The Slob

When the Bissell SC (self-contained) 1632 model was released, it changed everything as far as carpet maintenance was concerned. There was a newfound, revolutionary way to absolve your carpets and rugs of the disgusting murkiness that we’re all ashamed to admit somehow accumulates in every household. The experiences of my youth made my adult encounter with the machine more than life-changing. Little did I know at the time that it could potentially become the lynchpin of my demise.

Yes, the SC 1632 was a more than fabulous product. It was similar to the others that Bissell had released over the course of its remarkable history, which had begun back in 1876. For a company that had been doing business over the century mark, they still hadn’t let their foot off the gas. The SC 1632, more so than anything prior, solidified that notion. Mainly because it was their first deep cleaning device that wasn’t required to be tethered to a water source.

Now free of its proverbial dog leash, there was no need to feel restricted. You could leave any room sparkling effortlessly without the hassle of running an obnoxious length of water hose throughout your home, hence the “self-contained” moniker. The more I learned about it, the more excited I felt.

Certainly, when our porch was first occupied by a salesman dressed in a shabby black vest and a turquoise sports jacket, I had no intention of purchasing it. Not because I didn’t want to, of course, the reasons were of a more financial nature. However, contrary to the depth of our bank account, by the conclusion of the evening, all of the carpet throughout our recently purchased home would be spotless.

That outcome was relatively unlikely given the situation at hand. The sales pitch came from a hungover, disinterested man who failed to articulate any of the features or benefits of the superb product he represented. Basically, all he did was distract from them; jutting a disheveled greasy persona that made me itch. I felt like taking a bath just looking at the sad fellow. An Irish shower seemed like it would be the closest he’d be getting. The repellent aroma smacked of neglected hygiene and Old Spice unified with Evan Williams and Marlboros.

The man wasn’t the type you’d want in your home or around you in any way really, but I’ve always had trouble saying no to people. The homeless folks always seem to get a buck out of me. The people that just wanted to ask you a question at the department store, they always got their way.

Just like I felt empathy for them, I felt empathy for the salesman. It wasn’t hard to tell that he was a few sips away from his own vagrancy. So, of course, I played the role of the complete pushover when he requested that I allow him to perform a brief demonstration. I didn’t provide him a verbal ‘yes’ but I allowed him entry nonetheless.

He took a final deep drag of his cigarette before flicking it behind him carelessly. My husband, Daniel, wheeled himself into the living room having overheard some of our conversation. He probably wanted to have a look at the less than ordinary salesman who I permitted to enter our home. He was never one to hand out his trust, regardless of how innocuous the individual might appear.

His life experiences had left him a more reclusive and antisocial version of the prior ‘life of the party’ character I’d always heard about but never witnessed. It all started with God. Daniel had always trusted God, but after the war, all that changed.

Daniel’s paralysis could have been avoided at least twice by his count. Alternatively, his ability to walk was the unfortunate casualty of several very specific circumstances which came together to place him at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhat airport at 4:03 AM on April 30, 1975.

The history books will always show that, ultimately, we lost the war that day. With the North Vietnamese Army reaching the outskirts of Saigon, they’d already begun to evacuate Americans via helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft. Shortly after, the South Vietnamese president surrendered in what he described as an effort “to avoid bloodshed.”

They pointed to the fall of Saigon as the final brick to tumble, which would lead to a total collapse. The mass evacuations of over 1,000 Americans in addition to over 7,000 South Vietnamese refugees spanned just over 18 hours.

The last Americans to die in the war were two US Marines that were killed by a rocket attack that day. One detail that was mostly omitted, understandably so due to the deaths of his comrades, was that a portion of the fatal rocket shrapnel had spiraled into another nearby soldier’s spine. Daniel’s spine.

When the twisted metal burrowed into his back flesh and connected with bone, he dropped to the ground and lost all feeling in his legs immediately. Then after his own unconscious airlift, he awoke in a medical tent days later. Sadly, he would never regain the feeling from his waist down again.

As he laid silently, he isolated himself mentally and descended into what would be the deepest reflection period of his life. Simmering for weeks unending on the conditions that sparked the “perfect storm” as Daniel had often referred to it. The whirlwind of fate that had swept him up and spat him out seemed even more ludicrous considering all the idiosyncrasies.

Everything had finally started to slow down from breakneck military pace and he suddenly found himself with enough time to dissect the bigger picture. Once he did, he realized the horrible derailment of his life and future. His overflowing potential had been smothered, and the downward spiral could have been avoided on any number of occasions.

To start with, he’d been a part of the last draft class in ‘73, which was the final year America had chosen to implement a military conscription. He’d just made the age window; men born from January 1st, 1944 to December 31st, 1950 were eligible.

In his twenties at the time with his entire life ahead of him, regrettably, he just happened to have been born two days after Christmas. It wasn’t long until he got word that he’d be leaving his friends and family behind to go and kill for the government.

Daniel had never aspired to go to war. He was a mechanic like the rest of the men in his family and quite content with his routine. The news drove him into a rut, a stomach-churning tension left him without appetite or even the most remote feeling of purpose.

He’d heard the horror stories. The ones about people who had their loved ones delivered back in a black bag of pieces or maybe even worse. The ones who had come home so mentally fractured that returning in chunks might’ve been a better alternative. Neither path seemed particularly promising.

He could only have wished for the lethal alternative. Instead, he was significantly injured and one of the last people to leave Saigon on the final dreary day of the war. It was a cruel game of inches that had not leaned in his favor. It had left him stuck in a cycle of sadness, constantly crying himself into exhaustion.

I didn’t become privy and learn all of the details about my husband right away. It took time to build our slow-developing relationship. Any sort of relationship didn’t come naturally for him post-war, let alone one with a woman.

I was volunteering at an Alcoholics Anonymous group for wounded veterans when we had our initial encounter. Since my father had also served during the prime of his youth, his situation was similarly sour like Daniel’s after enlisting. Whether we like to admit it or not, girls always look for a little piece of their father in the men they seek. Something that can hopefully bring back the memories of youth and a feeling of comfort and protection.

My father was the reason that I had a soft spot in my heart for those who sacrificed so much for our country. Many of them would only come back broken and brimming with disturbing memories. At least my father’s plight during World War II wasn’t forced upon him. It was his choice to enlist, although he most definitely regretted volunteering.

He didn’t lose his full walking ability like Daniel, but what’s worse; missing a piece of yourself, or having an even larger piece still there but rendered completely useless? Phantom limbs always seemed like a creepy concept to me but the idea of having these useless masses attached to yourself bothered me even more.

I grew up understanding that they were different when they came back. Soldiers often needed the help of others. It was the least we could do after the nightmare they’d endured to protect us.

It was likely that remembering some of our family struggles during my adolescence drew me closer to Daniel. There was a certain culpability that I was never quite able to shake. Knowing that I’d never found a way to fix Dad or break him out of the funk that incased him with more layers than an onion left something inside me to be desired.

The failure made me feel like I still owed it, and if it couldn’t be to him, it would be to someone else. I needed to pay it forward before I could live it down. So, I joined the group, and that decision I always viewed as a fateful one. It was the one that triggered our paths to cross.

When he rolled in initially, his eyes were so cold and reluctant. His pitiful posture left them drooping in his chair, his face forever the stencil of misery. I was unable to gauge his temperament by tone since he didn’t speak, although I assumed he wanted to. I figured that he wouldn’t have joined the group in the first place if he didn’t.

Daniel was a very attractive man. For someone who looked so defeated, he sure kept himself well-groomed. His perfectly lined up beard was grown out a bit but still trimmed tidily. He had hair like Christian Slater that meshed with his sharp features to perfection.

It sounds cruel but, at the time, in my head, I referred to him as the handicapped heart-throb. Every time I saw his face, my chest fluttered. It took many awkward attempts before I was able to get him to engage me in any kind of casual conversation.

Breaking through his initial overall hesitancy was painful, like pulling teeth out of a pit bull. It was so agonizing that I needed to lean on an old tactic that had, at moments, worked to make my dad a little more cheerful during his downtimes.

I forced him to sit through my jokes, most of which were stupid and tasteless. But every once in a while, I could get him to crack a smile. I could see the corners of his mouth starting to curl and I knew I wasn’t too far off. If I could keep making him grin, it would only be a matter of time before he talked.

The wisecracks were usually ones I’d heard around the water cooler; the trashier the better. I knew he didn’t expect a sweet girl like myself who was there volunteering to say some of the things I did. But that was the plan, to catch him off guard with the crass line and spark some interest.

“How did Billy Squire die?” I’d asked him only to receive no answer or reaction. “Stroke! Stroke!” I yelled while clenching at my sternum and falling to my knees. I could see a little beam perking up around the edge of his mouth again; he was trying so desperately to suppress it. Just let go, I thought to myself. I knew I needed to hit him with another one fast while he was on the ropes. It felt like, after weeks of whiffing with my carefully orchestrated tactics, the nut was finally about to crack.

“What did the cannibal do after he dumped his girlfriend?” I asked, still garnering zero response. “He wiped his ass,” I said in a very calculated manner.

After the cannibal joke, he lost it. He laughed so hard that the others in the room took notice. The guy who never said a damn thing was on the verge of tears. Not the salty and debilitating tears that they were all so accustomed to, but tears of happiness. Tears of joy. Tears that he hadn’t felt since before he was blown up. It was a great feeling for him and I think he quickly realized just how good I could make him feel.

From there, our relationship only further blossomed with no foreseeable off-season. We saw the moments normally reserved for cheesy romantic comedies insert themselves into our lives on a recurring basis.

The selfless adoration and emotion that had been so absent in Daniel’s life, and also mine to some extent, was now overstocked. The laugh out loud moment was the major turning point. It was in that blissful instant that he’d completely fallen for me. It was the day that I felt like I finally became whole.

I’ll never understand why he stayed silent for so long. He was such a thoughtful, funny guy. Sure, initially, I was drawn to him by his appearance and maybe in part out of pity and the way it tied into my own complexes, but all of that seemed to become less and less relevant when I got to know him.

He was always surprising me. Firstly, for someone that was supposed to be disabled and dependent, he definitely wasn’t. At times, I felt like he was taking care of me more so than I was taking care of him.

Somehow, he’d find a way to complete most, if not all, the chores around the house while I was gone. He liked leaving notes inside my lunch bag with the kind of crude jokes or silly drawings that had initially sparked our interest in each other.

He arranged romantic dinners for us multiple times every week where he’d make intricate dishes from scratch. Not only was the food delicious but the presentation bordered on being a work of art. I don’t think he ever really knew how to cook; I think he taught himself to in an effort to spoil me. It was nice returning home from a day’s work and knowing that a flavorful meal was going to be sitting on the table that was so well-timed, it was still warm when I walked in.

Maybe the most significant aspect of our romance was that I was able to confide in him. He knew all about my quirks; I trusted him with the dark secrets of my youth. Outside of the three immediate members of my family, no one knew the full details of what transpired. I had been busy trying to project someone else to society. He knew about the scar-tissue my past had placed upon me which, over time, had developed my obsessive cleaning compulsion. When Daniel opened up to me about the murky things in his head, it allowed me to make myself more vulnerable.

He was sympathetic to my condition, so much so that many of his own days were spent on housework or devising new methods that would allow someone with his set of limitations to wipe, scrub, and clean any area of our home.

I had been working in a hotel as a maid for years. My gravitation toward hospitality was most likely a product of the monsters of my adolescence. I still couldn’t avoid them completely. They’d aligned me into a specific profession where I remained constantly struggling to maintain my surroundings. I performed in a borderline manic manner; like some possessed person flying through each room, feeling like stained pieces of the past might come back to life if I didn’t finish quickly enough. I was just grateful that I could do my job in isolation without anyone seeing my strangeness with their own eyes.

He hated to know that I was working all day and then had to come home and do the same. That’s why he spent so much time on the house. I loved how he made things incredibly easy for me, especially the most difficult things.

Before long, I began to feel like I couldn’t live without him. Daniel had alleviated so many stresses that previously haunted me. I was sure that he would be the focal point of my life forever and I would do anything to protect that.

It didn’t take long for us to marry. I remember exactly when he popped the question to me. I was sitting on the couch watching Unsolved Mysteries. As they discussed the case of a man who claimed he saw heaven for a few moments before being revived, I heard Daniel wheel himself into the parlor.

At first, I thought he’d fallen out of his wheelchair and rushed over to help him but he told me to sit back down. He started to use the couch to prop himself back up again with one of his hands before I could get to him. Then he began fishing through his jacket with his free hand. When he looked up at me, his cheeks were blushing and there was a look in his eyes like everything was on the line.

I couldn’t have been more ecstatic. Of course, I screamed yes and again reiterated just how much I loved him and how lucky I felt. The man on the television was describing heaven, but I knew he was wrong. I was looking at heaven, and it was in my Daniel’s eyes.

The purchase of our house would come shortly after our modest wedding. Only a few friends and family members had been invited to our humble but perfect ceremony.

We got married in that autumn of ‘88 with vivacious tree colors surrounding the gazebo. On that flawlessly crisp day, I stood beside the handsome love of my life. There were plenty of things I would have liked to change about my life but none of it concerned my wedding or who I was getting married to.

We weren’t rich. We wouldn’t be eating caviar at the conclusion but that wasn’t really our style anyway. We never valued our quality-of-life based on what was around us, only who was around us. And as long as we had each other, that would be more valuable than the big screen TV or VHS player.

Daniel’s disability paired with my part-time job at Hilton Hotels allowed us to live comfortably while granting more time to spend together than most couples were afforded. After I crunched the numbers, we figured that buying a nice little house in the suburbs wasn’t too far-fetched. We both wanted to start a family soon, with me having just turned thirty-four and Daniel being thirty-nine, it felt like ideal timing.

We ended up settling on a decent-sized one family. We were in love with this stunning Cape Cod-style house but I pushed for a ranch. I didn’t want Daniel to have to deal with or think about stairs. He had enough challenges in his day to day. I loved the place but not more than I loved Daniel or seeing him happy.

It had a couple of spare rooms so we wouldn’t be cramped and, more importantly, our child would have a place to grow comfortably. We aimed to spoil the baby with all the perks that were absent in our own childhoods. The place already felt warm and wholesome before we even put our own personal touches on it.

Although Daniel couldn’t feel it or enjoy the sex, he was still able to get hard and, more importantly (as far as any future children were concerned), still able to cum. I remember the night we conceived quite vividly.

We’d just returned from perusing the endless aisles of videotapes at Blockbuster and the choice ended up being an easy one for us. We’d probably seen the preview for Fatal Attraction a thousand times, but for whatever strange reason, we always ended up renting something else. It had been out for a few years already and it was finally time to come home with it.

The movie was incredibly hot due to the handful of gratuitous, well-acted sex scenes sprinkled throughout. There were so many that we couldn’t help but be hypnotized by our own lust for each other. In turn, we ended up missing all the parts of the film that everyone was still talking about. We still had no idea what relevance the bunny had…

I started by blowing him while he was sitting in his wheelchair. After ten minutes or so of that, we moved onto the couch and, just as Glenn Close appeared to be climaxing on the television, I could feel him shooting off inside me while I rode him. That would be the first of a trio of erotic sessions that evening. We had never fucked so many times in a single night.

The realization that we were going to need more financially to raise our baby the way we saw fit to was something that we understood well before we decided to try and get pregnant. It was a topic that we’d gone back and forth on many times before. Not that we were arguing but we each had separate views on how to generate the revenue.

Daniel’s most cherished possession was a ‘68 Plymouth Road Runner that his father had given him shortly before he passed away. It was a striking muscle car with a sexy electric blue paint job. The sort of thing that turned heads as you drove down the street for more than just the rumble it produced.

The car was one of the reasons a house with a garage was a must for us when we were property shopping. We got lucky enough to score one with a state-of-the-art numeric keypad, which at the time, was about the best you could ask for. Tapping in a quick code was so much more convenient than a garage you needed to unlock by key.

In spite of the fact that Daniel could never drive the car again, it was still something he cherished. In fact, his best memories in the car were never of driving it, they were of being a passenger, which was something he could still be.

He loved that car and it had nothing to do with how it looked, drove, or any attention it got on the road. Just being able to sit in it brought back an intimate rush of emotions that flooded him with a soothing nostalgia. It transported him back to a time when life was a lot simpler for him. When he could still walk but didn’t have to. When the only thing that mattered was heading to the drive-in with his pop or cruising around the parks and beaches nearby.

He didn’t ask (probably because he knew what the answer would be) if I was on board with him selling the car, he simply told me he would. He didn’t seem sad about it, instead, it was more like it was a necessity. He knew that it would be like an investment that went toward everything he’d been fortunate enough to build with me thus far.

The only problem was that there was no way in hell I was letting him sell that car. As much as he acted like it wasn’t a big deal, and maybe it wasn’t at the time, but I knew at some point, he would look into the mirror and be filled with deep regret. Furthermore, if he didn’t, I would and I didn’t want that type of guilt lurking around in the background.

There was a different solution for the financial issue. One I would be implementing soon that would avoid having to grind Daniel’s heart and soul into a mushy pulp. Instead of selling the car, I would be asking to be brought on full-time at the Hilton.

My manager loved me and undoubtedly would jump at the chance to keep me around any longer than I already was. Because of my bizarre background, my pace and detail far outweighed what any of the other girls brought to the table. My demons fueled the breakneck speed and quality of my performance. I could pick up a decent amount of extra cash by working the additional hours up until the birth of our child. The plan was seamless, we didn’t suffer any emotional hit and we would still get to give our child everything it needed and much more.

That became the plan, mostly because I wasn’t budging. I was going full-time no matter how much he pleaded otherwise. I was so adamant about making the sacrifice that he had no choice but to accept it, although he did so half-heartedly.

Everything was all about to fall into place… until that ratty salesman showed up on our doorstep. At that moment, I had no choice but to be blind to it, no one knows how the seemingly minor choices they make will come to affect them.

Sometimes it’s not even the choices themselves but immovable circumstances, like in Daniel’s case. He couldn’t choose when he was born, but starting on his birthday, he’d seen the perfect storm pushing him toward tragedy.

The salesman smirked and tipped his hat toward Daniel who sat sternly with an aggravated aura about him. The disorganized man dragged the Bissell into our living room, and just like that, my own set of unforeseeable circumstances had just been set in motion too. The old rugs stapled to the floors of our recently acquired home would be the first step in my very own perfect storm.