Okay. So crazy things happen in here seemingly on a daily basis but sometimes… oh man… sometimes something happens that makes me shake my head and think… “Okay… I have truly seen it all now.” Let me take you back to this past week…
There is a guy that lives a few “houses down the street” from me in the unit. He is about 50 years old… 5’4… thick glasses that he has strapped to his head at all times with a homemade adjustable headband… completely “blasted” aka tattooed from head to toe (literally) and his “name”… both inside these walls and out apparently… is ‘Lap Dog’. When asked how it came to be that he was given such a unique handle… he says… “Well… my Dad had a little dog that used to sit on his lap so when I started crawling and coming around… they just started calling me ‘Lap Dog’.” My thought… “Hmmm… well … that makes absolutely no logical sense” but I take things in stride in here and try not to ask too many questions so Lap Dog it is. Lap Dog is the kind of guy in the real world that wakes up in the morning… grabs a massive cup of coffee and 3 Monster energy drinks… takes all 4 to the head and walks out into his garage and “works on sh*t” all day…. every day. And it is no different in the house he currently resides in today. He is always tinkering with something. Making himself a “stronger” booklight. Sewing multiple towels together to make a “real towel”. Painting… dying… coloring… staining EVERYTHING he owns green (his favorite color). Making leather coverings for his 100 pairs of headphones. Trying to re-wire speakers so that they are 5 decibels louder. You know… normal things such as these. Gotta love him.
Well… this past week… I am walking in from work… turn the corner and head into the bathroom to wash my hands and as I am mid-wash… I hear… “Hollywood. Hollywood. Come in here! Get in here man!” His room is one room past the entrance to the bathroom so I can clearly hear him but cannot see him. “Hang on Lap… I just walked in here. I’ll be out in a minute” I say. “Hurry man!” I wash my hands and head out of the bathroom… take 3 steps and look to my left in his room. And what I saw… I will never… let me repeat… never in my life be able to remove this imagine from my brain.
Lap Dog is laying on his bed… on his left side so his head is toward the door. He has his shirt off and I can see something on his chest but couldn’t immediately make out what it was until I got a bit closer. I walk into the room and see this grown man with a purple latex glove taped to his chest. The glove is filled with something… not immediately clear what it is filled with and below this glove… there are two creatures with their heads bobbing up and down seemingly trying to get one of the fingers of said glove into their creature mouths’. What in the actual f*ck am I looking at??
“Dude. What is going on in here? What are those things? What is in that glove? And why is the gloved taped to your chest? But mostly… what is happening?!” I blurt out. “This is Chance and this is Lucky”… he says as he points to each little greyish black creature perched below his “man milks”. “They are baby Possums man. Their Mom died out there on the breezeway so I have decided to adopt them. I’m feeding them milk… look… I have these little squirters that I outfitted into the fingers of the glove so they think the glove is a teet and by putting it on my body… they feel my body heat and think it’s real.” I stand there… mouth open… completely bewildered…. I mean… how do I respond to this? It takes me a good 10 seconds for my brain to catch up to the information that was just told to me… then process the fact that he is fully serious about all of the above and I can’t do anything but (once again)… shake my head… laugh… and walk away.
Where am I?
Lap Dog’s new “bunkies” were the talk of the town for a few days… then they were discovered by the powers that be and after much discussion… pleading… arguing and begging… he was told that he must “surrender” the rodents due to fear of a rabies outbreak and just like that… Lucky and Chance had to depart the premises.
One thing that I will say about living behind these walls… there is absolutely no shortage of situations that really make you wonder if this all is just a horribly sick social experiment. No other way to explain it.
Stay Active. Stay Healthy. Don’t ever strap a latex glove full of milk to your bare chest in an attempt to mimic a Momma Possum…it just isn’t a good look.
P.S. – Lucky and Chance’s Mom was found hanging from the barbed wire fence upside down… a real unfortunate way to go. The facility called an outside company to remove her from the fence but due to her positioning being between the two fences and on the barbed wire… said outside company was going to charge thousands of dollars for the removal. T.I. said… “Nah. We cool.” and instead blow torched Momma Possum to a BBQ crisp and called it a day. Yeah… you can’t make this stuff up. Wow… just wow.