GRATING SPACE

Dear Melinda J. Nevarez,

The following is a letter of disclaimer I suggest you present to future guests to your home based on my experience of staying at your house last night. While I appreciate your hospitality immensely, something like this would have gone a long way toward making my stay more comfortable and enjoyable.

Yours,

Nathan C. Martin

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DISCLAIMER:

Dear friend/relative/train-hoppin’ hobo to whom I gave my number last time you stopped through town on your way on the rails out West,

Thank you for choosing to stay at my home during your visit to Salt Lake City. This means a lot to me, because it indicates that I am one of your less anal-retentive friends that is still cool enough to allow such things to happen, while so many of our former cohorts have become old and lame and use excuses like, “I have to work early in the morning, and you might wake the baby,” when asked if a friend can crash his/her two dogs, smelly backpack, bandmates, random bar drunks, and startlingly unwashed body upon their furniture. I appreciate this greatly.

However, instances in the past have urged me to present all prospective guests with the following disclaimer, which I hope will clear up any confusion during the ridiculously simple process of occupying my home for a short amount of time for the purposes of free warmth and shelter.

This particular disclaimer is intended for guests who will be staying at my house while I am out of town on one of my raucous escapades. If you believe this is not your case and that you may have received this situation-specific disclaimer in error, feel free to contact me and I will provide you with an alternate version.

1) Make sure that I have not moved. I am of the ramblin’ vagabond variety, prone to up and leave whatever dwelling I currently occupy at a moment’s notice. Although it is unlikely that I will neglect to inform you that I have moved since the last time we saw each other, this has happened in the past. Before you pick up the key to my place from our bearded mutual friend, simply ask: “You live at the same place as last time I visited, right?” This will prevent such embarrassing situations as you standing in my old, empty apartment asking me via cell phone where the hell the bed went, while I try to direct you downstairs to my new bedroom through the door to the left of the kitchen, which, in my old apartment, is the door to the broom closet, in which, as you will discover after a thorough inspection, has no hidden staircase.

2) Remember the address to my apartment. If you do find yourself stumbling around confusedly in the apartment I am currently in the process of moving out of, and we clear up on the phone what has happened (after we both assume momentarily that the other has totally gone insane), pay close attention when I tell you the address of my new place. This will save you the trouble of walking into someone else’s home one block north of my new abode, and having to scurry quietly out after announcing your presence to a blaring television and hearing a startled man-cough come from the bedroom in reply. Such situations are pleasant for no one, and can be easily avoided by paying attention.

3) Bring your own utensils, and everything else. Since I am in the middle of a move, it is likely that there will be absolutely nothing in my new house to assist in the comfort of your stay. Things that you will probably not find there include: dishes, toilet paper, furniture, a shower curtain, and food, among many others. If you show up in the middle of the night after twelve hours of travel and try to cook a frozen pizza, you will likely be required to pull it from the oven using a keychain and a sock, onto the box in which it was sold to you, where you can let it cool until it’s touchable enough to pull apart with your fingers into manageable portions. I do have a bed, but it consists of two separate pieces: the mattress, which sits barren on the floor of my room, and the bedding, which has been lying in a pile of sog and mildew in the washing machine for three days.

4) Believe me when I warn you about locking yourself out. If I say to you, “Watch out for the front door, because it’s really easy to lock yourself out,” it is because this is a real-world problem that I have had to deal with personally, and it sucks. The problem is exacerbated when you lock not only your keys in the house, but your cell phone, too. However, if you do not heed my warning and find yourself stupefied at your own ignorance on my porch in the late hours of a December night, do not tromp immediately off into the darkness to look for help or curl up under your overcoat. My house is old and not airtight, and in fact I am accustomed to leaving the window to the living room closest to the kitchen unlocked. You might have to scale a few feet of rock wall and tear through some plastic insulation, but this small feat of acrobatics is much preferable to sleeping outside.

5) If all else fails… If you, like one of my hapless friends who stayed at my home last December while I was away in California, have the great misfortune of arriving in Salt Lake City late after a long day of travel, first go to the nearly vacant apartment I am in the process of moving out of, then march into the home of some poor hippie schmuck whose address bears close resemblance to mine, then want to cook some food but find not a fork or plate to aid you, and then lock yourself out and have to crawl back in through the window, there is still comfort to be found in my fridge, because though completely void of food, it almost always is populated by some beers. The keychain that holds my house key has a bottle opener on it, and after some rest on the floor with a couple of brewskies, you won’t even mind falling asleep beneath a comforter that is still noticeably damp.