It's been a while...

Okay so, I've been hounded to write this scene to add into 'Adorable Disaster'. I wrote it on its own and hope to add it in the story where it best fits. The scene is thus far unedited but I think it's pretty decent. Let's find out how the voice fits in to the story...



The directions Laura handed me on a crumbled up napkin read “L, R, R, L, R, L, R, R, L,” etc.
“Now navigate Dildo,” Laura commanded.
We were in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Laura was away from Downingtown for a month taking summer classes at West Chester University with her friend. West Chester was about a twenty-minute drive from Downingtown so I made a few trips down there to see her when I had time off work. Our first adventure entailed several two-liter bottles of Diet Coke, a case of Mento's, and some stolen milk crates from an elementary school. I'll leave it at that.
We were bored driving around West Chester, so I told Laura to write down the letters L and R in random succession until she felt like stopping. She quickly figured out why I wanted her to do this and got to work.
We picked a random side road on High Street and I began following her directions.
“This is gonna be sweet, I have no idea where the hell we're gonna end up,” Laura laughed excitedly.
“Yeah I know. I'm almost looking forward to ending up in Wisconsin or something.”
We drove around following the directions for ten or fifteen turns before realizing we weren't getting as far as I thought. West Chester is filled with lots of one-way side streets, and dead-ends, so we pretty much just kept making our way up and down the road like a real-life version of PAC-man.
“I know what we should do,” Laura squeeled, “let's play P-Diddle.”
P-Diddle is a game wherein the players drive around a random area looking for cars, trucks, vans, or bikes with missing lights on the vehicle. The front head-lights, and brake lights on cars were the most common suspects, but guiding lights and rear-view mirror lights on trucks and vans were also fair game. I think I once asked her why it was called p-diddle and was greeted with a snappy response stating something along the lines of "don't ask stupid questions, dildo."
“God you're always pitching that idea,” I groaned.
“Oh come on, you never want to play,” she giggled.
The reason I was so skeptical is because of a minor stipulation in Laura's rules. When someone spots a blown light, the have to yell “P-Diddle,” and raise their hand to touch the top of the car before the other. Sounds harmless, but in Laura's version every time someone scores a point, the other has to remove one article of clothing. I was comfortable around Laura, just confused that I struck-out on my kiss attempt and now had an opportunity to remove as many pieces of clothing from her as I possibly could without having to go through the awkward stage of trying to do it myself.
“Okay, I'm in.”
“Bitchin'. P-Diddle, by the way,” Laura threw her hand to the felt ceiling of my car before I had even settled myself for the game. I glanced over to find her laughing hysterically as she pointed to the car on a side-street next to us which was parked, and had a brake light out. I took off my hoodie. We started moving down whichever street we were on by this point, still following the directions.
“P-Diddle!” Laura's hand thrust towards the top of the car for her second point.
“Take off that shirt, skinny boy,” Laura laughed at me. I took off my shirt. I soon found out that Laura was extremely good at this game. It took me, on the other hand, a while to get my feet wet. We were driving down a miscellaneous shopping district on the outskirts of West-Chester. I noticed Laura was temporarily incapacitated as she browsed the stores and window-shopped from the car. The area was very brightly lit and was swimming with pedestrian activity. Laura was too distracted to notice the Honda directly ahead of us with a headlight out.
“P-Diddle!” I thrust my hand upwards for my first point. “Take your top off, bitch!”
“Fuck you, dildo,” Laura scoffed at me as she took off her shirt, leaving her in a star-spangled tank-top.
“I used to play this with one of my good friends in high-school all the time. I once got him completely naked as we drove around town. His girlfriend wasn't too pleased about that, I guess. I didn't care, I thought it was funny as hell. P-Diddle, by the way.” I took off my belt.
I drove around West-Chester with no shirt on for what seemed like hours with Laura. We ditched the directions, when we became more infatuated with getting each other as naked as possible, as quickly as possible.
“P-Diddle!” I took off my shoes.
I was able to score a few more points throughout the course of the night, but not before Laura had stripped me all the way down to my boxers. She was one-point away from victory and started feeling pity on me. I had gotten her down to her bra and jeans which was rewarding in itself for me, but I think she still wanted to toy with me. My low-gas light came on, and I leaned over the back seat in search of my jeans as I pulled into a near by gas station.
“What are you doing, dildo?”
“I have to get gas. I'm not going out there in my boxers.”
“Oh yes, you are! The game isn't over yet.”
“Seriously? Cut me some slack. It's my first time. At least let me put my jeans on.”
“Fine.”
I got a few strange looks as I pumped gas with no shirt on but I paid with my ATM card right at the machine so at least I didn't have to go inside. I topped off the tank and stepped back into the car.
“Lose the pants,” Laura commanded.
“This is gonna look really bad if I get pulled over in my underwear.”
“I know! I can't wait.” As usual she was laughing uncontrollably.
“Alright dildo, I have class in the morning so I gotta get some sleep pretty soon. Start making your way back and we'll see who wins when we get to the University.” I didn't realize that it was 2 a.m. I started making my way back along High Street when I heard Laura start coughing. I looked over to find her nudging her head in the direction of a truck with a rear-light out.
“Ross, if you don't get it I'm going to,” she winked at me. I didn't like the idea of a handout, but hey it would get her pants off.
“P-Diddle!” Laura took off her pants, leaving her in her bra and panties.
“Scandalous,” I purred at her.
“Shut up and drive.”
I continued to drive until the University was in sight. I was just pulling up at the curb when Laura yelled it, “P-Diddle!”
“No way, that doesn't count. We're already here. I glanced over at a jeep with a headlight out across the street.”
“Oh, yes it does! Take em off,” she laughed. She had left me at a difficult crossroads. I was forced to decide between manhood and the removal of my boxers, and teenage anxiety and a nervous approach.
“Not doing it, that's cheating. We're already here.”
Laura threw on her jeans and tank top and stepped out of the car. She leaned in the open window and winked at me.
“Next time, I'm taking them off.” She blew me a kiss and made her way up the path to her room. I could hear her laughing the whole way.

Skunkers and the Cold Apartment. An unfortunate, yet true, story...

Skunkers and the Cold Apartment

Shane and I were first introduced to Skunkers on Shane's first day in the apartment. The skunk in question meandered across our backyard every evening and situated himself comfortably under our back deck. Shane's brother, who was visiting on this day, named him Skunkers and we agreed that this was a fitting name. For months Skunkers never bothered anyone. From roughly August to November, we barely knew he was around except for his nightly walk home through our backyard. Beginning in early November when the stars were set and the moon was right, we would find ourselves gracefully welcomed to some rather foul smelling skunk nonsense. Considering that Skunkers lived under our deck and the violating smells were mild (for skunk standards) and few and far between, we thought ourselves lucky.
After a few months of Skunkers living somewhere under the vicinity of our house, I began hearing him through the vent in my bedroom. My bedroom, which was located in the very back of the apartment, was rather secluded and much less properly insulated than the rest of the house. I think it was originally intended to be some sort of storage room but because there was a bathroom adjacent, I had no problems turning it into a bedroom. Anyway, there are very few things more unsettling to a newish resident of an old apartment than being awoken after 2 a.m. by the sounds of a skunk going ape-shit on your ventilation system.
Coincidentally enough, it was also roughly this time that our heater stopped working at full-capacity. Because of this, the temperature in our apartment was rarely over 62 degrees. Furthermore, because my cave of a bedroom was so poorly insulated, my bedroom rarely climbed above about 55 degrees during this time.
Because living in a very cold, putrid smelling, skunk-haunted home proves rather uncomfortable; Shane and I left an abundance of frustrated voicemails for our landlord to endure, because it was difficult to catch him answering his phone. Most of the time, when we called to leave an annoyed message, he would reply back to us in the form of a text message letting us know that someone would be over in the morning to look at it. This continued for a few weeks. This was a few weeks of an anonymous maintenance guy showing up every few days to temporarily fix the heat and comment on the smell, only to find it going out again in a few hours.
“Hello, Mr. Tennerd? This is Ross Sharkey calling.”
“Hi, Ross. How you doing?”
“Well, I’m cold.”
“Yes, we ordered the new blower motor for your heater and it should be here in the morning. I’ll have someone come by as soon as possible to replace it and have it working again.”
“Well, alright. I guess it sounds like you’ve got it sorted out, then.”
“Yes. The part will be here in the morning. I’ll talk to you then.”
The apartment was cold. It was mid-January and the apartment was cold. It also happened to be around this time that Skunkers turned violently insane.
It was a Friday night and Shane and I had some friends over for a few drinks. I, and a few others were playing cards in the living room, and everyone else was playing Jenga in Shane’s nearby bedroom.
“Ross you have to come listen to this. What the hell is in there?” A few of my female friends darted out of Shane's room followed by Shane and apparently the rest of the party. When I held my head against the vent to examine the noise, I was greeted by some of the most horrid sounding noises imaginable. It sounded like there was a 12 foot tall, rabid raccoon on PCP stuck in the vent.
“Oh, that's just Skunkers. He'll tire himself out,” I remarked coyly.
Several of the girls looked genuinely concerned about the well-being of my apartment after this monster was finished ravaging it from the inside out. It was then that the smell erupted. I say erupted because the smell may as well have emitted a thick, green fog like all horrible smells do in every cartoon. All at once, our apartment went from fun party house to complete cesspool of hatred, rendering the house uninhabitable.
“Oh dear god,” everyone seemed to gag in unison. We all made our way into the living room ten feet away with high-hopes it didn't smell there. If anything, it smelled worse.
“Wow guys. This is really bad. Does this happen a lot?” Our friend known only as Fozz asked.
“It's not normally this bad,” Shane replied.
“So, this happens often then?”
“It's happened a few times recently but never this bad.” I turned around to find Shane drowning the room with Febreeze.
“I dunno if that's gonna do it, Shane?”
“Think positively. I don't smell any skunk do you? All I smell is the warm scent of lavender and rain water emanating out of this bottle.” Of course, by this point the Febreeze combined with the skunk into one unruly, disgusting, anti-Christ of a putrid smell.
“I dunno Shane. I'm pretty sure that a skunk who goes off in a field of lavender during a summer sun-shower still ruins all life in a five mile radius temporarily.”
Just then, a couple of our friends emerged through the front door, having just smoked a cigarette.
“Hey you guys wanna- holy hell does that smell awful. Is that skunk? Christ it’s terrible. It doesn’t smell outside at all.”
I walked onto the front porch and lit up a cigarette after inhaling deeply into the night sky. It didn’t smell at all.

****

The trapping of Skunkers began after I text-messaged my landlord late one night when Skunkers was upset with me:
“It's 2 a.m. And it smells so horribly of skunk in my apartment for the third day in a row. It's so awful I can't sleep and am therefore texting you to let you know how upset I am.”
“No shit...”
I got up the next morning for work to a text-message from my landlord saying that he was coming to set a trap in our backyard.
“Hey, Mr. Tennerd,” I greeted, opening the front door. Tennerd was standing on my front steps holding a large trap, which resembled a cage.
“Hey, just letting you know that I'm here with the trap. This outta catch that little fucker.” Although I could not argue that Skunkers was indeed being a “little fucker,” I still felt a brief aside of sympathy when I realized we were gonna beat his ass.
“Oh, and I sent a tiny guy over earlier to get under your porch and see if he could spot where the skunk's been living. He had a rather cozy little home nestled up against one of the heating ducts under the floor in your bedroom. He was sleeping directly under you every night.”
“That son of a bitch.”
“Im'a get him.”
Tennerd set the trap up not far outside my bedroom window. The trap laid on top of the hardened snow for four days. Each day before work I would treat myself to a morning viewing of the cage to see if I would be greeted by a trapped and helpless skunk. After day one, the trap laid dormant and undisturbed. By day two the cage had been knocked over and because I was in a hurry to get to work, I left it that way. I of course forgot all about it by the time I got home from work and had a beer in hand. By day three, not only was the cage on its side, but it had also been triggered, and I saw no skunk inside. Discouraged, I again did nothing in my rush to get to work. By the morning of day four, the cage was now on its side, triggered, and half filled with snow from the storm the night before. I shrugged this off as a loss, and made my way to work that morning.
A few hours after I arrived at work I received a new text from my landlord:
“Skunk is going by-by.”
This text message baffled me. Merely a few hours before, the cage was buried and triggered. I didn't ask how he caught the skunk, because as long as it had been caught I didn't care. I decided that the only logical solution was that Tennerd showed up at the apartment with three-day old five-o-clock shadow, whiskey on his breath, and a large mallet of some kind and chased down poor Skunkers, bludgeoning him to death.
I arrived home from work to find Shane drinking a beer in the living room.
“You get that text from Tennerd?” I asked, dropping my coat on the couch.
“Nope.”
“They caught Skunkers.”
“The trap worked? Way solid. It's about time,” Shane replied, tossing me a fresh Pabst.
“I wonder what Tennerd is gonna do with him. Think they'll put him down?”
“Are you kidding? Tennerd has to be the back-alley abortionist of skunk removal. Your normal, professional exterminator might spare his life, but I doubt Tennerd has the connections to “properly” dispose of a skunk. He's dead for sure.”

Why I hate my apartment...

I hate my apartment for a veritable plethora of valid reasons. I'm working now on a humor collection to capture all of these reasons in the most comedic manner possible. Here is just one of them.

The Sewage-drenched Laundry Room Fiasco

I moved into the apartment a few weeks before Shane. Shane only lived about forty minutes from the place, and seeing as how I lived six hours away and desperately needed to find a job before the fall semester of college started, I moved in as soon as possible. I spent the next few days doing the regular unpacking thing and gradually began setting up the house to my liking. It wasn't long after this that I encountered my first problem. The kitchen sink was clogged. This was no big deal. The sink was not fully clogged, it would just take liquids 90% longer than most sinks to fully drain. The solution seemed very simple and would be found in a small bottle labeled “drain-o.” After pouring the bottle down the sink, I noticed that it did not even try to force its way down the pipe. I glanced back at the bottle which read “unclogs or it's free.” Thinking logically I realized that the fat-cats and the drain-o corporation would never levy such a claim if their product didn't work. I was overwhelmed with confidence that my sink would be defeated thanks to the smiling sewage pipe on the bottle. After a few more minutes of realizing that this wasn't working, I called up my landlord to let him know about my discovery. The house had to be 100 years old and for all I knew no one had lived in it for decades. Who knew how long that sink had been clogged for?
Tennerd sent over his best man to take a look at the sink while I left the house to go job-hunting. When I returned a few hours later, I found that the sink was still clogged. After another call to my landlord he assured me that “it was all taken care of. He went over earlier and put some drain-o down there.” I assured him that this was not the answer he was looking for as I had tried the same solution myself. To this information he replied “well, damn. I'll send him back over with a snake.” After laughing comically at the thought of an actual snake devouring the sewage blocking my pipe, I turned to find the plumber entering the apartment.
At this point I'd like to pause for a brief aside and explain some of the details of the kitchen. It was a rather large kitchen with a center island housed roughly in the center of the room. Directly across from the sink was the closed door to the vacant laundry room. All the hook-ups required for a washer and drier were present including the mammoth electrical outlet for the drier and the uncovered drainage pipe for a washer.
“Hey there, guy. My name's Steve, one of Bob's maintenance guys. I guess the drain-o didn't do the trick for the sink then, huh?”
“Guess not. I tried that myself, it must really be clogged.”
“Not a problem, I brought a plumbing snake to take care of it.”
Steve seemed like he was reasonably on the level. He was dressed roughly the same as Tennerd had been when we met him which was actually how I expected and hoped he would be dressed. Let's be honest, who the hell wants a spotless maintenance guy? Maintenance guys shouldn't be afraid to get nasty-ass dirty and I was glad his ensemble reflected this with none of the offensive smells that often emanate off others. Steve began unpacking a large, black toolbox and opened up the doors beneath the sink. The floor beneath the kitchen sink was badly warped and damp, which I noted was probably the result of the very slightly leaking pipe connected to the drain.
“So, where ya from there, guy?” Steve asked, while assembling his pipe snake and simultaneously working to lift up the cheap plywood covering the floor.
“Philly. I'm up here for college. Only got one semester left.” I replied, carefully watching Steve's actions. He had the snake assembled and the floor lifted up. At this point he was fumbling with a large wrench to disconnect the drain from the pipe.
“Oh cool. I've been down there a few times. In fact my brother married a broad from Philly and – son of a bitch!” Steve heaved at the wrench and smashed his hand on the side of the wall as the pipe disconnected.
“Shit, are you alright?” I hurried over from the door to the laundry room.
“Yeah I'm fine, that just hurt a bit. No harm done.” Now that he had the pipe disconnected, the next task was forcing the snake down the pipe. I returned to the comfort of the laundry room entrance to lean against the door frame.
“So anyway, he married that Philly broad and then moved back up around here because they didn't like the idea of living in a big, dangerous city.” Steve had the snake down the pipe and turned on what appeared to be a pressure washer connected to the end of it. Steve assured me that this worked perfectly every time. He explained that there was a small rubber bubble at the end of the snake which expanded to completely seal off the pipe and then the pressure washer engaged to force all the waste out the other end of the pipe because it had no where else to go.
“Yeah I don't much care for the city either, which is why I moved – hey is that normal?” The pipe started making loud growling noises and shaking violently.
“Oh yeah that's fine, the pipe is grounded in here pretty well, it's just the pressure building up. In just a bit here it'll shoot out the other end and your drain will work just fine.
“Anyway they said that after her friend got mugged in the city they didn't feel safe and-” As Steve was speaking a whole lot of nonsense that I didn't care about I heard a loud rumbling sound emanating from behind my post at the laundry room door. To give a viable comparison as to what this noise sounded like, imagine what Indiana Jones thought when he began running away from that big-ass boulder in “Raider's of the Lost Arc.” I turned around just in time to watch 100% of the contents of my clogged-sink erupt in a violent hell storm of putrid-smelling sewage out of the drainage pipe to the absent washing machine. I watched the contents spew out in a state of shock for several seconds before reacting. I quickly scrambled out of the laundry room and darted over towards Steve who was still balls-deep in a story about his sister.
“-and decided they better move away before something horrible happened. God-forbid, and-”
“Steve, are you not hearing this?” He looked up at me in confusion.
Still in a state of shock, I muttered out the words “Shit” and “laundry room.”
Steve listened carefully until he could hear the volcano and dashed over to shut off the snake. We both stood at the entrance of the laundry room and watched what was left of the obstruction ooze out of the pipe, tainting the carpet and surrounding walls of the pipe.
After what seemed like minutes of staring in disbelief Steve uttered the words “Well, shit. We probably should have capped that, huh?” We? I was just the naive college student who didn't know the first thing about plumbing. I didn't even know the drain from the kitchen connected to the drain from the washing machine.
“Yes?” I mumbled.
“Well, I'll go get a cap for that pipe and a carpet-cleaner and we'll take care of this no problem!”
I had to hand it to Steve for looking at the situation so optimistically. Hell, I'd have cursed for fifteen minutes before sitting in the corner with a coloring book for the rest of the afternoon.
Steve returned shortly after, capped the drain pipe, cleaned up the smelly-mess and situated himself back on his knees under the kitchen sink.
“So, yeah I really like it up here. Things are a lot different than they are down in Philly. For one, all the leaves turns a beautiful set of red, orange and yellow in autumn.” I chuckled to myeslf and restrained myself from muttering “no shit? They don't have autumn in Philadelphia.” Steve continued to fiddle with something on the end of the pipe snake, seemingly making pressure adjustments. Seconds after these adjustments we heard a loud grunting sound, followed by what sounded like perfectly flowing water.
“There's your boy!” Steve announced in enjoyment. I half-expected him to slap his knee and scream “hooooooo-eeeeeee!”
“Excellent, that sounds a lot better.”
“You bet, now I'll just get this snake outta yer way and I'll be outta here.” He began loosening something and began tugging on the end of the snake to get it out of the pipe.
“Yeah I know they have autumn everywhere but the colors up here are just gorgeous. My mom comes to visit every fall to come take a lot at what she calls 'foliage.'”
“Yeah, I've been up here a few years for school so I know how pretty it gets in the fall.”
“Oh that's right! You're a college boy! What are ya studying?” Steve tried making some more adjustments before apparently realizing that the snake was stuck.
“Well, I'm a writing major.”
“Oh cool, I've always wanted to- mother fucker!” Steve bashed his hand on the wall again as he attempted to free the pipe snake. I didn't bother asking if he was alright this time. In fact, I listened to him curse, fume, roar and scream at the pipe for the next forty-five minutes before he finally freed the bloated snake, cleaned up the mess he made and made his way out the door.