The Unwelcoming Committee

We had a visitor from Japan chez nous this weekend in the flat (perhaps I should refer to it as an aportment? It is in Dublin 2...) I was headed to the wilds of Kildare for a couple of days so being a generous but absentee hostess I picked up all of the dirty knickers off my bedroom floor and made it habitable for him. I was due back on Monday night and was warned that he'd be staying then too, but that the Swede was off to Sweden on Monday morning so he'd be fending for himself. "Don't worry!" I trilled, "I'll mind him!"

My hoop. After a weekend spent studying and trying not to murder the nextdoor neighbour's child, I was in no mood to entertain. The Swede had made more than mention of our guest's not speaking any English - which translated to my ears as "he will be hard work, very hard work". Fuck him, I'd had enough hard work for one weekend. Sometimes I truly am an arsehole, and a selfish and lazy one at that. So I timed my arrival back to the flat with when I knew he'd be out with the German, just in time to watch Lost and then scuttle off to bed. The Leitrim Lady had the same plan and my brother tagged along for the craic, so by the time the German arrived home with our guest we three were lost in Lost and they were made to feel as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit.

Grunts and nods without tearing our eyes from the screen, an absentminded shuffle over on the couch so that he might sit and enjoy the spectacle with us, staccato bursts of conversation during ad breaks and then mumbled reassurance that we'll talk to him in approximately 50 minutes when the programme had finished. Which we did, to be fair; we gave him a plot synopsis so that he might enjoy our further discussion of the episode's events and their relevance to previous episodes. The German made him (and us) some tea and we chatted for a bit, which was when we copped that actually the guy had fluent English and was pretty fucking sound. He was wrecked though so once the German had left, he excused himself and headed off to bed.

"Shite" we mused, "he was nice. We should have made an effort." His name was Naoki but in my study-addled idiocy I got Nokia stuck in my head instead, I had already forgotten it by the time we guiltily returned to the telly and our tired grouches, which was when he arrived back in with his camera to ask if he could get a photo with the three of us. Mortified, we put a shape on ourselves and said cheese. He headed off to bed happy and we sat there feeling like the miserable cunts that we are.