Condo Conversion, Chapter 4

         I hadn’t been laid in ten months.  And as is the case when you haven’t been laid in a really long time, I got to thinking about the last girl I had been with, Allison McRooney.  I was walking around Rohnert Park, trying to get a sense of my surroundings.  It was very flat, with wide boulevards that could accommodate far more cars than were in fact using them.  Having moved from crowded San Francisco, I liked that.  There is a surplus of space in Rohnert Park. 

          But the dominant impression is that it is flat.  Flat like we were taught people believed the world to be before Columbus, even though they didn’t.  Flat like a football field.  I walked over to the Safeway, then back around to the Raleys, then over to the Albertsons: three supermarkets and dozens of retailers and restaurants in one gigantic superplex.  Residents of this archetype of urban sprawl called it “downtown.”

          An angry old man rolled by in his electric wheelchair muttering something to himself.  On the back of the chair, on a flexible pole about three feet high, there was a little orange flag waving in the wind.  I recognized him from the day before: he was one of my new neighbors.  A moment later, a young handicapped woman rolled by in her electric wheelchair going the opposite direction.  Two young skateboarders cruised by me, hopping their boards nimbly over the curb.  A pattern was emerging.  Rohnert Park was a place built for rolling through.  This explained the endless number of shopping carts that littered every corner of the town.  Maybe I should get a little chair for myself, I reflected.  It might help me fit in.

           The thought of Allison’s gigantic breasts continued to haunt my mind as I aimlessly trolled the aisles of Longs Drugs.  And her ass; God it was huge.  When she was on all fours it was like looking at two Virginia hams sitting side by side: a glorious vision, it used to make me hungry with lust, all that magnificent, surprisingly taut, perfectly proportioned flesh.  

            She used methamphetamines.  She must have been the biggest girl in the world who used as much meth as she did.  Who knows how much bigger she would have been if she didn’t?  But her habit was one of maintenance and not absolute excess.  She was able to hold down a good job as an investment banker and appear to the rest of the world as if she were relatively normal.  She took two big hits in the morning before heading off to work, would rush home for a half-hour lunch of two more, and would be home at about eight o’clock after a few drinks with her coworkers and smoke a few more hits before getting three hours sleep.  On weekends she would catch up on her slumber, staying in bed until long after noon.  It was amazing, really, how she balanced her entire life around that little glass pipe.  

            I was mainly into coke at the time, but would indulge with her now and again to try to attain some spiritual connection.  People on speed can only relate to other people on speed, and I wanted desperately for her to relate to me.  There were times that she told me she loved me.  Once she even wrote a poem for me, proclaiming her love as infinite.  But I knew that it could never be true, even when I didn’t.  She needed an asshole to push her around, let her know she wasn’t worth shit, and I was basically a nice guy who wanted to tell her she was precious.  It was doomed from the start.  Still, it stung like a motherfucker when she left.  I have only been in love twice in my life.  She was one of them.