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 4 ...the sun is the same in a relative way but you're older, shorter of
breath and one day closer to death.  -- Time
   The thought of just cashing it all in crossed my mind more than a few
times over the years, even more so after I lost the last job.  After some
negotiation, the manager of my apartment complex agreed to let me work as a
maintenance man for $200 a month and free rent.  The catch was that I
couldn't stay in my apartment; not as long as there were people willing to
pay to rent it.  I had to move into a little room at the back of the
clubhouse, behind the indoor pool.  It was really little bigger than a
walk-in closet, but there was room for a cot and a dresser, and there was a
bar to hang some of my clothes on.  When I moved into that room, I stashed
the rest of the stuff from my old apartment in one of the storage buildings
that dotted the complex; not that I ever really had that much stuff to
begin with.  For bathroom and shower facilities I had to make do with what
was available at the pool, and my kitchen was in the common area of the
clubhouse.  Not terribly private, but I was in no position to complain,
especially since I was being allowed to stay there for free.  I didn't know
much about furnaces and washers and dryers, but I knew how to read a
manual. I didn't do too badly.
   I found out much later that the manager was actually given a $1000
monthly allowance by the owner for maintenance.  I guess the idea was that
he could hire someone part-time to do it for that $1000, but he had trouble
keeping anybody for that salary, so a lot of the time he had to do the
maintenance himself, which he hated.  He just pocketed the $1000 and told
the owner he paid it as salary, and he never had to produce any further
proof of the fake employee.  When I came along, he saw a chance to keep
pocketing $800 a month and pay me $200 to do the job he despised.  I can't
really blame or hate him for it; after all, I would have been on the
streets otherwise.  I had already lost my car when I couldn't afford the
insurance and had to sell it anyway for the money; after that ran out, I
got three months behind on the rent.  I was rapidly coming up on month
number four with still no cash; so when I got the $200 salary and free
rent, the hard place suddenly became the semi-comfortable place, and I told
the rock to go hump itself.
   The clubhouse was centrally located in the complex and in addition to
the pool, it also had a billiard table (upstairs), a reception area, and a
little alcove with three ancient videogame consoles; Donkey Kong (good),
Ms. Pac-Man, (bad), and some racing game (ugly) whose name I forget.  When
you have the key to the consoles, you can rack up as many free games as you
want.  I never did break three grand on DK, my high score remains at
297,800.
   The complex also owned a beat-up white pickup that I used to get
supplies and run errands.  The manager grudgingly gave me five dollars a
week for gas to run the errands, and let me know that I was free to use the
truck any other time I wanted but that if I did, I had to buy my own gas. I
didn't use it for personal stuff very much, pretty much every dollar I got
went toward groceries and sundries like shampoo, contact lenses and
solution, et cetera.  As I was rooting around in one of the storage
buildings, I found a stash of stuff that had been left by previous tenants.
Most of it was junk, but there was a 10-speed bike that I claimed.  It had
been pretty badly beaten up, but I spent a lot of time cleaning it and
straightening it out, and I used that if I wanted to go anywhere.
   My responsibilities also included the swimming pool filters and pumps.
There wasn't really anybody to do the other maintenance, like making sure
the pool was kept clean and keeping the area in shape, stocking the supply
of towels that the complex kept on hand for tenants to use, so all that
kind of fell on me too.  That wasn't too bad, either, because it kept me
busy, and I had a legitimate excuse to hang around the pool all day while I
watched the women who came to swim.  Angela Anderson, with her flowing
blonde mane and 36-24-36 perfection.  Sandra Ochs, with her charming,
crooked smile and frizzy hair.  Sally Riddick, with her enormous lovely
breasts that rippled and bounced so wonderfully whenever she jumped off the
diving board.  Annette Ross, with her oversized buttocks (easily twice as
large as the next woman), under whose enormous cheeks I would have happily
suffocated.  Julie Ann (never did learn her last name), whose legs really
did seem to go right up to her neck.  Others whose names escape me, but
whose various roundnesses live on in my memory.  I'd go around slowly
picking up wet towels and taking them back to the laundry room, where I'd
load the machines while fantasizing about whoever I'd just seen.  It had
been too many years, and I had never had the ability or looks to hit on any
of them, or the confidence to do anything about it even if I had.  I didn't
want to hit on anybody anyway, I just wanted a friend, a steady
relationship, somebody to just be with, to go places with, to eat with, to
talk to, to snuggle with and have sex with, like I'd had with Lilly, and I
didn't know how to get a relationship like that going out of a clear blue
sky.  So mostly I just hunched down there by the driers, breathing in the
moist atmosphere and stroking my lonely member.  Pathetic.
   As time went by, I resorted to pleasuring myself with the occasional
stroke book.  Nothing really raunchy, mostly just photos of couples doing
the deed, soft core for the most part, but nothing left to the imagination.
Sometimes I thought I was making it worse by torturing myself with what I
could never have, but I couldn't help it.  The need was too great, the
longing too intense.  I always held it in check, though; I never had more
than one magazine at a time, and I never left it laying out, but always
tucked it away in a dresser drawer in my room, to remind myself that there
was something shameful about using porn, and that I should never lose that
sense of shame.
   Anybody that's known loneliness, real soul-crushing ravenous loneliness,
knows what nighttime is like.  They know what it is when the darkness
closes in and chokes you and devours you with agonizing slowness.  They
know that loneliness shares a basic identity at the subatomic level with
cancer.  Sometimes it drives you out into the night looking for anything to
escape the pain.  The clubhouse was pretty slow most nights, and I was
tired of being trapped there anyway.  Bars are noisy and expensive, and the
only mall nearby closed at 9:00 pm.  There was a video game arcade about
three miles from the complex, and more than a few nights I made the hike,
or biked over, just to hang out and watch people be with each other, laugh
with each other, hug each other, kiss each other, trying desperately to
feed myself with whatever little crumbs and flakes I could pry from their
happinesses.  Walking or riding home, I watched people driving around, the
cars crawling past all stuffed with eyes, and when I would finally make it
back at 3:00 am, back to my lonely little clubhouse, I'd fix a Long Island
Iced Tea from a bottle of mix and a root beer from the vending machine; and
all too often this method was my only means of getting to sleep.  When that
didn't work, I'd occasionally wander around the complex, looking at the mix
of dark and lighted windows, wondering what was going on behind those
panes; sometimes hanging out in the stairwells of the buildings, just for
the scraps of conversation I could hear seeping through the walls.  What a
repulsive sight I must have presented, standing there in the hall, ear
pressed up to the cold, unyielding wallboard as I tried to tease the least
little sense out of the words.  It was a miserable existence, with nothing
to look forward to but more of the same.  I was so ready to end it all, yet
too afraid of botching the job and winding up a vegetable or a cripple,
unable to finish what I'd started; or even worse, succeeding and then
finding out that I was wrong, that there really is an actual Hell; although
how Hell could have been worse than my life, I couldn't imagine.  
  
rj_chapter04