Dear Girls Above Me: Inspired by a True Story (28 page)

Although I knew I wasn’t supposed to feed “the animals” in their natural habitat, I made the decision to go ahead and do it anyway. I had more than enough green bean casserole to go around, and I thought it would be amusing to listen to them try to figure out how it got outside their door.

“Claire! Claire! Look what’s outside our door!”

“What is that?!”

“It’s green bean casserole!”

“What?! Did we do that?”

There was a long pause. I had an enormous smile on my face.

“You know what? I think we did!”

LOST IN TRANSLATION

Dear Girls Above Me,

“She’s waiting on the results of her biopic. It better not be life threatening.” Although her life story might make a nice biopsy.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I’m so sore! It’s like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife.” And once again you haven’t referenced that lyric correctly.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“She was totally bragging about changing a flat tire. Who cares, that’s why they invented AA.” Pretty sure you’re missing an A.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“She said I’m way too PC! Umm, excuse me, but I’ve
always
been a Mac girl.” I’m sure your iPhone has a politically correct app.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“The rain is like two swords; it makes my nipples look great, but it also makes my hair look like death.” Double-edged sword?

Dear Girls Above Me,

(walking out the door) “Wait, getting a CAT scan doesn’t involve like a real cat, right?” Only if it’s raining cats and dogs.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“So the ‘right to bear arms’ has nothing to do with acting like you’re a bear?” No, but it totally should.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Nothing’s worse than waking up to the piercing sound of a malfunctioning fire alarm. I’d even prefer waking up to an actual fire. Sure, the alarm would still be going off, but at least, in the event I escape, I’d have an opportunity to tell people I’m a survivor. I’ve always wanted to survive something. Not necessarily something as depressing as, like, a Holocaust type of thing, and I think even surviving a plane crash would prove too intense for me. I’m just not a plane crash/Holocaust kind of survivor. Something like a nice little contained fire in the laundry room is more my speed. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

The fire alarm jolted me to life one cold early-winter morning. The sound was so earsplitting, I couldn’t help but feel pity for poor Marvin’s super dog hearing ability, a power I normally would have envied and killed to have. Unfortunately, there was no fire in sight, so it didn’t look as if I’d have any surviving to do, unless surviving hearing loss counts.

I stood there in the hallway, in only my boxer briefs (I know what you’re thinking—that sounds emasculating—but my boxer briefs had baby deer on them, so clearly I was exuding pure unadulterated testosterone), and tried to figure out how to destroy the alarm to end this horrible sound. I knew for a fact that Mr. Molever would use any excuse to keep my entire security deposit anyway, so surrendering myself over to the logic that I’d be financially obligated no matter what, I figured, why not go to town and have some fun? Cooler heads
didn’t
prevail, so naturally I grabbed my decorative samurai sword from off the wall. This obnoxious chalky-colored disk with a blinking red light was going to suffer a painful death by way of ancient Japanese euthanasia; I would give it an honorable death.

I took a swing at the fire alarm as if it were a candy-filled piñata. And just like every childhood birthday I attended, I completely missed and instead knocked off the only thing I had put on the wall, my framed autographed Marg Helgenberger headshot. I threw myself at the falling Marg, snatched her from the air, but not without slamming my right shoulder into the wall. The pain was instantly blinding, but I would have done it all over again for Marg. Despite the pain I raised the sword above my head once more, focusing any chi that I possessed on the evil little smoke detector. Just as I was about to conquer, Pat opened his door and by way of hand motion ordered me to cease the attack.

Pat was in a pair of bright red American Apparel underwear. We both stood there shirtless, the only difference being that my skin was as pale as a baby’s bottom and his was the color of Snooki on Mars eating an orange at sunset. The uproar was too loud for us to hear each other, so we communicated through a made-up sign language:

ME:
Hands opened and out to the sides. (“Why not?”)

PAT:
A pointed shaking finger and a look of disappointment. (“Because it’s too violent.”)

ME:
Same position as I was in but more exaggerated. (“Well, then what should we do?!”)

PAT:
A deep knee bend, pointing to his shoulder, a look at the alarm, and a swift tugging motion. (“I’ll hoist you up to the alarm and then you jerk it off”—oh, wait, “and then you pull out the battery.”)

ME:
An unflattering grab of my flabby belly. (“I’m too heavy for you.”)

PAT:
Opening the door a little wider to reveal an equally spray-tanned guy in matching underwear. (“But not for the both of us.”)

ME:
A wide-open mouth, tilted head, and not-so-subtle look at this surprising turn of events. (“Is this your boyfriend?!”)

PAT:
A finger across his lips with a chill-out look. (“It’s a little too early for titles.”)

ME:
A scrunched forehead and proud nod. (“Play on, playa!”)

PAT:
An impassioned acknowledgment of the fire alarm. (“Can we turn off this sound already, please!?”)

Pat’s officially gay! Yay! Now I had even more anger toward this fire alarm, because it was ruining the “Pat’s Coming-Out Fest” I had fantasized about planning. I was going to rent a bouncy castle and everything! I even knew a girl who knew a girl who did group inhome spray tans, which I was willing to try for such an occasion. Okay, I needed to focus.

The three of us stood directly underneath the ill-tempered alarm. Even with our hands covering our ears, the sound was still excruciating. I bit down on a Phillips-head screwdriver, in that “handy pirate” sort of way, and prepared myself to take down the beast. The two brave souls beside me each dropped down to one knee and hoisted me up. My right butt cheek rested on Pat’s shirtless shoulder, while the left cheek took a seat on his boyfriend’s. In order to gain my balance, I had to remove one of my hands from my ears, which damn near killed me. Not only that, but I got very little sympathy from the foundation of our human triangle, even though they had no idea how much louder the ringing was at my elevation.

At this point I was just inches away from the eye of the beast, the blinking red dot in the center. Even with my ears covered up, the sound waves found a way to irritate an already existing headache. I swiftly tried to grab the screwdriver from my mouth but was forced to recoil in pain. This thing had a genius defense mechanism: It was too small to destroy from a distance and too deafening to do anything about close up. But I needed to find a way to get to that battery. I tried once more, this time even faster, except once again the sound was just too powerful. Maybe if I screamed at the same time the noise wouldn’t seem as loud? “AAHHHHH!” Oops, that just made me drop the slobbery screwdriver on Pat’s big toe, which he did not seem to be thrilled about.

The screwdriver settled beside Pat’s boyfriend, whom I hadn’t
been properly introduced to due to the raucous alarm, so in my head I named him Ferdinand. And out of nowhere, Ferdinand pulled out some crazy Cirque du Soleil move by picking up the screwdriver between his toes and, with me still perched on his shoulder, gracefully lifted his leg all the way up and placed it gently back into my mouth. The move was too awe-inspiring to even consider the unsanitary nature of it. Did Ferdinand have a sister? I wondered.

I had been awarded a second chance from an acrobat, and I was not going to let him down. Even with my ears plugged, the siren was beginning to drive me insane. Pat and Ferdinand were locked into position and ready. So I attempted the assassination of the fire alarm once more. I let go of my soon-to-be-damaged ear and began unscrewing the machine parts as quickly as possible. With its face hanging by a wire, the intensity of the alarm became almost unbearable. I felt as if there was a good chance I was going to pass out and topple over, ruining this great cheerleader triangle we had going on. But I was able to stay strong, especially when Ferdinand assisted me once again, this time by reaching up and covering my exposed ear with his own hand. He was truly a contortionist. If Pat didn’t lock this guy down, I would.

I finally dismantled the shrieking alarm from the ceiling and forcefully yanked the battery out. But … nothing happened. The wail continued, powered by God knows what. This little alarm had gone more rogue than I expected. I looked down at Ferdinand for advice, but he was just as confused as I was. I didn’t even bother consulting Pat, because quite honestly I wasn’t really sure what he brought to the table anymore.

The only other option was doing something about the wires that connected to the fire alarm from somewhere in the ceiling. In looking back on it now, I should have gone directly to Stanley and had
him take care of the problem. He was getting older and probably at that age where he would have been losing his hearing, which would have made him perfect for this job. But once again, I needed to be the hero.

I called out to the boys, “Brace yourselves,” which didn’t do much good because they couldn’t hear me anyway. I pulled those pesky wires with everything that I had. One of my many problems in life is that I close my eyes whenever I do something even remotely physical; this proved to be a gift and a curse during the Great Hide ’n’ Seek Game of 1997. However, in this particular circumstance I was happy not to have seen everything:

The Good News: The insufferable noise came to a stop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Notice how many exclamation marks I used to make the news sound even better? Yeah, there’s a reason for that.)

The Bad News: In pulling out the wires from the ceiling, a chunk of the ceiling decided to come with it. We three toppled to the ground, plaster and all. And as if that weren’t enough, a plumbing pipe that had been somehow attached to the inner workings with which I had just tampered burst, and horrible-smelling brown water came raining down on us.… Ferdinand wasn’t God after all.

The three of us were slammed into the middle of a poo sandwich. As the spilling began to subside, we all tried standing up on the slippery surface. This took us a minute or so, as we skidded and flopped around like ice-skating fishes. Just when we thought we were stationary, Pat attempted a move toward the bathroom and pulled us all
back onto the floor with him. And as if this moment couldn’t have gotten any worse, we heard our front door unlock. The only other person with a key to our apartment was Mr. Molever. He frantically swung the door open with Stanley by his side. They both stood there, traumatized, as the three of us lay on top of one another in only our underwear, covered head to toe in chocolate rain.

“Sweet mother of pearl!” Stanley yelled.

For the first time in his life, Mr. Molever was speechless.

“This is not what it looks like,” I said back to them.

“Unless it looks like three strapping young men in their underwear mud-wrestling in a vat of shit,” was added by a voice in our crap-covered man pile.

“Not now, Ferdinand,” I muttered to a room full of people, none of whom was named Ferdinand.

THE GIRLS ON SCATOLOGY

Dear Girls Above Me,

“If a car is out of gas, can you fart into it to make it drive?” Meet you in the parking lot in 10.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“Eww, Cathy. Was that a regular fart or did you just Queefer Sutherland?” You have 24 hours to never say that again.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“Well if you still have diarrhea tomorrow we need to get you some of that ex-lax stuff.” Putting out the fire with gasoline, huh?

Dear Girls Above Me,

(regarding her loud fart) “Exactly why I’ll never move in with a guy. Who wants to give
that
up?” I guess I’m the lucky one then.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“In getting colonics, we basically paid 75 dollars to take the biggest shits of our lives.” Ha, mine was only 7.99 at Chili’s.