{"id":1298,"date":"2014-01-27T09:30:22","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T14:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/?p=1298"},"modified":"2014-01-27T09:30:22","modified_gmt":"2014-01-27T14:30:22","slug":"dirt-always-wins-a-story-in-six-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/2014\/01\/dirt-always-wins-a-story-in-six-parts.html","title":{"rendered":"“Dirt Always Wins” — A Story in Six Parts"},"content":{"rendered":"

One: Stains \u00a0 \u00a0\"Stain<\/a><\/h3>\n

Have you ever seen a stain wheel? It\u2019s a practical novelty, die-cut layers of glossy printed cardboard that you\u2019d have found in an old five-and-dime. Is something you love spotted or blotched? Merely turn the wheel to your problem: egg, gum, alcoholic beverages, axle grease, urine, mustard, glue, mildew, flowers, and the step-by-step stain solution, as it were, appears in a window. Similar wheels were made long ago for bashful young men who needed help in coordinating the colors of their suits, shirts and ties — before they were stained, I hope.<\/p>\n

For decades, a stain wheel was my mandala, and because of it, I\u2019m prepared now to clean almost anything. Still, in spite of an under-sink stock of detergents, solvents, ammonia, and magic bottle of glycerin, I\u2019ve narrowed myself in most cases to a supermarket staple, Clorox cleaner with beach.<\/p>\n

In some households, Clorox was referred to as \u201cthe white goddess,\u201d but I\u2019ll return to that.<\/p>\n

First, I check to see if the surface in question has a delicate finish. Old and porous Formica, for example, will yellow if the cleaner \"Spot<\/a>sinks in, but I have a way to fix that. Make sure any fabric you treat is colorfast, and do be careful with the Clorox cleaner in general: most of my black T-shirts have beige marks across the belly from when I leaned against just-wiped rims of counters and tables. I rarely spray the product directly because it flies everywhere, but instead apply it, full-strength or diluted, to a sponge or paper towel. If all goes well, chocolate, semen, berries, blood \u2013 immediately gone. Lady Macbeth rarely has time to enter the picture.<\/p>\n

The instructions on the stain wheel, however, are worth going back to, just for their domestic poetry:<\/p>\n

If safe for fabric, stretch stain over bowl, secure with elastic band. Then pour boiling water on stain from height of 1 to 3 feet.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s the one for Coffee and Tea.<\/p>\n

I bet you\u2019re thinking that my lifelong focus on dirt and stains is not exactly healthy. Don\u2019t get me wrong, cleaning doesn\u2019t run me, yet I must admit that my relationship to dirt does lend itself to some fairly basic questions.<\/p>\n

Yes, I know that you can\u2019t vanquish dirt, and a housekeeper is nothing more than Sisyphus with a mop. And yes, I\u2019m old enough to be aware in a daily way that my spanking-clean body will eventually become burnt dirt, sprinkled into the closest ocean by rueful, maybe tearful friends to ultimately flavor some youngster\u2019s poached fluke. Like death, dirt always wins.<\/p>\n

Do I sound flip? Mine is a small defense, much like the countless cleaning routines I have almost perfected.<\/p>\n

Problem is, I see<\/i>\u00a0 dirt. It\u2019s a blessing that I live with a man who doesn\u2019t see it, at least the dirt that\u2019s obvious to me. (His actual vision is just fine.) For lucky ones like him, dirt\u2019s nothing more than a fact on one\u2019s shoe, but for me, it\u2019s a taunt, a verb: in my world, dirt means \u201cclean!\u201d I know that\u2019s like saying marriage means divorce and crime, punishment, but I\u2019ve never known any other way to look at things. It may be time to figure out why.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[contact-form][contact-field label=’Care to comment? Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’\/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’\/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’\/][contact-field label=’Wish to be alerted to a new %26#039;Out There%26#039;? Just write YES and leave your email. Thanks!’ type=’text’\/][\/contact-form] \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Dirt Always Wins” is a story to be posted in six parts, two a week, about the narrator’s intimate relationship with dirt. Here’s the beginning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[390,388,385,386,389,387],"class_list":{"0":"post-1298","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"tag-cleaning","9":"tag-clorox","10":"tag-dirt","11":"tag-fiction","12":"tag-stains","13":"tag-story","14":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}