“The door hasn’t been fixed,” I mutter to myself, stepping
into the condo. The Author, as I like to call him from time to time, wasn’t
home.
“Business dinner with Charlize Theron and Richard Branson,” or something like
that. It’s all fine and good, except for the damn lock on this door. It’s not
only been broken for months, but it doesn’t shut right and I don’t know if you
can lock it yet.
“This place is CRAZY!!!” I get a text from The Author and I three quarters
smile before plopping myself down on the couch.
I wasn’t tired in the way you are when you want to sleep, but I was exhuausted.
(Why do I associate coming home with a big sigh of relief?)
The fucking door is open, just a crack. There’s nothing I can do but fiddle
with the metal parts until the door at least covers the kitchen it opens into.
It’s a clean looking play, though I tend to muck it up on a regular basis (I
spilled a bottle of bright red win on a 10 thousand dollar couch just last
week. Not even the fucking professionals could get out that last length of
purple (It was less red than the win, anyway.
(I took some heat for it, but boy, did I have fun that night. The Author was in
the office, and I was getting hammered and stoned in the living room, doing
lines off the kitchen counters every 5-10 minutes (How the hell long is a line
supposed to last anyway?)
(I’m playing piano, I’m watching some T.V. The Facts of Life is on repeat all
night, and I’m on my third (yes third, and if you know anything about a Jewish
boy’s constitution than you can guess what I felt like waking up.)
(He was quiet about the couch, though I knew it must annoy him daily. In order
to make breakfast he has to walk past the now, nearly bleached, white circle on
his beautiful tan couch (which is damn gorgeous and I think anyone would say
so.)).
So I’m home. The Author should be home in an hour and a
half. If there’s one thing I could say without a doubt about him is that he is
punctual. Comes in at the same times week after week. Mon Wed Fri 4:15 on the
dot. Ever other Tuesday: 2 on the dot. And when he says he’ll be back in an
hour and half that means he’ll without a doubt in my mind be back for 2 hours
maximum.
I manage to close the door (though the way it wiggles is
worrisome. Especially because if you press hard enough it pops right open.)
“We’ve got to get this fixed.”
I text him, “We have to fix the door.” He doesn’t text back because he’s at a business dinner with so and so. What’s more important the door or the dinner? The dinner pays for the damn door anyway, and it’ll pay for the dudes to fix that fucking lock. I swear, if we didn’t live in a building with a doorman, I don’t know that we’d still be living (thanks to all kindred spirits the Author has. The Author’s only kindred spirit is tequila, by the way.)
I don’t know what I even ate that night. Some unit of tamales that you literally just throw into the microwave without puncturing and bam your food is up after 3 and a half minutes (which is just about a minute longer than I’ll spend eating it. I’m no foodie, shall we say, though I can tell when a dish is up and beyond because of the years of being wined and dined by… well I guessa few of them did. One day, people are going to wake up and realize that you cannot force someone to love you, and that they can fall out of love with you while you’re still blissfully ignorant. I’ll bet the majority of dumpees get cheated on right before they get dumped. God damnit I wish I could fix that fucking lock.
I cut myself off from think about the door and I sit on my white spot on the couch and watch The Rachel Maddow show, which I think has way too much sarcasm. Say what you mean and mean what you say, I always say (I mean, I would/should. Do you ever get called out for saying “sorry.” I think “sorry” is one of the sorriest words in the English language. In any language it’s in. Maybe Mandarin’s translation is “I regret what occurred” or “Rock and roll, deal with it.” I think I’m able to deal with The Rachel Maddow show, though tonight’s episoe will not receive a world class attention from me.
I pick up my guitar, which I know his horribly out of tune, and I start to play some song or other I wrote, when I hear the door shake, at least four times. The bizarre layout of the condo pushes wind around and sometimes shuts doors, but it’s a one-time thing. It doesn’t shake the door three or four or however many times it just shook.
“It’s open!” I yell, assuming something as the business dinner went wrong, or horribly right, or they were just done and The Author didn’t know it. There’s no answer and the door is still again. “Come in, babe!” I yell. No answer and then the door starts to shake wildly for four seconds. It was long enough to make me think earthquake, and short enough to know that someone is fucking with me because in the past 2 years The Author has never fucked with me. Not even a pop scare here and there (I revel in those.)
But this is scary and I know that The Author’s admirers are numerous (to which one of his friends rolls his eyes at… actually most people don’t take the “numerous admirers thing to kindly. Rock and roll?...) I know nothing’s wrong. The door has stopped rumbling. The “10 dollar apartment with the million dollar view,” as he once put it, was now dead quiet. A half eaten Smores Pop Tar is sitting on top of it’s foil wrapping over on the kitchen table, and I begin to forget about the door and seriously consider eating the pop tart.
(Pop Tart’s are strangely better in theory than in reality. They are pretty much, never as good as you hope they’ll be. Maybe it’s because I don’t toast them?”
I heard in this inspirational movie or book or something once that we are only one step away from being the perfect version of ourselves. I’m going to attack this person behind the door. I start to justify assault (but your honor, he came to my premises and purposefully… whatever I need to say, right? I mean, I’m not going not going to fucking jail… something I’d feared since childhood. What if I accidentally killed someone? I would then imagine myself in the showers. A big black guy turns to me and asks why I have an erection. I don’t even try to explain it. I shrug and he violently rapes me. That latter part is not a fantasy I like by the way.)
The door is still again. It did move with the wind again? How does wind circulate through here when there isn’t a window open… maybe in the office? So when I see it move in it’s typical winded fashion, I start to think that I should lay off the weed. But then the door opens, and it’s a tall man. He’s not the tallest man I’ve ever seen, and somehow he’s masked in silhouette (isn’t that impossible?) He’s got a cane and I can see the gold tip at the bottom.
He vanishes, (I really should lay off the weed and the cocaine.), but the door is still open and broken. I stand there for, I suppose quite a while, because he, The Author walks in and says ,”Hey.”
“Are we ever gonna fix that that lock?” I ask. I don’t care that much, there’s a doorman anyway.
“Yeah, we’ll ask Harry (our doorman) to send someone up tomorrow.”
I text him, “We have to fix the door.” He doesn’t text back because he’s at a business dinner with so and so. What’s more important the door or the dinner? The dinner pays for the damn door anyway, and it’ll pay for the dudes to fix that fucking lock. I swear, if we didn’t live in a building with a doorman, I don’t know that we’d still be living (thanks to all kindred spirits the Author has. The Author’s only kindred spirit is tequila, by the way.)
I don’t know what I even ate that night. Some unit of tamales that you literally just throw into the microwave without puncturing and bam your food is up after 3 and a half minutes (which is just about a minute longer than I’ll spend eating it. I’m no foodie, shall we say, though I can tell when a dish is up and beyond because of the years of being wined and dined by… well I guessa few of them did. One day, people are going to wake up and realize that you cannot force someone to love you, and that they can fall out of love with you while you’re still blissfully ignorant. I’ll bet the majority of dumpees get cheated on right before they get dumped. God damnit I wish I could fix that fucking lock.
I cut myself off from think about the door and I sit on my white spot on the couch and watch The Rachel Maddow show, which I think has way too much sarcasm. Say what you mean and mean what you say, I always say (I mean, I would/should. Do you ever get called out for saying “sorry.” I think “sorry” is one of the sorriest words in the English language. In any language it’s in. Maybe Mandarin’s translation is “I regret what occurred” or “Rock and roll, deal with it.” I think I’m able to deal with The Rachel Maddow show, though tonight’s episoe will not receive a world class attention from me.
I pick up my guitar, which I know his horribly out of tune, and I start to play some song or other I wrote, when I hear the door shake, at least four times. The bizarre layout of the condo pushes wind around and sometimes shuts doors, but it’s a one-time thing. It doesn’t shake the door three or four or however many times it just shook.
“It’s open!” I yell, assuming something as the business dinner went wrong, or horribly right, or they were just done and The Author didn’t know it. There’s no answer and the door is still again. “Come in, babe!” I yell. No answer and then the door starts to shake wildly for four seconds. It was long enough to make me think earthquake, and short enough to know that someone is fucking with me because in the past 2 years The Author has never fucked with me. Not even a pop scare here and there (I revel in those.)
But this is scary and I know that The Author’s admirers are numerous (to which one of his friends rolls his eyes at… actually most people don’t take the “numerous admirers thing to kindly. Rock and roll?...) I know nothing’s wrong. The door has stopped rumbling. The “10 dollar apartment with the million dollar view,” as he once put it, was now dead quiet. A half eaten Smores Pop Tar is sitting on top of it’s foil wrapping over on the kitchen table, and I begin to forget about the door and seriously consider eating the pop tart.
(Pop Tart’s are strangely better in theory than in reality. They are pretty much, never as good as you hope they’ll be. Maybe it’s because I don’t toast them?”
I heard in this inspirational movie or book or something once that we are only one step away from being the perfect version of ourselves. I’m going to attack this person behind the door. I start to justify assault (but your honor, he came to my premises and purposefully… whatever I need to say, right? I mean, I’m not going not going to fucking jail… something I’d feared since childhood. What if I accidentally killed someone? I would then imagine myself in the showers. A big black guy turns to me and asks why I have an erection. I don’t even try to explain it. I shrug and he violently rapes me. That latter part is not a fantasy I like by the way.)
The door is still again. It did move with the wind again? How does wind circulate through here when there isn’t a window open… maybe in the office? So when I see it move in it’s typical winded fashion, I start to think that I should lay off the weed. But then the door opens, and it’s a tall man. He’s not the tallest man I’ve ever seen, and somehow he’s masked in silhouette (isn’t that impossible?) He’s got a cane and I can see the gold tip at the bottom.
He vanishes, (I really should lay off the weed and the cocaine.), but the door is still open and broken. I stand there for, I suppose quite a while, because he, The Author walks in and says ,”Hey.”
“Are we ever gonna fix that that lock?” I ask. I don’t care that much, there’s a doorman anyway.
“Yeah, we’ll ask Harry (our doorman) to send someone up tomorrow.”
Cushions should be double sided for do-overs.
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