ericboy's Diaryland
Diary
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\"Never really mastered disinterest\" - Dashboard Confessional
So, I have two hours and nine minutes to kill. You see, I don't know if crazy shit happens to me because I'm a writer or if I'm a writer because crazy shit happens to me. Either way, they work well in conjunction with each other and, for that, I feel blessed. Blessed that things like this happen to me:
As I've said before in these pages, my roommate wears earplugs when she sleeps, which is great, since I "snore like a bear pulling a Buick out of its ass". This is no exaggeration. A few years ago I was working three jobs and trying to drink myself to death. I was living in a one-bedroom apartment with two other guys and a revolving array of friends who continued to overstay their welcome. I come home one day and they're all watching Predator for the 1137th time. I sit down on the far end of the couch and immediately pass out, snoring as if trying to offend the gods. The houseful of people wasted no time in making folly of my condition, and called their voicemails and held their cellphones up to my gaping hole of cacophony. They then littered my crumpled body with empty beer bottles, CDs, and lit candles. When I finally came to, they all called their voicemail messages and played them back for me. It was like a grotesque cross between a chainsaw and the Rancor from Return of the Jedi. This stigma has not lessened with time. I am still reminded regularly of my snoring. So, it's great that my roommate wears earplugs when she sleeps.
Also, she has a propensity to want to run around the room naked. I have never seen this for myself (sadly) as I can't seem to correlate my schedule with her naked time. Whenever she gets the opportunity, she locks the door, strips down, and does God-knows-what hedonistic thing when I'm not around. Again, good for her. More power to her. Yeah. All that jazz. Now...
When the naked time ends and she puts in her earplugs to make her dead/deaf to the world and goes to sleep, she more often than not remembers to unlock the door so that her roommate, me, can get in the room that he helps to pay for. Tonight, however, that was not the case.
I left the house around eight-thirty-ish to go see my friend Eric at Dick's Last Resort, some forty or so blocks away. I walk over there and we kick it for an hour or so. I have a beer and some really sloppy nachos that have a short tenure in my body (note to diet enthusiasts: nachos are a great and guiltless naughty food. They're gone so fast that your body doesn't have time to absorb any badness or goodness from them. Best of all, they take whatever was in your stomach beforehand with them. It's like bulimia, only it's not a disorder and it comes out the other end. Go crazy!) and then hoof it back home. I get in around a quarter after midnight. I go up to the third floor and swipe my card through the card-swiper thing.
The card-swiper thing looks like a dark steel kleenex box that has been attatched to the door. Along the right side is a vertical strip wherein one swipes their card. To the left of the strip are three LED lights arranged in a horizontal line. The one on the far left lights up a deep, bright green that means "Come on in; the water's fine". The one in the middle lights up a bleary, sun-washed green that means "The deadbolt is locked and your roommate is probably naked". The one on the far right lights up a foreboding red that means either:
a) "Hey, buddy; you don't live here."
b) "That may be the right card but you did it wrong. Try repositioning your footing or holding your mouth open a little wider. There, there you go..."
or, c) "After shuffling down the hallway, you've built up a bit of static electricity and you shocked me at the same time as you swiped the card. Could you ground yourself and try that again?"
I got the middle light. I get the middle light quite frequently. Usually I just knock and she opens it right up. Or her ex-boyfriend, who always locks the door when he's in the room, opens it.
So, I knock. Nothing. I knock again. Nothing. I knock again and wonder what the neighbors are thinking. Nothing. I go downstairs and ask the desk clerk, a burly Guido who doesn't like me, to call up to the room. The phone rings but there is no answer. I go back up, hoping that the phone might have at least stirred her, and start knocking again. I do this for three or four minutes, then go downstairs and call again. Once again, nothing. I smoke a cigarette, then go back and start knocking again. Nothing.
Okay, no sweat. I'm not mad at all. I think it's really funny, actually. So I take the opportunity to write down some ideas for this sketch comedy show that I'm working on. Then I think "I'll call Eric and see if I can crash at his place." I write her a note telling her that I didn try to come home and called my friend to see if I could stay at his place. Just because her day would be longer tomorrow if she didn't know one way or the other. Unresolved issues and unanswered questions are like the anvils of intellect.
Of course, the cell-phone in my pocket is dead to me, and the girl who can let me in to the room so that I could use the phone in there is dead to the world. So I get one of my last two dollars changed in to quarters and go to the payphone.
Eric is one of those guys who doesn't answer his phone if a number shows up on the ID that he doesn't recognize. The payphone I was using was one such number. So I leave a message telling him the basic gist of the story and say that I will call him back in five to ten minutes from the same number and could he please answer it, thank you.
So, I call him back. Still no answer. I leave a message saying that I'm walking back over to Dick's, despite the fact that I'm quite tired and it's getting steadily colder.
So I get there and it's closed and there are no people inside. Usually, Eric stays after and counts the money, along with seven or so other "closing" staffmembers. No dice. They finished very early, apparently, and took off. I couldn't imagine that Eric got my message at that point. He's not the type of guy that would ignore that simple request of a friend. I'm guessing that the payphone, like almost all of the payhones here in San Diego, has glitches and no one on the other end can hear the caller. Case in point.
So, I walk all the way back here to my place. I try the door on a whim and it is still locked. I came back downstairs and sat down and wrote that Sketch Comedy in its entirety. Then I came here, to Diaryland.
So, I've been falling asleep during these last few paragraphs and I am fading fast. The words bundle together on the screen and I'll start typing whatever dialogue is going on at the time in my head. It's very annoying and somewhat alarming. I need to stop before my head explodes. So that's my "Locked Out of my Room Without a Reason" story. Let's hope it doesn't happen again. Good night.
3:51 a.m. - 2004-12-23
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