vitamin strange
Yesterday evening, between drinking coffee with Kat and heading to the bar with the Hickory House Crew, I was sitting in my apartment, reading Sara Vowell's Partly Cloudy Patriot and drinking cheap cabernet (my drink of choice for sprawling and reading...well, I'd drink good cabernet if i wasn't broke, but that's beside the point) and I hear an unfamiliar knock on the door. I answer my door, and it's my upstairs neighbor, the one I occasionally talk to while her rotund bulldog terrifies my cat and she smokes cigarrettes while she sprawls on a fold-out lawn chair."
"Do you have any clothes I can put on?" she asks.
"Sure," I respond.
"I can't come in."
"Okay. What size jeans do you wear?"
"Nine."
"Cool, you fit wear my clothes." I dig out an old thrift store t-shirt and a worn out pair of jeans, sensing some sort of strangeness and, while willing to participate, not willing to sacrifice any cute clothes to my neighbor, who is at least someone out of sorts and wearing wet dirt covered jeans. "Is this for a school project?" I ask. She doesn't answer. One of the true marks of having lived in a college town perhaps for too long is the fact that whenever someone is acting a little strange, I assume first and foremost that they must in in that Comm 1010 class where they have to act strangely and make people uncomfortable. The very fact that there are people like me who automatically assume this defeats the purpose of the assignment, the fact I will accept a fairly good sized amount of out of sorts behavior in the interest of a good story for me and a good grade for the strangely acting person. After school, I assume it's a bad trip or sorority prank, but my neighbor isn't exactly the sorority type.
I hand her my clothes and she removes her shoes, and tells me not to put them on (I don't generally feel a need to put on other people's dirty flip flops, and they looked about 2 sizes too small, so she was safe), and then proceeds out into the Pentacostal Revival Carport next to my apartmentthat is next door to my apartment barefoot. This carport is filled with trash and bricks and lots of tetnis bacteria or spores or whatever from tetnis takes, and I stand on my porch amused and she strips down (in clear view of the street) and puts on my shirt. She asks me to remove her bracelet, so I put on my own shoes and oblidge, and then she pulls her pants most of the way down (she's not wearing any undergarments at all, incidentally) before mumbling something about a black screw and how this means she doesn't need to put my jeans on afterall, hanging them from the Christmas lights wrapped around the carport. She then picks up all the small trash in the carport and puts it in a small blue bucket along with her shoes, and has taken on three different character situations for me and her. The first is that I am her and she is her dog, Nature. The second is that (as far as I could discern) we are two young women, talking about men, and she is really hateful and jaded towards men. The third is that she is a two-year-old, and I am (again, as far as I could discern) her older sister, and we are in the hospital waiting room and I am supposed to keep an eye on her. She finds a rubber chicken dog toy and shoves it in her back jean pocket.
There is a shaggy plant-covered area beside the carport behind the other building that makes up my apartment complex (if you can call two random old chopped up buildings a complex) and she walks around picking up anything "out of the ordinary." By this, she means the various beverage containers in the area. She asks me to help and tells me to set them on this old faded purple pillow that has been behind my apartment longer than I've lived here. In lieu of picking my neighbor up and setting her on the old purple pillow, I stand around for a moment getting chewed on by mosquitoes, before quietly suggesting we get out of the planty area so we don't get eaten alive and contract West Nile or anything. We head back towards our building, and she asks me for a glass of water. I oblidge, and offer it to her, but she freaks out and doesn't want it. She then heads to a square of bricks behind my apartment in between the neighbor's fence and our building, and sits down with her legs sticking straight out from her body. She says I can give her the water now, and I do.
"Okay, I have to sit here now until I pee in my pants," she announces. She then tells me I'm welcome to sit out with her if I would like. I figure I don't really have anything else to do, so I was going to get my drink and come back out with her. She asks if I have anything else to drink, but that she can only have Budweiser and gold tequila. I tell her I have cheap red wine, and she says she can have that, too. So I refil my glass and pour her one, and come back outside. She tells me I can sit on her lawn chair if I'd like, and I do. She rambles and I try and ramble back, but I am having a distinctly difficult time wrapping my red wined-head around the situation.
She drinks half the wine before dumping most of it on her lap. She then gets up, but still squatting, turns around, announces "Check this out!" and dumps the rest of the wine down her pants. "I'm a winey ass!" I laugh at the absurdity of the situation, and she says, "I got it, I know how to make women laugh." She then throws the wine glass against the fence where it shatters. Fortunately I break about a wine glass every two months, if not more often, so I don't keep expensive wine glasses around. I was just glad I didn't hand her a cofffee mug of wine instead. She then pitches the rubber chicken into the neighbor's back yard.
She tells me to be quiet for a moment and makes comical "I'm Peeing!" type faces. I tell her I'm meeting some friends and I really need to change clothes and get going, and I am being devoured by mosquitoes. She is, too, and her arm was livid red with scratching.
"What do I need to do?" she askes.
"I dunno."
"I need to find him."
"Okay. What for?"
"What do you mean, "for"? He doesn't understand "for"?"
I tell her to have a lovely evening, and head indoors. She continues to sit on the bricks.
As I leave, I look behind the apartment, and she is completely without pants with her leg hiked up, peeing on the neighbor's fence. This morning, the shoes in the bucket are still in the carport, and the jeans are sitting on the bricks.
"Do you have any clothes I can put on?" she asks.
"Sure," I respond.
"I can't come in."
"Okay. What size jeans do you wear?"
"Nine."
"Cool, you fit wear my clothes." I dig out an old thrift store t-shirt and a worn out pair of jeans, sensing some sort of strangeness and, while willing to participate, not willing to sacrifice any cute clothes to my neighbor, who is at least someone out of sorts and wearing wet dirt covered jeans. "Is this for a school project?" I ask. She doesn't answer. One of the true marks of having lived in a college town perhaps for too long is the fact that whenever someone is acting a little strange, I assume first and foremost that they must in in that Comm 1010 class where they have to act strangely and make people uncomfortable. The very fact that there are people like me who automatically assume this defeats the purpose of the assignment, the fact I will accept a fairly good sized amount of out of sorts behavior in the interest of a good story for me and a good grade for the strangely acting person. After school, I assume it's a bad trip or sorority prank, but my neighbor isn't exactly the sorority type.
I hand her my clothes and she removes her shoes, and tells me not to put them on (I don't generally feel a need to put on other people's dirty flip flops, and they looked about 2 sizes too small, so she was safe), and then proceeds out into the Pentacostal Revival Carport next to my apartmentthat is next door to my apartment barefoot. This carport is filled with trash and bricks and lots of tetnis bacteria or spores or whatever from tetnis takes, and I stand on my porch amused and she strips down (in clear view of the street) and puts on my shirt. She asks me to remove her bracelet, so I put on my own shoes and oblidge, and then she pulls her pants most of the way down (she's not wearing any undergarments at all, incidentally) before mumbling something about a black screw and how this means she doesn't need to put my jeans on afterall, hanging them from the Christmas lights wrapped around the carport. She then picks up all the small trash in the carport and puts it in a small blue bucket along with her shoes, and has taken on three different character situations for me and her. The first is that I am her and she is her dog, Nature. The second is that (as far as I could discern) we are two young women, talking about men, and she is really hateful and jaded towards men. The third is that she is a two-year-old, and I am (again, as far as I could discern) her older sister, and we are in the hospital waiting room and I am supposed to keep an eye on her. She finds a rubber chicken dog toy and shoves it in her back jean pocket.
There is a shaggy plant-covered area beside the carport behind the other building that makes up my apartment complex (if you can call two random old chopped up buildings a complex) and she walks around picking up anything "out of the ordinary." By this, she means the various beverage containers in the area. She asks me to help and tells me to set them on this old faded purple pillow that has been behind my apartment longer than I've lived here. In lieu of picking my neighbor up and setting her on the old purple pillow, I stand around for a moment getting chewed on by mosquitoes, before quietly suggesting we get out of the planty area so we don't get eaten alive and contract West Nile or anything. We head back towards our building, and she asks me for a glass of water. I oblidge, and offer it to her, but she freaks out and doesn't want it. She then heads to a square of bricks behind my apartment in between the neighbor's fence and our building, and sits down with her legs sticking straight out from her body. She says I can give her the water now, and I do.
"Okay, I have to sit here now until I pee in my pants," she announces. She then tells me I'm welcome to sit out with her if I would like. I figure I don't really have anything else to do, so I was going to get my drink and come back out with her. She asks if I have anything else to drink, but that she can only have Budweiser and gold tequila. I tell her I have cheap red wine, and she says she can have that, too. So I refil my glass and pour her one, and come back outside. She tells me I can sit on her lawn chair if I'd like, and I do. She rambles and I try and ramble back, but I am having a distinctly difficult time wrapping my red wined-head around the situation.
She drinks half the wine before dumping most of it on her lap. She then gets up, but still squatting, turns around, announces "Check this out!" and dumps the rest of the wine down her pants. "I'm a winey ass!" I laugh at the absurdity of the situation, and she says, "I got it, I know how to make women laugh." She then throws the wine glass against the fence where it shatters. Fortunately I break about a wine glass every two months, if not more often, so I don't keep expensive wine glasses around. I was just glad I didn't hand her a cofffee mug of wine instead. She then pitches the rubber chicken into the neighbor's back yard.
She tells me to be quiet for a moment and makes comical "I'm Peeing!" type faces. I tell her I'm meeting some friends and I really need to change clothes and get going, and I am being devoured by mosquitoes. She is, too, and her arm was livid red with scratching.
"What do I need to do?" she askes.
"I dunno."
"I need to find him."
"Okay. What for?"
"What do you mean, "for"? He doesn't understand "for"?"
I tell her to have a lovely evening, and head indoors. She continues to sit on the bricks.
As I leave, I look behind the apartment, and she is completely without pants with her leg hiked up, peeing on the neighbor's fence. This morning, the shoes in the bucket are still in the carport, and the jeans are sitting on the bricks.