Without a Mattress

Chapter 7.

True Genius Contained

Nothing gets my goat like a nice leather collar. My goat can't do SHIT once that's around him. But something that BOTHERS me is having to stay home when anyone comes around to fix something in the apartment. It's bad enough that I can't leave the house with a sstranger inside, now I have to keep focus off doing things on my drawing board because I have to get up and CHECK on the bastard every few minutes to make sure he's not STEALING anything. Which is something that, over time, they manage to become better at than fixing air conditioners, which is why he's here in the first place.

And it's not like he can go around just quietly doing his job is it? The guy asks me for SURF, which I didn't even know HOW to react to. Of course I asked him why, and that threw me into a 15 minute conversation about the magical world of bubbles and how they can be used to find leaks in car tires and AC's. After the sixth minute of course, I was nodding my head and looking for SURF, while simultaneously thinking about how much I miss my girlfriend. And how this man must have no idea what it feels like to HAVE one. So I asked him if he was married, and he replied "No thanks, the SURF will do."

What an incredibly witty guy.

They'll always leave the AC on for ages and shit too. Come back the next day, "COOLING kar raha hai?" Well it's been ON for 3 and a half DAYS now you pig lover, if it isn't cooling then we're obviously not doing what our employers are asking of us are we? They comment on the sound your split air conditioner makes before coming on. 13 beeps like a damn truck is backing up, before it kicks in and the entire area you live in fluctuates for a second, and unnoticed by you, when the fluctuation goes away, the lights are a LEEEEETLE bit duller than they should be, someone at WAPDA gets fired due to cut backs...

And your mom full HUMOURS the guy and shit too, thinking it'll make him do a better job. I hate this theory. Most people in Pakistan do what they do for a living because it's just what they kinda fell into, and no one advised or taught or trianed them otherwise. This dude sucks at repairing AC's...talking to him nicely won't banish some devil spirit thats keeping his true genius contained or something. Like all of a sudden this halo will appear over his head and he'll start snapping his fingers like Mary Poppins and the AC will fix itself. He sucks at the work. Talking to him like he doesn't only makes him a slightly less irritated man who STILL sucks at his work.

I opened the fridge because I was hungry, and I needed an excuse to be alone. I can't eat in front of people, it's a real age old fear of mine. It's one of the reasons why I MAY have gone to a couple of weddings dressed in a full body burqa. So much so that whenever I go out to eat with friends, and they ask me why I'm not ordering much, I'd rather tell them I'm poor than show them a man who can make an ass out of himself on a stage, but refuses to eat a chicken wing if a single soul is watching. Of course, you'll know why I feel this way if you ever see me eat a chicken wing. It's not nice putting people off their food, but the more you care the less they understand. So I checked the fridge and I found a quarter broast. It was imitation KFC. You know, the kind you're mom TRIED to make but couldn't quite pull it off? Then she gets frustrated and tells you to name atleast 3 ways in which it DOES taste like KFC but you can't so she steals the mattress from your bed? And it's wierd with moms because the ones that cook well don't take any shit from anyone. If you say anything nice about KFC the first time you order it, they take out the lab equipment, get their tasters ready, put on their glasses, the sanitary gloves and they get to work on one leg piece and all its crumbs, and start listing all the things they taste each time like, "Mmm...ginger." And then jot it down. Once, despite my best efforts to explain to my mom that the crispyness in the chicken batter comes from knotting up the cornflour with harder pieces of aata like substance, my mom crushed a box of Fauji cornflakes and dumped it all over the chicken.

I slept in my room that night, without a mattress. I suppose there are lessons here, if we look for them.