Eloquently Twisted

When I first moved to Dublin I lived in a shared house. My room was so small it contained only a bed, a cupboard, space to get into the bed and the wardrobe was in the hall. The house was one of those that people moved in and out of it. 

One of those people who lived there was a guy called Anthony, he was in his forties, he looked in his fifties. He was from a rough area of Dublin but to be honest he was pretty friendly and we could talk. The reason he was in the house was he’d recently separated, his wife and two kids lived in the house they owned and he lived with us. A lone figure smoking on the couch watching late night TV. He liked to smoke, he also liked to drink, I once came back after Christmas the living room reeked of vomit, his vomit, he’d got sick and did an awful job of cleaning it up.

Still we got on ok, he was pretty passive about house things, he hogged the TV but wasn’t much hassle. He for some reason told me way too much detail about his love life, I’d look at him with a semi horrified expression then walk away with a 100 yard stare. 

At the weekends his kids would arrive, that was awkward, I’d avoid them. Don’t get me wrong they were nice kids.Though one day there wasn’t toilet tissue in the bathroom (we’d plenty under the stairs), one of them wiped their ass on the towel. 

Anthony started seeing a woman from a rough area of Dublin, he moved out. In his wake he left two pornographic magazines and a packet of pornographic playing cards. I can only assume he’d been playing solitaire. I threw them out, a few months later the romance turned sour, he moved back in. He never enquired about his porn which at that point had been recycled into possibly new porn, and I never told him of it’s fate. 

One day Anthony told me that Claire the other girl in the house and him had words. The words related to this; Anthony had come home drunk. The house had two bathrooms, the one on the landing and the one in Claire’s room. He’d come home drunk, gone to bed, got up to use the bathroom, it was occupied. He then walked into Claire’s room to use her’s. The problem is, Anthony was completely naked and Claire well she was in bed with her boyfriend. She shouted at him to get out. He did. He woke up naked draped in the bath mat with no memory of what had happened. Claire moved out shortly after. 

Eventually the man who owned the house wanted to sell it, we all had to move out, I’ve no idea what happened to him. I’m sure he’s still out there, becoming the stuff of legend on someone else’s couch.