FireVaney

The Playboy woman, whose old fogy folks don’t want her to rent the apartment to a cat owner, keeps calling Eryk. She keeps telling him how much she likes us (or likes him —although I get the sense that she’s not into guys—or perhaps she assumes he and I are a couple, this being “Boystown” after all). But Eryk will not part with that darn cat. * Although the Playboy woman pulled the “For Rent” sign from the building’s front door four days ago, she told Eryk that she’s showing the apartment “to a few more people.” Are we her fallback prospects? Either way, she is very friendly. But then personability is key when your job involves coaxing young women to disrobe and pose for a globally circulated publication. Then again, the place has been on the market for three months. So… she’s picky? Well, you gotta be a picky if you’re the one auditioning Playboy Playmates. Amirite?  18 April 2001  After being strung along for another week and a half, the Playboy woman told Eryk that her m...

I suppose it wasn’t the worst Thanksgiving I’ve had.  The worst Thanksgiving was the one I spent in my walk-in closet of an apartment way up north, where the turkey that night came from a Swanson’s “Hungry-Man” TV dinner. I watched Gone with the Wind [on VHS] for the very first time. I think I cried a little, but not as a result of watching that sappy epic.  I spent last night with Cindi in her (much nicer) walk-in closet of an apartment. We ate a real Thanksgiving meal and watched X-Men , part of Beetlejuice , part of Commando , all of Lethal Weapon , and all of a corny kung fu flick called The Last Dragon . *   24 November 2000  * [Questions, questions: Had Cindi made the meal herself? More importantly, did I get laid? Why can’t I recall?] 

People look at my face and say, “Are you growing a beard?” And I don’t reply: Is that cause for alarm? Or: What’s it to you? Or: Aren’t you observant. Rather, I tell them I’m taking a break from shaving. Which is true. I miss Cindi. I miss both of us clinging to each other, naked, in the dark of her apartment. I miss sucking her bumpy tits. What I really need, right now, is some caffeine. Yes, that’s right, Cindi’s tits were (and, presumably, remain) bumpy all around the nipples. I suppose they’re officially known as “areolas.” So: bumpy areolas. And I miss them. But she was a smoker and a bit of a racist and somewhat out of shape and not terribly bright. All that, and she liked to lick the clouds, too. Time and again I admonished her for taking advantage of her height and sullying the troposphere with her taste buds. She accused me of harboring an inferiority complex just because I can fold myself neatly inside a Pringles potato chip canister. An empty one. (Are they called canist...

I’d planned to break up with Cindi tomorrow night. Her appetite for me outstrips my appetite for her. It’s a shame, really. She’s quite accommodating and not at all bad looking. The first time I saw her I wanted to kiss her. But she smokes (granted, she’s trying to quit—just for me) and she looks a little too much like my father’s second wife.  The ugly truth? I’m not looking for my match. I’m looking for a woman I can worship, idolize, set high upon a diamond studded plinth. I want a woman I’ll never feel worthy of, a woman I’ll never quit pining for.  Cindi left a fraught message on my machine this evening, before I came home from work. It wasn’t what she said as much as how she said it. If the creaky front door of a dilapidated old house could speak, it’d sound a lot like Cindi. So, even though it was late, I had to call her back.  She picked up in the middle of her machine’s greeting. She sounded groggy, like she’d cried a lot. But when I asked her about it, she said ...

Whilst making out with Cindi last night, I stopped to ask— very gently —if she would do something—not necessarily right there and then —about the few hairs growing above her upper lip. I had no idea what female facial hair removal involved. I figured you could simply and easily shave it off with a disposable razor.  “No,” Rich told me, this morning, at work. “It must be plucked, or removed with special creams, or by electrolysis.”  Cindi was rather upset at my request. “What’s the big deal?” I’d said, in the moment. “It’s only a few hairs.” But amongst all her many smoochers, I’d been the first to make mention of it.  She would not let me kiss her for the rest of last night. Did I make her feel like a hairy beast? Does this mean she enjoys my habitually unshaven face, along with my hairy chest and back? [I never thought to ask.] For the record, I don’t care for it myself. I’m particularly hostile toward the hair that sprouts from my ears and noses. [So sorry, only one nos...

Cindi looked out the window of her apartment this morn and spotted a bright orange hard-backed chair. It sat across the street in a lot between two unremarkable buildings. Curiously, this chair appeared to be perfectly centered in said lot.       — I wish I had my camera, she told him.       — As neat as I’m certain that experience was, he replied — it was not art. He invited her to look it up. He labeled it: happenstance.       — Art is deliberate, intentional, he declared. — It is, at root, a creative expression.  He reflected on the aforementioned episode, years later, whilst rereading this journal entry. The photo Cindi had desired to snap of the chair, centered in the lot, would indeed count as art. What’s more, he’d admit, if he could (for Cindi’s whereabouts were unknown to him), that he was in no way qualified to judge what counts as art. Is a maple leaf art? Are caterpillars art? Would the wings of a moth or a ...

Last night, over the phone, Cindi told me that her Coke was looking at her.    I didn’t ask how an aluminum can might’ve sprouted an eyeball. Instead, like any protective beau, I threatened it. “Quit looking at my girlfriend!” I shouted. “She’s waaaay outta your league! And besides, you don’t exist to… to ogle your consumer! You have one job: Contain!”   The can offered neither appeal nor apology.    So, through clenched teeth, I issued this warning: “Keep it up, buster, and I’ll crush you flat under my shoe!”    In sooth,   I said none of that.   What I actually said was,   “What?”   Cindi told me to “never mind.” But I pressed her and, finally, she disclosed what I thought I heard her say. Was the eyeball, I asked, giving her an inquisitive look? The famed " evil " or " stink " eye, perhaps? Might it be a look of surprise? Or fear? No, she told me. It was merely looking at her, with no particular l...

Cindi finds Mac whimpering under her desk. No, Mac isn’t a co-worker. He’s not some random dude, either. He’s Cindi’s boss’s golden retriever puppy.  (Later, when Cindi shares this news with me, she adds that her boss moonlights as an analyst for the NSA. The extra moolah supposedly supports his cocaine habit.)  Cindi captures her boss’s attention long enough to point out that something purple protrudes from Mac’s butthole.  Cindi’s boss calls from his office. “Here, Mac!” He whistles in that shrill, staccato way some dog owners do. “Here, boy!”  The hapless pooch waddles in. Every few feet he stops to squat. He doesn’t squeeze anything out. He can’t. Cindi’s boss crouches for a closer look at the purply wad. He follows Mac around the office on his hands and knees.  Finally, he says, “I know what this is.”  He reaches out and pinches the purple lump. Then he pulls at it. The puppy’s whimper swells. The purple thingy stretches. Cindi bunches her fingers and ...

After all of the bars in Champaign closed, Cindi and her roommate stripped and made a mad dash for their apartment building. [Whose idea was this? How often did they do it? Would they streak home in the dead of winter, or only on warm, summer nights? Oh, and, just how far was their building from the nightlife? Alas, if I asked these questions, I’ve long since forgotten the answers.]  Then, during a party in their apartment, somebody came up with the wacky idea of group streaking. All twenty revelers shed their clothes and stampeded out to a nearby park. There, they frolicked. Many wound up muddy.  Upon their return, they discovered that no one had the means with which to enter the apartment building. So here we had twenty naked twenty-somethings standing outside of a building in the dead of night, buzzing buzzers with the collective hope of being let in.  What would you do if some stranger buzzed your door in the middle of the night, begging to be let in? And what if yo...