Paul, my mover, showed up at 8 a.m. sharp to haul all my belongings uptown. Because his bread-and-butter is hauling furniture, he only had an older Nissan flatbed truck, but was able to stack and pack everything densely and securely, like the Beverly Hillbillies jalopy. We made two trips on account of the loveseat, which did fit in the elevator of my old building, but wasn’t much fun to carry up the five flights of stairs in the new one. At several points, I thought surely I was suffering from heatstroke or heart arrhythmia, and I was breathing like Chubby Checker in a buffet line.
After the move, I headed out to Target again for a Brita water pitcher, some clothes hangers and other miscellany. On my way to the grocery, I checked out my neighborhood, passing a taco truck and a group of old men playing dominoes on a folding table they had set up on the sidewalk. I bought some basics: a block of cheese, generic Honey Nut Cheerios, Pringles, cranberry juice, Granny Smith apples and a coconut-flavored soda named Coco Rico. By the end of the day, I had finished most of the cleaning, which involved spraying-on Lysol and wiping every horizontal surface. I put away about half my stuff. I assembled the bed, hung my clothes and filled the closets. I still need to put together my modular shelving, store my DVDs and hook up the stereo, and there’s plenty more shopping to do, foremost for kitchen supplies and drapes for the main room and bedroom, as well as a cover for the light in the bedroom which someone made off with at some point.
While cleaning and storing, I found the usual stuff one finds laying around a recently vacated apartment: instructions for the radon detector, spare change, a stray screw. However, I also found porn.
Cleaning a high shelf in a closet, I spied rectangular black plastic that I assumed was part of a roach trap. Standing on a milk crate to extend my reach, I retrieved four VHS tapes with black-and-white laser-printed labels. Because I don’t have a VCR, I’ll offer some reviews based on the labels:
- Fuck Holes #31. That’s a lot of fuck holes! This one is a bit alarming as it uses the same typeface as Arabica, a popular chain of Cleveland coffeehouses, although I don’t think there’s any relation. Brought to you by a company called Legend Direct, this tape’s second feature is Disgusting Fat Girls #2, which reminds me of that dialogue from The Silence of the Lambs:
Jame Gumb: Was she a great big fat person?
Clarice Starling: Why, yes, she was a big girl, sir. - The hygiene-challenged fatty fetish continues with Filthy Fat Fuckers #3. The only hint into the majesty of this one is a subhead on the label that reads, “Approximately 240 Min.” and a note that it’s produced by the sunny folks at Sunshine Films, Inc.
- Another hit of Sunshine is the more tamely named Latino Sexpots #4. Do people still use the word sexpot? I think “sexpot,” I think Vargas girls. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing from a porn standpoint, I suppose.
- Finally, a classic from Vivid Video has a title that makes me titter: Behind on My Mind. A label note helpfully suggests, “Adjust Tracking for Clearer Picture,” when it just as easily could have read, “For Clearer Picture, Buy a DVD Player, You Cheap, Horny Bastard.”