Condo Conversion, Chapter 3

3

The day after I settled into my new place, I was invited to dinner by another old friend, James.  I have known him since I was about ten years old.  Most of my best friends go back that far. 

            James had married Jenny, his high school sweetheart.  There weren’t many couples from way back then that had made it this far; I was happy to see them happy.  They made a handsome couple.  James was an all-American looking guy, six feet tall, symmetrical features and a full head of dark brown hair.  Jenny was only a little shorter than him, long curly brown hair, porcelain skin and a slender, lithe figure.  Although she had given birth to their first child, Chloe, only half a year earlier, she had immediately regained her figure.  James was lucky. 

            It used to make me uncomfortable, being the unattached guy going over to dinner at the married couple’s house, especially without a date.  Sometimes I felt like I was missing out, and that secretly they pitied me.  But I had recently gotten over my insecurities.  I was happy with who I was becoming for the second time in my life, the first being my wild adolescence. 

            Jenny held Chloe in her arms and then handed her to James while she stirred the pasta sauce.  I love pasta.  Then he carried her around for a while rocking her back and forth in his arms.  I played with her a little, too: lightly pinching her soft rosy cheeks.  She smiled at me.  Most babies like me, and animals, too. 

            James put her down for a moment and she scurried around the house on all fours.  We were drinking beer, following her around, making sure she wasn’t getting into too much trouble. 

            “You’ve got a cute kid,” I observed.

            “She’s a handful,” he responded.  There was an uncomfortable silence.  I could tell he was deep in thought.  “I gotta ask you something, Pete.”

            “Go ahead.”

            “I want your honest opinion.  Don’t pull any punches.”

            “All right.”

            “I feel like I’ve become boring, one dimensional.  I love Chloe, more than I can tell you.  But ever since she was born, it’s as if a part of me shut down.  All I talk about is the kid now.  Remember those long talks we used to have when we were young, drinking until all hours of the night?”

            “Those were good talks.”

            “They sure were.  We solved the world’s problems back then.  I never have conversations like that anymore.  It’s just eat, shit, work, feed the baby, clean up the baby’s shit.  I feel like time is speeding up, as if I’m hurtling toward nonexistence.”

            I understood where he was coming from.  Often I’ve observed the very phenomenon he was describing manifest itself in the lives of other comrades.  What is it about having a child that robs some men of their creativity and vitality?  Was it always this way?  Or is it a more recent development in contemporary life, the result of increased demands?  Not all fathers turned out like this.  But many of them did. 

            “That’s nonsense,” I told him. “Your existence is more relevant now than it has ever been.  You have the privilege of being responsible for another life.  What could be more important than that?”

            “You’re right,” he responded, pleased.  “Thanks.”  He patted me on the back and took a long drink off his beer.

            And I wasn’t placating him.  I had meant what I said.  It’s strange how two competing ideas can be equally true in the same instance.  One of life’s tradeoffs.

            Dinner was great: green salad with vinaigrette, walnuts and bleu cheese, penne in a thick meat sauce and good red table wine.  We were all sitting around the living room finishing off the second bottle, my elastic stomach bulging with fullness.  Chloe began crying from her crib in the bedroom and both parents excused themselves for a moment.

            “Take your time,” I said, semi-comatose.

            There were a number of magazines resting on the coffee table.  I picked one up; it was the spring circular for “Terracotta Shed, Bed + Bath.”  I began flipping through it.  Inside, there was the bathroom collection: the “classic console,” “accessories,” “monogrammed towels,” and “fixtures and sconces.”  It looked like nice stuff, very expensive.  “Obtain the bathroom of your dreams,” the magazine exhorted.  In the back was a price guide to all the products, complete with serial numbers to help the buyer place orders.  This guide was several pages long.  Here and there an item was circled: the “double console,” the “linen closet” the “mini vanity” and the “full length mirror.”  Also completed was an order for towels, monogrammed of course.  There was a neat little section where the buyer wrote out the appropriate letters and then chose from a variety of fonts.  It was Jenny’s handwriting.

            I soon left.  The baby was screaming.  It was good timing for all.  I promised to return soon.  Nice people.

            I went home to my tiny new apartment and looked around: tattered reading chair, 1980’s era love seat and cheap overstuffed bookshelves.  A true bachelor’s home, it declared “NO WOMAN HERE!”  I went to the bathroom to take a leak.  Afterwards I washed my hands and splashed my face, ruddy from wine, with cold water.  I tried to imagine the items from the bathroom collection in my inadequate space.  Nope, it just wouldn’t work.  I was glad.  I liked my apartment the way it was.  Inadequate: it reflected the way I felt about myself and about the world I lived in.  I threw a porno entitled “Dirty Sluts Young and Tight” in the old-school VCR and turned up the volume.  Good thing those seniors don’t hear too well. 

My Kind of Seminar

           This makes me think I’ve been missing out on something all these years.

Condo Conversion, Chapter 2

2

            I had just moved out of the city.  San Francisco is truly beautiful, but after ten years I just couldn’t take it anymore. 

            I was essentially unemployed had been living with my parents for three weeks.  Imagine that: thirty-two years old and living with my parents.  I was looking for a permanent residence.  My Mom took me to a few she found in the local paper.  Cute places, nice bungalows in Sonoma County with neat little yards in the front.  She didn’t know what I wanted.  She wanted me to get married.  I wanted to get laid. 

            I wasn’t going to pay those prices.  Twelve hundred dollars a month for a one bedroom: that was ridiculous.  I’d be back in some job I hated in no time.  But that’s the idea, her hidden, subconscious agenda.  If I committed to an expensive place I’d have to get a real job.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m a mamma’s boy at heart.  I love her dearly and would gladly sacrifice my life for hers if given the choice.  But she sees things a certain way.  She tells me to “get a life.” 

            “I have a life,” I respond.  “Anybody who is alive has a life.”

            “You call that a life?”

            “Yes.”

            “That’s not a life.”

            “What is?”

            “A good job, a home, a wife and a family.”

            The thought of it made me nauseous.  Not necessarily the idea of having a family, mind you; but the idea of having the kind of family she would envision for me.  She is a very traditional woman.  I am not a traditional guy. 

            But I had to go somewhere.  I couldn’t live at my parents home for much longer.  There’s nothing wrong with living with your parents.  I don’t quarrel with the notion.  The Europeans and South Americans have been doing it for generations.  But I like to live a certain way and my Mom likes to see me living a certain way.  So our purposes collide.  And like I said, I’m a mammas boy.  I don’t want to make her sad, which my constant presence in her life and the reminders it brings sometimes does.  My Dad cares, but is too pragmatic and wise to get in the middle of things.  Good for him.

            I play poker at one of the local clubs about twice a week.  Usually, I coordinate my visits with Mike Williston and The Admiral.  Mike is my oldest and one of my closest friends.  He’s also thirty-two, tall, strong, unmarried, and has lived with his parents in Marin County since he got out of college.  The Admiral is a seventy-five year old millionaire who made his money with a famous chain of seafood restaurants “Admiral Jim’s Seafood Bonanza;” hence the nickname.  Later on, toward the end of the eighties, he got out of the restaurant business and bought up a bunch of apartment complexes.  It was very good timing.  I spend a lot of time with The Admiral and Mike.

            On this particular day, I was up about two hundred bucks and in a good mood.  Mike, the best player of the three of us, was about even and The Admiral was pushing the whole table around as he has the capacity to do from time to time.   He was up about a thousand.  We were playing no limit Texas Hold-Em, two hundred dollar buy-in.  It’s a good game.  There are a lot of losers at the table, guys for whom the money only goes one way. 

            Mike was not catching cards and was getting bored with folding every hand.  When this happens, he tends to get a little goofy to entertain himself. 

            “You know, Peter lives with his parents,” he said to the lone female sitting across the table, a pretty, petite Asian in her early thirties.

            “I do not,” I responded.  “I’m just staying with them for a while.  You live with your parents.”

            “Dude, don’t be embarrassed by it.  Take it from me, you have to embrace your living situation if you’re gonna make it last.  It’s no big deal.”

            “I never said it was a big deal.  But I don’t live with them.  I’ve been there three weeks and was looking for places online today.”

            “I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Castellano are thrilled to have their baby boy back.”

            “You know that isn’t true.”

            “When I was younger,” The Admiral chimed in, “I used to be surrounded by beautiful women.  Now I’m surrounded by strange young men.”  He loved to talk about his sexual conquests of the old days. 

            Mike changed topics and began regaling the table with an awkward but hilarious personal story of a recent trip of his to the strip clubs.  We played for about another hour, during which I lost everything I was up while Mike went on a three hundred dollar winning streak.  The Admiral was getting tired: he had been playing for ten hours.  It was pretty amazing, really, a guy his age pulling those hours at the table.  We got up as a group and left.

            We walked out to the parking lot together.  The Admiral only lived a few minutes from Mike’s house, so they usually drove in to play together.  He pulled me aside.

            “You’re looking for a place to live?”

            “Yeah.”  I was glad he asked, hoping maybe he had something cheap for me.

            “I’ll tell you what, I’ve got a great apartment available in Rohnert Park, and I’ll rent it to you for only five hundred dollars a month.”

            “Is it a one bedroom?  I can’t live in studios anymore.  Too little space.”

            “Yes, it’s a nice, small one bedroom.  Perfect for you.  There’s only one catch.  It’s in a fifty-five and older community.  But once it’s been vacant for thirty days, which it has, anybody can move in there.”

            It only took me a moment to think about it.  “I’ll take it: sight unseen.”  Beggars can’t be choosers.  What the hell did I care how old the neighbors would be?  At least they would be quiet and unthreatening. 

            “Oh, there’s another catch.  I guess that makes two catches.  The complex might be sold in a few months.  Then you’d have to move out.  But if that happens, I’ve got another complex I can move you into right away.”

            There could have been ten caveats, a five hundred dollar a month apartment in Sonoma County was a good arrangement by anybody’s standards.  I didn’t feel like looking for a job and needed to score a bargain.  The Admiral had just presented exactly the opportunity I was looking for.  “It’s a deal,” I told him.  “When can I move in?”

He was thrilled.  He picked up the phone and called his management team.  “I just rented out number 127, have it ready for a move-in sometime tomorrow,” he said, then hanging up.  “See that Mike, I won a thousand and closed a transaction.  I’ve still got it.”  He was thrilled.  It didn’t matter how much money The Admiral had; he simply loved making deals.  It reminded him that he was still on top.

Opportunity Lost

          On Wednesday, July 1, near Marathon, Florida 29 bricks of cocaine with a total weight of 35 kilograms and worth approximately 1 million dollars, simply washed up on the shore. This is not the first time something like this has happened in the world. The town of Bluefields, Nicaragua was enriched beyond all imagination by repeated discoveries of such packages, castoffs from Columbian speedboats fleeing law enforcement. Well informed fisherman of the remote town set aside their cumbersome nets and began fishing for what they called "white lobsters."

          What would you do with all that blow? I can only imagine the myriad possibilities and the opportunities that such a find would present. Certainly, death by heart attack is a possible scenario at the end of such a rainbow. But I'd like to think that a small fortune would also possibly come my way, if I handled things just right. 

          But obviously whomever discovered this once in a lifetime windfall has little in common with me. Because they called the police, who brought in the U.S. Border Control. 

          Sigh. I mean, really? Some people have no imagination. 

A Quote From Stonewall Jackson

"I am more afraid of King Alcohol than of all the bullets of the enemy."