art let us stay at his house, and didnt even go back there himself, which makes him really nice and generous. he has a very stark but very stylish bedroom that i enjoyed lying on his bed and looking around. i did a minimum of snooping, to show how greatful i was for him letting us stay at all. although, we did get him into the laneway festival for free, on our artist passes. however, it was still really nice of him. he has lots of good books, which i wish i was reading now, and if he had not been such a champ, i would probably borrow for the rest of time without asking, but again, as a mark of respect, i leave on his shelves. he has the craziest house, it's a big square, with rooms all around the outside and a courtyard in the middle, with a scrabble piece mosaic on the wall. art also had a cool thing in his room, of some cute pictures slicedup and stuck to his venetian blinds, so that when the blinds are closed your can see them staggered down the blind. it looks really cool. when i first went to art's house about eight months ago, i found it really depressing, but now looking out his bedroom window that is right onto a weird apocolyptic concrete section thing, thats got an old bench press and other assorted 20th century debris, it feels almost tranquil.
the bathroom was absolutely filthy, covered in pubes and cockroaches and tampon wrappers and hair dye trash and so much scum and dust and green slime and this stuff that looked like spilt piss with hair and pubes stuck in it, and rusty shaving cream cans and choked old rasors and empty bottles (that had actually once held really nice Aesop products) and yeah, thats about it. the bathroom is actually really nice, so because i like cleaning, and also to say thanks for having us, i cleaned it for him. i suprised myself by not being grossed out at all, picking up foetid gunky hair nests from the plugholes, and not minding scrubbing off fifteen years of other people's skin from the floor and wall of the shower. i used their bathmat to mop it all up, and threw the bathmat somewhere where i wont say in case art ever reads this.
points for really nice hot heavy shower, and for having matching organic shampoo and conditioner, which felt like salon quality when i was lathering. points again for a manly big square bar of soap, like what cowboys would have wrapped up in a piece of leather with a single rasor blade. and because i didn't mind doing it, they dont even lose points for having a bathroom that looked like the bottom of a bikini waxer's rubbish bin. points for having a power point in there too, so i could blow dry.