Honestly, I can deal with messy, I said. But not dirty. I abhor dirty. My last serious boyfriend, he was dirty. I always thought his dresser was grey, until one night, when he was sleeping, I took a Swiffer to it. to get rid of a few strands of dust that had been driving me craaaazy. Turns out the dresser was brown. The grey was dust! Took 4 Swiffer sheets to restore it to the original color…

I didn’t know why I felt the need to tell him all this, but once I started I just couldn’t put it back in, so of course, I kept going…

He’d have me over to cook dinner and the sink was piled high with old dishes. He’d leave the condoms on the floor by the bed for a few days, so that I wasn’t sure if they were from us or from someone on the side. Yea, I didn’t jibe with that. Yuuccck-o. But a little mess, now, that’s OK. My desk, if you saw it, you would knooooow I’m a creative type. Totally belies all the spreedsheets I make to organize my life and office. I go on clean-up sprees almost weekly – you know, attack some tiny corner of my life – but I have this chair…

There are moments in your life, decisions you make or things you say when you’re grateful you had too much to drink, because you can always blame the alcohol for whatever you said/did. I didn’t have that excuse.

So this chair, it’s piled high with clothes. It could probably be a pretty comfortable chair, if I could only find the seat. I’ve never sat on it. But my closet has. The clothes on this chair, they’re not my good clothes. So, like, that makes it okay. My good clothes go on a hanger or in a drawer at some point before I go to bed at night. These clothes on the chair are mostly lounge clothes. And they’re on the chair because I don’t wear them – they’re out of season. So yea, I say I don’t date messy guys because I guess, I’m messy and I can only imagine what kind of chaos would ensue if I ended up living with someone who had a chair or desk like mine.

I took a sip of my iced tea and finally shut up. That was a long-winded answer to a simple question: how do you feel about a guy with a messy apartment. I tried to make my eyes all big and doe-like, but much like “cute,” I’ve never done naïve convincingly. He laughed and proceeded to tell me about his collections of pop-culture memorabilia that had yet to make their way to a shelf or drawer.

I used to have a chair like that in my bedroom, too. He confessed.

Oh? Yea?

I got tired of seeing the mess every morning when I woke up. So I got rid of it.

That’s what I need to do. Just get rid of the “easy way out!” I thought he had just uncluttered my life with one swoop. My hero!

I moved the chair into my hallway. With the clothes still on it. They’re at least 3 seasons old by now…