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pon awaking, the very first
thing I did was throw my mattress over the fence and then drag it to the
trash pile at the adjacent apartment complex. That mattress had served me
well, originally being an orphan that I adopted in the early days of the
Dynashack. Someone had come
by several months into my use of it to pick it up, but I hadn't been home
so they'd given up. This morning it was just yet more of society's
waste. It wasn't looking too good and the springs were acting funny. If
I ever need another mattress (and I'm sure some day I will), they can
always be found. They are like pencils this way, but less so than the
now-ubiquitous futon.
ext on the agenda was the
disposal of Monster Boy's big striped couch, two big
pieces that fit together in the corner of a room. Originally we'd thought
we were selling them to Aaron's Attic (whose slogan is "Everything old
under the sun"), but that deal fell through and we just wanted to get rid
of them. Deya and I thought we
could just carry them down Observatory and set them up enticingly on the
grassy median of JPA, but we soon gave up on that idea. They were far too
heavy to carry a quarter mile. But then we found that they actually would
fit in Deya's Mercury pacer station wagon. Soon we'd set up the whole
sectional as it would normally be placed in a typical living room,
complete with all the cushions. From a distance, to the many driving by,
it looked very attractive; you couldn't see the stains or smell the beer
and dog-induced funkiness. The whole thing was gone within an hour.
Deya went off on another massive junk disposing mission, taking small
stuff to just leave in random places about town. It seems better that
way, it's less psychologically stressful to depart with things if it seems
likely they will end up in a good home. These last few weeks have been
unique in my life in terms of all the material possessions I've been
shedding. Never before have I willingly disposed of so much of my stuff.
It's especially strange to be tossing out things only a few months after
obtaining them in the first place, with the joy of finding them still vivid
in my mind.
In a way, this has me redefining my relationship with the material
world. I'm realizing that everything I think that I own (and own
proudly!) is really just loaned to me from what Wacky Jen terms "the pool
of things." In such times as these, when outright disposal is the least
desirable option, there is a hierarchy of options for shedding my surplus
things:
- selling them
- giving them to friends
- giving them to strangers
- giving them to the Salvation Army to be sold to strangers
- dropping them off around town to await the fates
- putting them in other people's dumpsters
- piling them up in front of the house to irritate the neighbors
Having to dispose of so much stuff makes us unusually altruistic. We felt a real
sense of joy when we discovered someone had taken Monster Boy's couches.
But then someone from Aaron's Attic showed up. You snooze, you
lose.
ollowing the same principle,
Matthew Hart and
Angela finally came by to get their crap on this, the final day when such
things were possible. Unfortunately, some things they'd expected to find
were already gone. Where were the little wooden tables? More importantly,
where was the air conditioner, the one he took from his car to make room
the night of the 80s party? We explained that the air
conditioner "Had been here, but, wait! It's gone! Someone must have taken
it!" He stormed around silently pissed off and loaded up the things of his
that weren't gone (including a couple mattresses that had formed
part of Jessika's "princess and
the pea" bed arrangement). Everything Matthew and Angela took was to be used
to furnish Peggy and Zach's basement
apartment up on Carter's Mountain, where they'll be moving on June 1st.
Johnny Boom Boom rode with Matthew on
the way up the mountain and later Johnny reported to Jessika that my old
housemate wasn't buying the story that the
air conditioner had "just vanished."
I didn't have time to worry about such politics as I cleaned up a house
that Matthew had once seemed determined to destroy. The old ferret shit
came up pretty easy with a putty knife, but the candle wax around Matthew's
bed was much more troublesome.
y scheme for cleaning
revolved around the idea of completely clearing out
rooms, cleaning them, and then making them "off limits." Deya and Jessika
worked without such systematic thoroughness, starting cleaning projects and
leaving them half-finished to start up new projects. As the hour drew
late, I determined to finish one of the massive bits left undone: the
kitchen. I assaulted the electric range, which had, under the burners,
many years' accumulation of a sticky, oily mixture of carmelized starches
and cooking grease. It came up in satisfying slabs with a putty knife, but
there was no way I could make it shine with the time I had. I did make
stove surface itself look pretty good, however. Then I focused on the
refrigerator, going shelf to shelf in a urban warfaresque "mopping-up
operation" (now I know where the term comes from; World War II must have
been fought by batallions of kitchen staff).
bunch of people: Joanna
Road Rage, Johnny
Boom Boom, Peggy and the Baboose, all showed up at around 3:30, just when
the biggest push should have commenced. They weren't really part of the
solution so they ended up being part of the problem. Jessika felt
compelled to chit chat with them about gossipy things (like Sarah Kleiner);
she has no sense of the movement of time, and is always eager to socialize
even under the most demanding of emergencies. Who was wanting to fuck whom
was not important to me at all just then; I found myself growing
enraged by the people lazing in the yard, tromping through the house to use
the phone, and especially, smoking cigarettes and flicking ashes upon
the front porch (which I had just swept). As I strained to replace an
outdoor light fixture that I'd long ago hidden for fears of its being
smashed, I just let loose with my rage and hollered "We need to get
cracking! We don't have time for socializing! We can talk about Sarah Kleiner
later!" After that, Peggy helped me in the kitchen, greatly accelerating
my progress despite the fact that one of her hands was tied up holding the
Baboose. She works fast and effectively when she puts her mind to it.
Joanna Road Rage passed through the kitchen at one point and asked why I
was so cranky, a question I did not dignify
with a response.
n the last hour, it was just Deya and me working. She finished off the
bathroom and then hosed down the front porch while I attacked the back porch
and kitchen. When she was done with the front porch, she cleaned out the
refrigerator and I cleaned up systematically behind her as she emptied
shelves. We worked surprisingly effectively in such constricted space.
When the house was done, a miracle of echo-y emptiness, I locked it up and
sat down to drink some ice coffee I'd been preparing for this magic moment.
Off in the distance the university bell chimed five times, the hour at
which we were required to be out of the house. We'd won. Deya sipped on a
beer and we stared calmly across Observatory, exhausted but satisfied.
Somehow the house had made it through countless perils to a state probably
more tidy than we'd found it. Think of the obstacles we had overcome:
- Matthew Hart during the final Leah period,
when Leah routinely threw bottles and cups at her then-boyfriend (I'd found
myself filling many arc-shaped dents with dry wall compound)
- Theresa Venezian, who frequently broke
things
like windows as a
melodramatic form of sentence punctuation
- Matthew Hart during the Angela period, when, in fits of pathetic drunken
neediness, he smashed windows and bathroom doors to express emotions like
jealousy and desire
- Shira the Dog, who left mud on the walls, destroyed Monster Boy's couch
and dug holes in the yard, and put poo and pee stains in the dining room
- The Boy Jesse, whose craziness
always seemed on the verge of breaking something, though I don't think he
actually broke anything
- The constant menace of the skinheads, who, as it
happened, never mustered the guts to show up and cause problems, though for a
period I was so afraid this would happen that I armed myself with a .30
caliber pistol
- Ray Robot, who as recently as two days ago suggested that it would be a
cool thing to trash the house
Deya drove over to her new place at the Wertland Mansion with a final load
of stuff, and I rode over shortly thereafter on my bike, intending to keep it
there during my travels.
t the Wertland Mansion,
Jessika, Deya and I drank a last bottle of red
wine and watched a bad action adventure on the teevee (the girls get free
cable as part of their summer sublet arrangement). As an ironic commentary
on all the stupid babe pictures that surround them in their new abode,
Jessika put up a picture that had been on the Kappa Mutha Fucka bathroom, a
photocopy originally prepared by Leah depicting a bare-breasted girl all
tied up with thin black straps. Considering the picture later, Jessika
suddenly realized that the frat-boy-type housemates who live next door will
probably get the wrong idea and think that Jessika and Deya are some kind
of dyke couple. They do dress kind of weird, especially Jessika, who of
late has embraced a sort of fetishistic femme look, featuring layers and
layers of lacy girlie clothes. In Jessika's mind, the fact that the
all-American housemates might get the wrong idea about her and Deya is a
wonderful thing; it admirably serves the purpose of fucking with their
minds. To cause even further mind-fucking, I suggested maybe including
some unexpected rock and roll bumperstickers juxtaposed with the bondage
picture, ZZ Top for example.
We wondered among ourselves what sort of interactions Jessika and Deya will
have with the housemates over the long summer. We thought the boys would
probably try to avoid them at first, while simultaneously being intrigued
(they are girls, after all). We decided that the boys' reticence to approach the
girls will probably break down the first time the boys get really drunk. I
envied my friends; it seems they'll get some fascinating experiences out
of all this.
Deya still needed to go home to pick up her rat Francis and her cat
Nicholas. I rode with her, since I needed to drive the Dart back to
Staunton one last time. Suddenly I
realized that I was leaving, that this was it - a major turning
point in my life. I said goodbye to Jessika,
and off Deya and I went.
ack at the locked and vacant
Kappa Mutha Fucka, Nicholas was playing
nervously in the yard. He'd been apprehensive and jumpy these last few days
as he watched room after room emptied, scrubbed clean and acoustically
altered. Deya picked him up and put him in her car. He didn't want to go; he
had the most horrible expression on his triangular grey face. But away Deya
drove, leaving me alone in the yard. I was the first person to populate
Kappa Mutha Fucka, and I would be the last to go.
It's hard to express the feelings I had. I was feeling sort of sad and
nostalgic, but also I felt energized by being on the cusp of some future
era. I walked around the yard, picking up hay and putting it on dirt spots
and pushing clumps of leaves and maple seeds out of the driveway with my
foot. Various cats unusually near me, looking at me in weird ways that
both seemed to say goodbye and condemn me for presiding over the taking
away of their friend Nicholas. As the evening light dimmed, I climbed in
my extremely packed Dart and backed out of the driveway of 129 Observatory
Avenue, formerly known as Kappa Mutha Fucka. I'd barely left enough room
behind the wheel for myself.
ack home, I told my parents that the end of Kappa Mutha Fucka had gone
smoothly. They had a few interesting tales to tell. The most odd of these
was about Josh Furr, my
redneck friend who is now in jail on the charge of attempted murder. Josh
had been using a match-making service and had the numbers of a couple girls
he wanted to contact, but since he was in jail and could only make collect
calls, he asked my Dad to call the girls instead. Surprising enough, my
Dad decided to humour the poor inmate and called them up. He only got
through to one of them, but the moment my Dad said Josh was currently in
jail, she said she was most definitely not interested.
I went to bed fairly early, after unpacking a small amount of my crap.
Rain had begun to fall. When I couldn't sleep, I got up and began working
on my musings and stayed up until 3am.
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