One Step Better Than A Park Bench

There comes a time in everyone's life where, for one reason or another, you find yourself without a place to live. It doesn't seem to matter who you are- millionaires lose the fortunes, writers get exiled, dictators usurped, chimps released back into the wilderness after decades of captivity- everyone eventually comes home one day to find the house on fire or the locks changed. Sometimes both.

Ever since Piglet returned from Ireland, the snake-less Isle of limericks and car bombings, she'd had a spate of shit luck. It's the age old story: She broke up with her boyfriend, the topless bar she was working at wasn't treating her with respect and she suddenly found that she had no bed to sleep on. Her couch surfing experience has also been unpleasant. The stripper she was staying with apparently turned out to be an insomniatic "crack whore", waking Piglet up every twenty minutes to see if she'd like to partake in dangerous substances, and the guy she's currently staying with seems to be a powder keg waiting to explode. 'Admittedly,' says Piglet, 'I do wake him up at two in the morning to let me in to his room at the hostel. But he really is such a light sleeper.' (I have been informed that Piglet's snore causes ears to bleed, walls to crack and ceilings to tumble. Low-flying bats have been known to explode on occasion)

I hesitate before I say what I say next.

'You could sleep at my house if you'd like.' She looks at me. I know that she'd rather stay at the home of a convicted paedophile or a house adorned with pentagrams but she's a little desperate.
'That's nice of you to offer Fatman but...'
'Look,' I interject ,'I know that under different circumstances you'd happily live in a place where the roommates drink goat's blood and keep photos of dead babies on the fridge but you're a bit starved for choice.'
'Well.....'

Piglet has a strong aversion of nerds. She firmly believes that the interior of our house is decked out like the Starship Enterprise.
'You guys don't have long discussions about the temporal inconsistencies of old Dr. Who episodes do you?'
'No! We are not a household that does that sort of stuff[1]!'
'And I'm not going to wake up one night with a Bowie knife held to my throat/ someone taking pictures of me to download onto the internet/ with syphilis?'
'Piglet. You are not going to come out of a chloroformed torpor with me rubbing scented lotions on your hoof saying; "Ah lahks tuh rub people's feet.". It's not something I'd do. Do I strike you as someone who'd feel up a mongoloid cousin at Christmas?'
'Actually...'
'Shut it! Sleep with a can of mace within arms' reach if you must. And read this Jonathan Stern article from the New Yorker. It'll get you up to speed to what it's like to live with us. Sort of.'

Now, to convince the housemates to let a homeless Irish girl stay with us for awhile.


Mi Casa, Su Casa,
Fatman

[1] 'Anymore,' I add, bitterly and under my breath.