Bad Gay: Episode 6

I own a few rental cottages in a resort town. The cottages are “historic” (read: old) and “charming” (read: the floors creak and there’s no central air). But they are walking distance to the lake and I allow renters to bring their pets, which buys me a lot of grace and a 5-star rating.

I truly enjoy being a host—even when guests complain. I like it when it’s the wife/girlfriend who complains, because I’m a lesbian and I’m very skilled at dealing with angry women. I get yelled at by a woman every day at home. Doesn’t rattle me a bit.

When renters text me, they always use too many exclamation marks for the problem at hand—e.g. “I can’t find the dish detergent!!?!!” I respond by taking responsibility and declaring myself a moron. (“I stupidly put the dish detergent in the cabinet under the kitchen sink where no one would think to look for it. I’m such an idiot.”)

That tactic always works. They feel vindicated, intellectually superior and then generous for forgiving me. They always comfort me in the aftermath—reassuring me that they love the cottage and ask if there’s anything they can do to help during their stay.

This is when I preemptively apologize for any shoddy housekeeping. “I’m going to have to fire my cleaning gal. But I don’t have the heart to do it. She only has the one leg now. Has to clean while propping herself up on a stick. She’s saving for a prosthetic. Poor thing.” (Note: I don’t have a cleaning lady. I clean the cottages myself. And I’m not very good at it—even with the two legs.) The guests always vow to leave the cottage cleaner than they found it to save further hardship.

The complaints almost always come on the first day that renters arrive—when they’re still stressed from travel and adjusting to the fact that their vacation fantasy is now the grim reality that they’re trapped in a small cottage with bad water pressure for a week with their family. But by day two, when they’ve happily acclimated to the louche lifestyle I offer, I rarely hear a peep.

So, I was surprised this week to get an email from a renter who has been at a cottage for a week into their full-summer stay. These renters have been an absolute dream. Their only question on arriving was if I had a shovel so they could tidy up the landscape. (I, umm, have never used a shovel or pulled a weed in my life.)

This week, though, I got an email with the subject line: Creature in the attic. My first thought was that this was a complaint that warrants a few exclamation marks.

But my renter was perfectly calm and surprisingly chipper. He started by acknowledging my no-kill spider policy (I ask renters to gently place them outside); my request that guests put food out at night for the neighborhood stray cat, Mittens; that they tolerate the fat bumble bees that nest above the front door because they are my friends (they are!); and not to chase off the groundhog that sits on the picnic table and watches TV thru the window—even when it makes alarming groundhog noises when someone turns the channel. (I also include extensive notes on what to do if a deer wanders into the house—they do make a mess.)

“But,” he wrote, “I don’t think you want a family of raccoons in your attic.” My heart sank. A neighbor had raccoons in her attic. It did not end well for the raccoons.

“Do you think that maybe it’s a monster in the attic and not very cute animals?” I wrote. He responded with a laugh emoji as if I had made a joke. I wasn’t joking.

My spouse happened into the room as I was frowning at my computer screen. I made the mistake of telling her about the animal drama. She immediately started yelling at me, which—as noted above—is like mother’s milk to me. “Call the exterminator!” she demanded.

But, instead, I contacted the only person I could trust in this situation.

Find out who I contacted and whether we found a monster in the attic in our next episode!