The Weeble in Chuck's honor :)

I am reposting this for my friend Chuck who has decided to travel to other dimentions. I loved/love him dearly.

The Weeble

                The Weeble (for my friend Chuck)
 
 
The Weeble finally died in my building this morning. I called him the Weeble because he weighed 300 pounds and looked like a giant egg. He had lived in his small studio since 1945. When they came to take him out the elevator, of course, was broken so I envisioned them dropping him at the top of the 4th floor and watching him roll down all 4 flights, maybe lying broken at the bottom like Humpty Dumpty. But, they didn’t, and his lifeless body was taken out safely. As I always do after someone in my building dies, and quite a few do die a year, considering the building is full of originals and they pay anywhere from $200 to $400 for a studio, or one bedroom…. anyway…. I like to go into their apartments and lie in their beds and imagine what it was like to be them, what their lives were like, and finally what it must have been like when they died. Yeah, I know weird, but, I am weird, and frankly death fascinates me.
 
The Weeble had a freaky studio, only because he worked as a film archivist so his walls were covered with film posters, half of them pin up posters. This concept of having women in bathing suits on walls I’ve never understood, hey, he paid his rent on time and never bothered me. In fact he use to give me all kinds of key chains from films. I have quite a collection of half naked women key chains which I plan to sell on Ebay. Anyway, he had at some point built a loft in his studio about 4 inches from the ceiling so I climbed up there and laid down in his bed. It smelled like dirt. Not unpleasant at all. Besides, I like dirt. Of course, as I said I am slightly obsessed with death.
 
Anyway, as I’m laying James walks in, he helps me manage the building, and is my partner. He looks up and says,” Are you lying in dead people’s beds again?” I sit up quickly and hit my head on the ceiling. I notice the ceiling is Styrofoam. Then I notice it’s just part of the ceiling, so I lie back down a feel around the Styrofoam and notice there is something underneath it. Knowing the apartment is going to be renovated I pull off the Styrofoam and down falls something on my lap. It is a cylinder with a tube and a pump thing attached to it. I put my hand out in the air with it and ask James what it is. He looks up, hems and haws and finally informs me it’s an enhancer. I ask him, what does it enhance? He hesitates and I can tell he’s about to finagle the truth. James doesn’t like me to see the tawdry things in life and goes to great lengths to protect me. Like the time he told me the people in Apt. 29 had put up their Goldfish for adoption. I thought at the time they had gone on vacation and not had anyone feed them and they had died. But James informed me there was a great need for baby Russian Goldfish and baby African goldfish, and I pictured an Angelino Jolie type character adopting them, who collects goldfish instead of babies. Anyway, finally James with gritted teeth cryptically says, a part of the male anatomy.   But, it’s not heavy enough to help your pecks or biceps, I say. Then a realization comes over me and say. OHHHHHH, hmmm, yeah that’s just gross, I say dropping the enhancer, going onto the Weeble’s kitchen, grabbing an oven mitt. Coming back and picking it up with the mitt. I look at James and say, I’m calling Chuck. As I run down the hall to get my cell phone James yells, “Don’t call Chuck, he’s way to busy. He doesn’t have time for your nonsense.”
 
“I’m calling Chuck,” I yell back.
 
Chuck is the man who hired me and has become a great friend. When unusual things happen like the time a born again tenant emailed Chuck and wrote the elevator kept breaking down because of sex, Chuck called me and said he was immediately flying down from San Francisco. Chuck brought a picnic basket with cheese, pate and crackers, as well as champagne. We sat on the floor outside the elevator for 4 hours with our lovely picnic talking and laughing, waiting for sex to break down the elevator but it never happened. Finally, Chuck got up and said,”well it was worth a shot, let’s have a real cocktail!”
 
This time Chuck happened to already be in town so he came right over! As the three of us stood in a circle around the ‘enhancer” and stare at it, Chuck says, “I wonder if it works?” We all hysterically laugh and I decide we should try it and run to my apartment and bring back a zucchini. Chuck sticks the zucchini in the pump and pumps it and the zucchini swells then explodes all over the 3 of us. “Well that makes me kinda nervous. Don’t think I’ll be getting one of those, says Chuck. “Put it back where you found it. We will leave it as a tribute to the Weeble. He was one of the original tenants. We will renovate around it.” After Chuck leaves I climb up into the loft bed and put it back in the hole and tape the Styrofoam around it, still wondering what an 80 something year old man was doing with such a device and what it felt like when he died. Maybe he wondered what it was too and used it to kill bugs. That’s how I see it anyway. Then again, maybe it’s like that movie, “Citizen Cane” and the rosebud thing.
 
Two weeks later I received a present in the mail from Chuck. I keep it in the kitchen. It is quite a conversation piece. I use it to make mash potatoes. And every time I use it I think of my friend Chuck and I think of the Weeble and smile. And I think they are both probably smiling at me somewhere to.