Neurosis

When we first moved to LA, Jade and I lived in a converted garage stall. Some would call it an efficiency apartment. The "some" in question probably never lived in an efficiency apartment. If they had, they would be able to tell you that being able to reach a bologna sandwich from your fridge and take a piss in the bathroom, both without getting up from the comfort of your couch is not really "efficient".

Today our place is a little bigger but maintains many of the features our first apartment possessed. Our living room is our dining room is our kitchen. The house is set up in such a way that sort of lacks, what modern people would refer to as "walls". So, if we want to flip on the AC, we are forced to cool down the entirety of the house rather than trying to section it off. The Air Conditioning. The Actual Comfort. Equally, our bank accounts are set up in such a way that if we DO decide to flip the switch, our money suddenly disappears.

So we sweat.

We sit on our couch in our underwear, the door hanging open, the fans on, circulating the horrible heat, blowing it in our faces. What little clothes we are wearing stick to our skin. The sweat dries and you can feel it like sand arms, chest, back. Showering is futile. The sun must go away.

And, at night, it does.

And then, because LA is a desert community, it gets cold. At night I freeze. At night I pray for the sun. I wish for heat. Where are our blankets? Why has Jade taken them off the bed?

A sheet. That's what I'm given to survive the summer nights. I wake up and am frigid and naked. I tug on the sheet. Clementine, our cocker spaniel with the inverted crossed eyes (that means her eyes point OUT instead of center, like some jungle toad), half-wit tongue dangling from her mouth, pokes her head up and glares at me accusingly, her tongue shining pink in the moonlight and seeming to say something along the lines of, "I was dreaming I had a pony named Patches and you woke me up". I say her name. I don't know why. She continues to stare at me before standing up and marching over onto my chest. She pins me down with her fuzzy paws and tilts her head towards mine, staring into my eyes (sort of - inverted, remember) and then just stares. I wonder if that pink nub is going to slip out past her lips any further and accidentally touch me. I blow in her face and she rolls over on her back between Jade and I. She uses my pillow as a pillow. This is how I will undoubtedly receive her ear infection.

I pull on the blankets again but Jade has wrapped herself up in them, mummifying her body. I pull again and she grunts, "what?". I tell her to get up. I tell her I need the sheet. I tell her I'm freezing. I ask her where the blankets are. She says that the medicine is up underneath of her. She tells me the squirrels are tampering with our mail. I give the blanket a final tug and an 1/8 of it slides free, just enough for me to cover my freezing genitals. I use my extra pillow (we each have 2. Jade loves pillows) to cover my chest.

I go to sleep fantasizing about drinking hot cocoa in front of a fireplace with a sweater on in Hell.

I dream about a bomb. It explodes and kills mostly everyone on Earth. The survivors are infected with radiation. We all begin to decompose while surviving off of canned corn. In our free time we play the Nintendo Wii.

I wake up in the morning. THE SUN! It's too hot. I realize I'm completely covered by something that is inherently trying to wrap itself around my feet, trying to mold itself to my body. The bed is scratching me. Something heavy(ish) is on me. My brain is fried from sleep but I try to take in what's happening.

Jade. "What're you doing under there?"

I sit up. Somehow, during the night, in between the radiation and Wii Sports, I'd managed to pull back the fitted sheet, pull back the egg carton mattress thing (which all girls own) and had crawled under them both, deciding to take up nocturnal residence directly on the mattress. I fight my way out of the fitted sheet. Clementine stares at me, her eyes blank slates. Is anything happening in there? I don't know. She farts and starts barking.

It's a Monday, I think. I throw on the clothes I wore yesterday, my socks stiff, my shirt not so gross anymore after airing out all night. I try the underwear, give them a courtesy sniff. No. The dick sweat and dried urine smell is too much. I decide to roll commando. This too proves to be a bad idea as hot days, denim and bare butt cheek skin does not mesh well. It's basically the chemical compound of wool.

I throw on a flannel over a t-shirt I purchased that has a guitar and a gas pump drawn on it. I don't understand what it means or if it means anything. It was eight bucks, it fits perfectly and it has that nice "used cotton" feel that I like so much.
On my way to work I'm listening to the High School Musical 3 soundtrack not because I'm working on a High School Musical piece at Disney, but just because the songs are too catchy to ignore. When Jade found out what I had been listening to, she used the words, "nerd" and "fag" to describe my tastes. Track 1, "Now or Never" is about Troy Bolton's (Zac Effron) chance to make history in one of his final basketball games of his high school career. It feels like a tween version of a Michael Jackson song. Track 2, "I Want it All" is about Ashley Tisdale's dream of becoming a superstar and having an agent and a publicist. It has a definitive "Disney" feel, but is easily overlooked by it's overall epic musical arc. The final track on the CD, track 12, "High School Musical" is my favorite. "I want the rest of my life to be just like a High Schooooooool Muuuuuuuussiiiiiiiiiccclllllllllllle!"

Truer words were never spoken.

I crank down my windows and blast the AC (I can afford it in my car). I know this is sort of a wasteful thing to do but I LIKE the wind in my face, like a dog, and I LIKE the cool air mixing with it and keeping me fresh and clean in my dirty clothes. A red light. I slowly pull up to the car in front of me while examining the car I'll be sitting next to. The rules are as follows:

If the person is 60+, I can ignore the situation, we are in the safe zone. If the person is anywhere below that, male / female and attractive and their windows are rolled down, I lower the volume of the music until it is nearly inaudible so that I don't humiliate myself. I will admit that there is something strangely.......what's the word I'm looking for......"pedophile"......about a grown man trapped in a boy's body listening to a soundtrack for children (but mainly girls). If the person is below 60 and pretty ugly I just keep blasting. Why? Because everyone knows that ugly people's opinions don't matter.

I get to work and park next to the Jonas Brothers themed van. I stare at it and wonder if I've been judging them too harshly.....maybe I should buy an album. 100,000 screaming fans can't be wrong. Walking through the parking garage I try to decide where to put my wallet, cell phone and the huge chunk of metal that is every key I own. I start distributing things to my pockets, trying to figure out which fits where, which piece makes it look like I have a big boner (or worse, a little boner), which piece in what pocket makes people think I've got butt tumors. I try several different combinations until I finally decide to just carry everything in my hands. I leave my sunglasses on even though I'm inside because I think they make me look cool.

I'm wearing new slip on shoes that a friend gave me because he felt sorry for me. He told me that he's known me for two years and he's only ever seen me wearing one pair of Nike's that used to be cool but now where the worn color of piss and were falling apart at the seams. He gives me some shoes he just bought that resemble a "fresh" version of penny loafers. My pants stink, my underwear is gone and my shirt has a gas pump drawn on it. I notice that other adults around me are wearing button-ups, ties and slacks and they have their sunglasses on too. I decide to button up my flannel to appear more professional. I stick my things in my pockets and even though it looks like my lower torso has developed budding breasts, it's okay because no one is looking. I begin buttoning up my shirt and find that my buttons have gone all willy-nilly. The holes and buttons seem to all be in the wrong places and my trained fingers are struggling to figure it out. I look down and see the back of my breast pocket. I look at my shoulder and see some stitching. I'm wearing my shirt inside-out. I quickly pull it off and look around. It's clear. I put it back on and roll my sleeves like Kevin from the Jonas Brothers picture on the van.

I enter the lobby and a few people glance my way, probably just because they saw something moving out of the corner of their eye. I look down at my crotch out of habit. I am certain that some day I'm going to enter a busy building with my dong hanging out of my zipper. It is a real fear and I don't know if there's a name for it.

My zipper is up. I walk to the front desk where the receptionist, an older black woman, calls me "sweety" and asks to see my ID. She asks if Brookbank is my first or last name (for the second day since I've started) before giving me my "badge" (really just a sticker with my name on it that I'm forced to wear around all day). I get in the elevator and ride it up to the sixth floor with other people wearing sunglasses, none of them wearing flannels, all of them texting on iPhones and drinking coffees.

Today we need to layoff a tape and I don't really know how to do that but it's considered extremely unprofessional to get hired for a job and then explain that you're not really sure about certain aspects of it so, while my producer is out of the room I open up the Final Cut Pro user manual and begin frantically flipping through the pages. She comes back in and I smile, "are we ready for layoff?". She nods. "Great".

After work I drive from Burbank over to Wilshire Blvd for my weekly creative arts meeting at The Oasis (the church that we attend). Again, my window is down and my (factory) stereo is up and HSM3 (you know what I mean) soundtrack is blasting and I'm singing and sort of playing air drums on my steering wheel and shifting lanes and then this guy is honking at me and we're both swerving all over the freeway and he's shouting and I'm singing, "W-I-L-D, WILDCATS! C'mon! C'mon!" I suddenly feel really stupid and turn the radio down, embarrassed. I should have seen him but, what can you say? They're called blindspots for a reason.

I have to poop throughout the entire two hour meeting but feel like it would be rude to get up and leave. Plus, everyone would probably think I was going to poop when I asked if I could borrow a newspaper for a bit and then didn't return for fifteen to twenty.

After the meeting, on my way back to my car, it's dark out. The parking lot has a few lights, but not nearly enough. I pull my keys / lumpy hip tumor from my pocket and fumble around in the dark. I stick them in the keyhole and twist but it's jammed. My hands are full - I'm carrying a hard drive and some cables and am getting a little frustrated. I try talking to the key and reasoning with it. I twist some more. I take it out and put it back in. Nothing. I look at the key. Is it the right key? Yes. I look at the car. Is it the right car? It's gray. It LOOKS like my car. I peer in the windows.

About a year ago I got into a car accident. I slammed into the back of this woman's automobile at about 35mph. My windshield shattered, the hood of my car accordioned and my air bags exploded, leaving my steering wheel with two air bag exit flaps dangling like flat, plastic testicles from my horn region. The car that I was peering into like some homeless thief had a steering wheel that was intact. The passenger side floor was not covered in Diet Coke and La Croix sparkling water cans. There were no Taco Bell bags.

This was the wrong Chevy Cavalier.

As is my M.O. I quickly glance around to see if anyone has seen my folly. The parking lot is still pretty empty. I run down the aisle, searching for my car. I find it, crawl inside and flip the heat onto a nice toasty low setting before driving home. When I pull into my driveway I sit there for a moment, trying to absorb as much heat as I can before heading into the frigid house.

I think about the sun.