Just Imagine You Walked into Your Livingroom, and Your Table Was Gone

Ah Freecycle. So freewheelin, so strange.

It started with me manifesting. Ok, there, I admit it. I am sure this is all my fault. That and the existence of the word 'manifesting.'

I measured the space in my house for a side table I decided would be helpful to my organizational system. And then I thought about how to bring such a measurement of a table into my life.

Within 24 hours, there arrived an OFFER ad on good ol' Freecycle, the infestation of all manifestations. Someone in the Haight posted the offering of a side table in the EXACT dimensions I was looking for.

I asked. She accepted. We made a time.

I asked for a photo. She wrote a brief description. I asked for her number in case something came up. She wrote nothing. I asked if there was a driveway I could stop in. She wrote more nothing. I got a car. I got into the car, muttering the address to myself as I drove. As I drove, I quite possibly dyslexified the address. It is possible.

I got to the address. Well, what was hopefully the address. It was certainly a version of it.

I parked in the neighbors' driveway and pondered how many nanoseconds I could leave my vehicle unattended blocking a driveway before the Peace and Love residents of the upper Haight had my ass ticketed and towed. I locked the car to give myself time against AAA jimmying my locks.

I rang the bell.

No answer.

I rang the bell.

No answer.

I dawdled on the sidewalk.

The gate buzzed for a second. I took a last look at the car and ran back to the gate.

It buzzed. I shoved in the gate. The apartment door was locked. I knocked.

The door buzzed and I stumbled into the bottom of a two-story steep windy staircase. Greeeeeeat.

I hollered: HELLO?

Nothing.

UM HELLO?

A woman's voice: WHAAAAAAAAAT?

Me: HI, ER, I'M FROM FREECYCLE? I'M ---?

Her: ( )

Me: ER, OH, I THINK I TALKED TO A K----. IS A K---- HERE?

Her: YEA, SHE'S IN THE BACK. (Door slam, followed by silence.)

Me: Er, ok.

I climb the stairs to arrive at an entrance-y type of hallway. It has a couch in it, and next to the couch is a side table. The side table is about the size I'd imagined. The side table more or less looks like the very vague description its owner had offered in lieu of a photo. It is a very nice table. Just the sort of table a person such as myself might manifest. But the side table? It also had a bunch of stuff on it. Not Stuff to Freecycle seeming stuff, more like Stuff We Read and Do while sitting on the couch. Like mail and bills and stuff. Hmmm.

Me (back to yelling): ER, HELLO? HELLO? K----? (As I wander through the cricket-chirpingly-vacant apartment)

Silence.

Me (still yelling): ER, HELLO? ANYONE? IS THIS THE TABLE?

Silence.

Me (more yelling): OK, WELL I AM GOING TO TAKE Y'ALL'S TABLE NOW. I AM GOING TO PUT THE STUFF THAT'S ON IT ON THE COUCH. OK? COOL? HELLO? (Pause) OK, I AM LEAVING WITH YOUR TABLE NOW.

Silence.

Me (last yelling): OK, HERE I GO! WELL, THIS IS VERY STRANGE! GOOD NIGHT!

I then cuss audibly while nearly breaking my neck getting the table single-handedly down the stairs. Thankfully, the neighbors have yet to get DPT on my ass by the time I get to my car, and so away I drive with my nice little table that is hopefully not made of cocaine or anything else rapidly disintegrating or illegal.

I am a little scared to check my email, fearing K---- will email me to ask: Why didn't you show up at my place? And reiterate her address, which will have all the same numbers as where I was, but in a different order. Hmmm. Thoughts?

UPDATE #1:
My rather squawky conscience insisted that I write to K---- to ask if her table was gone. At midnight, she wrote be back:

Well you didn't stop by did you?! So of course it is there. Peace, k

Despite the clear passive aggressive sign-off of Ms. K, I experienced stomach churning and proceeded to spend the evening wrapped in a guilt quilt, reluctantly trying to figure out how to return the perfectly dimensioned side table to its rightful owners.

UPDATE #2:
K----- wrote again at 9 a.m:

Oh how strange. You must have been here when I stepped out somehow. Which is strange because I didn' step out. But I see that the stand is no longer here, so I guess you found the right place. :) k

Me: Phew.

Some People? They Love Love.

It is possible I am not one of them. I prefer to call this "The Day After February's Friday the 13th." Now it doesn't roll off the tongue like "Valentine's Day" or anything, but really that is just long for V.D, which is so old fashioned, and so Mr. V.D. Valentino can just take back his day if it is all the same to him. While I am a sharer, some things just don't need to be shared. Like people whose feelings give you emotional whiplash. Like those chalky heart candies. I pulled one at D's that says: In a Fog.

WTF.

The Day After February's Friday the 13th turned out ridiculously fun despite. Got profoundly ass kicked in soccer, got the "gift" of silence from some of those who love me, got to clean some of my own dirty laundry, got to swoon over all manner of crush-worthy musicians busy unrequiting love after pulling a distinctly boy-stereotype-dismissive invite, got Rite Spotted and belted and bruised and also ear pierced by a Bette Boopesque voice... it just kept going.

But, as there is always good even in the not so much, I really want to thank CoCo for turning me on to my current favorite seasonal poem, which somehow reminds me of so much all at once:

LIFE STORY, by Tennessee Williams

After you've been to bed together for the first time,
without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance,
the other party very often says to you,
Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you,
what's your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do

sincerely want to know your life story, and so you light up
a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you
lying together in completely relaxed positions
like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed.

You tell them your story, or as much of your story
as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say,

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

each time a little more faintly, until the oh
is just an audible breath, and then of course

there's some interruption. Slow room service comes up
with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee
and gaze at himself with the mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror.
And then, the first thing you know, before you've had time
to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life story,
they're telling you their life story, exactly as they'd intended to all along,

and you're saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming
no more than an audible sigh,
as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to the left,
draws one last, long, deep breath of exhaustion
and stops breathing forever. Then?

Well, one of you falls asleep
and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth,
and that's how people burn to death in hotel rooms.