The lobby of a tall apartment building, with glossy dark wood floor-to-ceiling shelves. The elevator has either floor 6 or 9. Typewriters. A class I’m not a part of.
Louis CK made of maggots with a single tooth each.
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Tag: apartment
Someone rediscovers an old secret of mine, that when I was in high school I got a letter of acceptance into Yale but never followed up on it. I lost the letter and chose to forget about it over the years. I’m embarrassed but also just don’t know what to say. I don’t have an explanation for why I left behind the opportunity, it just… slipped away.
Later on I’m at a swap meet near a terraced park. I’m packing up some metal rods embedded in parking lot asphalt into the truckbed, hopefully to sell. Their partially dug already, and it turns out a vendor there already decided they weren’t worth it and gave up. That same vendor has just sold a small black heart-shaped vessel for $302, a vessel I sold to them only a few days ago for $16. I calculate it immediately in the dream as $285, oddly off by one. For a variety of reasons, I’m not actually upset — although the way he told me, it seems what he expected.
Then I’m cleaning up the park after the show. Walking away with my arms full I see I’ve missed some vape tips in the dirt. I’ll get them another time, I think. I go to visit a group of friends in a further-away part of the bay. I pass their apartment and open a heavy door to a tiny bare windowless ground floor apartment, somewhere no human should live of their own free will. I know it must be hella expensive, too. I go next door to see my friends and their place is the same, but twice as wide.
As I’m driving home, I’m dropping off one of the girls at her subway stop. The town is like New Orleans, her stop is named Mystic, and it’s practically right by the swap meet earlier. Just as we get there she begins to try sweet-talking me into driving her across the bay. She’s cute, might’ve worked, but I see pretty clearly how it’s manipulating my attraction. There’s no actual feelings from her.
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Cheap but Familiar Dreams
Kid is happy to eat replicated (irradiated) mammoth meat. There’s a feather in a shotgun, the kid mistakes it to mean it’s for him to control and change things. It’s just a gift! Next stage in this game is little stars or circles in a form that get bubbled in.
In an unfinished wood building, I live with four other adults in a 20 x 20 room split four ways lengthwise. Aislinn is there. We mostly pretend we have our own spaces, but one day I blurt out how absurd and frustrating it is that the landlord has split it like this. Outside in the hall there’s a poster framed in plastic mounted to the floor. I’m usually complaining about it because I think it’s dumb since it routinely gets slippery when it rains.
A hotel / food counter up a winding hill. Strangely Victorian and Modern. Go there with friends (Ais, Reecy) but I remember it from long in my past. I order a big plate of various fried food served in styrofoam to-go container. Before I leave I return a distinctive flat clock I took from a stairway when I was very small — back then I didn’t understand it probably broke off from something. But I immediately recognize things when I came up the grand entry stairway which, Victorian/Modern again, had an odd ’70s green shag carpet paired with Golden Age woodwork. This is an odd reason, but I think this dream happened because I smelled a bizarrely familiar apple body cleanser at a Korean beauty store — like something I played with when I was very small.
(Messy remembrance, I got woken up a few times.)
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The New Apartment
On a public street near a riverbank somewhere downtown, things appear neglected and abandoned. Around the corner there’s a grand old white-columned courthouse that has seen better days. Old cars rust outside industrial-sized garages — no people can be seen. I’m there to move into the neighborhood. Eventually, with time, the residents show themselves. It’s a bit of an initiation they do.
In the living space I settle into there’s a rat cage, not much bigger than a 10-gallon terrarium, but which is decorated beautifully with plant clippings and dry moss. Around the corner in this strangely welcoming squat group-style apartment is a leopard in small cage. It’s at first unfriendly, even hostile. Then one day it asks to be handled and is so friendly I almost let it escape by rolling through a crunchy plastic carry-out box.
Working on a student project of some kind, I take figurines of the evil Mongol leader from Mulan and add a jet-pack. Mostly, this doesn’t result in its limbs being melted off — mostly. Heph, my partner, does a much more diligent job and regales us with a moving story (which I watch through a gap underneath the rat cage). Blake is also living here, and I recall it being her birthday. The dream ends outside in a oddly-shaped triangular parcel, cars parked tight, with stalagmites of rust rising out of the ground.
“Excuse me, what do you think’s going to happen if you keep doing that?”
An entitled, stocky, well-dressed white girl is throwing dirt and plants over the fence from the garden next door. I happen to be out in the backyard smoking from my smoking kit and tell her there’s people that live here, and to stop. She keeps doing it even when I shut the fence’s windowed door and lower its shades. So I hop the fence and get all up in her face telling her to get out. She pouts all the way back to her tan scooter. I get my phone out and get pictures of her and her license plate, at which point she yanks down her shirt a little bit. I say “come back when you have a better attitude. Thanks for showing me your boobies, that’s always nice.”
My landlord gets called in shortly thereafter and I have to worry about explaining everything to him even though I’m in the right. He’s smelling my smoking kit, and there’s a guy I don’t know who’s complaining on behalf of the woman that I have to sit too close to on the couch. I retell the story and emphasize that the woman was damaging his property.
It looks like two of the cars outside my bedroom window have been sideswiped. I look again later and those cars have disappeared, and I watch as my own truck is sinking up to the grill in the mysteriously liquefied asphalt. Baffled, I visit the coffee shop three doors down. The barista has never heard of such a thing, and I’m worried that people will think I’m nuts.
Stranded on the side of the road in a tropical paradise, could be Hawaii, could be El Salvador. It’s relatively rocky and barren, but since it’s June it’s not too hot yet. I climb over logs and inspect the nature. A public bathroom there has lit-up text on the door when it’s locked. I’m with someone else — a Japanese girl — and I’m not Orin. She manages to flag down a passing motorist, but it’s a large-wheeled 2-seat race-car. She catches a ride promising to come back for me. I’m kinda glad she’s gone since she wanted to be rescued more than me anyways.
In a broad terracotta tile courtyard with modernist angles, underneath the floors of a building, I’m waiting for the elevator to get back to my apartment. The door opens, but opens right into a part of the city’s downtown. I sigh and start running up the stairs the opposite direction, out to the sunny but dry streets that remind me of Florida. I seem to be carrying a dog on my shoulders, and I’m quickly tired.
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Drew’s Dinosaur-Infested Pad
Pulling into the driveway of Drew Carey’s bachelor pad with a friend of mine, who just started dating him. His bed is very close to the glass double doors. Inside, we find him playing an sit-inside racing game. Drew is an experienced host and the house has a few sparse rooms with dude-ish amusements, including a foldout pool table (the balls have chips in them though). One sunlit room near the back of the house has a water feature with lazy psittacosauri, crunchy brown pine bonsai, and tiny slimy yellow hadrosaurs — eerily intelligent and otherworldly ones that walk on hind legs.
The story seamlessly transitions to a Jurassic Park story, raptors stalking, and I step out the back door into a sweeping valley, only to peek around the side of the house and see a giant carefully escorting a thin, tottering, grayish Godzilla.
Was moving out of a place on Mission street. Went through a lost and found hamper that turned out to be filled with my own clothes. My dad was there cleaning also and put his stereo system and a bunch of CDs in his car. He drove down Mission street fast enough to spin out into a storefront made with cutouts of San Francisco.
I was in the elevator to a possible new apartment with Lynae. I had a metal cart filled with our stuff. We were headed for the eighth floor but the elevator stopped at the seventh. Not noticing, we got off, but I got back on once we realized. Lynae couldn’t get back on and I couldn’t figure out how to get the elevator buttons to scroll up to the 8th floor. My doppelgänger came onto the elevator at this time; I was unsure whether to send him away or make out with him (as I’ve always expected I might). Finally I got to the 8th floor. Our former roommates Matt and Emily might’ve been the landlords. Outsides of people’s apartment doors was decorated with knickknacks and tasteful lighting. I entered my prospective home and met the roommates who lived there. Most were very attractive 20-something girls, including a pair of twins who looked like my attractive Australian acquaintance Hemmy. One of the twins had a developmental abnormality that affected her symmetry… she had three breasts and, when she casually rolled over, I saw two assholes. I engaged in easy, free-flowing conversation with all the roommates from a ledge in their open plan home. Due to the liberated vibe I was sitting with my dick hanging out; unfortunately where I was sitting only one girl could see it and she was the least attractive to me. The apartment was decorated with colorful lace curtains and pastels, underlit beds and fancy framed art. It had a view out to the city and as I and a few of the girls watched, a van driving a trailer drove off a nearby roof. It fell a ways before veering up, as if swimming against the force of gravity.
The dream began to fall apart as I realized how dream-like it was, but I pulled an interesting trick. I pretended that I had simply blacked-out in the dream world (perhaps taken a bad pill). This worked, and I ended up back in the sexy apartment with the two-breasted twin showing me that she had gone through my art works and found one she wanted to build off of (it was a pressed plastic sheet of a skateboard wheel with the word ‘concrete’ embossed above it). We made out and it was intense, pulling each other’s hair and fervently tonguing.
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Some of My Favorite Apartment Games
I’d like to think a list like this needs no more introduction than a title, but I’ll go on introducing anyways. It’s a list of games: easy games, fun games, games which you can play in your own home (yes, do try these at home, folks!). In my home, these are the games I regularly play every week, but I’m sure there are many more. They can be also be played in houses, duplexes, public housing projects, or wherever you happen to dwell. Please share if you have any of your own! With no further ado…
Apartment Games:
- Will I Require Pants? – A simple yet enjoyable game, suitable for many occasions. Play it next time you will be using a handsaw, running for the doorbell, carrying bags of garbage, talking on the phone with relatives, walking around the house at night, eating finger-food, sewing or doing needlework, or any of the many other situations where having (or not having) pants is so often uncertain.
- Does This Go Here? – This game is not as well-known as some, but I guarantee it’s worth trying. The object is to find something in the home that is out of place. But you probably won’t win with just any ol’ dirty sock wrapped ’round a ceiling fan—you should seek out the most wildly unlikely, head-scratchingly bizarre, pickle-jar-full-of-melted-cheese-inside-a-fishtank type combination. Great with kids.
- What Am I Supposed to Do With This? – Much similar in idea to the classic game “Hot Potato,” but picks up where it leaves off. The giver hands the receiver a “potato,” which is, let’s say, a large freezer bag full of pipe cleaners. No matter how seemingly unimportant or stupid, whatever it is mustn’t be thrown away! Instead, the receiver must decide what next to do with it. You’ll discover this is easier said than done…
- You Go Here Now – Like Tetris, spatial awareness and strategic thinking are necessary to win at this game. The challenge is to fit something into a space which really can’t possibly accomodate one more thing. How is that possible, you ask? When you finally find out, make sure to yell, “You Go Here Now!”
- I Come In Here For Something – Fun for all ages, and can be played anytime, with equipment you probably already have. All that’s needed are two or more rooms, a collection of stuff which cannot be stored in only one of them, and another (hopefully larger!) collection of mental distractions. Simply mix and begin play. Plan a series of such games for hours of entertainment.
- Find The Smell – One of my least favorites, unfortunately, since I’m generally quite good at it. This game is distinct in that winning isn’t always much fun (as “The Smell” is often something unpleasant/unwanted/disturbing), but still not as bad as losing. Rotten fruit, pet feces, standing water, household pests, building damage, questionable visitors, and all manner of dead things are usually good props utilized for play. Similar to hide-n-seek, but more viscerally revolting.
- Secret Weakness – Hard to explain the rules for this one. Can be played alone or with any size group. A sort-of riddle game, the idea is to find something (not previously expected) that makes you feel suddenly, gut-puchingly powerless. For example, if one player has a job with a strict dress code, use the last of his/her leftover purple hair dye. An elegant game when played correctly.
- I Need A Hug – Collect as many hugs as you require in the shortest amount of time, from as many people you find tolerable. Usually played after other games, like Secret Weakness or Find The Smell.
There you have it! Hope you enjoyed my list, and please, please, do send me more if you have them. I’m always up for more fun!
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Roommating
Goodbye, old roommate. Hello new roommate. Oh! Hello, second new roommate.
Jerome got his bed yesterday. He was sleeping on the couch before that. He was sleeping in our apartment because he’ll be staying with us the next three months. Three months! This is Jerome (and this is Jerome en English). He is Quebecois, from Quebec City. An international traveler extraordinaire, he planned a three-month internship as a Mac developer, not to mention found a place to stay (with me), completely through Gmail. That’s impressive.
Jerome, meet Rhiannon. She’s our roommate—as of two weeks ago. Yup. She had to move three times in the past two months to find a place as good as ours. She’s planning on settling down and having some action figures. We met her at Bad Movie Night and kept coming back, long enough to make friends with the girl taking our $5 every week. Now it’s free for us. You can come too, Jerome, and be subjected to the horror that is “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.” It’s ok, though! It didn’t actually win any Razzies, so that means it must be a good movie.
Nice to finally introduce you two. This place isn’t the cleanest in the world, now that our former roommate is gone. She sure liked that cleaning. So there’s some Dr. Pepper boxes that are being saved for no reason. We’ve got extra couches, now (not sure what to do with those). I’ll be the first to admit that there’s too many open projects to count. Expect things to be in unlikely places, like my hats on the couch or network cable strung up in the hallway. It’s a creative disorder, a constantly brewing ferment of materials and activities and ideas all swirling around in too small a space for their own good. Welcome.
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Wishing Away the Smell
There’s a room in my house that smells like abandoned building. I know this, because I’ve been in many, many abandoned buildings. For the past few days San Francisco has had (while not quite “Biblical” as described by some) torrential rains, and the normally warmer drier Mission has seen as much as the rest of town. And I love my apartment; my neighborhood is great despite some evidence to the contrary.
It’s just that the place is a bit of an old girl, you know. She does the job… the job of being inhabited… just, sometimes she shows her age is all. One room at the back of the apartment I call the “project room” (pictured, to the left) despite the fact that no “projects” to speak of have been completed there. We just called it that when we moved in. Besides, it’s easier than calling it the “sitting slash storage slash plant slash kiln room.” It’s actually one of our cooler rooms and used to be outdoors in fact, which is why it has two windows looking in on it from other rooms of the house (err apartment—a personal history of single-family home residency is apparent in my mental constructs). 
It also doesn’t really hold in warmth too well which makes it not-too-handy for sitting in seats as far as “sitting room” goes, but which is pretty handy when Lynae’s kiln hits the 2400 Fahrenheit mark. Except of course when it rains and water starts coming in under the door, which doesn’t fit because it’s swelled up in the rain. And as far as the rain goes it doesn’t stop at the door. The roof hasn’t started leaking… yet; however, one gets an inkling of why I might notice a little aroma of dilapidation. I think you kind of get the picture here: the room is neat for its uniqueness and its feeling of history, but has its disadvantages as concerns actually taking care of the place.
Well, I did want to live in an abandoned building once. I guess we ought to be careful what we wish for.