Saturday, September 18, 2010

One More Night in a Glamorous Life: the Sleep & Skank Edition

We have new tenants here at Chez Merde. The departure of the nice half-Brazilian, half-Norwegian (Brawegians? Norzilians?) family upstairs has heralded the arrival of the the Sorority Sisters. A pair of young hotties who are are badass night owls, they arrived with a handful of boxes in the back of their banana yellow Chevy Cobalt, a craptacular car festooned with fake floral leis and beach resort stickers on the bumper. (I wonder if I should tell them that the last resident here with a banana yellow car somehow managed to raise the ire of a mentally unstable neighbor on the block who brandished a pistol and left rambling, multi-page manifestos tacked to our lobby message board - all because she hated yellow cars.) Within a week of the duo's arrival, one thing was clear - they weren't used to living in shared housing with working adults.

I swear to God, even when I was a teen or in my early 20s, I could not go out and party every night of the week without turning into an utter zombie. These guys? They're animals. And honestly, I couldn't give a shit if they were the biggest party critters on the face of the earth, save for two things: 1) they're moronically loud when they come home late at night; and 2) they don't seem able to master the challenges of the laundry/trash room. I say this after following a trail of thong underwear (and food trash) down the stairs to the entryway today. Apparently, they don't have a laundry basket or garbage bags - maybe I should buy them some. Unless that would undermine their secret plan to lure hungry, horny elves, fairies, or trolls up to their second-floor lair. Who knows? (This actually was a point of discussion between me and another neighbor this afternoon - we both refrained from picking up the discarded undies.)

If it wasn't for the sudden bursts of late-night noise, I might find them amusing. One had her 21st birthday shortly after their move-in. There was something deliciously awful about watching their flashy-trashy white stretch Hummer limo attempt a u-turn on our narrow dead-end street. Classic! Except that some of their drunk-ass friends were using my car as a place to rest their drinks as they observed the maneuver. That's the only interaction I've actually had with them - yelling to their friends to move their crap off my car.

But I think some fresh interaction may be coming their way - if their downstairs neighbor (with the cute toddler) doesn't beat me to it. It's the nearly nightly arrival home, accompanied by screaming. Last night, it was 2:45 in the morning when Sister #1 got home and made the drunk walk back to the building, announcing herself to us all: "OMIGOD!!! LET ME IN!! I NEED TO PEE!!! WAAAAAAAAAH!" (Keep in mind, there's no lock or access code for the front door of the building. It's just a matter of getting your own damn apartment door open.) Immediately, you could hear and feel the building coming quickly and unhappily back to life. The silence of sleep was shattered, and floors started to creak as we all padded around, trying to sort out our broken rhythm.

For me, it was useless. The specter of insomnia is always lurking over my shoulder, and it was more than happy to envelope me in its misery. I curled up on the sofa and turned on the TV. A friend had alerted me to a freebie HBO/Skinemax weekend for FiOS users, so I flicked through the late night offerings.

There's a reason Skinemax *is* Skinemax: most channels had one form of soft core porn or another. It's a constant parade of lame scripts, bad new age funk elevator music, and enormous fake boobs. All I could think was "God, her back must hurt all the time" or "Oh, Jesus, what happens if one of them pops? Will it just deflate? Will there be a flesh explosion?"

I'm not kidding. You show me cheap Skinemax porn, and that's what I'm thinking.

Well, actually, it's worse than that. I find it so lame, I'm usually looking into the background of the scenes. This time, in one flick, a couple flopped around on a desk in a classroom somewhere in Asia, where a blackboard featured a set of algebraic equations, sans solutions. I love algebra. Things always come out right if you respect the formula, after all. So, there I was, at 3-something in the miserable a.m., mentally completing equations and multiplying out fractions, while some bored "actors" in a tract house in the San Fernando Valley bumped uglies and pretended to be in Bali. I was psyched to finish all the equations before the couple wrapped things up. I may have flunked out of Calculus in high school, but I've still got the basics down, baby! (Oh, and that chick had a heinous tramp stamp for those keeping score on the actual porn content. Seriously, I've seen better porn between fuzzy lines on channels we didn't pay for back in the days of crappy 90s cable.)

Clearly, I'm not the Skinemax target demographic. I actually yelled back at the screen during an improbable kitchen sex scene. The woman was shown burning her hand on the metal handle of a hot pan on the stove (oven mitts, honey) and then, almost immediately, the dude picked her up and plopped her on the stove for what passes for a good rogering in this level of cinematic non-achievement. Of course, my first reaction was: "Jesus! Hot stove! Hot stove! Her ass must be on fire!"

I was also thinking "Christ, that has to be painful - nothing like having the metal grill of a stove burner plate pressed into your rump, full force, over and over again." (I may be an unadventurous party-pooper, but I'm looking out for your ass, pornstress!)

This reminded me of an event I attended in Baltimore a gazillion years ago (oh, I bet you're wondering where this is going - and no, John Waters was *not* involved.) The cast of the brilliant - and wretchedly underappreciated - TV show "Homicide: Life on the Street" did this series of wonderful live events now and then to support the Fells Point Creative Alliance. "Homicide Live" allowed the cast members to stretch their wings, performing theatrical vignettes, poetry, and music for a very appreciative audience. I went one year, and it was a blast. In one piece (culled from a play I sadly cannot identify tonight) actors Peter Gerety (late of "Rubicon") and Ellen McElduff recounted the misery of a sexual encounter up against a wall, including back pain, balance and height challenges, and some horrific wall-based form of rug burn. It was hilarious and awful and always comes to mind when I flip past bad cable porn (and whenever "The English Patient" is on TV.)

What's the point of all this ramble? (Well, other than the fact that I just outed myself for shamefully watching execrable adult fare on cable in a fit of insomnia last night.) I honestly don't have a point this time. It's just another Saturday night here in suburbia, and I spent it at home alone again, spilling out more words about the inherent weirdness of my life. Trails of thongs, screaming sorority girls... Jesus, maybe I'm actually Stephen Tyler. Jury's out on which one of us breaks a hip first.

G'night, kids.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't believe you were able to write about porn in a classy way! You are so awesome-- I am in awe.

And yes, I spend more time raging about the stupidity of those adult situations than, um, "enjoying" the offerings.

Washington Cube said...

If you fall and break something on a thong...you may be going for a record. And only you would be working the algebra in a porn film.

Chuck said...

Man, if I got woken up at 3 AM on a workday I'd be making my displeasure known in person. Is there an apartment manager (or condo manager) that you can complain to? I did just that when my downstairs neighbor started letting out her yappy dog early every morning after she moved in here...she has a small courtyard just below my balcony and it woke me up for like a week straight. I started going in and complaining every time the dog woke me up and she soon stopped letting him out early (or let him out later) and I've only heard the dog a couple times since then.

Anonymous said...

new kids in my building too..but i dont have the patience you do...they annoy me to no end...as for cable tv... pornstress is my new fave word!
xoxo

Anonymous said...

This is my favorite part:

"I was psyched to finish all the equations before the couple wrapped things up. I may have flunked out of Calculus in high school, but I've still got the basics down, baby!"

And I'm sorry for your sorority girls. If they just turned 21, it probably won't get any better for a while. Which means more algebra for you!

Merujo said...

@Meow-chick: I'm waiting to see which members of my family are horrified vs. greatly amused by my Skinemax adventure. Since "Jackass Two" is a holiday film for me, this should not surprise most of them. :)

@Cube: There was something so much more satisfying about the math than the porn. At least I knew the math was real!

@Chuck: I bit my tongue this time because it was a Saturday night, but they pulled this crapola again last night. I think it's a toss-up whether it will be me or toddler daddy who cranks at them first.

@Blonde: I love "pornstress" too. Were I one, I'd want that on my business card. And thank you so much for your kind mention/link on Twitter to the DC Blogs peeps! I would thank you on Twitter today but as I understand it's currently the victim of some weird virus/hack, I'll have to wait until we get the "all clear" whistle.

@Liebchen: Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing - maybe it's time for me to finally tackle Algebra II & Trig. :)