The Naked Truth

Muse:…. so he’s going to come and live with us.
Muse’s Mother: Oh, OK. You’ll both have to pay rent then.
Muse: How can we pay RENT*? If we could pay rent we’d get a place of our own. I’m STUDYING! You WANT me to study! I can’t study and WORK!
MM: How is it that you had to inherit my lack of work ethic, and not my antisocial leanings and nice placid temperament?
Muse: Why didn’t I get the blue eyes? WHY?? I’ll never forgive you for not giving me blue eyes. It’s so unfair.
MM: You got a waist instead. Much healthier. But anyway: no rent, no moving in**.
Muse: But he HAS to. He can’t live at home. His mother is being UNBEARABLE. And why do you need rent? You never pay bills or the mortgage anyway.
MM: Well, that’s true. But I do have to every so often, or they cut everything off, and they’ll take the apartment. This is why I feebly suggest you should get a job every so often, my petal.
Muse: Yeah, yeah, whatever. Say yes, though. I’ll keep the house clean.
MM: Will you darling? Why don’t you start with a practice run, and see if you can find where I hide the vacuum?
Muse: Don’t be silly, you’d have to do it first. And you can’t walk around with your boobs falling out of that nightdress when he moves in. Or your ass falling out of those jeans. You’ll have to stop being so vulgar all the time. And we’d have to have actual food in the house. That you’d have to cook. You know, at mealtimes.
MM: Why, sweetie?
Muse: BecAUSE. You. Are. The MothAIR. That’s what you’re supposed to do.
MM: Mmmm. Right.
Muse: Everyone else’s mother does those things. AND the laundry. And they clean the house.
MM: Wow. Really?
Muse: Yes! Every single mother of every single person I know behaves like a proper mother.
MM: Including the steady stream of them who have taken up residence with us over the years?
Muse: Yes, of course.
MM: OK, so everyone you know has these paragons for mothers, and yet they’re all desperate to leave home and move in here. And you have your vulgar slatternly mother who is slowly starving you to death, and not only do you refuse to move out of home, but everyone else wants to move in here?
Muse: Er… yes.
MM: Where the fuck did I go wrong? What’s wrong with you? Haven’t you grasped the concept of benign neglect yet? Why don’t you want to move out? What else can I do to make things more uncomfortable? I might as well go back to cooking and cleaning and doing your laundry for all the good living in squalor is doing me!
Muse: Yes, I wondered when you’d work that one out. And please stop fucking swearing all the time when he moves in.
MM: (lots of swear words as she realizes yet again that she is NEVER going to have to face up to the longed-for empty nest syndrome, and may have also tacitly agreed to do some housekeeping).

* Yes, she does talk in capital letters all the time. In two languages. All the time.
** As far as I was aware he’d moved in months ago. If it’s not him I have no idea who the boxer shorts in the laundry basket belong to.