I’ve known Margaret for over 20 years now. We met because we worked at the same place for a couple of years. Then I had the chance to recommend her at another place I worked and we got to work together for another couple of years. We were very close friends.
Her best friends are some women she knows from Bennington College in Vermont, a few of whom are pretty rich. One of them, Connie, is a lot of fun. (Not that the others aren’t!) We have a similar sensibility and we both love True Crime. She’s really great.
As long as I’d known Connie she’d been with the same man, Gary. He’s a great guy, an infectious disease specialist who’s been very helpful to me. Some years ago she suddenly left him for a woman named Gay. (I know!!) Gay has a personality disorder or two which I don’t have the knowledge—or the interest at this point—to diagnose and of which Connie was apparently unaware when they moved in together. They live in a great house in Connecticut with two dogs and two cats, surrounded by woods. The neighbor’s houses aren’t visible and you can’t see the road during the day, only at night when car headlights pass. One wall of the living room is all glass doors and the other side of the room has a balcony/hallway that leads to the bedrooms and bathroom. The place is great. Fucking Mia Farrow lives up the road, for god’s sake.
They’ve had some bad luck with dogsitters, housesittters and kennels. They visit their respective families in Maine and Cambridge MA a couple of times a year and can’t really travel with the animals. Margaret suggested me for the job and I was thrilled to accept. I would stay there for about a week over Thanksgiving and three weeks at Christmas when they’d be going to Cambridge and then to Eluthera for a vacation. They’d pay for all my food, let me use the car, and pay me $50 a day. What a deal! For Thanksgiving I’d drive up and back with Margaret because she always goes with Connie to hang out with her family over the holidays. It sounded perfect.
Margaret and I arrived in Bridgewater latish on the Monday before Thanksgiving. Connie was in the living room watching TV and Gay was asleep but she came down to say hello because we had never met. She was really brash and smart and funny and I liked her a lot. I met the dogs and the cats and we all went to our respective bedrooms.
The next day we all got up early because the animals get fed at 7am and 4pm. The dogs get a mixture of dry and canned food twice a day with vitamins and the cats get canned food twice a day with vitamins only once. The dogs could pretty much come and go from the house as they please since they had an electric fence and perimeter collars. I'd go out a couple of times a day and play with them. It was pretty simple except that one of the dogs has allergies and needs to be watched pretty closely. If he shows symptoms I would have to give him some medication. I remembered everything well enough to do feed them in the afternoon without even taking notes.
Gay had a huge problem preparing to leave the house and got progressively more anxious as the day went on. She and I went to the supermarket to get me some food for the weekend and that was relatively calm but still had some frantic moments. Margaret and I tried to stay out of her way but it was nearly impossible. I was given insanely over-written instructions—laser printed with hand-written notes—later that evening and Connie (apologetically) or Gay (neurotically) went over the protocol with me three times that night. Gay would turn every little thing into a crisis and took every opportunity to berate Connie, reducing her to tears several times. I felt terrible for Connie as well as being really uncomfortable myself. I’ve never witnessed such abnormal behavior in someone I knew before. My ex-lover Cecilio was a nut case but this was clearly much worse. Margaret and I finally went to sleep. I’m not sure what Connie and Gay did. I suspect they didn’t get much rest.
In the morning things were still the same. The atmosphere in the house was thick with tension which got worse until it was time for them to leave, and worse still in the four hours until they actually did leave. I fed the dogs and cats and we all took a long nap.
Needless to say, things went swimmingly while they were gone. It was fun having that great house to myself in the middle of nowhere, real perfection for me.
I forget whether they returned on Saturday or Sunday but the return trip so bad that Margaret insisted that we leave immediately for Philly. Fine with me. Connie paid me and we were on our way.
Then Christmas. I knew things were going to be bad even before we left Philly on the 23rd because we got the word to do my three weeks worth of food shopping before we got there. It was a lot of fun having an unlimited budget at Trader Joe’s!! Also, since I was going to be gone for nearly a month, I put my entire desktop computer set-up in the car. I didn’t think at the time that Margaret would be returning a few weeks before me and I made no provisions for getting it back home.
Anyway, we got there and the chaos was already in progress. (I swear, the dogs come running to the door when visitors arrive because they want to be rescued, not because they’re being friendly or just want to go out for a while.) My animal-feeding instructions were already printed. They were at least twice as long as the original version and they had even more hand-written notes. In addition, Gay had gone label maker happy. As an example, there was an unopened can of dog food labeled “SAMPLE CAN – DO NOT OPEN” which was utterly pointless since they only had one kind of dog food! The shelves of the pet supply closet were labeled very specifically as if there could have been any kind of confusion. It was ridiculous. Again, I was instructed in person three times with the written directions in hand and I was encouraged to take notes. Connie cried a lot.
They left for Cambridge on the 24th. Peace. I set up my computer on the dining room table. I spent Christmas exactly the way I like to: alone. By the way, they left me presents to open which were GREAT! (Mmmmm! Bridgewater Chocolates!) Also I had the keys to the car and $300 cash for whatever I needed. Life was good. For three days. I took the computer set-up down and put it in the basement before they returned, even though they’d only be there for 12 hours. I knew it would upset Gay.
They came back late on the afternoon of the 27th. Gay immediately stomped upstairs and slammed the bedroom door. Uh-oh. In the craziness, Gay let the dogs out and one of them came back without her collar. Margaret apologized to me and left within an hour.
Connie and Gay were to be picked up by a car at 6am and taken to JFK airport for their flight to Eluthera. That left them about 12 hours to pack one bag each and get some rest. Of course, Gay said it was impossible for her to do that because there wasn’t enough time. She hounded Connie to change their flight to a day later. It would cost them $1000 each. EACH!! Connie spent over an hour on the phone with the airline and finally was able to shave a bit off by canceling the original tickets to use at another time and buying brand new tickets for a day later. There was a lot of screaming back and forth. Before she left, Margaret had encouraged me to go to the movies or something just to get out of there. Stupidly, I stayed. I went to bed early.
The next day Gay was completely off the chain. She obsessively unpacked and repacked the refrigerator and the kitchen cabinets. She managed to fit all of my food into them but the cabinets were packed like Chinese puzzle boxes. Besides needing x-ray vision to see what was in them and I had to be careful that everything didn’t come tumbling out if I removed an item. Supposedly this was because the cleaning lady gets cranky if there's anything on the surfaces she has to clean. She left me five huge bags of clothes and a couple of fake fur blankets to take to the dry cleaners in town. (Bringing them was a seriously weird scene. I tried laughing along with the woman behind the counter but I was incredibly embarrassed at the amount of stuff I was dragging in from the car which, by the way, was parked behind the building.)
She did every scrap of laundry before she left. Seriously, every one. She put the downstairs shower head back together and cleaned up the shower and bathroom so it could be used. She scrubbed the kitchen and ran the dishwasher several times with nearly nothing in it. At one point I had to go into their room and saw that she was sitting on the floor chattering away with all of her shoes, about 30 pairs, arranged in a perfect grid around her. She wrote some more feeding instructions. Whenever we’d be alone together she’d say things like “You think I have a little OCD problem?” You think??
Worst of all, Gay endlessly berated and demeaned Connie, blaming her for things that she herself had caused or things that were totally meaningless. There were lots of tears. Connie and I tried to get away from her lunacy and catch up since we hadn’t really had a chance to talk, even at Thanksgiving. Gay would not let that happen. Paranoid that we were talking about her, she constantly interrupted us.
Gay also said “No sexual hijinks” while they were gone. Damn, but OK. I could travel since I had the car.
Later that night Connie came downstairs to give me my final instructions about the animals. She tried not to cry as she said she thought it was best that we go through them again, knowing that Gay was listening. Eventually she started sobbing and said that this would be the worst vacation she’d ever have. I told her it wasn’t too late to back out and that I would help her in any way that I could. I knew that wasn’t going to happen but I had to say something. She just kept apologizing and apologizing that I had to experience this insanity and she promised me a huge bonus. As uncomfortable as I was—and I can’t remember ever being more uncomfortable—I said she should worry about herself, that I’d be fine. (I didn’t say it but I was going to be fine as soon as they left. Connie was the one who’d be spending three weeks in a beach house with a lunatic, not me.) I hope it made her feel a little better but I doubt it.
I went to bed. They got no sleep. In all, it took Gay 36 hours to pack one bag. One. Bag. Finally they were gone.
I had a great time for a couple of weeks. I cruised the internet and met a couple of very hot men nearby. I went to a fisting party in New London, shopped at Trader Joe’s, bought a Razr, went to the movies, drove around investigating the town but mostly did nothing. It was heavenly.
I made sure everything was in order and my computer equipment was taken apart and packed up before they arrived.
When they got back, things weirdly seemed fine. We spoke on the phone while they were away and agreed that I would drive one of their cars home because I had so much stuff and return it the next day, then take the train home. The original car I was using, though, developed brake problems so they arranged for their limo driver to take me back to Philly in the morning instead. Nice!
Connie paid me before I left and, since things were going so well between them, forgot the “huge bonus” she had promised me. Maybe she thought the comfortable ride home was good enough. If so, that’s great. If not, I don’t know what to say. I would have done the housesitting for free because Connie’s a friend but still.
After I got home that things got more strange.
A few days later I get a call from Margaret. She said, “We have to talk and it’s not something that can be done over the phone.” Naturally, we couldn’t meet for a couple of days so I was completely on edge the entire time because she sounded so serious. I didn't think it had anything to do with Connecticut so I was totally in the dark.
As it turns out, the day I left Bridgewater, Gay was cleaning the dining room table and she found an black, oily substance that was difficult to remove, even after numerous scrubbings. They went out to dinner that night with some friends, a gay male couple. The guys told them that the stuff on the table was probably a special black fisting grease that they’d heard of. What?!?!?! THERE IS NO SUCH THING! And I would know. They are now convinced that I was fisting on their dining room table! Oh great.
The following day, Connie found a dog collar tied to a tree with a rope. At first I thought they were accusing me of some sexual game involving animal role-playing or of being a “furry” but they weren’t. (I'm terrible at role-play, too; I always snicker. I’m not an actor.) No, they assumed I tied up at least one of the dogs. Why would I? They have perimeter collars and they come back home faithfully. Maybe they think I tied them up outside so they wouldn’t disturb my non-stop fist-a-thon in their dining room with the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Perhaps I was trying to entice Mia Farrow to come over for some sexagenarian hole play. Please.
Later that night a pizza delivery guy arrived with two pies in my name! Yes, two pizzas for Frank Carroll. Sure, I ordered pizza while they were gone but I never gave Dominos my last name, nor did I give it to anyone I had sex with while I was in Connecticut. In fact, I used their phone to order. I have no idea what happened here except probably several kinds of miscommunication but they seemed to think I was up to something dastardly. I don’t fucking know what it could have been.
I assured Margaret that none of this had anything to do with me and that I had not had sex in the house. A fuck-buddy from Provincetown who lives close by came to visit but we didn’t have sex. I promised them I wouldn’t, so I didn’t. The dog collar thing is a complete mystery. The pizzas must have been some kind of mix up and whoever answered the door misheard my name and that is that.
Margaret believed me, thank god, but Connie and Gay had told her they knew I’d deny everything. They’re convinced I somehow took advantage of them and fucked them over. Wonderful. She said it would be better if I didn’t talk to them directly and it seems to me they didn’t even want her to speak to me about it in the first place. Needless to say, I was floored by the whole thing. I laughed even though I was kind of furious and I still am. What else could I do? That’s the way it stands. They think I’m a selfish prick.
A couple of weeks later, it came to me what the black stuff on the dining room table was. My Virgin de Guadeloupe mouse pad is really old and is kind of melting where my wrist hits it. It leaves black goo on the surface of the desk or table or whatever’s under it. There’s a picture of it on the left. It’s old and crappy but I love it. I want to send the pic to Connie but Margaret thinks it’s not a good idea. I don’t see what difference it could possibly make. I mean, she’s already not speaking to me because she thinks I’m a complete asshole. How could it be any worse?
I’m listening to “Release the Stars” from Release the Stars by Rufus Wainwright.
