Sunday morning started like any other Sunday morning. The slightly delirious post-Guiness inspired dream… the shuffling down the spiral staircase toward the gigantic industrial-size coffee maker… the Dad-just-shot-my-pony, AHHHH! feeling of horror upon discovering a lack of CREAMER…

As I ritualistically — much like I’d imagine a Cherokee medicine woman, or Senior Starbucks lifer Barista would — poured my French Roast into a coffee cup… I eyeball observed my OCD perfect apartment.

The white couches were in place, perfectly L shape arranged, the happy fluff of the (white) shag carpet impeccably vaccumed. The (white leather) ottomans were arranged in a communal, come drink (white) wine upon us setting around the (mostly white) calfskin. The Riedel glasses (not white, but clear, thus passable) were configured on the bar a meticulous half-inch apart. I smiled into my annoyingly milk-less mocha, mostly content until –

The “SHIT BOOKCASE” reared up from behind the stairs, horrific and terrifying in all its not-completely white un-glory. I stared at it, hard, willing to set fire to it with my mind.

The shit bookcase was the result of one “I’m going to make this pretty!” statement of defiance and one very, very bad Craiglist pickup. A coat of paint later, it was now exiled to lurking behind the base of my metal spiral like… the Less Favored Child named… Earl in a… Quaker “Rhythm Method” family of twelve. YES. So while Earl still kinda looked like everybody else, he wasn’t as attractive, or as smart, or nearly as athletic… so while the family tolerated Earl, they secretly wanted him GONE.

Yep. Earl was our freakin’ bookcase. The ugly white shabby chic “shit” bookcase that we hid behind our staircase.

Sipping at my disgusting concoction of lack-of-milk Roast, and waving to our obnoxious “I STARE. AT YOU.” chain-smoking neighbor across the way, I opened up The List.

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*** Absolutely DELIGHTFUL white shabby chic bookcase, 7 feet tall !!!  $20***

Is your life absolutely, utterly incomplete without an abundance of slightly imperfect, blissfully worn, hap-happyily shabby chic furniture? This is the post for you… we have a one-of-a-kind, hand painted bookcase that will add delight to any room!

Seven teetering feet tall, a foot and a half wide, and just adorable. Come by to Marina del Rey and pick it up for just $20 today!

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I assumed someone would want this piece of crap (hey, I had hand painted it… one coat counts, right?) for twenty bucks. A college kid. A person with vision who’d hack it apart and use it for a “modern art piece”. Someone who just needed a shitty bookcase.

Within twenty minutes my iPhone “binged” with an email. “I LOVE IT!!!! I can have a friend come by tonight to pick it up! Please tell me it’s mine!”

Raising my still sleep-deprived eyebrows, I called the chick back at the number she listed… three times… and told her that her “buddy” could come by before seven.

“But not a moment later,” I advised, “I’m throwing my significant other a surprise birthday party this evening, and I cannot tarry!”

“He’ll be there!” she chirped.

Eight hours roll around, and the clock is nearing 7.30. I prepare to escort The Boyfriend out to hide him while his friends came over.

Riiiiing! Riiiing!

The random “friend” the weird I Love Your Shit Bookcase chick was sending over had finally arrived.

“Hello?”

“Huuuurrr… ‘lo. I’m by your buildin’.”

“You’re… by it? Or, in it?”

“By it.”

“Okay… where are you?

“Not sure. By 4500 Bluewoods.”

“Er, we’re 4533 Bluewood*. The Live/Work Lofts”.

“Oh. I’m there then. Is it a little house?”

“Um… no…”

Twenty minutes later I finally somehow get this crackhead INTO the appropriate address (obnoxious leasing signs abound down the street, you can’t NOT find our infamous lofts), and he calls again.

“Where are you?”

“We’re on the fourth floor.”

“Oh,” (long pause), “where’s that?”

“… UP! ELEVATOR!”, I attempt to not-yell, forcing myself to hang up before I added, “GET INVOLVED WITH ONE!”

Standing there, waiting for this dude to navigate my building, mentally crossing off doing my hair… or makeup… or anything remotely feminine for the party I was throwing in order to have time to obtain, you know, a CAKE… I waited for Crackhead to find my unit number.

A limp-writsted knock finally alights on my door. I sprint to it, opening.

“Hullo.”

“Um… hi…”

An extra from Deliverance wanders into my apartment. I silently observe his pockets, looking for knives, a gun, mustard gas. He looks clean. I show him in.

“Nahce plaaaa-y-ce,” he scoffs, obviously annoyed at its maniacal perfection.

“… thank you.”

I drag the shit bookcase out from behind the spiral stairs. Crackhead bobs his head.

“Huh! Didn’t see it thur.”

“Nope… it… uh, doesn’t really “go” with the rest of our furniture, so…”

“Right. Merryl’ll take it, I guess.”

He fishes around in his pocket for something… finally extracting a crumpled twenty. I’d have almost felt bad taking it from him, had he been less of an silently seething asshole. He could get… like… a haircut with that, you know? Trim up that mullet a little?

He stands there, looking at shit bookcase, then looking at me.

“Uh… do you need… help with it?”

“We-helll… you could offer to get the DOOR for meh,” he states, irked that I’ve just actually accepted the proffered money… for the item that I’m SELLING. Picking up the bookcase, he stomps off down the hallway.

As requested, I open the door for Crackhead. He glares at me as he exits. “Fuckin’ maze in this place!”

Smiling, I close the door, his weird psycho man-killer energy wafting out with him. I lock it. 8:15… guests were arriving in less than an hour.

As I began hustling The Boyfriend to get his shoes on, my cell phone rings. It’s the Strange Woman who sent Crackhead.

“Hello?”

“Um… hi,” she began, “um… so, the bookcase, I just bought… I hear it’s not all that, um… it’s not what I thought it was going to be.”

“… yeah. Usually a good idea to actually LOOK at the stuff you, you know, buy.”

“… right. So, I don’t really… um, want it? So… can he just… like, bring it back?”

Boyfriend at this point is halfway through the sock process.

“You know what, Mildred, or whatever your name is? You can totally just HAVE your twenty bucks back. We’re headed out to “dinner” right now… so feel free to stop by tomorrow…. and just KEEP the bookcase. Or throw it on the side of the road. Frankly, I don’t care, but I have to go–”

“Well… I need the twenty dollars back now.”

“Well, you just purchased something from NOT a store, had a very strange individual show up an hour LATE, and we’re on our way out to dinner. So feel free to swing by tomorrow –”

“That’s not going to work for me –”

I hang up on Mildred or Minnie or whatever the hell this woman’s name is — Boyfriend has his SHOES on, and I’m not risking any more random delays over Shit Bookcase… my god, I mean, seriously, it’s a (completed) twenty dollar CRAIGSLIST purchase!!!

Boyfriend begins putting on a dinner jacket. My cell phone rings again.

“I told you, tomorrow –”

“I-yum waitin’ outside your DOOR until you come OUT with the MUN-HEE.”

Crackhead. Startled, I wander over to my peephole, looking outside. I don’t see anyone. Unnerved, I steadied my voice…

“Dude, we’re already on our way out the door to dinner, so you can come by tomorrow –”

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Jumping, I creep up to the door again. Crackhead and his weird Crackhead eyes are STARING right back at me. He’s holding the shit bookcase like it’s freakin’ ransom.

One thing I don’t like, besides Hitler — besides eggplant — is an individual I HAVEN’T INVITED trying to SURPRISE stalk me at my HOUSE. I suddenly began channeling an African American mama –

“Oh no you DIDN’T–”

I put a hand on the door, about to swing it open to face Crackhead –and out of nowhere, Boyfriend pushes me back, a crisp twenty in hand.

“Ash, just let me handle this –”

“OH NO HE DIDN’T –”

“ASH.”

He literally picks me up and puts me in the living room. Opening the door to Crackhead, he hands him the twenty, then goes to close it.

“I told yooo I’d wait!!!” Crackhead spits, trying to push Shit Bookcase through the opening. Boyfriend pushes back, closing the door on the guy. Crackhead begins POUNDING on it.

“Wayyyy-ting!!!!”

Boyfriend rolls his eyes, moving to the other room to re-collect his jacket. Not one to be idle when there’s confrontation, I grab my purse, rushing the door.

Swinging it open, Crackhead nearly falls over the bookcase as the pounding surface is removed — I grab a handful of dollar bills (don’t ask me why I had these readily available, but I did), and fling them into the air.

“You want more money? Here’s more! Here’s twenty FIVE dollars, shithead, now take Earl and leave us alone!”

I don’t know if it was the sudden shower of crumpled cash or the humanizing of the shit bookcase — but Crackhead went still, widened his eyes at me, grabbed the money, and literally RAN.

I watched him sprint down the hallway for a few moments before sighing, and looking down upon the now broken and additionally ugly shit bootcase, which lay — finally ready for death — at my feet.

“I’m so sorry, Earl.”

And with a final eyeball recon gaze to make sure Crackhead was absolutely out of our lives forever, I strapped on my three inch heels, grabbed my evening bag, and dragged shit bookcase down the hall and into the elevator… my silent tuxedoed Boyfriend standing next to me, not telling me so… and flung it into the basement garage cubicle from whence it (probably) came.

From now on, I stick to reconstructing NOT shit furniture when I’m bored.

At least until this experience dulls a little.

Or I mix Whiskey with my coffee again.

Goodbye Earl.