The exercise:
Let us dabble in a little more Hindsight.
Mine:
Bobo - not his real name, that's just what I called him... unless it was, but then he never told me otherwise, so who knows? - was not the worst roommate I'd ever had. The fact that he never talked was a big plus in my books. I enjoyed the quiet, which mostly rained supreme whether he was around or not.
Rained? No, that can't be right. Snowed? Snowed supreme. That's got a nice ring to it.
Anyway. I say 'mostly' because he wasn't completely silent, on account of those giant red and blue and brown (that might just have been dirt though) clown shoes of his. That he never seemed to take off. I guess they were his only footwear? Maybe I should be grateful he kept them on, actually - could you imagine the smell of his feet when he finally squelched out of them?
I'm getting distracted again. Mr. Hunter in 4th grade always said that I couldn't focus worth a damn. And I always said that a 4th grade teacher shouldn't be using them sorts of words in front of 4th graders. I'd like to say we agreed to disagree but...
Right. Bobo. In his defence, I don't think I could have walked around our place wearing oversized shoes without kicking things over neither. At least he usually picked things back up, or returned them to the piles he'd scattered. And when he didn't it wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility that he hadn't even realized he'd made contact with this lamp or that can of open paint.
By now you've probably got to wondering about that whole 'homeless' thing I mentioned earlier, and how I didn't know or whatever. Well, I did figure it out, thank you very much.
It just took me a bit.
I mean, how was I to know the bank was rejecting his rent payments because he didn't have a, you know, bank account? I just thought they couldn't read his signature, what with it being such a messy scrawl thanks to his big ol' clown gloves. And the fat red felt marker he used for everything. That's reasonable, right?
Okay, so maybe it should have dawned on me what the actual problem was a little sooner than five months down the road, but in my defence, I had other things to worry about at the time.
Like Serena.
2 comments:
Serena is a perfect name for another ex-girlfriend :) And Bobo the mime clown with the red felt pen, the oversized shoes and the open tins of paint... I'm starting to enjoy the hindsight into this guy's life. And living it vicariously with him. Even though I'm quite glad I'm not living it myself for real :-D The details in this are fantastic and really build up the story into something that's almost telling itself, despite we're only three months in!
Hindsight
Serena turned up on the night of my break-up with Dina, though I'm not sure Dina knew we were breaking up. I thought that maybe it was time to take our relationship to the next level: maybe find out her surname and what her favourite colour was and see how she felt about me so I took her out to a Red Lobster. I'd never been there before and I'd had to save for about six weeks to think I could afford it, on account of Bobo's cheques bouncing like trampoline champions in the national playoffs, so when I walked in the door I was nervous and sweating like a sumo wrestler in a sauna. Not that I'd have described it like that back then; I only picked up some of these phrases in Tokyo, which coincidentally was the first place I ever saw a sauna and where I picked up Gonorrhea. Serena was our waitress for the evening. She smiled at me like I was a Philly cheesesteak and she'd just found out she wasn't lactose intolerant after three months of worrying. She looked Dina up and down, smiled glassily, and pretended to throw up in her apron pocket after Dina walked in front of us both.
We sat down and I mentally ran through what I wanted to say. I decided on trying to find out Dina's favourite colour first and as I opened my mouth to ask, she said,
"Curtis, your roommate... there's rumours going about at work that he might not be... well, entirely... white."
My name's not Curtis and while I'd like you believe that I'm a rational, educated, intelligent young man my dad'd be rolling the aisles before I finished that sentence. So I looked round to see who she was talking to. While I'm looking over a mostly empty chain restaurant with plastic white bibs with happy red lobsters on on all the tables, there's a soft sound, wet, maybe squelchy, and then a gasp that like's the prelude to a scream. I look back and somehow Serena has tripped and spilled a bowl of gazpacho and sour cream all over the front of Dina's dress.
Dina's a classy gal though, and she's just dabbing her face with her napkin and acting unphased, and I'm realising that she just called me Curtis and maybe doesn't know who I am, and Serena's walking over to the kitchen window for another bowl of soup, but there's noone else in this restaurant and we haven't seen a menu, let alone ordered yet.
"Hispanic friends can be bad for your reputation," said Dina. "Although there are worse things to be."
My daddy didn't raise no racists and my brain was having trouble processing what she was saying; all the more so because I'd started finding crickets coming out of Bobo's room and I was worried he was keeping a snake in there. I was wrong, as it turns out, but that's not as happy as it sounds either.
There was another splash and Serena deposited yet more soup on Dina.
"It's wet in here," said Dina. "I think I'm leaving for somewhere drier." I stood up to accompany her, but she shooed me. "You sit and think about your roommate," she said.
No sooner had she left than Serena was sat in her chair in front of me. "Bad date?" she asked, and I started to cry.
Greg - thank you :) I'm having fun with this one!
Dina is quite the... I'm not sure what word I'd use. Either way, that was quite the introduction. And then outroduction.
Serena definitely seems like trouble, but more of the fun variety than Dina :)
Also: well done with the name reveal tease. I was already trying to figure out if I liked Curtis or not when you let us know Dina was... um, I'll say 'off base'.
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