I must dismount down in the Home Depot off Hamilton Avenue because they don't let me ride through the aisles any more, singing at the top of my voice like a crazy fool—a jolly good fellow should old acquaintance be forgot—belting it out like a degenerated opera star and nobody even blinks in this part of town where it’s better not to acknowledge the howling whack jobs.
Listen sweetheart, I’m working on my own shack for a change. I'm Handy Guy the Super Guy, this bicycle my Super Truck, a wire basket on the back and items flowing off the shelves like some Goofy cartoon. Me the handy fool with a screw gun, hanging tough with the Guidos, Brooklyn Visigoths, selected by Darwin for dumb-fuckedness to be the Gods of Drywall, "Forget About It." They should use me for one of those info-mercials, a shopping idiot who buys everything in the store. Let me tell you about electrical, let me tell you about plumbing, this is my own house we’re talking over here so no indulgence goes too far.
I dreamed I carried a four-by-eight sheet of three-quarter A-C plywood naked on my bicycle, howling like a baboon, and I’m not entirely sure it was a dream. Today we’re after minor items, no industrial-strength stuff and I don’t even need a list. I just close my eyes and something’s calling me over there in Paint, three tubes of caulk for the upstairs bathroom, another quart of polyurethane for the stairs, give me a little of that Gorilla Glue, slide over to the electrical aisles to scoop up seven more boxes—four outlets, two switches and a junction, two three-eighths nipples for each, I do electrical in my boxers and not one corner shall be cut because it's my own house this time and
I'm on a mission from the holy church of Obsessive Remodeling. I even told them I’m building a synagogue to avoid paying sales tax. Thou shalt not skimp on small items, for thine is the power and the glory of Home Ownership, let nothing slow your progress toward Do It Yourself Heaven. Yet another fifty-foot roll of grounded cable to reach the bedroom from the breaker box, a dozen of those ducky little 50-watt halogen reflector bulbs. Take me to the station and
put me on a train, haul me over to the ventilation aisle to snarf some four-inch elbows, fasten your seat belts and let me recite the gospel of Fresh Air, ventilation for an asthmatic apartment dweller, roaches crawling out of my ears, I’m an expert on this ventilation topic, recirculation of warm air when the frost is on the window, exhaust the stale gases in the hot season, suck it in up here and blow it out down there, air flow is a question of relative pressure, like water running downhill and who wants to lose his eyesight and manhood sitting at a computer? This is a job for a real man, a Handyman, the word the suits use for an insult but it sure beats trudging on the step machine or hitting golf balls until I turn blue. Pour that concrete, boys, I plan to remodel This Old House until my bank account zeroes out and I'm eating cat food.
