For a number of years, I had a next door neighbour named Uschi.
Uschi was a 65 year old German, bipolar alcoholic. A very caring woman, she spent a lot of time looking out for me, when I was in the far depths of my depression. She was good to me.
And, given my penchant for a drink at that stage, Uschi and I hung out together quite a lot.
She was an interesting woman, with quite a fascinating past. She was well travelled and had enjoyed many lovers, in her time. Actually, she still did… but things were a bit different now. She would pick men up in bars. Usually cads and bounders, just after a cheap thrill.
I’m not saying that Uschi was cheap. She just had a certain lack of inhibition, when under the influence of alcohol.
She would often turn up at our door, bottle of champagne in hand, half cut and mostly dressed. I say ‘mostly’ because on more than one occasion it became apparent that she was wearing nothing but a t-shirt and knickers… or t-shirt and no knickers. The no knickers thing only happened a couple of times and we didn’t realise until it was too late. Not until she had been sitting on our couch for an hour or so and got up to go to the toilet. It was then, as she walked around the coffee table, half bent over, that we got a full view of 65 year old arse and pussy lips. Yah.
So many times, she became so intoxicated and incomprehensible, I had to take her home and put her to bed. Or, I would walk past her window at night and see her passed out in an unnatural position in her loungeroom. I was always a bit worried that she would choke on her own vomit, or something of the sort. She gave me a few frights. Like when she would pass out with her eyes open, or appear not to be breathing. Like many alcoholics, she became non-compus very quickly after seemingly not very much to drink. She didn’t have a strong constitution.
One afternoon, I was just returning home and had my key in the lock, when the phone started ringing. I rushed in the door to answer it. It was my mother. I wasn’t really in the mood for chatting with her, as I’d just walked in the door, but she had things she wanted to talk about, so I did my daughterly duty and lay back on the couch for what was likely to be a lengthy conversation.
We were living in a townhouse with an open plan downstairs area, comprising of lounge, dining area and kitchen. I heard a noise at the backdoor, which I’d left open in my hurry to answer the call.
In a mild state of alert, I looked towards the kitchen (the back door was off the laundry next to it) and was greeted with the sight of Uschi. Uschi standing in my kitchen, pretty much stark naked.
Keep in mind this was the middle of the afternoon. Despite her previous entrances, sans various articles of clothing, I wasn’t expecting this.
I started stuttering at my mother on the phone… well, kind of. I thought I did a pretty good job of keeping my composure, considering the circumstances. Mum knew something was up. She immediately asked me what was going on. I told her that someone was at the door. She said ‘It’s Uschi, isn’t it’. (Do you use a full stop at the end of a rhetorical question?) I said, ‘I think so…Yes’.
Mum had met Uschi a couple of times, when she had been in various states of intoxication. Also, Uschi volunteered with my Grandmother at the nearby hospital and Marnie (my grandmother), who is a class-A gossip, always took great delight in telling Mum about Uschi’s strange behaviour.. and the fact that Uschi talked about myself and Andrew to her incessantly. A touchstone, I suppose. Also, Uschi was quite taken with Andrew because he was reading news on her favourite radio station and she was a bit of a groupie where he was concerned. I often wondered if that’s why she would come to our house half-dressed…
Uschi just stood there in the kitchen, looking morose and… drunk. Naked, apart from her shoes and bra. Her dress was draped over her arm. No underpants.
I made my excuses to Mum. After all, I did have company…
After hanging up the phone, I walked up to her and asked her if she was alright. She mumbled to me that she’d locked herself out of her house. Lost her key. Inwardly, I groaned. Not again… But I’m not one to turn down a friend in need, so I invited her to come in further.
Before I knew it, she was sitting on the couch, which I have to tell you, didn’t please me one bit. She was NAKED, for fuck’s sake. She was still holding her dress, which I noticed at this stage was mostly soaking wet and had some odd looking stains on it.
I tried talking to her. It was immediately and abundantly clear that she was well past drunk. She could do not much more than sit there, staring vacantly into space. I tried to ascertain where she’d been and where her key might be. I couldn’t get anything coherent out of her.
We sat for a little while, until I remembered that I knew where she hid her spare key. At least, I thought I did. It was most likely that she had it on her person, or nearby. Okay, not on her person, seeing as she was wearing nothing but a bra, but her purse had to be somewhere nearby, unless she’d lost that, too.
I left her in my lounge to venture around to her courtyard, where she hid her key. I opened the gate and was greeted by a flood of water on the paving. I mean, it was like a main had burst. I was standing ankle deep in water. Gingerly, I ventured forward. A few steps away was a table and chair. On the table was Uschi’s handbag.
I splashed a few more steps forward and looked down. I noticed there was some kind of foreign matter on the ground. It didn’t look good. It looked like lumps of poo. I looked closer. It WAS lumps of poo. It was everywhere. It was like a sewer had burst in her courtyard.
I started groaning ‘Ohhhhh.. noooo… noooo….. NOOOO…OH, MAN…WHAT THE FUCK??!!!’ I was standing ankle deep in water, poo and god knows what else.
I quickly put the pieces together. After she’d arrived home from wherever she’d come from, she couldn’t be arsed (no pun intended) finding her key… or just couldn’t get it together to find it in her purse. She’d sat down in the courtyard and at some point realised that she needed to shit… and shit NOW.
Ironically, her downstairs toilet was three steps in from the back door. The door she was trying to enter. She just couldn’t focus enough to find her key. So she did it right there. Then, to try and wash it all away, she’d turned on the hose, thereby spreading it all over the tiny courtyard to the point of flooding. I don’t know what else she did, although I think it’s pretty safe to assume she had a piss whilst she was sitting there…
I grabbed her bag and leapt/tiptoed back out of the flooded courtyard. I was wearing sandals. I left them on the front lawn, washing my feet under the tap before re-entering my own house, where Uschi was still sitting bare-arsed on my couch.
It was then I realised why her dress was soaking wet and what those odd looking stains were. I quickly got her off the couch, noticing with revulsion that indeed, she had left a brown splodge behind.
Is it wrong that I was glad it wasn’t my usual couch, but Andrew’s? hehe.
I told her to stand there. STAND THERE. Stay put. I quickly ran upstairs and grabbed a cotton shift dress that I sometimes wore around the house. I put it on her. She was in no state to dress herself. I made her keep standing while I searched her bag and purse.
Lo and behold, what did I find, almost immediately?
Her key.
I walked her back around to her courtyard, put the key in her hand, making sure it was the right way up to fit in the door and ushered her in. I had to point her to the door. There was no way I was stepping back in that muck.
Eventually, after much coaxing and coaching, she got the key to fit in the lock.
She was in!
I breathed a sigh of relief, and ran around the back, past the carpark and around to her front door. I watched her through her loungeroom window for a few minutes to make sure she hadn’t fallen and hit her head. She didn’t go upstairs. She just lay down on her couch and passed out. Going upstairs would have been another adventure fraught with danger and I didn’t want to have to shower her, although if she’d headed that way, I would have made her let me in and made her comfortable downstairs.
At that point, I felt safe to go home and scrub my own couch. Errghh.
I did check on her a couple of hours later. She always left her front door ajar, with the security screen locked, so her cat could get in and out. I banged on her door and called her name until she came to. She was alright. I thought it was okay at that point to let her go upstairs on her own and if she wanted to shower, or soil her own bed… that was up to her. I don’t think she showered. She was too far gone, still.
I didn’t see Uschi for a couple of weeks after that.
I don’t think she remembered much, but she must have had some idea when she opened her back door the next morning…
What a nice surprise!
We never talked about the incident in detail, but I made damn sure she had knickers on every time she entered my house from then on…
