The Visitor

Fish and visitors smell in three days said Benjamin Franklin. No truer words were ever uttered!

Recently, I had a visitor stay over at my place. Even though I do enjoy my privacy enormously, I was happy to have him over for a short while. We were not particularly good friends, rather acquaintances from a long time ago. Still, spending some time with him, chatting about the foolishness of our youth and the journey travelled so far was an enjoyable perspective. I had taken some time off work and planned on showing him around. So far, everything was fine.

The troubles started the moment he landed. I had forgotten his true nature. Actually I had known him so very little that I was really unaware of it. Distance and years had done their toll on my memory. I thought that at some point we all grew up. I was wrong. And for the next seven days, I would be reminded of it constantly.

My visitor, George, it turned out, was far more interested in listening to his own voice repeat ad nauseam the same insipid stories than engross himself in this wonderful new culture in which I now lived. It became so pathetic that I had to actually apologize for interrupting his monologues, to point out places of interest and pieces of art, only to be acknowledged with a curt nod and a resentful silence; he was annoyed at my lack of manners or interest, was I told. Not only did he spend seven dreadful days and evenings talking solely about himself, and let me tell you he is not that interesting in the first place, but it turned out that he was also terribly competitive, judgmental and loud in his believes. And this can be quite uncomfortable, especially when his disdain would focus on someone nearby. Obvious sexual orientations, excess of weight or ethnis were amongst his favorite targets. No matter what the subject of conversation, every sentence, without exception, made allusion to some sex he supposedly had, to something smoked or to the pretensions of some expert friends of his. It was rather pathetic.

The funniest moment happened around the third day. I am an avid reader; my home is crammed with books. Not only do I have an overflowing bookshelf right in the hallway, but there are piles of books everywhere. That afternoon George was commenting on the fact that he was very surprised there were no books in my home. He had somehow thought of me as a reader. As far as I was concerned, it was another one of his brilliant remark that did not require an answer. What could I reply to that? Never-the-less, the morning after, when he got up to be fed breakfast, he noticed a large pile of books located by the couch. Within a minute, he was shaking his head in disbelief. He actually thought that the previous night while he was asleep, I had deliberately piled up books around so that he would think I read a lot. He could not phantom how I intended to make him believe that they had been there all along…

The morning after his arrival I had a moment of panic. I briefly considered the possibility of asking him to pack and leave. But I am a fair person. Considering I was also at fault for inviting him in the first place, I figured I should make an effort; it was after all, only six days of my life. However, as Albert Einstein once said, sit besides a beautiful woman for an hour and time passes like a minute, sit on a hot stove for an hour and it will feel like one hour. Needless to say, the length of those days did not go by unnoticed; I had time to appreciate every minute of it. Thankfully the weather was on my side and we were able to roam freely outside. It would have been unbearable otherwise. I have to admit though; it was surprisingly easy to block him out of my mind. I remember bits and pieces, but for the most part, I enjoyed to the fullest the last of summer days.

His coming was mostly a vast waste of my time, save perhaps for the wonderful realization that I have made a lot of progress in my life. I am definitely not the same person I was at nineteen.

On the last night, I drove him to the airport and after a few minutes we parted. I was walking away when I stopped and turned around. Apparently, my visitor had already passed the gate for he was nowhere in sight. For a moment I was baffled, I could not remember whom it was I had just dropped off. That night, I headed home with a smile on my face and a spring in my step.