He Did WHAT On My Couch?

My love affair with my couch began in the year 2000 when I trotted out to a well-known furniture store in the area. I painstakingly looked though tome after tome of furniture pieces in search of the perfect couch for a cozy room in my house. After I found the frame, I spent two days going through fabric swatches with the hopes of bringing some color into the room, and perfectly matching my two scalloped ecru chairs. I found a multi-colored fabric I loved in a high-grade material, which I didn’t mind, it would last, right? I handed over my hard-earned dollars (a lot of them) and waited for my couch to be born.

From the moment it arrived on my doorstep, I was absolutely in love with my couch. When we moved into a larger house several years later, I vowed to make it work. No seven year itch for me, I was still madly in love with my couch. I made it fit in my new home, arranging and rearranging my whole living room around it.

One day sometime later, I arrived home from work and my husband said, “A good friend of mine, “John” from Bulgaria, is driving a truck through Charleston tonight. I’ve invited him to come over.”

“How do you know him?” I asked. I'd never heard him mention John's name before.

My husbands eyes lit up like a little child. “He lived in my neighborhood when I was a kid. He used to be a football player (soccer in American) on a professional team.”

(Being European, my husband gets goo-goo eyed over football players and views all of them with  admiration and esteem.)

I thought it was odd that a successful professional soccer player would be driving a truck in America, but I shrugged it off reminding myself people had done stranger things for a green card.

So anyway, my husband picked up John at the truck stop, and brought him to our home. He was a short, stocky guy with long curly, grey/blond hair. I guessed him to be near fifty. I remember he had an annoying looking mole on his nose that looked like it belonged to a wicked witch, but he couldn’t help that. (I'm just being spiteful.)

I didn’t speak to John much as it was getting late and I had no intention of entertaining on a week night, but I did ask him if he was married or had any kids and he told me, “No, I just haven’t met the right woman yet."

This should have been clue number two. I should have caught on that something was just not quite right, because it is extremely unusual to find a heterosexual man approaching fifty to have never found the right woman or procreated at least once. But, again, I shrugged it off, grabbed my five-year-old son, and headed off to bed, leaving my husband and his friend to have a few drinks and catch up.

The next morning at around 6:00AM my husband jostled me awake.  He told me to hurry downstairs because our son was down there alone with John.

“Why didn’t you let John sleep in the guest room? And, what are you so worried about?” I asked perplexed by his panic stricken voice.

“Just hurry up and go down stairs so I can get dressed.”

I threw on some sweatpants and a tee shirt and scooted downstairs in pursuit of my son.

John was lying on my couch, covered from head to toe by a large blue quilt. He didn’t wake up even though my son was standing two feet from him. I herded my son into the kitchen, feeling uncomfortable in my own home, around this sleeping stranger.

In the mean time, my husband gathered his work gear and rushed to get John up and out the door.

After a few shoulder shakes, John woke up and stumbled groggily to his feet, leaving the quilt on the floor as my husband hustled him out of the house.

When the two of them were gone, I went to pick up the quilt from the floor to throw it in the wash.  That was when I saw it. The couch, which I had created and loved for seven years, was desecrated with big round pee stain that had to have been eighteen inches in diameter.

Blood shot to my head and pressed against my skull so hard, I felt like my brains would blow out the top. “Noooooo!" I screamed.

My young son ran into the room to see what was wrong and then darted straight for the pee-soaked couch. Acting like a cross between a protective mother and The Incredible Hulk, I dove behind the couch and flipped it over before my son pounce on the pee. Instantaneously, I felt moisture seep into the material of my socks. Realizing I was standing in urine, a wail that sounded like a wounded animal rose from my gut and bled out of my mouth.

“What’s the matter, Mommy?” my son asked.

I want to vent for a moment. I want you to know that I partied straight through the seventies and most of the eighties like it was 1969. (Any of you who were there by my side, raise your hand in a show of solidarity) Many, many, many people crashed at my house for one reason or another. Never once, did I ever have anyone, not one single person, pee on my couch. (The person who puked on my carpet after a trash can party will remain nameless.) And, now that I am older, and in a nicer home, and only a smidgen of the partier I once was, I'm supposed to be okay with some idiot who thinks it's acceptable to pass out and pee on my couch?

My husband, and part-time nemesis, returned home and was greeted by possessed woman who had been pacing back and forth in front of the door like a caged animal. (Me.) I admit I lost it like I never had before. I was livid, to put it mildly.

“What in the hell did you put him on the couch for?” I squealed.
 
 My husband didn't answer.

Then my voice dropped and octave in tone, not decibel, “That jerk peed on my couch!”

My husband jumped like he’d been tazered and held his hands protectively in front of his face. "He wouldn’t quit drinking. He kept drinking and drinking until the entire bottle of whiskey was gone. I only had two glasses. When he passed out in the lawn chair, I carried him in and put him on your couch.”

A blood vessel burst in my eye. “Why, didn’t you put him in the guest room? I have a mattress protector on the bed. Why the hell did you put him on my couch?”

After this question, the truth came out.

“I didn’t want him upstairs. I barely know him. He lived in my neighborhood in Bulgaria, but he was a lot older than me. I barely know the guy, honest.”

Why my husband thought the fact that he barely knew the guy would make the situation better is beyond me. I spoke to him slowly, like he was mentally handicapped. “You brought a person you barely know into the house to spend the night with your wife and child?” My voice shot back up an octave on the word child.

“But, he was a football player from Bulgaria.”

This is when I really lost it.

“At one time the guy may have been a B rate soccer player, though I seriously doubt he was that good, but now he's a drunk. Just because someone comes from Bulgaria and plays soccer does not make them a good person. I want you to take that peed-on couch outside and put it by the curb, and then have the carpet cleaned."

I poked my six-foot tall two-hundred and ten pound husband in the chest. "You owe me a couch, asshole.”

That day, my love affair with my couch (and almost my husband) ended. However, two good things came out of this incident. Firstly, my husband swore on his life that he would not bring anymore friends  home to spend the night; And secondly, I a newer, younger love, paid for by money ( a lot of it) pulled from my husband's personal savings account.