Mostly alone and drunk

Last year I had a shitty apartment. The parking lot was cramped and the driveway was too steep. The landlord would let the ice and snow accumulate in the middle of the winter and it was virtually impossible to get back up, if you managed to leave at all. There was a crack somewhere between my floor and wall in the corner, so there was an icy draft at all times at about knee level. Also, I believe there was some sort of animal- either a woodchuck or groundhog- living in the walls. I believe this because I woke up and saw him sitting on my dresser one night. You can’t really leave a mousetrap for something that large and it was welcome company, so I allowed him to stay. I don’t believe they’re dangerous.

Anyway, I’m sitting there in my overpriced igloo late on a Tuesday, or early on a Wednesday depending on how you do that. It was right before Christmas vacation, and I had decided to lay awake watching DVDs, and skip my morning classes. It was about 4:30 I’d say, and I was watching National Lampoon’s Vacation. Despite the fact that I had four or five blankets on, I had to keep moving and twiddling my toes to keep the blood moving. I’ve been terrified of having my toes freeze ever since I saw a documentary about Arctic explorers in third grade. Most of the men had all their toes die and turn black, so they took turns cutting them off with hammers and chisels. Looking back that’s actually sort of funny in a bizarre way.

Vacation is a good movie to watch because of how often you’ve seen it. You don’t really have to pay attention- you can sit there going over your day, thinking about what you‘ll have for lunch the next day or how much of a lying whore your ex girlfriend is, and when you snap out of it, you won’t have missed a thing. You’ll be right at the part where Aunt Edna’s dog is getting leashed to the rear bumper. Poor little guy probably kept up for the first mile or so. Usually I start thinking about sex during this movie because I have a thing for the Mom and yes, I know that’s a bit weird. So as most guys do I’m picturing myself as the hero and I’m keeping up a really good, loud rhythm when I realize I’m not just thinking about sex right then, I’m actually listening to it. The girl that lives upstairs has her bed centered directly above mine . The first few times I heard her and her boyfriend going at it, it was pretty amusing. I’d call my roommates in, and we’d all have a chuckle. It was funny because one of my roomies had already nailed her a few times, so maybe he liked reliving the experience. Really though, I’m not big on voyeurism, so by this point in the year it had become an annoyance, more of a removed curiosity than anything.

I told her once while we were playing beer pong- Hey, you know this house isn’t exactly well insulated, right? After that, she only got louder- so she was the pervert, not me.

Back to the sex. What struck me as odd about this particular time was the fact that it was now nearing 5 am, and it was just a random Tuesday. I hadn’t heard anyone moving upstairs for quite some time, so it means they both just woke up and decided to go for it. Fine by me, I’d shake his hand, but this was actually the loudest, most violent sex I had ever heard. On screen or off, I need to bottom line this fact, she was screaming like it was a karaoke performance and I could hear every syllable of every filthy word. My eyes go wide with shock at a particular sentence and I mute the Griswalds because I definitely need to know what happens next. I can understand now why she’s a cheerleader because this girl could project- it was actually so loud that in my imagination she had one of those bright-red cones held in front of her face, shouting Letters to Penthouse out into the audience. I just let my imagination run wild, but really I’m more nervous than anything because right between a “Fuck” and a smack, her floor (or rather my ceiling) cracks. Loud. The kind of dull, creaking crunch that a ceiling definitely should not make.

So then I think, Sweet fucking Christ, what if the ceiling caves in?

This really worries me, so I realize I should move. But then, in another way, I’m actually paralyzed by the idea of dying like that. Having a queen size bed come crashing down on me, a half naked cheerleader falling directly on top of my television just as they arrive at Wally World, and she’s still tied to the fucking headboard. Feather dusters, love potions, and empty bottles clattering around and smashing in the debris around my room, the poor Woodchuck left without a home.

This death would be oddly fitting, I think, staring up at the ceiling, trying to find the crack. Let me explain. No one in my family has ever died normally. By normal, I mean I’ve never heard about a man from the Kelly’s dying in his sleep with a smile, or attached to a machine in a hospital. My great-great grandfather was fresh off the boat from Ireland on the day someone took his wallet out of his back pocket and shoved him into an oncoming train. Subways were apparently unsafe back then. His son, my Great grandfather, died a decade or so later during a thunderstorm. The way I’ve been told the story, he was attempting to carry a sheep to the safety of its pen during a violent storm when he was struck by lightning. For all the sensitive souls, I believe the sheep survived. One of my great uncles was found frozen to death in a snow bank when it started to thaw, his palm still frozen to the glass of a whiskey bottle. My grandfather Norman is actually still alive, thankfully, though he did have a very close brush in the late 70’s, which may have broken the cycle. He went down in a plane crash while on a business trip, and out of about 40 passengers, he was one of two survivors. He dragged the woman sitting next to him out a shattered window after escaping himself, though they were both burned. There are photographs somewhere.

So you can see how, in my brain, I’m picturing this as the revival of Death’s Vendetta against the Kelly clan. The Reaper is skipping a few generations in order to catch me unawares. Imagine that, Death by Screwfest? And I’m not even the one getting laid? A closed casket funeral because I’ve been disfigured by a double sided dildo, impaled through the chest. Her boyfriend is stumbling around, still blindfolded, fumbling to find a phone to call 911. He reports to the dispatcher that he just seriously fucked a girl through the floor, and there are casualties. His father is the proudest man alive while mine has to deal with having an urban legend for a dead son.

But then, right then as I’m imagining all the bizarre police reports and news castings and everyone trying not to laugh as my casket gets lowered into the earth, the ceiling cracks again.

You better believe I slept on the couch.