Being a Good Host

Hospitality is an important aspect of one's house keeping. The maintenance of a domain, living space, keep, vessel.

I suppose pride has a lot to do with it, as does the humanistic drive towards a sense of civilization... whatever civilization is/suppose to be.

Nevertheless, grooming and cleanliness are integral components to being a good host. And recently, my roommate, Tyler, discovered just how effective good hosting can be.

Proceed with caution:

A few weeks ago, Tyler woke up complaining of a soar foot. The symptoms hinted at a stubbed toe, yet it had mysteriously appeared over night. So, when did it occur? Why did Tyler have no recollection of hitting his foot?

Over the course of a week and a half, Tyler’s toes began to swell, become bruised, and eventually blister. One night, as I was lounging in the hammock reading a book, Tyler emerged from his room to show me that the blisters had popped and that black liquid had come out. Neither of us could make any sense of it and so we both went on assuming that it was a mysterious case of a stubbed tow with a bit of dirt in it.

Let us now fast forward to a week ago, Thursday. The day that Tolga left our site. As a group of us waited for Tolga’s boat to depart, one of our friends asked Tyler what was wrong with his foot. Tyler explained the events of his toes and the response he got from the audience was this:

“Tyler, you have flies in your toes.”

Tyler’s eyes doubled in size and were followed by a crisp, “What?” (much like pop you get when you bite into a cold, granny-smith apple). I almost died laughing and then abruptly shut my mouth in embarrassment.

In any case, Tyler stood there trying to wrap his brain around the idea that there were flies living inside his toes. Last time I checked, flies fly and then they land on things. You have to be one misdirected fly to burrow into someone’s flesh and live there. I mean, that’s like handing scuba gear to an airline pilot. Serious conflict of interest here. A few hours later and a confirmation from the Cuban doctors that live near us, Tyler decided to take action and I decided to watch. Everyone had told Tyler to just pour Kerosene over his toes, but that didn’t seem to fancy him at all. So instead, we poured two healthy portions of rum and Coke, got the tweezers, Swiss Army knife, and needle out and placed them next to the gauze, antiseptic, and band-aids. It was a grizzly affair and I’ll spare the details save this one: They’re hungry little suckers and the holes they make are incredibly symmetrical.

Apparently Tyler is a really good host.

P.S. Last night I pulled two out of my own foot.