Strangers are in my house saying bad things about me. I can hear them.

"Yeah, I guess you could call the art abstract. But I'd say it is more accurate to call it horrid."
"Color blindness. What else would explain that ghastly pale peach on these kitchen walls?"

"He reads that? What a philistine."

I have no idea who these people are, and (full disclosure) I can't hear them, not technically.

I am in a sports bar across town, drinking beer, eating chicken wings, and decrying the wretched plays of my favorite team.

For all I know, none of the people in my house are saying any of those things. For all I know, no people are even in my house.

But I would rather have strangers in my house trashing my taste in art and paint colors and rigged-up books than have no one there at all. Yes, I am happy to bare my soul to strangers, pleased to run naked through the brambles of public scrutiny, downright ecstatic to invite the world to come into my domicile and pass judgment.

For I need their tender attention. And by tender, I mean legal tender. As in money.
I am, you see, selling my house.

SELLING YOUR HOUSE means never having to say you're home. People come tromping through whenever they want, and I am not supposed to be here because I might say something stupid, like, "That smell? Dinner. Unless you don't like the smell. Then, it's the landfill this house was built on. Hey, I'm joking. Come back. It's a joke!"

The other thing selling your house means is that you have to do something called … bear with me while I look up this word in the dictionary … ah, there it is … clean. We dusted and mopped and swept and vacuumed and sponged and sprayed and wiped and elbow-greased this and spit-polished that. I felt like I was captaining the USS Enterprise of cleanliness - brooms went where no broom had gone before.