The Purple Tux
With just enough education to perform.Thursday, September 22, 2005
[Since I moved back home, I haven't had Internet, unti just now. Of course, because I'm so dedicated to my loyal readership (seriously, thanks for being pals), one of the first things I must do is post a very brief story. I wrote this last week. Also, I might not have had Internet access for a few weeks, but that doesn't mean I haven't been writing anything. I'd say that I have a small log of items that I'm finished writing that are ready to be posted. So I'll probably be making posts at least a couple times a week for a few weeks. Much love. And it helps if you listen to some punk rock while you read this! ...If only to drown out my words.]
Dark Party
Max leaned back on the plush leather couch as he turned up the volume on his stereo. He’d been in a rebellious, somewhat combative mood all day, so he decided to listen to some punk rock. For Max, the list of greatest punk bands of all time began with the Clash, so he popped in Combat Rock. What a great title for a punk album, he thought. Your humble narrator is inclined to agree.
It was just a shade past 11:15PM as Max leaned back on the couch and turned up his stereo. “Rock The Casbah” was just getting started. Right when the first chorus began, though, the electricity was abruptly cut off. “Shareef don’t like it!” indeed. Someone doesn’t like it, so of course the natural punk response would be to “rock the casbah,” suckers. Only, without any electricity it’d be kind of tough to rock anything.
Max sat on the couch for a few moments. The lights in the room flickered back on, but just briefly so. Then they died again. After another few seconds, the lights again flickered on, then off again. Max was a bit surprised and also a bit miffed that the power would cut during one of his favorite jams. In the darkness of his living room, he sat on his couch for another thirty seconds, vainly hoping that the electricity would return. He asked himself the eternal burning philosophical question that all young punks ask themselves at one time or another: Should I stay or should I go?
With some heady effort, Max forcibly lifted himself off the couch cushion. He took two steps to his window. He reached for the rod that he would twist to open the blinds. As soon as he touched the rod, however, and twisted it a mere fraction, he came off in his hands, completely detached from the blinds to which it belonged. Unintentionally, his first gut reaction was to panic just slightly, and his heart skipped a beat or two. Perhaps due to his vivid imagination, the combination of the blackout and his reliable blinds failing him, he was a tad more startled than you or I would probably be if we were in his situation.
For, you see, he imagined some sinister dark force at work behind these suspicious events. He held the rod in his right hand, as though it could serve as a makeshift weapon. Swiftly turning around, he raised his weapon in case a bad person was trying to sneak up behind him. Though it was still dark, his eyes had just about adjusted and he could discern no shadows that didn’t belong in his house. Only then did he realize how silly his reaction was. He smirked to himself and used his fingers to peep through his blinds. Of course, the entire neighborhood was out. It was a blackout, so what did he expect?
Purposefully, Max used the rod that he was still holding in his hand as a bit of a blind man’s cane and used it to feel his way around his house. Familiar or not, in these unusual circumstances, he had no desire to needlessly trip over the carpet or stub his toe against a wall. Besides, there wasn’t anyone else around to see him acting like such a stranger in his own home.
Making his way downstairs (carefully, of course), he found his three emergency lamps. They were really designed for camping, but they were also rather effective, with two quality halogen bulbs each. Unfortunately, none of them turned on when he pressed their switches. Slowly walking down the hall (and faster than a cannonball, no less. Excuse me.), he made his way to his office where he stored his trusty, if old-fashioned, flashlight. Success! A smile formed on his lips as the flashlight brought some illumination into the room.
Spending a few more minutes downstairs in a valiant if futile search for Double D batteries for his emergency lamps, Max eventually gave up, sensing the hopeless situation. He’d just have to make due with his flashlight. He returned upstairs with his flashlight and his makeshift walking cane. When he passed through the dining room, he placed the rod on the dinner table so that he’d remember to reattach it in the morning. Max paused to glance at his wristwatch. It was now 11:38PM.
Usually, Max went to bed by around 1AM or so. But what could he really do without electricity? He flipped the light switch on and off a couple of times in the off chance that the power had returned while he was downstairs. No luck there. These blackouts, he knew from experience, often lasted a couple hours at least. He could listen to music, he supposed. He had a portable CD Walkman as well as a small radio that could run on four AA batteries. Max walked into his room and got that little radio. There weren’t any batteries in it, but he knew he kept some in a cupboard, so he easily found them and installed them.
The radio squawked to life on a random AM station. Max tried a few different news stations, wondering if there’d be any news about his blackout. He wondered how many people have called in and blamed this blackout on George Bush, and he laughed at the thought. Apparently, the blackout in his neighborhood wasn’t major enough to warrant a mention on any of the local news stations, so he listened to some sports radio for a while. It’s quite a man thing to do, wouldn’t you agree, to listen to a sports station during a potential disaster situation? It could have been terrorists cutting off the electricity in preparation to launch some kind of unprecedented surgical strike into the heart of his residential neighborhood and there he was, sitting the dark and listening intently to ESPN on the radio.
At a commercial break, he turned off the radio and got his portable CD player. He still had a hankering to listen to some more Combat Rock, but without electricity, he couldn’t operate his living room stereo. Instead, he simply put his headphones on and hit “Play.” The CD that was inside was the debut album by the Spice Girls. How the hell did that get in there, he wondered. It was a somewhat strange experience, because he was just listening to the Clash about forty-five minutes ago. Absolutely ludicrous. Strangely, Max was compelled to listen to the pop music that, only nine years ago, had defined the lives of an entire female generation. All this time and still none of us have the vaguest idea of just what the hell a “zig zig ha” is.
After a couple more tracks of this, Max finally became a bit self-conscious and turned off his CD player. With his flashlight to aid him, he brushed his teeth and took a nice, satisfying piss. That done, he changed into his bed clothes. It was around half past midnight by the time he plopped down on his bed, underneath his hearty comforter. He had been lying restfully for around fifteen minutes, half-asleep, when he noticed a light in the hallway. The power had returned. Max dutifully rolled out of bed and crept into the outside hall, and turned off the light.
He knew Combat Rock was still sitting patiently in the living room stereo, beckoning him to do what Shareef don’t like, but Max had enough partying tonight. With the lights out, he went back to bed and promptly fell asleep in the dark. He didn’t have too much to celebrate, anyway.
