Mexican Katie, the hanging chair, the coffee couch, and Grosse Pointe Blank
During college, my friend Shaun worked as an equipment manager for the football team. This wasn’t even the most notable thing about Shaun -- he wore his shirts inside-out because the seams made him itchy, he ran the heat during the spring to keep his apartment above 80 degrees, he didn’t learn to properly swear until he started working for the Bucs -- but it was how we identified him among the eight Shaun/Shawn/Seans we knew in college.
Shaun had two fish that he loved more than a man should probably love a creature with scales and gills -- nothing creepy or anything, just a slightly fanatical devotion (after they died, he buried them together in the south end zone at the Swamp). When he left town for away games, he charged Mexican Katie with the responsibility of feeding the fish, which she absolutely loved. At the time, Mexican Katie and Katy lived in the Phi Mu house, and I lived across town with a fat shut-in, a slut, and the slut’s ex-con boyfriend; we loved Shaun’s apartment specifically because it wasn’t where we lived, so we spent a lot of time there, both with him and without him.
One away game weekend, we stopped in to feed Scotty 2 Hottie (Funkmaster Flex was already dead at this point) and maybe watch a movie; we’d stopped at Starbucks on the way, and I’d gotten a mocha-something-or-other because this was before I learned to order real coffee. We fed the fish, rummaged through Shaun’s DVD collection, came up with Grosse Pointe Blank (which Katy and I had never seen), and settled in with our coffee-like drinks to watch the movie -- Katy and me on the white couch, Mexican Katie in this rattan chair that hung from the ceiling by a chain.
Maybe ten minutes into the movie, Katy and I heard a weird clang, and we turned to see Katie and the chair in a free-fall, the chain whipping about like a snake. Mexican Katie instinctively covered her head with her arms, Katy shrieked, and I dumped my entire coffee-like drink onto the couch cushion.
When the dust settled, we gazed up at the gaping hole in the ceiling, then down at the chair. It wasn't in bad shape -- a bit scraped from the chain slamming against it, but somewhat less damaged than Mexican Katie's arms. The more pressing concern was that instead of being suspended from the ceiling, it was sitting on the floor.
We found Shaun’s toolbox and ladder, drilled a new hole in the ceiling, and hung the chair again, hoping he wouldn’t look up and notice the gaping hole in the ceiling until he moved out. Then we turned our attention to the couch cushion, which had been stewing in coffee-like liquid for almost thirty minutes and was now approximately the color of tea.
As it turns out, tackling major home repairs before minor cleaning is a bad idea, and even after we ripped the cover off the cushion and doused it in bleach, the stain refused to disappear. So we stuck the cover into the dryer (because if you can’t remove a stain, you might as well set it for all eternity), put it back on the cushion, and turned it upside-down. Then we flipped all the other cushions, just to be safe.
The movie played through all of this chaos, but we never actually watched it.
That Sunday, Mexican Katie and I went out to dinner with Shaun, and midway through the meal, apropos of nothing, he said, “You know what’s a great movie? Grosse Pointe Blank. You guys wanna come over and watch it tonight?”
Mexican Katie looked at me. I looked at my plate. One of us said yes first -- I swear it was her, she swears it was me -- but I don’t think either one of us could have come up with a reasonable excuse. So we ended up in Shaun’s apartment, sitting on the stained-and-flipped couch while he sat in the hanging chair, watching this movie that I knew was supposed to be funny -- but for an hour and a half, I just gripped the arm of the couch in white-knuckled terror and prayed that Shaun’s chair wouldn’t fall out of the ceiling again.
(It didn’t. And thanks to a drive-by spackling during the next away game, he never found the gaping hole in his ceiling. In fact, he never knew any of this had happened until about a year ago, when he finally got rid of the hanging chair and Mexican Katie couldn’t disguise her relief.)
Mexican Katie gave me a copy of Grosse Pointe Blank for Christmas that year.
Shaun had two fish that he loved more than a man should probably love a creature with scales and gills -- nothing creepy or anything, just a slightly fanatical devotion (after they died, he buried them together in the south end zone at the Swamp). When he left town for away games, he charged Mexican Katie with the responsibility of feeding the fish, which she absolutely loved. At the time, Mexican Katie and Katy lived in the Phi Mu house, and I lived across town with a fat shut-in, a slut, and the slut’s ex-con boyfriend; we loved Shaun’s apartment specifically because it wasn’t where we lived, so we spent a lot of time there, both with him and without him.
One away game weekend, we stopped in to feed Scotty 2 Hottie (Funkmaster Flex was already dead at this point) and maybe watch a movie; we’d stopped at Starbucks on the way, and I’d gotten a mocha-something-or-other because this was before I learned to order real coffee. We fed the fish, rummaged through Shaun’s DVD collection, came up with Grosse Pointe Blank (which Katy and I had never seen), and settled in with our coffee-like drinks to watch the movie -- Katy and me on the white couch, Mexican Katie in this rattan chair that hung from the ceiling by a chain.
Maybe ten minutes into the movie, Katy and I heard a weird clang, and we turned to see Katie and the chair in a free-fall, the chain whipping about like a snake. Mexican Katie instinctively covered her head with her arms, Katy shrieked, and I dumped my entire coffee-like drink onto the couch cushion.
When the dust settled, we gazed up at the gaping hole in the ceiling, then down at the chair. It wasn't in bad shape -- a bit scraped from the chain slamming against it, but somewhat less damaged than Mexican Katie's arms. The more pressing concern was that instead of being suspended from the ceiling, it was sitting on the floor.
We found Shaun’s toolbox and ladder, drilled a new hole in the ceiling, and hung the chair again, hoping he wouldn’t look up and notice the gaping hole in the ceiling until he moved out. Then we turned our attention to the couch cushion, which had been stewing in coffee-like liquid for almost thirty minutes and was now approximately the color of tea.
As it turns out, tackling major home repairs before minor cleaning is a bad idea, and even after we ripped the cover off the cushion and doused it in bleach, the stain refused to disappear. So we stuck the cover into the dryer (because if you can’t remove a stain, you might as well set it for all eternity), put it back on the cushion, and turned it upside-down. Then we flipped all the other cushions, just to be safe.
The movie played through all of this chaos, but we never actually watched it.
That Sunday, Mexican Katie and I went out to dinner with Shaun, and midway through the meal, apropos of nothing, he said, “You know what’s a great movie? Grosse Pointe Blank. You guys wanna come over and watch it tonight?”
Mexican Katie looked at me. I looked at my plate. One of us said yes first -- I swear it was her, she swears it was me -- but I don’t think either one of us could have come up with a reasonable excuse. So we ended up in Shaun’s apartment, sitting on the stained-and-flipped couch while he sat in the hanging chair, watching this movie that I knew was supposed to be funny -- but for an hour and a half, I just gripped the arm of the couch in white-knuckled terror and prayed that Shaun’s chair wouldn’t fall out of the ceiling again.
(It didn’t. And thanks to a drive-by spackling during the next away game, he never found the gaping hole in his ceiling. In fact, he never knew any of this had happened until about a year ago, when he finally got rid of the hanging chair and Mexican Katie couldn’t disguise her relief.)
Mexican Katie gave me a copy of Grosse Pointe Blank for Christmas that year.