The apartment was not haunted but clearly had some sort of
curse on it. Kim and I began a downward spiral of drugs and booze shortly after
moving in. Funny, we no longer had a whole series of roommates to contend with,
it was just the two of us with an occasional “special guest star” who would
visit, but things got ugly fast.
Kim’s childhood friend Kevin would come to our new apartment
and we would stay up late at night watching The PTL Club while we put huge
amounts of cocaine up our noses, cigarettes in ashtrays and emptied liquor
bottles. Once you were high on cocaine,
we would smoke a joint and wash down everything with whiskey. The booze and
weed would help to mellow out three Cocaine Zombied out druggies.
I would often slip off to bed and leave Kim and Kevin to
talk about old times. It seems that the two of them had a history, even though
Kevin recently came out as gay. Kim put me under strict directions to never
mention it in his presence and if I did, he would deny it.
I would spend what seemed like hours trying to drift off. I
was usually so high that I ended up tossing and turning while looking at the
ceiling. In the morning I would often find Kevin and Kim still on the couch
where I had left them the night before. Except now they had all sorts of
paranoid theories to share with me. Theories
ranged from our neighbors being able to listen in on their thoughts, to Jim and
Tammy Baker giving them secret messages through the PTL Club broadcast.
As weeks go along things get worse and worse between Kim and
I. Drugs fuel paranoia and paranoia fuel fights. Kim and I would argue about
the tiniest things and that would lead to slapping fights, objects being
launched at each other and punches being thrown. Our relationship was becoming unbelievably
toxic. We were acting like our hero’s Sid and Nancy and I suspected that Kevin
and Kim were smoking a much stronger drug than weed.
It was during this time that we painted the entire bathroom and
the changing room, black. It echoed the way we were living our lives and how we
were feeling.
One day the shop next door decides to repave their driveway,
with these little black stones. For hours we would watch through slightly
parted blinds from our basement advantage, as the workers poured wheelbarrow
after wheelbarrow of the little black stones all over their driveway.
For hours, Kim and I could hear the stones bouncing off the
wells that surrounded our windows. Unfortunately, several of the rocks put tiny
cracks in the windows before they landed in the wells. Kim would rap on the
window and scream at the workers “To be more fucking careful!” Kim would never
show her face, just bang and snarl.
Soon, Kim and I started missing work or showed up hours
later than the time we were scheduled for. We were in danger of losing our
jobs, which also meant losing our apartment if we couldn’t pay the rent.
Thankfully, Jodi’s sister Cindy, who also recently started
working at The Half Moon Café, was breaking up with her boyfriend and needed a
place to live. It was a Kismet born out of desperation.
Two days before Cindy moves in it rains.
We hadn’t had any rain since the driveway next door had been
paved. The storm was moving across the sky quickly as you could feel a drop in
pressure and smell a change in the air.
The skies opened up with a fury, quick and fast and they dropped
a quick hard summer rain. When the rain hit those round black stones, it rushed
over the top of them and headed right for our windows.
Kim was at the store getting a pack of Marlboro lights and I
was home alone listening to Amadeus on my tape player when it hit. Within five
minutes the force of the water filled the wells, then it smashed against the
windows. The widows held back for a moment letting a spray here and there shoot
into the kitchen, then they moaned and gave way. The water rushed across the
kitchen floor, heading for the living room, the bedrooms and the bathroom.
Within moments, I was ankle deep.
To be continued…
Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writing "A Day in the Life". It can not be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent.
Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writing "A Day in the Life". It can not be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent.
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