Troped

Oh, I could die right now, he thinks as he watches the last 33 seconds of Phantogram’s “Futuristic Casket” count down on his iTunes. His lair feels like a futuristic casket; with his Britney Spears literacy poster and his gloss pens to draw on it and make her in to catwoman. With the cavernous clouds overhead, casting his windows in a pale light of grey, this could be a perfect time to go in to the nothingness. He’s got quests, yes, but it does no harm to dwell on the nothingness of the moment.

After paying off some debts (in the sum of 1600 gold pieces) tonight (for credit cards) and realizing again that I had some freedom from the brokers and guilds, I started looking around this amazing apartment of mine. It’s no wonder I call it a lair. Batman’s got his darkness and trophies, and so do I! I have trophies that show that I’ve helped designed and make toys, that I ride a bike, that I stole a highway sign once, that I (apparently) like to take apart and collect pieces of electronics, that I have a healthy appreciation of art and books, that I will sleep in my living room¹, that I love the majesty of the inanimate becoming animate (nicely framed wind-up toys). I’ve even framed and hung classic literary works that I’ve read and admire. (One of them I haven’t actually read—Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle”—I swapped it out for one that I’m reading now. I’ll get to all of them; although I do sometimes feel that the amount I’m supposed to read is a flurry of pages around my head. But, I’m getting better these days, and I WILL get to them. There is much time.

Back to the lair! You see how that sounds? It makes it easy for me to stay late at work until I’m tired and stressed because there is such release in knowing that as soon as you finish this one daunting task, it’s BACK TO THE LAIR!!!

At any rate, it took some kind of Karma of the day to just get me to lie down on the bed early in the day (instead of being the usual night owl) and just take a survey of my surroundings. Most everything here is something I did or created. When you really step back to look at it, it’s a museum. But MUSEUM sounds so boring. I much prefer lair. Several times this evening while drawing, i jumped up to get a pencil of a particular weight or an eraser, or more paper, and I had to search for none of those things. They were right there, just like the weapons of an art ninja. Nah, ninja’s are passé. Besides, my Epic Win character is Thorin the Thoughtful, Swarthy Dwarven Toiler. And I think I had a moment (several) of weakness this week. But lo, I am only fourth level, and there is very, very far to go!

It is useful to have a lair when one seeks adventure.

SCUBA is an acronym as opposed to an intialism. You can pronounce it, and that, apparently, makes all the difference. The first time Gene passed his SCUBA class, the hardest part was when the instructor took him down to the bottom of the fourteen foot deep diving area and then he had to slowly let our air until he reaches the surface. Slowly let the air out. Much deeper and much faster and you get the bends. Gene’s not exactly sure what that is, but he doesn’t want it. The ascent at the bottom of the pool starts “normally” enough. With breathing apparatus, Gene is at the bottom of the pool—breathing, no less. Then the blue shadow of the instructor reaches out for the mouth piece. At this point, Gene takes a big deep breath off of the tank and hands it all over to the instructor. Looking up, Gene can see the fluorescent lights from the top of the University’s pool facility; shimmering. The very idea of taking a breath rests just above him. It’s clear in patches, a space between the water and the ceiling where there is nothing but air. He launches himself from the floor of the pool, beginning to count down from 10. With each number arises a desire to get the countdown over with and arise from the surface, but the instructor is counting too, and so this must be timed accurately. Slowly, he rises close to the air, holding what he has in his lungs until just the number two comes up and he knows he is one second away from gulping air. The sound of coming up has a reverb bounced from the rails and beams and wavy steel of the Natatorium. He takes a breath. Done. Ten seconds from 14 feet down. Now he can SCUBA.

He pulls away. “It’s just that you’re too cool to sleep with.”

“Huh?” In the back corner of a booth in the back of a nicely lit, red dive bar, she was just about to put her lips to him. Then he says that.

“Oh god. Not this shit,” she sighs.

“What?”

“I’m not you’re bestest girlfriend just because we’ve hung out this much. Ok?”

“What!? You tried to kiss me!”

“Yeah, like, slutty. Stop trying to make us a ‘thing’.”

“Ok?”

“What?”

“I thought I was giving you a compliment…”

“Don’t, Gene…”

“You rocked my world tonight! Everything I said was different from what you had to say. But we didn’t pause on stupid contradictions. We just went from one subject to the next and there was no problem!” Gene pauses to smile—grinny— and through the froth on his beard he says, “We disagree on a lotta’ shit, but we still get along.”

“Well—yeah. We get along.” The one side of her cheek puckers when she’s being smug.

“You can’t do that. You can’t just expect me to be fine with living with a stranger just because you all can’t keep track of a simple list. That’s all it is, a list. People, rooms. Why is that hard?” He was rapidly losing his civility, but was still more determined not to give in.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Copeland, but it was a computer error. There were two room listings for 400 when they’re should’ve been only one.”

“You can’t blame the computer, it’s a dumb machine. Someone in your department created two listings or entered the number twice. The computer didn’t decide to get it wrong. And that’s your department’s problem. And since you’re speaking with me, that makes it your problem. And if you can’t do anything about it, then you need to put me in touch with someone who can.”

And now, modern reader, can you guess what happened next? Yes! The geometric modern trajectory of phone calls, forms and hierarchies pulled Gene Copeland ever onward from office to office, building to building, hold song (“Dancing in the Moonlight,” King Harvest, 1973) to hold song (“Belero” Maurice Ravel, 1928) until he landed at last, in front of an old factory building. He’d won, yes, because he would not have a roommate in this place, but then, had he really won? The site of the industrial-era leviathan caused him to hear the faint shoomp sounds of pneumatic tubes and wonder to himself if we were really any better off.

Gene shrugs. Fair enough.