Dear Old Man,
You are a perv. You won’t remember because, apparently, you go around asking women as a matter of course, but this is the second time you have approached me, unbidden, to “innocently inquire” if I clean houses.
The first time you asked me, I was walking home, dressed professionally, carrying a laptop, which you felt gave you latitude to pull your car over to the side of the road as I passed a gas station and ask if I would clean your home. I understand that in rural Kentucky, not many people are just out walking and some of them may be doing so because they’re sort of down on their luck, so it can be confusing. However, I was not in a desperate search for employment at that time. I was merely walking home to my loving family after a fulfilling day at my place of work.
Today, as I got in my BMW (husband’s midlife crisis-don’t ask) and you got out of your beat-up, old Nissan Sentra, you again asked if I cleaned houses. I have to admit, you may have had more reason today because I was wearing a greased-stained t-shirt and shorts with driveway sealant encrusted on them. In my defense, I was planning on doing some house-cleaning of my own home so didn’t feel I needed to look nice to buy garbage bags. Personal appearance does not seem to faze you, though, because it doesn’t matter how I look; you just show up at random times in need of a “woman who cleans houses.”
I am starting to wonder if you are a projection of my own consciousness maybe. No one else I know has seen you, yet you appear to me without warning, as if to remind me of what my mother always said, namely, that “you cain’t get above your raisin’.” Although I have received a college education and beyond, I need to be aware that I am just a breath away from scrubbing other people’s floors and eating lard from old, bulging cans in an alleyway by a fire made of trash.
When I asked you in a huffy tone why you said that, you looked a bit guilty and just repeated your line, “I’m just looking for someone who can clean my house,” I almost said, “Why don’t you clean yourself, a-hole,” but I saw your hand hung curled and useless by your side. Only my pristine Kentucky manners saved you.
I don’t think you really want someone to clean your house. I think you like giving women the creeps. Here’s a tip, though. As a pick-up line, “Do you clean houses?” leaves something to be desired. However, if you looked like Ben Harper with your hippie Rasta hat, hipster facial hair, and sincere song lyrics, then I would take this back and we’d see what we could work out.
Please never talk to me again because I don’t want to clean your house and am barely keeping up with my own,
Jodie Leidecker
Submitted by: Jodie Leidecker
