Notes on Living at Home...

I have a contract with the universe. It's that my life will be many things but it will never be dull. And that I'll respond to the abundance of interesting events like a crazy person. People tell me I'm dramatic, but you'd be dramatic too if dramatic things kept happening to you. Like, that one time that I got kidnapped. But this one isn't about that. It's about my living arrangements.

As an unmarried young man under 30, I'm delighted to tell you that my dogs and I live with my parents. Everybody is equally unhappy with the arrangement. I eat Papa Afam's Guinea Fowl, I break Mama Afam's dishes, and I occasionally borrow her skin care products and make up.

I, Afam, the wondrously mediocre, would like to tell you that if you're a man, and you don't have concealer, mascara, an eyebrow pencil, or foundation, you are playing with your destiny. God did not put you on this good earth to torture the masses with your hangover eye bags, or your pimple scars. In any case I was on television. On days when I needed it, I'd get my face beat and take that face to drinks. I'm single but nobody calls me ugly and everybody thinks I have great skin. These two things keep me warm at night.

I also make my dad buy dog food for Plato and Zeus, who I now call my children. They're adorable. One of them has rickets, and the other has an unusually high marginal propensity for diarrhoea, but I suppose I love them in my own way.

I'm not very happy about living at home because Papa Afam has made it his job to make me as unhappy as I make him when I steal his Guinea Fowl. Guinea Fowl is the poultry equivalent of Eid Ram - food for the gods.

On a Sunday morning not too long ago, Papa Afam Barged into my room at the crack of dawn. There was a tub of vaseline on the floor right by the top of the bed. He proceeded to yell the following things.

"Why are you still in bed! It's 7 in the morning, your mates are in the gym but you are here sleeping!"

"What is that by your bed? Vaseline? You have been masturbating!"

"Don't you feel ashamed? You can't even afford a bloody prostitute!"

I suppose I'll go steal more of his Guinea Fowl now.

Happy Days,
Afam