ORourke - The bachelor home companion: a practical guide to keeping house like a pig

Also by P. J. ORourke

Modern Manners

Holidays in Hell

Parliament of Whores

Give War a Chance

All the Trouble in the World

Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut

The American Spectators Enemies List

Republican Party Reptile

Eat the Rich

The CEO of the Sofa

The Bachelor Home Companion

Camus had it all wrong about the myth of Sisyphusits not symbolic of life, just housekeeping.

A Practical Guide to keeping House Like a Pig

BY P. J. OROURKE

Photographs by Alan Rose

Copyright 1987, 1993 by P. J. ORourke

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ORourke, P. J.

The bachelor home companion: a practical guide to keeping house
like a pig/by P.J. ORourke: photographs by Alan Rose.
Originally published: New York: Pocket Books, 1987.
1. BachelorsHumor. 2. House cleaningHumor. 3. Cookery
Humor. I. Title.
PN6231.B25076 1993 818.5402dc20 92-38785
ISBN-10: 0-87113-686-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-87113-686-2

Design by Laura Hammond Hough

Atlantic Monthly Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

06 07 08 09 10 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

To Alma
who cleaned my house and straightened my lif for nearly ten years and without whom everthing in this look would have been true.

The Introduction, chapter he Introduction, originally appeared, in somewhat different form, in Parade magazine. The author thanks Walter Anderson, editor of Parade, for proposing the subject of bachelor housekeeping, and Elaine Kaufman, proprietor of Elaines restaurant, for insisting the Parade articles be turned into a book.

Further thanks are due to Jean McBride, who suggested the coffee-cup ring on the title page; Tom Yellvington for his recommended use of spray deodorant on dirty socks and his Egg Foo Breakfast recipe; Michael Nesmith for telling the author about the Bill Martin dishwashing method; Bill Martin for inventing that method; Brock Yates, retired bachelor, for his observations on the four unmarried-male food groups; Larry Gray for the floaters recipe; Chris Isham for inventing Doggy Melts; Gerry Sussman for the phrase death over easy; Debbie Babson for her Girlfriend Chicken recipe; Debbie Babson, again, and Rob Stephenson for founding BARK (Bachelors Against Rude Kids); Winston Groom for his recipe for horrible wild ducks; Mike Burke for discovering that you can heat canned food by sticking it into the air cleaner on a car engine; Constance Bosworth for her extensive help on the Bachelor Cooking chapters, and for being adorable and for hardly squealing at all when the author kept a Jell-0 mold with a dead mouse in it in his refrigerator for two weeks; Ronald E. Burr for his underwear washing tip; Britain Hill for her photo ideas and suggestions; Evelien Bachrach, Matthew Seeger, Virginia and Peter Russell, Rob Stephenson, William V. Bowers, Lauranne Shea, Trisha Cassetta, Court Barrett, Anne Diebold, and Anne Rose for their kind services as photo models; Christopher and Claire Bean and their children, Andy and Katie, for photo model services above and beyond the call of duty; the Beans and William and Carol Bowers for providing photo locations; Dan and Ann Griffin, owners of Soap and Suds in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, for letting us disrupt business; Anne Rose for letting us tear her house apart; William Farrington for letting us make a disgusting mess in his basement workshop; Socky for being the worlds most compliant dog (when bribed with cheese); Robert Rakita for photo retouching; the authors old bachelor pals, Alan Wellikoff, Denis Boyles, and Bob Dattila for their inspiration, encouragement, and living examples of what this book should be (somebody please call the health department); and American Express, VISA, and MasterCard, whose many calls and letters provided the author with motivation to keep working.

THE BACHELOR HOME COMPANION

A look about cooking, cleaning, and housekeeping for people who dont know how to do any of these things and arent about to learn

We Are All Bachelors Now

How I Became a Bachlor Housewife

Basic House Cleaning

Why Have a House to Clean?

Bachelor Cooking, Part One

Bachelor Cooking, Part Two

Entertaining

Bachelor Decorating

Home Repair

Yard Care

Children Are Bachelors, Too More or Less

Miscellaneous Bachelor Hints and Tips

This book was written in 1986, which is half a lifetime ago in dog years and thats certainly the kind of years were having now. When I look at these photographs of a younger (and, darn it, slimmer) self, I am suffused with nostalgia. Werent the eighties grand? Cash grew on trees or, anyway, coca bushes. The rich roamed the land in vast herds hunted by proud, free tribes of investment brokers who lived a simple life in tune with money. Every wristwatch was a Rolex. Every car was a Mercedes-Benz. A fellow could romance a gal without shrink-wrapping his privates and negotiating the Treaty of Ghent. Communist dictators were losing their jobs, not presidents of America and General Motors. Women wore Adolfo gowns instead of dumpy federal circuit court judge robes. The Malcolm who mattered was Forbes. Bill Clinton was only a microscopic polyp in the colon of national politics, and Hillary was still in flight school, hadnt even soloed on her broom. What a blast we were having. The suburbs had just discovered Martha Stewart, the cities had just discovered crack. So many parties and none of them Democratic.

Those were halcyon (and Valium and Lithium and Prozac) days. Think of all we owe to that glorious past. And the bank. Back then health care was a tummy tuck, not an unalienable right. If you wanted a better environment, you went to Laura Ashley. Sleeping with the President meant youd attended a Cabinet meeting. And I actually was a bachelor. Why didnt I listen to myself? Here is an entire treatise on the joys of the unmarried state. I not only read it, I wrote the damn book. Then I got married anyway. Its not my fault. These are the nineties, the dumb decadedumb and complaining and sad. Fin de sicle. Fin de fun. Im a victim, a victim of the tragic American I.Q. die-off which happened halfway through the Bush administration. I need a federal program.