Dylan “Fuzzy” Fitzpatty and a suicidal vacuum cleaner

Last Sunday I worked one of my last shifts at Amy’s Ice Creams.  On the way home, Rachel calls me up and tells me that I should go to Dylan’s moving-out party.  I declined because it was kinda late and I was kinda tired.  Somehow, an hour later I found myself sitting in Rachel’s living room with Dylan.  We were waiting for Rachel to finish dying her hair.

Dylan drove us to his apartment once Rachel finished her hair.  Calvin was sitting on an old Coleman cooler outside of Dylan’s door when we arrived.  We walked inside and I started drinking even though there were only 4 of us there, including me.  Darcy was out of town and Dylan’s other roommate, Aaron, hadn’t been home in a couple of days.  The more I drank, the more people from my past starting showing up at the party.  These were people I did not expect to show up at all and they seemed to show up in order from the most recent person I had known to the earliest person I’d known.  Everyone there was from a period of my life between 5th grade and Thanksgiving 2008.  Lindsey Smith was there and I remembered reading on her blog that she started listening to vinyl so I told her all about the record label and record distro and vinyl and mixtapes and I assume most of what I said made no sense at all.  I drunkenly scribbled a “perfect mixtape” for her on the back of a receipt for some textbooks I bought a year ago.

Hours later all the girls at the party left, except Rachel who fell asleep.  The remaining males and I all drove to House of Pies in the same car.  I told them about how sometimes the waitresses refuse to serve me, even if I’m sitting there, and they all decided that if I didn’t get served that night we’d all walk out and go somewhere else.  We showed up to House of Pies and every car in the parking lot was a cop car.  We walked inside and every patron was a cop.

When we got back to the apartment, Dylan accidently stepped on a glass so he vacuumed all the broken glass up.  The glass shards ended up destroying the vacuum cleaner and it started to make horrible noise and eventually stopped working.  He literally hanged it up in a closet, as if it committed suicide my hanging, and etched something like “HOOVER WAS HERE” in the wall.  He even wrote a fake suicide note and taped it inside the closet.

Mopeds & Presidents Heads

I was looking forward to the Menzingers’ show last week at the Presidents Heads Gallery, the second floor of a warehouse occupied by Jason and Patrick.  I first got excited after I heard that there was gonna be a keg there and then I got even more excited after learning that the gallery got its name due to the fact that it shares the space with all those giant Presidents heads you see in local news articles.  I’d never seen them before but I always wanted to, I just never knew where they were.  Most of my friends know that I NEVER ride out to the Heights because of the distance and I would normally get a ride with Aaron but he’s on tour right now and it’s about time for an adventure so a moped ride out to the Heights was on the day’s itinerary. I pulled out my map and traced out a good route from my house to the gallery and packed a backpack with some clothes.  I made sure to bring my pint glass.  I went out to my porch to get my bike ready and noticed a stray cat sleeping next to it.

I rode my moped from my house in East End all the way to Washington Ave and I’m surprised I didn’t die along the way.  The old warehouses in the Old Warehouse District looked awesome, though.  Some of the businesses have been open for around 50 years and they haven’t changed their signs since then. I have to go back there to take some pictures.

I pulled up to the gallery and lock my moped up.  I walked up to the second floor of the warehouse and walked around and it was amazing.  The warehouse was once a lead paint factory and it was enormous.  The ceilings were high and the hallways were long and the windows were the size of my living room floor.  I went to Freebird’s with Eric and Val and talked about why Aaron would go on tour right now. None of us could come up with a plausible answer.  After we got back, Darcy called me up and told me she was home.  I finished my burrito and unlocked my bike and went to go pick her up.  I’ve never ridden doubles on a street before, let alone at night, but it seemed alright and we didn’t die.  It went pretty well for having no helmets, a broken headlight, and a one-person seat with no passenger foot pegs.

Jason invited me, Val, and Darcy on the 3rd story roof.  He locked it up so people don’t fall off and die.  He unlocked a window for us and we had to walk up an old rusty aluminum staircase, walk across the 2nd floor roof, and then climb up a rickety wooden latter.  There were no guard rails or even ledges, just a flat roof that suddenly stopped.  The view was amazing.  We could see a near perfect skyline and an awesome view of the Presidents.

It was too hot for me and Darcy to actually watch the show so we spent most of our time on the roof.  It was kinda like a Rosa song.  She was jonesing for a fountain soda so we hopped on my moped and went the Valero down the street.  On the way back a biker told me to be safe out there since it was night and my headlight was broken.  I love it when bikers are nice to me.  We went back to the show and I said goodbye to some people and Darcy and I rode back to her place.  We hung out a bit and I started to get a bit woozy so I decided to take a shower and call it night.  Then Darcy got a call; one of her friends was at Catbird’s.  She asked me if I wanted to go and I eagerly said yes. We hopped in her truck and sped off.

I was walking through the bar and I heard two guys yelling “PETER LEE! PETER LEE! PETER LEE!” I looked around and saw nobody.  I walked passed the patio door and heard the same thing.  I look outside and I see Ben Breier and Hugo from high school hanging out. They were hanging out with Darcy’s friend, Lucy (I think that was her name).  How perfect, I go to hang out with Darcy’s friend whom I’d never met and she happens to be hanging out with two guys I went to high school with.  Ben spent quite a bit of time in Japan and I hadn’t seen Hugo since he graduated. We talked about Japanese girls, showed each other our tattoos, and bought each other drinks until the bar closed.  Darcy and I got home at around 2 or 3 in the morning.

Our meeting at Amy’s Ice Creams started at 9:30 the next morning, less than 8 hours from the time we got home. We met the new managers. I put in my letter of resignation the next day.