite thing about Graceland was that after four months of practically living in the basement there, the landlords brought it to everyone’s attention that there was a mold growing down there that we would be wise to avoid prolonged exposure to. This did not stop us from holding nightly band practices, which typically devolved into dart games and drunken shouting matches after about 30 minutes.
As one could reasonably expect, that lifestyle took a toll on everyone who frequented the house, and by the end of the year all but a few had left Eugene as consequence of various Graceland related problems. The surviving members of the house became Kings of the Trash Heap, and we were left to our own devices. As the lease was running up we were also stuck with the unenviable task of cleaning up the big fucking mess we all made.
Although I was not on the lease, that ecosystem of squalor was my sanctuary from the real world. I did my part to help it thrive, and thus I was obligated to help restore it to it’s original form. It took almost an entire week, but we persevered through it with a simple mantra. “Never forget.”
