Why, hello! It’s so good to see you! Come in, come in! Welcome to my house! Have a look around. I’ve removed all evidence of how I actually live. Thank you for coming!
Oh, the coat? Why, you can put that on this coat rack, which is where all of my coats are. Is that because I regularly put my coats on the coat rack, rather than strewing them randomly on the floor? You can certainly choose to believe that! I won’t stop you!
Follow me; this is the living room, but don’t worry. It won’t tell you anything about how I live either. Feel free to sit anywhere. As you can see, I’ve hidden all the chairs beneath tables and made the sofa look flat and unused. I hope you are comforted seeing that there’s no way for you to know how much contact any item in this house has had with my butt. By the time you go home, something that’s touched my butt will almost assuredly have touched yours, but you’ll never know what.
Oh, thank you! It is a lovely little house, for the moment. Best of all, nothing in this room suggests I regularly spend entire days in my pajamas playing video games and eating peanut butter with a spoon. That’s an entirely random example, obviously. I could equally have said this house doesn’t suggest someone who eats breakfast before 1:00 in the afternoon, after cooking it using something other than the microwave. Read nothing into my saying the first thing instead.
Would you like something to drink? All of my glasses are in special wooden boxes called cabinets. Is that usually where I put them? Do I avoid leaving them in random, often disturbing places where no one should eat food? …Yes. Yes, it’s true. This is how my house always looks, and If you think you can prove otherwise, then do it! Who are you, a toucher of seats with butts, to doubt me? Where are your glasses?
Great Jupiter, I had forgotten the sheer power. You placed your drink on a counter. You believe that I am the kind of person who not only sees their table, but actually cares about whatever a coaster prevents in the first place! The lie I have told in this house is so perfect that it has become the truth. I can feel the tidiness like a fire inside me, burning away what I once was and remaking me into something new and terrible.
Oh, you want to know about the bathroom, do you? Oh, yes, let’s talk about the bathroom. You probably think if there’s anywhere you’ll find proof of my humanity, it will be the bathroom. You think you’ll be able to show that I metabolize liquids and solids, don’t you? That I dispose of the parts of them my body can’t absorb as nutrients? That I’m some of kind of filthy heterotroph? Ha! I’d like to see you try. Every surface is clear as day and smells faintly of lemon. You’ll never catch me!
I’ve done everything! I’ve erased the evidence that I sleep, that I eat, that I drink. It’s all gone! I am a God. No, better than that. I am a normal adult! And this is my temple. Worship before me, who has transcended humanity and become something greater: a responsible homeowner. Bow to me! Grovel to my adequate housekeeping!
Oh, you have to go? Already? Well, okay. Maybe your place next time?