My goodness, you look beautiful today...
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To Noisey. I’ll probably find another place.
That’s the text message I received when I returned from my hike. It was Rob. Sent at midnight. This was reinforced by a voicemail from the morning. And the suggestion was that he’d had a loud night and wanted to move out.
It was 4:30pm when I received the message. I’d spend the last twelve hours hoofing it in the wilderness. My primary concerns–showering and eating a hot meal and finding a place to sleep–flooded my conscious focus. Fielding a tenant’s complaint was the last thing I wanted to deal with. I decided to wait to call him until after I ate. I had told him I’d be away in the wilderness for the weekend, so I had a built-in excuse to stall.
The best $5 I’ve ever spent was at the hostel in town, where any vagrant could stop in for a paid shower. And shower I did, cleaning every square millimeter of my skin with the gusto of a prison custodian under review for a promotion from the local prison to the Playboy Mansion.* It was fantastic.
When I asked about their room availability, the hostel clerk shook her head. All of the rooms in town were booked. And the only room the hostel had available was their private room, which could be had for a cool $80!
“Holy shit!” I exclaimed, losing myself a little in the emotion.
“Well, you can drive up to Bishop and pay a hundred,” she sneered.
“No, I appreciate what you guys do here,” I replied. “That’s just a hell of a sum for a hostel room. Thank you, though.”
It would be another night under the stars. C’est la vie. I’d digest my concerns with an overcooked elk burger and lager at the local cafe.
I got in touch with Rob after dinner. He took the tone of a man submitting a police report after a mugging.
“It was crazy here last night, man,” he said, going on to describe in great detail the digression of the building’s inhabitants from upright citizens to bloodthirsty pirates with snare drums for sneakers well into the morning. “This place is like a frat house.”
Having lived there for two years and experienced nothing of the sort, aside from the occasional (though admittedly consistent) evening disturbance from a small gathering of drunkards on the steps outside my bedroom window, I secretly called Rob’s bluff.
But it was Labor Day weekend. And we did have a sketchy neighbor or two. So his story wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility.
“I’m sorry you experienced that, Rob,” I said. “I’ve never had anything like that happen to me. The neighborhood can be a loud place, but never to that extent.”
“I’m just a little disappointed, man” he replied. “That stairway by your window, there’s a door right there. People were running through there, yelling and slamming that door all night… You didn’t tell me about that door.”
There it was.
I had been waiting for this since yesterday. As long as you’re telling me everything, I think I’m happy with the place. A comment worthy of a gypsy charlatan, pregnant with guile and purpose, and now so immediately alluded to. Rob had set himself up for an out, primed to ignore our written contract and replace it with his verbal swindle as if this were some kind of trial period.
Needless to say, I was pretty annoyed by Rob’s reaction. Frankly, I didn’t believe him. Anyone who moves veritable college dormitory of urban SoCal bachelors shouldn’t be surprised when their living experience doesn’t mirror the hushed tranquility of the Montana countryside. A holiday weekend in good weather is bound to promote some evening activity. But I didn’t make my aggravation apparent, and politely offered to drive to him tomorrow afternoon and discuss the matter in person.
“Do what you’ve gotta do, man,” he said.
How kind of him.
After we hung up, I drove to the outskirts of town and parked my car roadside for a night of restless slumber.
– TOH
*This never happens.**
**Which further reinforces my point.
After waking up in a tent at 3:00am, I gathered my belongings together and stretched before hitting the trail. It was a long hike, 22 miles in all, each mile revealing a fresh perspective of the Sierra Nevada range. These are the mountains that inspired the devotion of naturalist John Muir and motivated the creation of an unprecedented three national parks to protect its peaks. And they would be my backdrop for the day ahead.
Not ugly.
My hiking group was jovial–more than I generally care for at such an early hour–but this ultimately made for some great company. There were nearly 20 people in all, men and women from a variety of backgrounds, assembled through an online meetup group designed expressly for this purpose. Although I had been a member of the group for nearly a year, I had never actually joined them on a hike.
Mountainfolk.
By late morning, the more fit and ambitious of us broke out from the others and headed for the summit. Our pace was strong. It felt great to travel so briskly.
Along the way, we ran into a woman hiking with her dog. I don’t remember the woman’s name, but the dog’s name I will never forget. Her name was Kacy, and she was a beacon of joy, a domesticated animal who had found her home on the ridges. Kacy was found freely galloping her way up even the most discouraging climbs, always turning around with perked ears to check in on her owner. You couldn’t help but be infected by Kacy’s delight. The stress from the recent bustle to sublet the apartment, the discomfort of sleeping under adverse conditions, the fatigue of climbing 4,000 feet in thin air, all of that dissolved in the presence of Kacy’s pep. If the dog could have so much fun on the trail, then so could I. By noon, thanks in part to Kacy’s enthusiasm, we reached the top and posed for our summit photos.
Later that afternoon, the group began to fragment even further. About half of the way into the descent, I found myself alone again. It was a welcomed solitude. At that point I had logged over 15 miles for the day and had seven to go. In truth, the hike had taken more of a toll on me than hikes of recent memory. I had spent much of the past month doing everything but maintaining my fitness. I was exhausted. Each step forward was met with the threat of ambulatory seizure of tendons and ligaments, each chunk of Mesozoic granite in the trail evaded with more consideration than the last. It was in this concentrated solitude that my brain began to wander.
If my best ideas are conceived in the shower, then my deepest emotional secrets are revealed on the trail. Particularly on the back end of the trail, when your body begins to give way from the stress of the long miles and your lungs are straining the hardest to capture and distribute the thin oxygen. Your will becomes skeletal. Your body is burdened and exposed to the elements. Your soul is vulnerable. For those next two or three hours, I began examining what remained of my depleted being. I began thinking about Shani.
Why do our most mysterious loves-lost linger so?
Shani and I had broken up on Valentine’s Day. She initiated the separation with a swift bluntness true to the form of her self-advertised coldness. In our year together, I had gotten to know the tender, dutiful side of the woman many people recognized as rogue and unfeeling. In truth, the same character liberated enough to stand by the motto “I do what I want” was the one so ultimately dedicated to putting her lover above herself in every detail, to absorb every fault and inconvenience with the subtlest smile and punctuate each visit with a thoughtful gift or remark.
My heart still bore a gaping hole from her absence, but though I missed her dearly and the pain of her departure shone clear in my most exposed moments, I couldn’t tell you if I’d take her back if she asked. Not that such a moment is anymore in the realm of possibility. But out of general bewilderment the question still surfaces. I’m still as baffled today about our parting as I was when it first happened.
These thoughts distracted me enough from the discomfort of my physical condition, my pace quickening as the scenery evolved from barren, punishing switchbacks to the fertile flatland route.
The bows and vistas of the trail never cured my thirst for an answer.
It had been months since I’d seen her. Six months to be exact. The memory of our love remained strong, but the image of our once strong union was disappearing, a four-dimensional canvas of sensory overload reduced to a fading slice of reminiscence, grainy and grayscaled, shrinking into oblivion with each passing day. Shani had been gone for half the year, but I was always losing her. Losing the image of a love I could never understand enough to tame.
When I reached the end of the trail, I was exhausted. But I didn’t want to stop. My knees were aching, temples throbbing, heart racing. Yet I was ready to move on. From everything. From this trail, from this day. And most of all, from the sting of misunderstanding. I wanted to walk until my body failed me, until my legs gave out from under me and sent me crashing to the ground, the impact of my fall resulting in an amnesic erasure of an aching memory.
– TOH
It was a lonely Friday night.
After packing my belongings for the hike, I retired to my air mattress. Instead of a restful sleep, I spent hours fidgeting about in a half-awake reminiscence over times less austere. I imagined Shani, my ex-girlfriend, my most enigmatic and troubled love, emerging out of the shadows to propose reconciliation, to offer me a respite from my self-imposed solitude. Not that I wanted help; I didn’t know what I wanted. But I liked the idea of her tenderly presenting an olive branch. Shani haunted me periodically, her memory still so alarmingly vivid, even after the passing of these seven months. Tonight, she haunted my foresleep, leaving me with waking nightmares of wounds reopened. Sleep was had only in fits and starts.
I was very much looking forward to getting away.
When I woke up the next morning, I felt the false renewal of a man tasked with a tight schedule. So I made haste to the apartment and began preparations for Rob’s arrival. It was 7:00. He was scheduled to arrive at 11:30.
I rushed to clean up the mess left by Jürgen. As explained here, Jürgen’s facility in the art of home cleanliness wasn’t going to win him any awards. My work was cut out for me. Once again, I got to work on the Easter Egg Hunt search for pennies and gum wrappers, and restored the apartment back to its original condition. I noted that the only belongings I could determine to have been damaged or missing were consumables; for one, Jürgen seemed to have drained my rum supply and relieved me of my drink mixers. Fair enough, I thought, and noted to myself not to leave such “valuables” out in the open for risk of inviting uninvited use.
By 9:45, the place was ready for Rob. So I rewarded myself by washing my car looking forward to finishing early and showering and, if I was lucky, sneaking a short nap in before he showed up. But as I was washing the truck, Rob rolled up in his early model Lexus SUV.
“Hey man, are we good to go? And is it cool if I park here?”
It was shortly after 10:00am. I looked around nervously, as if a mythical third-party would materialize and offer a bemused, “Well, you’re here early!” Alas, I was on my own. So I compromised.
“Hey Rob,” I said. “Give me about an hour and I’ll have it all ready for you. Then you can park in this spot. Is that cool?”
“Sure man, do your thing,” he replied. “I was gonna grab some food anyway.”
When Rob returned, I had a clean car, a clean me, and a clean apartment. And the pride of having accomplished it all on a narrow timeline. I walked him through the apartment once more, making sure to cover every little detail I could imagine. I even pointed out Griffin, one of my more volatile neighbors who I was pretty sure was a drug-dealer.
“Avoid that guy,” I warned, handing him the sublease paper to sign. “He’s got a strange energy, but he’s harmless if you don’t engage him. Oh, and I put ‘Rogers’ as your last name, but I wasn’t sure if that was right.”
Rob’s eyebrows caved into one another as he scanned the paper, following the lines with his finger as he read.
“This looks cool,” he said, ignoring my surname comment. “As long as you’re telling me everything, I think I’m happy with the place.”
I paused for a moment. Was it not clear that Rob and I had already made a gentleman’s agreement? His tone suggested he had arrived today short of a final decision. And his words implied that I might be concealing some egregious fault, and as a result his side of the agreement was subject to potential loopholes to be named later. My stomach dropped, suddenly aware that the fate of my apartment, the belongings inside of it, and the $700 in cash now in my hands, could be vulnerable to the whim of a litigation-happy scam artist. Or, at best, that Rob was someone who viewed our relationship as potentially confrontational.
But instead of let that anxiety govern me, I tried the opposite approach. As much as I wanted to head north, I stayed with Rob for as long as possible. I answered questions about the general area, writing a list of nearby restaurants and bars I recommended and giving him tips on traffic and neighborhood parking. We talked about our backgrounds. Rob was secretive about details, but alluded to time spent in China as a bodyguard and Northern California as a part-owner of a bar. We shared travel stories for twenty minutes, the morning breeze our only interruption. Aside from wanting more time to gauge his intentions, I wanted to bond with Rob as much as possible before we parted ways. I wanted to shift the balance of our relationship to a more casual, respectful tone.
It was nearly noon when we parted ways, shaking hands and promising one another that we’d check out some Hollywood dive bar together in the coming weeks. I felt much better about our agreement when I backed out of my spot and headed for the highway. But I was still haunted by his words, the ever-foreboding “as long as you’re telling me everything.” They stuck with me for the entire 4 hour drive to the mountains.
Two-thirds of the way into that drive, my car’s overdrive light began to flash–something I’d heard was a precursor to transmission problems in vehicles of my make and year.
Month Two had kicked off with a bang.
– TOH
Today marks the end of my first month as The Office Hobo. I’ve decided to celebrate by leaving town.
Tomorrow, I plan on heading to the apartment early in the morning to prepare for Rob’s arrival. Once we exchange the keys and the cash, I will head up to Inyo National Forest for a group hike in the mountains.
It has been an eventful month, to say the least. I’ve successfully defined office-living as a viable form of home-free living, saving over $1,100 in rent while experiencing an uncharacteristically dizzying social presence. I have read two books and written enough material to considering developing one of my own. I’ve evaded the attention of my coworkers and neighbors, secured the recovery of my IRS tax refund, and initiated a new karaoke hobby. I’ve brought my monthly food finances down to an average of $16.11 per day. And I’ve done all of this with a verve I’d not experienced since my time living back east.
The Hobo’s got his groove back.
At this point, what could go wrong?
– TOH
I paid $13.50 for a sandwich today. It was a huge mistake. I’ve come here today to make amends for that mistake.
The scene of the crime was the Bay Cities Deli in Santa Monica, and I had stopped there on the way to an appointment at a nearby client’s office. This prospect excited me, as Bay Cities has arguably the best deli sandwich in Los Angeles, and at reasonable prices. Or so I thought.
Scene of the Crime
Once I was able to jockey for a spot in the limited parking lot, I hustled into the shop. Figuring I had just missed the weekday lunch rush, I thought I’d just waltz in and out. But such is not life in sunny Santa Monica; the inside of Bay Cities was like WalMart on Black Friday. Cray-cray. Yes, that’s right. So impossibly impossible that only the most awful slang would suffice in its description. And cray-cray is about as awful as one can get.
Where the magic happens–the magic being the disappearing act of all the cash in your wallet for a simple sandwich.
After fifteen minutes of waiting for service, it became apparent that my “number”–you pull a number to get served–was still twenty customers away from being called. If I didn’t act quickly, I’d either be late to my appointment or on-time and hungry. So I started searching for an out. I found one immediately, behind the deli glass, next to the roast beef. It was a bundle of fresh, turkey-and-other-shit-that-looked-yummy delight just waiting to be snagged.
“Say,” I asked the lady behind the counter, “these sandwiches wouldn’t happen to be available… number-free?”
Holding up my triple-digit teardrop paper, the woman behind the counter nodded, and indicated the man in the black polo twenty paces to her left. “He can help you,” she said. Why she couldn’t simply grab the sandwich and hand it to me was beyond imagination, but at least it wasn’t a rejection.
As the man prepared the sandwich for me in its new wrapping, I saw him scribble a sweet nothing on the paper before handing it over. Most sandwiches at the deli were in the $8 range, including custom options that allowed you to choose your own ingredients. Perhaps this was a reward for customer patience. Nonetheless, I figured my sandwich would be $8. It was practically a consolation sandwich, pre-made this morning for the poor sap who scheduled his day a little too tightly for sitting around until someone yelled “107”.
I was in such a hurry to leave, that when the man handed me the sandwich, I grabbed it and raced to the checkout without further question. It wasn’t until the cashier blurted out the total I owed for the sandwich that I bothered to look at what the man had written on the food’s wrapping:
$13.50
Seriously, there must have been a mix-up.
As humans, we have an innate instinct for survival. When feeling pressured by external influences, one loses the ability to distinguish between practical triggers for adrenal release and those triggers that are wholly outdated. The difference between, say, a fast-approaching sharp-toothed predator and a fast-approaching meeting with a development associate feel eerily similar. Both require physical movement and emotional response. Both require immediate action in order to survive free of punishment. In the case of hunger, that priority action is the capture of edibles, and the consequential movement becomes throwing an obscene amount of cash down on the checkout counter for one freaking sandwich.
$13.50.
I certainly won’t win any Nobel Peace Prize nominations from this work, but from this day in particular I can learn one thing: Don’t ever pay $13.50 for a sandwich because $13.50 is way too much to pay for a sandwich and you’ll spend the rest of the day wondering why you spent $13.50 on a sandwich.
Heed this advice and grow to be a better person.
It was a tasty meal though, I’ll give you that.
– TOH
In less than a week, Jürgen would move out of my apartment. The decision to stick it out in the office for another month seemed a no-brainer. I had developed a routine and was living in a way that I had never lived before, liberated from the anxieties of financial burden and unwanted obligation. The sneaking suspicion that I was making a huge mistake had come and gone. And with it left any doubt that I would re-post my ad for another candidate for sublease. Jürgen agreed to let me show the place on Saturday afternoon.
The first thing I did when I arrived was take a shower. It was a particularly warm afternoon, and I still emanated an odorous mixture of alcohol, sweat, and Vera-scent. Having just let my trial membership at the Culver-Palms YMCA expire, I was in between bathing homes. Showering at my apartment was the pinnacle of luxury.
It was heavenly. First of all, it was the first time in weeks that I could enjoy a proper shower sans footwear. Tiled floors in dark, wet areas breed the strand of the human papillomavirus that causes plantar warts. An unsuspecting barefoot visitor to such a place might find himself, weeks later, complaining about what feels like a tiny piece of glass stuck in his foot. Upon closer examination, this will turn out to be a wart requiring for removal heavy doses of salicylic acid, liquid nitrogen application, or an elaborate surgical incision involving lasers. So instead of risking this abomination of convenience, one might opt instead to act preventatively. Hence the shower shoes.
I cleaned between my toes extra vigorously that day. Emerging from the shower, I felt downright renewed, like a newly granted parolee taking his first step off of prison grounds. It was freedom sung in the key of an Irish Spring scent.
The apartment, however, was still a mess. So I set my sights on tidying up before my visitors were to come by for a visit. In doing so I formulated a new sweeping cultural generalization: Austrians collect lots of pennies. In his three some-odd weeks of living in my apartment, Jürgen had amassed and redistributed randomly around my apartment enough pennies to complete a load of laundry, provided, you know, the machines–any machines–would accept the lowly Lincoln coins… which I guess was the point in him spraying them all about the room. I found pennies on the windowsill, under the pillow, inside of a shoe. It was like I was a child again, frantically gathering Easter eggs on the annual holiday hunt. Only this was annoying and I was kind of old and no one would be awarding me chocolate for my efforts. So it wasn’t really like Easter at all.
Anyway, I finally got the place looking show-worthy and laid down for a quick nap. I hadn’t slept in my bed in twenty-six days. It felt great. Even for a brief doze.
Saturday 2:00: Rob
I was startled from my nap by my phone’s vibration. It was Rob. He was here to see the place. The apartment. The one I was showing for rent. Wake up, Matt.
Right. I’m totally awake.
Shaking of the sleep from my eyes, I went outside to greet my first interviewee of the day. Rob was a little older than I expected, nearly 40 years of age. A self-proclaimed yogi from Chino with tattoos and bulging muscles, Rob seemed to occupy the role of bouncer in whatever general area he set foot.
“Hey man,” he called up to me, as I looked down from my balcony walkway. “Is it cool if I park here? I just, ya know, I don’t like parking on the street. You can’t trust people. They’ll ding your car and…”
His tonal delivery was that of a 23 year-old surfer bum, except if you ever saw him carrying a board you might wait for him to stop and break it in half over his uplifted quadriceps. I wondered if this was an affectation. Nonetheless, I invited him up while he parked illegally in some neighbor’s spot and mentally noted to keep an eye on it.
I showed him around the place and chatted him up a little about why he was in Los Angeles. He said he was taking a nearby two-week intensive class to be a yoga instructor, and preferred subletting to staying in a hotel. His story was innocuous enough. Rob was scary looking and a little secretive–his email address was assigned to the name “Joe Wright”–but his talk was gentle and he seemed like someone who wouldn’t tear my place to shreds partying.
“I like the place, man,” he said. “I’ll give you $700 for two weeks. That’s all I need.”
$700 was over half of the posted month’s rent. Rob ran a hard bargain. I wasn’t sold on him as a tenant, but this deal was about the money. And though I was prepared to stay in my office for the remainder of the month, having the option to leave earlier wasn’t the end of the world. But I had promised to show the place again in an hour, and I thought it better than to leave them hanging.
“I’ll get in touch with you later this evening,” I said to Rob, knowing in my gut that he’d be my guy.
As he walked off, I returned to my bed and wondered if I had stumbled onto a new business venture: Rental Re-rentals. As I considered the possibilities, I drifted off into another brief slumber.
I woke up twenty minutes later to a text from my 4:30 saying they couldn’t make it on time. Could I do two hours from now? My memory turned to Linda. Not a good sign.
Saturday 4:30 6:30: Catarina & Bianca
Catarina and Bianca were two Brazilian girls claiming to be cousins. At least according to their emails. I found this highly suspicious, as most cousin roommates I know aren’t in the market for tiny studio apartments. I couldn’t help but be curious about their situation. Who were these Brazilian girls and what did they want with my place?
They arrived at a quarter to seven. Catarina led the way. She strode confidently, this portly young woman with bleach-blond hair and an authoritative gait looking back not once to her “cousin” Bianca, a slender brunette whose eyes remained exclusively trained to her feet. I invited them in.
“Hi, hello, yes, I am Caterina and this my girlfriend Bianca.”
Bianca nodded and smiled, lifting her head briefly to meet my gaze. They were a lesbian couple. I wondered, too, if they were cousins.
We began to talk about the apartment and what the girls were looking for in a place. Bianca stood silent, a mute lover-in-tow, refusing even to shift her posture as Catarina explained the practical nature of their situation. The two were studying at Santa Monica College, and hoped to get employment soon so they could “go out a little more, you know?”
Oh, I knew.
It was a red-flag statement. But I was conflicted. Wasn’t I the one who was all of the sudden finding myself spending late nights gallivanting around with a glass in my hand? Who was I to judge a person for partying a little? I tried mightily to check myself.
I tried.
That evening, I called Rob and offered him the place starting September 1st. He accepted.
– TOH
Friday’s Done-Did List:
– wake up in office for 6th time this week
– brush teeth
– create ad for upcoming month’s sublease
– work
– wait for last coworkers to leave at 5:15pm
– spill trash all over carpet while taking out clothes for post-work shower
– note that this is 9th time said trash has been knocked over while arranging bags under desk
– put trash can back in same spot
– remember that this is another Cleaning People Weekend
– mumble under breath periodically about how cleaning people better be on schedule; include curse words
– tolerate communal bathing at YMCA
– enjoy post-workday drink with neighbor James
– enjoy second post-workday drink with neighbor James
– close out happy hour tab
– enjoy first evening weekend drink with neighbor James
– enjoy first evening weekend drink with subleaser Jürgen
– acknowledge text message from Vera
– assist Jürgen in hitting on dentally-challenged waitress
– remark that James has been gone from table for a while
– locate James outside bar, where he has been banned from re-entry due to intoxication
– re-enter bar to pay tab so as to leave with James
– emerge from bar ten minutes later to no James
– check text messages
– continue drinking somehow
– some other stuff
– I don’t know
– wake up next morning in Vera’s bed
– brush teeth
– TOH
There exists somewhere a saying about the true curse of a thirst for punishment not being the punishment itself, but the fact that said thirst can never be satisfied until the punishment is ultimate. And at that point, you’re dead.
Am I making that up?
I think I’m making that up.
Anyway, you get the point. Dogs will always express loyalty to their owners, people who like to get spanked will always take pleasure in having their underpants slipped down just beneath their buttocks, moths will continue to smash themselves against streetlamps under a waxing crescent moon, etcetera. (I’m winning over readers everywhere with this stuff, I just know it!) But there’s a purpose here. And that is this: I’m going to extend my stay in the office.
It started on an evening bike ride through the hills, where I was almost hit by a car at the intersection of two mid-sized streets, at the bottom of one of the most exhilarating downhills in Los Angeles:
Approaching 30 miles per hour on a 5 year-old Trek with squeaky side-pull caliper brakes is one thing, but doing so while attempting to perfectly time a green light alongside a line of impatient cars at rush hour, well, that’s another thing all together. A thing I call “fun”.
I had pulled the stunt a hundred times before, pausing at the top of the hill, poised for the precise moment the last southbound-facing car took its left turn and the traffic signal transformed its tri-cyclops eyelids to an emerald glare. I’d push off with a “yee-haw”, shift into 7th gear, put my head down and hope for the best. It was the highlight of every round-trip ride to date.
And today seemed as if it would be no different. As I hurled myself forward from the taxing uphill approach and through the summit stop sign, I could see over the hill’s crest the red light in the distance, a healthy line of twenty or so cars waiting obediently for the bottom circle to illuminate. Coming to the point on the hill where I usually stopped, the light turned green. I rushed ahead, championing the rare hill-to-intersection opportunity to keep my feet off the ground.
I gained speed quickly, feeling the air sweep sadistically across my face as I passed a line of cars on my left, each commuter planted securely in his mobile metal pod. The cyclist can sense things the driver cannot, his body strapped to his cloth bucket seat, a six speaker Bose stereo system blaring the rhythmic, corporeal melody of the latest Gotye single. I, on the other hand, am one with my environment. Aware. Had I a working speedometer at this point, it would have read 20 miles per hour, a remote but instinctual thought as the tips of my fingers crept towards my handlebar brake levers. I was now less than ten cars away from the cross-street, the vehicles beside me halting patiently for a Mercury Mountaineer waiting to turn left in the single-lane traffic ahead. A brief polluted scent of an aging Dodge Caravan, an exhaust’s bitter perfume, flutters in and out of nostril’s range. My eyes squint, muscles tense.
Six cars now. The Mountaineer makes his left-hand turn. 25 miles per hour. Each detail of the road observed with adrenal focus. Discarded pack of Marlboro Lights. Armless Buzz Lightyear figurine. A nickel. Four cars now, their brake lights flashing on as a Mercedes without her turn signal flashing stops for a left turn. I anticipate, shifting closer to the curb. The Ranger Rover behind her sneaks to the right to pass. My bike comes level with the rear bumper of a Toyota Corolla, third in line, three feet to spare between its wheel and the curb.
That’s when the Corolla begins to position for a right turn, creeping along at just under ten miles per hour, feeling his way between the curb and the advancing Range Rover. He doesn’t see me as I pull level with his passenger window. He continues to turn the wheel. Gotye sounds from his speakers, too. Must be the radio. 26 miles per hour. I could brake and try to get his attention, but my reaction would inspire his one second too late and my face would splatter Pollock on his hood. I maintain speed and inch right to get by him, nearly rubbing against the curb, diving my head left like a gannet to get the driver’s attention. 27 miles per hour. Four feet from the intersection. Passing the front wheel as it angles toward me, its bumper grazing the hair on my left leg. I call out an inspired “Turn signal!”. One foot from the intersection. I make eye contact with the driver. His eyes widen in terror. He brakes before he straightens the wheel, and I ride past him. Alive. Unscathed. Triumphant.
“Yeah, motherfucker!” I yell. “Turn signal, motherfucker!”
I breeze through the intersection and into the curve of the boulevard, grinning madly when the driver of a second Range Rover pulls level with me and rolls down his window.
“I saw that back there!” he said, unable to contain himself. “That guy almost ran you over!”
“Fucker had no turn signal!” I yelled.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he replied.
“You know,” I said. “It was actually kinda fun.”
What makes us enjoy these moments of risk and recklessness? Is it the merciful and addictive release of epinephrine through the body? Or the thrill of discovering and defying the taboo nestled in the universally acknowledged routine? Or are we just so nauseated from the dizzying choreography of the middle class swivel–accepting a paycheck with one hand only to turn around and offer it back with the other–that we must flirt with destruction and impairment to remind us why life is really worth living?
This afternoon, I felt alive. I felt free to act, free to risk, and free to believe. And I’ve felt this way more often since I moved out of my apartment twenty-two days ago. Whether it’s the financial freedom or the emotional imperative or the intrapersonal scholarship, I don’t know. But I do know I’m not ready to throw in the towel. So I’ve decided to give it another month. Later this week, I will post my apartment up for another month of sublease. And tonight I will crack a beer to celebrate the month ahead.
Perhaps that will cure my thirst.
– TOH
Linda removed herself from the picture this afternoon.
We had made plans to see one another two days in advance. But last night, Linda sent me a message saying that she forgot she had planned to go to a birthday party being thrown for her friend’s boyfriend. It was an intimate affair and somewhere deep in the San Fernando Valley (a.k.a. B.F.E.), but I was invited to attend with her if I was interested.
I was once again miffed by Linda’s frenetic mis-scheduling. It came across more as absentmindedness than spontaneity, more as careless impulsiveness than friendly social opportunism. My plans to spend a night on an exclusive date with her were again deferred. So I politely delayed discussing it further until we could talk by phone.
It didn’t go particularly well. When I suggested we postpone our date until Sunday to accommodate her party, she assumed I was avoiding her friend’s event because I was anti-social. The phone call was cordial but cold, and hurried. But we agreed to meet the next day for dinner. Then, ten minutes after the call, I received a text message that read:
Just came to a realization; we’re probably too different. And maybe we shouldn’t hang out anymore.
She “broke-up” with me. By short message.
I’d never received a dismissal by text before. And I couldn’t understand why it was happening now, and from someone well beyond her adolescence. Was this yet another confirmation of her youthful propensity for whimsy, seizing the momentary satisfaction of the text message over the more committed phone or in-person chat? Or was this simply another transaction, a businessperson’s short-sell on a relationship whose deficits have proven too inconvenient to further manage? Or was she just a little nuts?
Unfortunately, the events of the next 24 hours seemed to confirm the latter. This included a barrage of phone calls, voice mails, and text messages that would put to shame the most zealous of telemarketers. Each communication carried a different theme, from apology to optimism to impatience to anger. And with every communication, my distance from Linda grew. It was like an epidemic had taken her over and soiled her reason, steering her to sabotage everything we’d enjoyed over the past few weeks. I counted my blessings that she was infected so early in our time together. But I was disappointed to lose her all the same.
– TOH
After a week showering at the local Family YMCA, my free trial membership there came to an end. The time had come for me to find another gym.
I had actually grown fond of my routine at the Y. I had learned how to avert my eyes from geriatric ball-sacks and navigate the oblique corridors. The tiny hallway of elliptical machines suited the ephemeral nature of my cardio workouts, and the unassuming climate of the place, from the cordial staff to the low locker room lighting, kept my visits focused and free of the anxiety I had anticipated after my initial day (outlined in the post “Shower Time“).
I was actually going to miss showering there.
So when it came time to pick another gym, I decided to go with another YMCA. This required a much longer drive, but it was the next-closest YMCA to my new office home. This facility, I would soon find, is the Mecca to fitness shitholes all across the globe.
My first indication of its lowly quality was its yelp rating, an innocuous three stars. The first less-than-flattery review I read set the tone for the rest:
“UGH, I’d happily write a better review for this Y, if they would actually process my application for membership. However, their complete baffoonery (sic) gets in the way.”
Since I’m always up for an adventure, I didn’t let this deter me.
I was far from disappointed. When I arrived, meandering into the lobby with a trial membership form in hand and a quizzical look in my eye, there were three employees behind the desk, one of whom was actually in uniform. The other two were shirtless. One of the shirtless boys, perhaps a freshman in college, punched the other as he implored the uniformed young woman to agree with him on some matter involving the television show “The Voice”. Not having watched “The Voice”, I thought it presumptuous to assume that my membership registration should in fact be prioritized over the presiding opinion of Cee Lo.
After two or three minutes of this kind of welterweight back-and-forth, one shirtless jab returned courtesy of a uniformed comment about the promiscuity of Christina Aguilera, I stepped in with a verbal uppercut that interrupted this spontaneous choreography of dumb.
“Excuse me,” I interjected. “Where is the men’s locker room?”
Cue the screeching halt of a record player. The two shirtless boys instantly turned their attention towards themselves, ignoring me and the uniformed girl. The young woman, shifting slightly in her chair, looked up at me mutely and cocked her head vaguely to the side, as if she were a rawhide-chewing dachshund whose owner just asked her if she wanted to go for a walk. I half expected to see a tail wagging behind her.
“I have a trial membership form here,” I said, hoping to snap her out of it.
This seemed to do the trick, as she lumbered through some nearby papers, creating a dust cloud in the process of finding me a facility-specific follow-up form. She hushed a bothered, “Fill this out,” before turning her attention back on the bare abdomens behind her. I completed the form and interjected once again for directions to the locker room.
“Through the pool,” she said tersely, nodding in the direction of the glass door to my left. She hadn’t even bothered to turn around. I wondered if I’d even needed to check in with her.
The pool was in a whole separate area than the rest of the facility. So if one wanted to use the locker room before a workout, he first had to traverse the pool deck. Here he might find a lifeguard on duty, one fixated more intently to what appeared to be a very underage girl than the pool’s elderly patrons. My new gym: Where supervision comes to die.
Once inside the locker room, one comes face-to-face with a miniature maze of tiny rooms, many of which have a single toilet, and all of which were pooled with old, murky shower water. Finding my way to the hub of the tiled space, I could see that the intention was for the water to be drained into a single, solitary grate at the epicenter of the collection of rooms. This hub also acted not only as the main drainage area, but also as the main hallway. One could not enter or exit the locker room without taking an unobstructed look at all of the shower’s inhabitants.
I could have accepted all of this if, thanks to having been indoctrinated over the past week in the art of wincing through elderly balls and ass, the locker room would’ve been limited to access by grown men. But life had other plans for me. No, this was not just a men’s locker room, but a family locker room as well.
Turning the corner to the main shower room, I was greeted by the much disquieting sight of a naked brother and sister, between the ages of seven and ten, staring up at me from under the faucets. Nothing gets me quite as uncomfortable as unsupervised children, particularly strange unsupervised children without clothes on. So I kindly excused myself and hustled around her, averting my gaze as much as I could without risking a cartoon-like slip at the hands of the backwashed delta of puddles.
Having successfully warded off the specter of extended time spent with the unclad elementary creatures, I found my way to the locker portion of the locker room. Much to my chagrin, this was also inhabited by children—two to be precise, presumably of the same French father. (I thought the French had more refined taste than slums this.) I danced my gaze away from the family and surveyed the room. It resembled a staging quarters for some PAL league football team. The kind of place where young men would huddle together at halftime, hold their bladder and listen intently as Coach Gill gives an inspirational speech about blood and guts and bulging testicles.
The only motivator I had on that day was a mild, niggling odor and a two-day old film of Unclean about my outer parts. Maybe that’s not true. I was motivated—motivated to get the hell out of that locker room. With it’s molding carpet floor and rusted, some-broken Nixon-era lockers and well-lit walls of chipped paint, this place hardly resembled anything I’d call home. I gathered my shower materials and headed back through the maze of my own antipathy.
I was pleased to find that, among the open room of shower heads, there was something there that hadn’t registered with me before: A solitary spigot reserved for private bathing. Enveloped in an awful beige curtain (by the way, why is it that tags always show so prominently on shitty housewares? Just me?) and a partial handicapped railing, this was the ideal staging area for my routine. Well, ideal under the conditions. Which were horrifying.
Halfway through my hustle to get clean, a group of early pubescent voices flooded into the locker room to inhabit the showers. I wasn’t sure at first if one was a girl—he had an regrettably high voice—but after a round of dude/man/bro/etc. references, I figured these were boys. Their presence further reinforced my already familiar ill-ease. At the precise moment I began to work the soap over my genitals, I noticed an approaching shadow, accompanied the high-pitched voice.
“Hey guys, is someone in this one?”
I was aghast. Anyone that’s spent time around teens knows their fearlessness. They act on impulse, a sheer primordial emotion that, when left raw and untreated, can turn easily into hazardous ruffiandom. I was once myself one of these terrible adolescent creatures, having earned myself the reputation for obscenity and embarrassing acts. Whether it was placing my bare buttocks against the window of a tour bus for our sister group to see or leaning garbage cans full of water against people’s doors before knocking and running away, I was well aware what the power of unchecked testosterone could accomplish. In short, these young people are ruthless and aggressive. And everyone is vulnerable to their wrath. Especially those who are pantsless.
So I stood stiff as this teenage thing approached my little shower sanctuary, frozen in a moment of terror, defenseless to the whims of a privacy pirate half my age and legally considered a child. I was unsure whether to call out to the menace and expose my presence, or remain still and pray to be left alone.
“Aww, that’s my favorite shower.”
I felt it’s hand brush up against the outer edge of the curtain. My eyes bulged, and I prepared my defenses, which consisted of a horror film screech and a distracting heave of my travel-size shampoo bottle. I could run. Yes, I could dart out from behind the curtain, maybe knocking one of them down in the fray, making a bee-line escape directly to wasteline amnesty, directly to my lockered pants.
Then, just as I had laid plans to flee, something amazing happened.
It backed off.
I was free. Liberated from the fickle advance of the curious teen.
They had left the showers. I was alone again. So I finished up hastily, quick to avoid another potential encounter with the family locker room natives, and got myself clothed in record time. I was superficially clean, but spiritually tarred. This wasn’t a place I could shower comfortably. I’d have to seriously consider alternative bathing options.
Or maybe just shower early in the morning, when most teenagers are still hibernating.
– TOH