Stop Inviting Drama In - The M Story

Many years ago I lived in New York and a friend came to visit. She had kinda invited herself and I thought it would be just a day or two. Turned out it was more like 2 weeks and full of drama. My friend was a gorgeous looking lady who never seem to hold on to a boyfriend or just dated the wrong ones. I was to find out how wrong. M, we'll call her M although she's long moved on so very little chance she'll read this, would take hours putting on her make-up and separate each eyelashes with a pin after each layer of mascara and there would be at least 4 coats. She did look stunning when she finished and when I used to moan that she took too long she would ask how long mine took - mine took 5 minutes - and she would ask how long it lasted and sure enough after an hour mine would start sliding off. Hers would last all day. I just didn't have the patience for all that.

M was fanatic about her diet - vegetarian, lacto-free, disgusting wheatgrass, etc. One day we were out shopping all day in the city and I said, two or three times, that I was hungry let's go eat, to which she pulled out some fiber tablets and told me to eat a few of them to quell my hunger. What! Sorry, but missy here needs real food!

M would go buy protein powder, spirulina, probiotic yoghurts, berries and make us smoothies. They were actually quite delicious with my bacon buttie in the morning. But even though M tried the yoga, exercise, vegetarian, lacto-free, smoothie, fiber pills life-style it still left her constipated for days on end. I told her she needed to see a doctor. She didn't. And then she pebble dashed my toilet bowl with poop after using a colonic irrigation contraption set up over my shower pole. Arghhhhhhhh!!! Me on the edge of going ballistic, her wondering what the problem was. I asked her to ensure the bathroom was disinfected immediately and to save the colon cleansing for when she was at home. I couldn't eat for the rest of the day.

So M had a boyfriend she had come to break up with in NY. Who the hell flies all the way to the States to break up with someone? I advised her to just call him and be done with it. But no, M was going to do it the 'civilised way.' WTH that means I'll never know. I'd never met the man so was asking M about him. He was a black doorman at a hotel. Aspiring actor I thought, part-time musician maybe? No, just a doorman who had served time in prison for murdering a man who was beating up his brother. What? I nearly fell off my stool. So M's mission was to break up face-to-face with an ex-con who had murdered someone. She tried to explain it was an accident. I was kinda freaking out that she may have called him from my apartment and he'd got caller ID. I told her she was never to call him from my place and I, consequently, couldn't sleep that night. 

She met him downtown for coffee the next day and delivered the news to him. I was to meet her back at my apartment later in the day as I had no desire to meet the man. Late afternoon she was back. She came in all bright and smiling and said there's someone I want you to meet. I thought she'd seen some old friend in the neighbourhood and wanted to introduce them but no she had brought the ex-con to my door to meet me. I was flipping furious. I said a quick hi and closed the door. She came in after 10-15 minutes and asked what I thought. I let rip. She had known I was already scared poopless that the man might have my number - and so now she escorts him to my door. The woman is loony tunes. She apologised and tried to tell me what a nice guy he was. I wanted to slap her, really hard.

I tried to survive the last few days without throwing her, all her make-up and weird contraptions, on to the sidewalk. A day before she was to leave she asked if she could extend her stay, I said no. By the time she was packed to go I was ready to blow. I was on a flight to Frankfurt that evening and she was leaving on the same flight too. I could barely talk to her. We got to Frankfurt and she asked if she could come stay in my hotel room for the night, I said no (it was a hell no in my head). And then she asked me if I could pay her ex-con ex-boyfriend $300 for a jacket she wanted him to buy for her and she would reimburse me later. I opened my eyes widely in disbelief and turned my back on her. That was the last I've ever seen of her. Although not my last thoughts of her. 

When I got back to my apartment in NYC, after five days in Frankfurt, there was a funky, nasty smell that greeted me as I opened the door. At first I thought it was the bathroom (Lord, please not another pebble dashing) I checked the bathroom, nothing. I opened a few windows and looked around, nothing. The following morning when entering the kitchen I was hit with the same foul smell from the night before. Checked the garbage, nothing. I usually empty the garbage before a trip but thought I'd double check. And then I saw it - the blender was a yukky, stinky mess. She had used the blender for one of her smoothies and not washed it out. It had sat in a warm apartment for five days and turned into a putrid, bubbling life form. The blender went straight in the bin. Her Facebook request, years later, went unaccepted and I can only hope that life has not taught her some very harsh reality lessons. Though some people just never get it.