/////August 22, 2001 - 12:52am/////

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Living in an obviously run down excuse for an apartment building in the Upper East Side, it hasn’t
been a rare event in the last two months to experience power outageson a hot summer night. I
was taking a shower at 10pm in our corner of a bathroom that resided in the front of our closet
of an apartment, when low and behold…I can’t see my hands. I swore I had completed the
shampoo portion of my cleansing ritual so I know I hadn’t gotten soap in my eyes. Argh! It was
the damn electricity quitting on me again. Using my agility and keen X-Men skills, I completed
the nightly ritual without my power of vision.

I could hear my roommates scurrying around the apartment looking for matches to light candles
and cursing the day Mr. Frankwasever our super. Girl roommate screamed my name making sure
I was still conscious or at least not completely freaked out. “I’m fine, and I’ll be out in a sec,” I
responded in my classic “no duh” fashion.

Without proper ventilation or air conditioning, our closet got hotter and hotter. As soon as it
became unbearable we decided to head to Merchants. What started out asone glass of red,
turned into a bottle of Glass Mountain cabernet. The Jazz band thatplayed was so bad, they
should not only be banned from playing, they should never have been concieved. Once we
reached a blissfully inebriated state, we decided it would be an excellent time to head home and
sleep. After all, it was midnight and we could easily get away with going to sleep thus not
needing any electricity.

The plan to sleep immediately upon arriving home was not surprisingly a moot prescription. We lit
the candles in the place, adding up to close to a dozen. I started to continue reading “Man
and Superman” by Shaw when I decided it would be a brilliant idea to read aloud to my bored
and restless roomies. One brilliant idea lead to another as we found ourselves reading the play
together and taking different roles. Although the characters were all British, I interpreted the
role of Violet as a geisha FOB, and girl roommate took the role of Hector as a southern
gentleman. In his usual sarcastic style, guy roommate turned the humble chauffeur character
into a snobby stick in the mud. Since Shaw isn’t exactly easy reading, we found ourselves losing
the meaning of his words as we tried to keep our flow and inflection. So, we moved on to “No
Exit” by Sartre. Sartre? Damn! I can’t find the book. I’ll uh, just go with that for now. If I’m
wrong you’ll find a retraction at a later date.

Now, that was a cool play. About 10 minutes into it, we (excluding guy roommate who had read
it before) realized it was about three people trapped in hell. Dang, some mind trip it must have
been for those chumps. Alright...so we only made it to page 20, but it was fun. We did more
laughing and snickering than we did any reading. Now I know what people did in the dark ages
did when without electricity they couldn’t distract themselves by watching TV or listening to a
blaring stereo and just plain ignore one another. I felt fulfilled with yet another new experience
in the city of New York.


Journal Index


Home