I found this link at Ace a couple days ago. It’s a real-estate listing for a house in Detroit.

56 pictures, 3200 square feet of madness. Salvador Dali with a government grant couldn’t turn in anything this insane.

I was clicking back and forth through the slideshow, wondering what kind of mind, what kind of person could possibly create this? Obviously money was no object. But this person also must have worked like a slave for years, all to make a house you can’t live in because you might track dirt on the hallucinations. Thousands of hours must have gone into it.

Picture 30 caught my eye. It’s not like the others. This room is not “put together” the same way as the other rooms. There’s something kind of permanently unfinished about the whole setup.

There is a bed in the room, with a velour-looking bedspread. About ten more such bedspreads in their original plastic packaging are stacked in what looks like a hallway.

There is a gigantic porcelain sink in the room. Next to the sink is a desk. Who puts a sink next to the desk? The sink is not set up for grooming, personal care or cooking. There is a sit-stool in front of the sink, and a paper towel dispenser.

There are 32 rolls of paper towels next to the sink. The occupant of this room sits in front of this vast sink, unable to see himself in the mirror, and does…something which consumes paper towels by the truckload. There is also a tidy drying rack for what appear to be face cloths.

One odd thing about this listing is the bathrooms outnumber the bedrooms four to three. Somebody really digs their indoor plumbing. So, a clean freak who throws out his bedspread if he sweats in it?

Everything here points to obsessive-compulsive. Once you see it that way, the whole experience takes on a kind of darkness. You notice that some of the layouts are obsessed with symmetry and balance. And the totally antiseptic cleanliness becomes oppressive. The cleaning bill for this place must be on par with the Smithsonian.

I’m always grateful when somebody does a freakazoid thing that expands my ideas of human potential. But I’m pretty sure I’m glad I wasn’t the guy who decorated that house.