Dear Girls Above Me

by Charles McDowell

  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 o
ut 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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  After a forty-five-minute Purell shower, I found myself sitting unresponsive on Mr. Molever’s faux-leather couch as he calculated the damage I had caused. I was wondering if there was a way to somehow pin this whole thing on Ferdinand. Although I knew that would be a tough sell; he has very trusting eyes.

  Mr. Molever wore his thick prescription glasses as he number-crunched on his annoyingly loud calculator: “Two hundred for the plumbing … Seventy-five—make that a hundred and seventy-five for the cleanup. Twenty-two dollars for the replacement fire alarm … Six dollars and ninety-nine cents for a new battery … Okeydokey, I’ll need you to sign your John Hancock here … and here … and here … and here.…”

  “But this entire ordeal was the result of a malfunctioning fire alarm that I had absolutely nothing to do with. Shouldn’t that be considered in your calculations?” I pleaded.

  “Here are the words I just heard come out of your mouth, Charles: ‘The traffic light wasn’t working properly, so I took a chain saw and sawed it in half, causing it to crash down on multiple cars and one unfortunately located small business.’ Then, as a result of the mass confusion and hysteria due to the missing traffic light, it turned into a free-for-all of cars going in all directions and slamming into one another, culminating in a fifty-four-car pileup. And after a massive search-and-rescue mission comes to a grueling, time-consuming end, the police, and most likely National Guard, finally approach you to ask why on earth you caused all of this. And you say, ‘The traffic light wasn’t blinking correctly.’ I imagine that as you’re placed in handcuffs, on your way to prison to serve your life sentence, the judge will probably have a good chuckle at your ‘malfunctioning traffic light’ defense.”

  By the time Mr. Molever finished his rant I was willing to pay whatever he asked in exchange for him to simply stop talking. Finally, he carefully folded the savings-draining documentation in half, then into thirds, and placed it neatly into a manila envelope. He then removed the documentation, smoothed it flat, then folded it in half, and again into thirds, and again put it back into the envelope.

  Next, he searched around his immaculate desk for something but was unable to locate the item. When he asked whether he could have a minute to find whatever it was he was looking for, for some reason I nodded. The way he asked for a minute made me kind of, sort of, feel bad for the guy. Was it possible I actually felt the tiniest bit of compassion for this lunatic? Thirty seconds ago I had wanted to kill him, but now I strangely thought about embracing him and letting him know that it was all going to be okay. Then I started wondering what “it” could be.

  His apartment felt as if no one but he, and maybe an occasional unsatisfactory tenant like me, had set foot in there in years. He had no pictures of family or friends on the walls, only a couple of perfectly centered pieces of art that you would find in the discount section at Target. The main bit of decoration, besides the “Welcome Home” mats in every entryway, were the neatly organized folders that lay stacked on top of one another. There must have been twenty piles, each arranged in different colors. Tacked above each mound was an apartment number and a picture of each tenant. Putting aside the general creepiness of the layout, something suddenly dawned on me. In some messed-up—really messed-up—way, his tenants were the only family he had. He viewed himself as our parent. As I came to this realization, I glanced over at the section for 2C and found a photograph lifted from my Facebook page of me surrounded by beekeepers. Yes, I had been on a scavenger hunt in an apiary, but that’s another story. Seeing my picture only further confirmed my theory. Just like most parents, Mr. Molever somehow got past the privacy settings on his “children’s” Facebook pages and sifted through personal pictures, most likely jumping to silent yet judgmental conclusions. Or maybe I’m reading way too much into this and I just have severe untreated mother-privacy issues that I need to deal with on my own time.

  Eventually, Mr. Molever found what he was looking for. He was holding a red ink pad and a stamp attached to a gavel-like handle. He politely took back the envelope, dipped the stamp into the ink, and hammered it onto the cover of my folder. After a few awkward seconds of his grunting and pressing down with all of his might, he lifted the imprint, which read, CONFIDENTIAL. Are you kidding me? That’s what I had been waiting for?

  “You can never be too sure who’s going to want to take a look at your documents. Don’t worry, this stamp will scare them off,” he said.

  If only such a stamp existed for my Facebook scavenger-hunt photo album. “Thanks, Mr. Molever.” I was almost out the door when, just as he does so well, Mr. Molever had more parting words.

  “You’re gonna want to go ahead and inform the girls who live above you that they shouldn’t flush their toilet for the next twenty-four hours, unless you would like more of their waste pouring into your apartment,” he said with a wildly entertained laugh.

  In the barbarity of the moment, it had not occurred to me that the sewage, which had so profusely showered down on us, had been that of the girls above me. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this made the unpleasant experience all right, because that would be psychotic bordering on fetishistic, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel slightly better about the whole thing.

  No doubt knowing where the shit came from caused momentary relief, sort of like how eating a hot dog at a baseball game is somehow more mentally acceptable than eating one at a movie theater. Regardless, though, I never again wanted to put myself in a position where I’m finding comfort in the fact that the people who defecated on my face were sanitary enough.

  SOMETIMES THEY FIGHT

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “We need to talk.” Uh oh, are you guys okay? “Did you switch over to iced coffee without telling me?” That bitch!

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “Cathy, talk to me! I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t pee, knowing you’re mad at me.” Don’t let Cathy mess with urinary system.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “You can’t go on birth control, your tits will get bigger than mine! We had a plan!” Does this plan involve small boobs and a baby?

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  I don’t normally weigh in on your fights, but “whose hypothetical older brother would be hotter” is serious stuff. Sorry Claire.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “I can fully admit you’re better at yoga, but it’s totally offensive you’re claiming to be a faster texter.” Umm, should I leave?

  THEY LOVE THEIR PSYCHIC

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “The psychic said I have a serious stalker in my life!” I much prefer “a friend who always listens,” thank you very much.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “The psychic said that in a past life I hung out with Jesus! Does that mean I’ve, like, walked on water?” No, he made you swim.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “My tarot card lady told me that babies bring people money. Maybe I should have one?” I see no harm in testing it out.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “The psychic said I’ll marry a redhead! I can’t have fire crotch kids!” I think their pubes will be the least of their problems.

  CHAPT
ER TWENTY-FOUR

  I knocked on Cathy and Claire’s door without hesitation. My intense motivation didn’t come from a place of confidence, but from the fear that I wouldn’t make it to them before they used their toilet again. Thankfully I could faintly hear them analyzing a text message from somewhere in their apartment. As usual, their voices were too overbearing for them to hear me, so I tried knocking again, this time much louder. Their conversation ceased, followed by the monotonous sound of high heels walking on fake wood floors.

  “Who is it?” Cathy called out.

  Completely forgetting that they did not know my voice the same way that I knew theirs, I stupidly responded with “It’s me.” For the record, I’m not an “It’s me” type of guy. I didn’t even “It’s me” my ex-girlfriend and I was with her for years. I don’t “It’s me” my parents, and I don’t “It’s me” my friends. I’m against all “It’s me”–ing not because I think I’m above it, but because quite often when you hear “It’s me” you immediately know who it is and wish that “me” was “anybody else.”