Clean Criminal

It’s easy to find me at a party. I’m the one picking up your dirty plate the moment you put it down and fluffing up the couch pillow when you get up from your seat. I’m consolidating food trays and washing the dishes so you can relax and chat with friends. Which would not be surprising, except for one thing. These are not my parties- I just act like they are. Perhaps it is my "I’m not worthy" attitude that fills me with guilt at the thought of relaxing while someone else waits on me. Or maybe I’m so appreciative of being invited that I overcompensate by making sure I leave your house even cleaner than it was before I arrived. Or it could be that my social awkwardness is easier to handle when I keep myself busy, making exciting small talk such as "Can I take your plate?"

At a recent cookout for my running club (which I was also not the host of), I helped with everything from serving food to cleaning up. Not because I had to, not because I was asked to, just because I was there. And at the end of the event as guests left full and relaxed, I was starving and badly in need of a nap, leaving one departing guest to ask if I had been elected as Club Janitor. If so, she laughed, the job was mine, as no one else in his right mind would ever want it.

Being born with a ‘janitor gene’ is not a role I relish. Why would anyone choose to live a life tormented by trash and distressed by disarray? I can’t eat a meal at home unless I’ve washed every pot and pan I cooked it in. I can’t leave the house for work until the bed is made. I can’t relax and watch TV at the end of a long day if I spy a spot of lint leering at me from the rug. And while having someone energetically sweeping behind you might be great in the sport of curling, it is not as endearing if you are simply trying to walk across the kitchen floor without being harassed about the dirt falling off your sneakers.

I’m not the only one suffering from this alleged affliction. Grabbing a coffee at a local shop where you add your own cream and sugar, I wait patiently as a woman well beyond retirement age, also a customer, uses a napkin to wipe up the mess left by others into her hand, and tidies up the sugar packets. "I was always the clean up girl", she says with an apologetic laugh as I stare into the eyes of my future self. And in the restroom of a local restaurant I spot a tiny tidier, no more than 12 years old, dutifully wiping down the wet sink, sealing her future fate as ‘one who randomly cleans up behind others’.

But there is another Salem citizen who may have us all beat. He spends his days cleaning up the entire city of Salem. Not because he gets paid to do it, and certainly not because he created the mess- just because he likes things neat. You will often see his bags full of other people’s trash lined up along the fences of public areas ready for pick up, an act of altruism so genuine it deeply touches the heart of this fellow picker-upper.

The life of a scouring scoundrel is not easy, and I’m often blamed for throwing things out that I never knew existed in the first place. Your favorite sweatshirt is missing? "Maybe Beth threw it out." Can’t find yesterday’s newspaper? "Beth probably threw it out." Those missing paintings from the Gardner Museum? "I think Beth threw them out." Apparently innocent until proven guilty doesn’t apply to a defense of acute cleanliness. Nor does anyone feel the need to apologize when they find the allegedly tossed trinket, as if my reputation as a clean criminal makes me deserving of blame regardless of my innocence. Reminding me that having a ‘spotless’ reputation is not always what it is cracked up to be, and that is a dirty, rotten shame.