Monday, October 10, 2005

I Am Eventually Going To Get To the Part About The Car, I Swear

Part I

The thing with performing any car-related transaction is, if you’re a woman, you need to bring a man with you. Father, brother, boyfriend, buddy-pal, cousin—doesn’t matter. Any penis will do. In a pinch, I recommend toting along a strap-on and slapping it on the table while demanding the $700 your ovaries will immediately add to the sticker price.

So I took along Josh the Pilot. I wanted him to see where I lived in Cocoa Beach before we met, which would have gone a lot better had my former apartment not ceased to exist.

That is how you go home again: “Here's the bar where I used to sell roses. That’s the McDonald’s I used to stop at on my way to work. Here's the other bar where I used to sell roses. And this… sand pit… is…where I used to live.”

This was a great apartment. $480 a month, right on the beach. It was maybe five blocks from the Cocoa Beach Pier. I recorded my very first cell phone message greeting while standing on the balcony; I kept it as long as humanly possible because you could actually hear the ocean in the background. People would call my voicemail just to relax.

I still carry the business card the 107 year old leasing office secretary gave me the day I walked in after my interview at the Kennedy Space Center, announcing I was looking for an apartment. “Sat.,” I had written on it, probably because that’s when the deposit was due. Or perhaps it says Gewürztraminer.” I hate my handwriting.

I miss that place. There were screen doors and green plastic chairs, and it was a wonderful apartment to do business in if you didn’t mind the fact that you could only get your mail when the leasing office was open, which was approximately 4:22-5:07 AM. It was my first big-girl apartment, and I was getting paid to watch space shuttles launch, and I had just met my then-boyfriend, in Florida. I think I could have lived in Winslow Beach Garden Apartments exactly the way I found them last week and had been every bit as happy.

Nice little sidetrack at: mb@blondechampagne.com

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