Sofa, So Good?
“ To dream of reclining on a couch indicates
that false hopes will be entertained.”
- 10,000 Dreams Interpreted
I park my car and have to walk ten blocks to my apartment because the old lady who lives downstairs has taken my parking space. Well, I wouldn’t say she lives downstairs. It’s more like she hasn’t yet died downstairs. Her whole apartment is a hovel. Trash is strewn everywhere; the floors are stacked with yellowing newspapers and the place just reeks of decaying food. No wait... that’s my apartment. My bad.
The old lady has been eyeing my parking spot for three months now like a buzzard who doesn’t even have the decency to wait until an animal is entirely dead before swooping in. She’s like one of those parking meter cops who hover around a meter that only has one minute left before expiring. Her beady eyes would follow me every time I left the building, staring through the slits of her window blinds, just waiting to see if I was taking the car so she could scurry down and get my spot. Sometimes I would mess with her mind by opening my car door and then shutting it again before going to catch the subway. It was kinda fun seeing that bright gleam in her eye become transformed into her old lady scowl.
I don’t even know why she has a car. The only time I ever see her drive is when she’s moving her car to a better parking spot. That’s why I hate living in the same building as elderly retired people. They have nothing better to do than devise clever ways to screw with your life. They also always reveal the ending to Murder, She Wrote reruns before I’ve gotten a chance to watch them. That is just so entirely rude.
I continue walking towards my apartment. Everything I pass reminds me of Laura - though maybe that’s because Laura has broken up with me in at least a third of the restaurants in this strip. She even broke up with me in the Chuck E. Cheese because of my excessive victory strutting after beating her in a game of Skee-Ball.
My feet start to grow tired. I haven’t walked this far since I took part in Hands Across America and had to walk three miles before I found two people who looked like they wouldn’t spend the whole time talking about Bible stuff. The ten blocks to my apartment give me way too much time to think and thoughts just bounce around in my head like the man-bosoms of the hairy, 300- pound, shirtless guy riding a Harley who just passed by. And I must say, for the record, that he’s not one of those attractive hairy, 300-pound, shirtless guys on a Harley that you often read about.
As I walk, I keep replaying the Peter Gabriel incident over and over again - to an extent that one can only do with either the abject failures of one’s life or a hot porn scene that is too short and always ends before you can finish masturbating. I can’t believe I messed things up. Why did it have to be Shock the Monkey? Why couldn’t it be one of Peter Gabriel’s more romantic songs like Sledgehammer?
I approach my favorite bakery. Their doughnuts are even good enough to risk having to converse with customers buying birthday cakes with Marmaduke icing on them. Thoughts of Laura fill my brain as I look into the bakery window. Our first kiss came at this bakery and it’s hard to describe, but everything seemed so uncomplicated back then. It wasn’t about marriage or the future. It was just about a kiss made a bit sweeter by a little powdered sugar on the lips.
I continue staring into the bakery window. The sunlight glints off the bakery window and I see my image peering back at me. Unfortunately it’s not my reflection peering back at me, but rather a grainy photograph warning the cashiers not to accept personal checks from me anymore.
I debate whether I should go in and get a doughnut. Laura would be pissed off if she knew I were here. Our eighth break-up happened at this bakery, although I have officially contested that break-up. About an hour after break-up #7, Laura passed by the bakery and got upset that I was enjoying a jelly doughnut rather than feeling sad that we had broken up, so she broke up with me again even though we were still technically broken up. She called this new one a “break-up with attitude.” I personally don’t think you should count a break-up if it happens while you’re already broken up. That’s like finding two parking tickets on your car for the same parking offense. It may be technically legal, but it doesn’t mean that it’s right.
Despite my reservations, I decide to get a doughnut. I have to step over a homeless person to enter the bakery. If I were homeless, I think this is where I would beg for change. I bet he gets a lot more money smelling like doughnuts than smelling like another homeless person’s urine. People with money are shallow that way. I look down at the homeless guy and notice he is sobbing. There is nothing sadder than seeing a homeless person cry - except maybe seeing a fast food worker at Subway who is forced to wear one of those pins declaring himself a “sandwich artist”. The homeless man’s face is buried in a baseball cap as he sobs and all I can see is the top of his head. He has that odd balding pattern where there’s a little clump of hair towards the front, then a circular bald spot and then long hair in the back. It kinda looks like those circles that appear mysteriously in crop fields after a supposed UFO landing. It occurs to me that I have never seen a bald, homeless person before. I suppose I always thought it was just nature’s way of giving them just a little something to be happy about.
Maybe I should give the homeless guy some money. I usually don’t, but I figure if I feel the need for a drink this early in the afternoon, he probably does too. I reach into my back pocket and realize I left my wallet at home. I only have a stray dollar in my pockets. I could give it to him, but I figure that while the joy in helping others is nice, the memory of a good doughnut is forever.
I leave the bakery with my doughnut and continue walking. Shit. Shit. Shit. I’ve gotten a raspberry jelly stain on my shirt. Why is it that the only time you spill something is the day you are wearing a white shirt or the day when you’ve entered a contest where you’re not supposed to spill stuff? Now I have a jelly line on my shirt where the jelly hit the shirt and then slid down until lodging in my belt. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t a wise idea to eat a jelly doughnut with the jelly hole pointing downwards. Yet again, gravity has proven to be my nemesis - a lesson I learned the hard way when I fell ten feet while climbing the ropes in high school gym class. I still curse the day my gym teacher blew the whistle to start the dodge ball game while I was trying to climb down the ropes.
I want to wipe the jelly off my shirt, but I forgot to get napkins from the bakery. Places should always give out napkins without you asking. Forget that whole “service with a smile” stuff, just give me a fucking napkin. And a free blow job wouldn’t hurt either. I mean who doesn’t like a free blow job? Blow jobs are like a bowl of peanuts at a bar. Even if you’re not really in the mood, if it’s placed right in front of you, it’s almost impossible to just push it away. But if I can’t have the blow job, at the very least, give me the fucking napkin.
I need to stop cursing so much. I never cursed when I was younger. When I was growing up, my family had this jar in the living room where you had to deposit a quarter if you said the “F” word. Although it was successful in decreasing our profanity, it was embarrassing to explain to guests why we had a container full of quarters in our living room with a big label on it reading “Fuck Jar”. On the plus side, our family did earn about a third of our income getting quarters from house guests foolish enough to ask what a “Fuck Jar” was. The other two-thirds came from engaging in games of Slap Jack with people who had arthritis.
I take my finger and clean away the blob of jelly stuck on my belt. I look around to see if anyone is watching and then I eat the jelly real quickly. How dirty can a belt be anyway? I need to get the jelly off my shirt before it sets. I rummage around in my pocket and find a used Kleenex most likely from a week ago when I last wore this pair of pants. I don’t have any water on me so I spit on the napkin and try to wipe the stain away. Unfortunately, there was still jelly in my mouth when I spat and I end up spreading even more jelly on the shirt.
I give up on the shirt and try to focus on Laura. I don’t know if I should even try to win Laura back. Maybe Thelma’s right. Maybe we really are the worst thing in the world for each other. But I love Laura so much and I think she still loves me too. Laura didn’t throw anything at me this time - to me that’s a very good sign. I’m all in favor of maintaining consciousness. Except maybe during the latter hours of the Jerry Lewis telethon when you see Dom Deluise heading to the stage for a medley of Italian novelty songs about food.
As I round the corner and reach my apartment, it finally dawns on me. How could I have not thought of this before??? I must be the stupidest person on the planet - and that’s saying a lot when you consider all the guests on the Jerry Springer show who still look surprised when someone gives them bad news. If it wasn’t Laura on the phone, who did I propose to? I smell a disaster looming and it’s not just because I’m approaching a movie theater showing the new Freddie Prinze Jr. romantic comedy.
I finally arrive at my apartment and see the old lady heading to her car. Maybe I can get my parking spot back if I hurry. I watch as the old lady opens the driver’s side door and then immediately shuts the door again. She heads directly back to the building and smiles as she watches the bright gleam in my eye give way to my really bitter man scowl. She looks back one more time and, just in case I didn’t understand her motives, she also flashes me her middle finger. Her finger is all veiny and shrunken. It looks like a string bean left on the counter too long. I’m not sure what I find more disconcerting: the way her finger looks or the fact that I’ve just been flipped off by someone who drives a car with a “Jesus Loves You” bumper sticker. I’ve never liked that bumper sticker. It reminds me too much of the “Jesus Loves Everyone But You” sticker that my parents put on all my school lunch boxes.
I search my key ring for the key to unlock the secured entrance to the apartment building. I don't really see how the owners can call this a "secured" entrance. Their idea of safety is wiping up the blood spills quickly so no one slips and hurts themselves. I continue fingering through the nineteen keys on my key ring trying to find the right one. I have way too many keys and fear that I’m only some exposed butt cleavage away from becoming Schneider the handyman from One Day At a Time. Pretty soon I’m going to have to upgrade to one of those gigantic circular key rings that they use to open jail cells in old prison movies. I’ve tried decreasing the number of keys I carry, but I’m never successful. I can’t remember what eight of the keys actually open, but I suspect they are important so I can’t bring myself to actually remove them from my key chain.
I finally find the right key and enter the building, heading towards the elevators which always take forever to arrive. I wish I had a remote control so I could activate the elevator buttons and have the elevator waiting for me the second I arrived at the elevator doors. There are three elevators, but none of them seem to be moving and they all seem to be stuck on the same exact floor. Why is it that the more elevators a building has, the longer it takes for one to actually arrive? I stare at the brown elevator doors, thinking about how bland elevator doors look. They’re always brown or black or metallic silver. You’d think someone would start making elevator doors with Andy Warhol prints on them to make your elevator waiting experience more pleasant. Or maybe some nice Roy Lichtenstein prints. Basically anything would be fine except for those 3-D stereograms with the hidden pictures. I’ve never been able to decipher them and they always give me a headache. Not necessarily from having to cross my eyes so much - more from having to listen to people try to explain to me what I’m supposed to be seeing.
I press the up button every five seconds even though I know it doesn’t make the elevator come any faster. After about a minute I also press the down button hoping it will make the elevator come faster. It doesn’t, but that doesn’t stop me from pressing the down button every five seconds either.
I debate taking the stairs, but decide against it. I always run into yuppies eating Power Bars who think it's hip to walk up them for exercise. They’re one of the groups of people I get along with least - they’re right up there with people who describe themselves as being Kafka-esque. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I know I don’t like ‘em. I wouldn’t mind so much if the yuppies were neat eaters, but they spill food all over the stairwell. It’s rather embarrassing when you’re at the hospital being treated for a sprained ankle and have to list “slipped on granola” as the cause of your accident. The nurses made fun of me for hours the last time it happened. Evidently seeing me in pain transformed these angels of mercy from Florence Nightingale to Florence the maid on the Jeffersons. The last time I was in the hospital, the nurses had to sedate me after I got upset at their jokes and threatened to go all Weazie on them.
The elevator finally arrives and I go to press the button for my floor, but someone has already thoughtfully pressed my floor for me - along with all 30 of the other floor buttons. I hate when kids do that. Sure it’s funny when I do it, but when others do it, it’s just plain annoying. The elevator moves exceedingly slow like those big-haired teenagers in the mall who walk really slow in a horizontal line so that you can’t pass them. I'm convinced it would have taken Philleas Fogg at least eighty-one days to travel around the world if he had encountered an elevator on his voyage.
The elevator continues to rise and I have to listen to that horrible Muzak elevator music. There’s a Muzak version of Stevie Wonder’s I Just Called to Say I Love You playing, presumably for people who thought the original was just too hard-rocking. Stevie Wonder’s song ends and the Muzak version of Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes begins. After all those years of mocking Muzak, Muzak is finally mocking back. Finally the elevator gets to my floor and I head to my apartment.
As I turn the corner to my apartment, I notice Susan is attempting to attach a Post-It note to my door. But it must have lost it’s gumminess because it flutters to the ground every time she tries to attach it to the door. I watch Susan bend over to pick up the Post-It note, but a draft picks up the paper and it levitates in front of her. It’s almost like that scene in American Beauty where that white bag floated poetically through the air. Well, it would be if the scene contained a polyester-clad white girl with numerous Post-It notes stuck to her butt. From afar, it looks like someone is playing the home version of Hollywood Squares on her rear- though maybe that’s because one of the Post-It notes inexplicably has a caricature of Vicki Lawrence in her Mama’s Family wig.
Susan finally notices me and says, “ Sorry to pop by unannounced, but we really need to talk.”
A sense of dread builds up in my stomach - the type of dread that makes you feel like you’re going to throw up even if you haven’t even eaten anything all day. I hope beyond hope that I didn’t propose to Susan. If Laura broke up with me because I accidentally said I loved Susan, I’d hate to see how she’d react if she found out I accidentally proposed to Susan. I’d also hate to see how Laura would react if she found out that I accidentally pooped my pants on the subway a couple of years ago. That was really embarrassing. I’m not sure was worse: realizing how low I must have sunk to be the foulest-smelling person in the subway system or the fact that three women slipped me their phone numbers.