A Day in the Life

There has no been no "typical" day for me in NYC so far. Every day has been a new exciting and often stinky adventure. So here is something of a travelogue of an imaginary 24 hour time period in the life.

2:30 a.m. arrive home. notice multiple dirty pots in sink. evidence of cooking by roomate. open the refrigerator. 12 ounce cans of Coke that were placed in the refrigerator earlier have dissapeared. correction. one of them is standing empty on the wooden table that is covered with a blue sheet in front of the couch that is covered with a blue sheet and cigar ash stains. An ash tray rests on the table, filled with remains of a night of cheering for the Giants while chomping away on a cigar. A stale smell permeates the air. i make a slight noise of disgust and tromp away to my room.

2:45 a.m. probably asleep

3:00 a.m. my cell phone rings. its a girl. she says she was only going to leave a message and wonders what I'm doing answering the phone at 3 in the morning. I tell her a story about how several years ago when me and my brother lived at home and had dial up internet connections, I would leave the internet on all night to download large files. that night my brother was involved in a drunken accident for which he shared probably very little of the fault but perchance the same level of drunkeness. He was unable to get through to the house on his cell phone because the signal was tied up with me trying to get part 1 of office space on to my computer. Ever since then I've always left my phone on for emergencies. The girl is a little taken aback by the story but I thank her for calling anyway, and she explains what she's been up to for about 30 seconds, which mostly involves catering and being tired. Then she hangs up. We both go to sleep.

3:50 a.m. I'm awakened to hear my Italian roomate cursing some inutterable words which rather disturb my slumber. The television sounds like it's on. Probably Perry Mason, Columbo or the Jeffersons. nothing else is on between 3 o clock and 4 in the morning on any tv programmers schedule. I try to sleep thinking that the noise will be kept to a reasonable level.

4:15 a.m. the "reasonable level" of noise has kept me up till this point. at the sound of gunfire and laughter from my roomate. I rouse myself enough to stand, open the door and ask for the noise to die down. My Italian roomate apologizes and the television volume is turned down by probably 2 levels.

4:25 a.m. the sounds of muffled screaming convince me to awake and again complain of the noise. An apology is again quickly offered in what seems like an instinct response more than actual attention to any offense or discomfort caused by watching television loudly in the middle of the night.

7:25 a.m. My italian roomate is now yelling into the telephone and complaining to someone. since he said "ma" i am forced to assume that he is talking to his mother. My much larger roomate of indiscriminate origin is wandering around and is pestering italian roomate about some domestic matter. I can't tell what. I just wish they weren't there.

9:30 a.m. I want to get up and eat breakfast and leave the apartment but i can still hear some faint roomate rumblings and I don't want to see either of them so I wait till all is silent. I lay my head back down on my boxspring futon and check the time on my cellphone. It's 9:30 in the morning. I think about writing more of my new book "The Complete Idiots Guide to Idiots" but I can't get up any inspiration for it. I vow to write more on it later. Then I fall back to sleep.

9:50 a.m. The coast is all clear. I slip into some jeans that have been worn 20 times at least since coming to the city and put on some socks and shoes so my feet can escape the disgustingly dirty conditions of the kitchen floor that I'm about to tread on. As I walk around the corner I catch sight of my larger roomate of indiscriminate origin pouring a box of cereal into a very large bowl. This bowl is much larger than any that I would have ever thought would be used to put cereal into, except for industrial purposes. The nauseating smell that arises from the roomate as well as the sight of his flabs of skin hanging over his nearly equally unsightly backhair push me back into my room quickly. I grab a book and head for the private bathroom in my room which also affords me the only seat to read on in the apartment without a blue sheet covering it.

10:10 a.m. the coast is clear. this time for real. So i grab some bacon and 2 eggs from the refrigerator and fry bacon and eggs over the electric oven. I enjoy the way the flames come crackling out and cook things in like 2 minutes. It's like a 1960's version of the microwave. The whole place actually reminds me of the 1960's - all hardwood floors, dirty floor tiles in the kitchen and bathroom (not mine but the public one with the shower in it) an entire corner of the main room devoted to a table and smaller piles of what appear to be useless junk that hasn't been thrown out yet, and of course no decorations on the wall of any kind. Yup, just like the 1960's all right.


(to be continued tommorrow)