#22 Are these vibes in the room with us right now?
I was not looking forward to the rest of my night as I walked back home from the local bar. It gets worse when I walk into my apartment and feel something slosh beneath my feet. I look down to find the first floor covered in water and my rug completely drenched. There is no clear indication of where the water was coming from - the roof looked pale and dry, no water spouting from anywhere, no dripping, no trickling. It was like I had been too late to stop a crime. On account of being slightly drunk and unable to find where the water was coming from, I sit on the office chair in the middle of the wet rug and watch an episode of Seinfeld. As I sat there, surprisingly unperturbed, I remembered the day I was laying on my rug, on hallucinogens, thinking, "even if I lose everything, I'll still have this nice rug to lie on."
In the course of the Seinfeld episode, it dawns on me that the apartment should have an emergency maintenance number. I call it up, and after a woman was kind enough to write down my request, we end the call on this exchange:
me: so, they'll be coming tonight? since this is an emergency and all
woman: I don't know I just take the calls
me (annoyed): when do you think they'll respond to an emergency
woman (more annoyed than me): I don't know I just work dispatch like I said
A few minutes later I get a text from the apartment maintenance guy "If this is an actual emergency, call our emergency number XXXX "
I call and get the automated response, "This emergency number is not taking emergency requests anymore."
The next day, after saying goodbye to my rug, I walk into my regular coffee shop, eager to tell the cute barista about the deluge. Before I could, I saw the sign on the door that said their steamer broke, so they could not make any drinks requiring a steamer - cappuccinos, lattes etc. The vibes were off, so I held on to the apartment deluge story for another time.
It's always good to go to the sauna when the vibes are off, so I head over to the climbing gym with the fancy sauna. My mind was doing that thing where it was already relaxing in anticipation of how I'd feel after the sauna. I walk through the doors and shoot straight to the table where they stack towels. The towels have been replaced with the sign "No towels, new dryer should be arriving tomorrow."
The vibes are off, so I decide to focus on getting my affairs in order. I have a backlog of annoying things - some that I've kept off for weeks, others for months and years. I pick the most unpleasant of these - extracting my wisdom teeth. I book an appointment with a dentist and wait anxiously to find out the size of the hole this will burn in my pocket (and my mouth). They cancel my appointment without notice, so I adamantly book another one, call them to confirm, and show up at the office 15 minutes before time. They call my name, and as I walk up, the Indian woman behind the counter tells me, "Sorry you didn't confirm your appointment, so we canceled". I flail my arms like a tube man in front of a car dealership and tell her I did confirm. She tells me they somehow have two phone numbers in my name, and I didn't answer the phone when they called. I say, "that's cause its not my fucking phone number," and walk out.
Anyway, it's been a month, and the floor just got fixed. I got a new rug and got my teeth fixed. I take my own towel to the gym now. I was standing in the shower a few hours ago, my own towel hanging outside, and I see they have replaced the soap and shampoo dispensers. They have got rid of the transparent dispensers and replaced them with opaque ones in which you can't tell if there's soap or not. I slam on the dispenser a couple of times, I don't get any shampoo but the dispenser comes unhinged off the wall, and I just leave it there. "The vibes are off," I mutter as I walk out of the shower.