Goodbye, Bathing Beauty -- The Legend of Precious: Part III

She saved a life and ruined a day, and for that we kept Precious around. She spent the winter months stuffed in a corner of our house, all but forgotten. Spring turned to Summer, and the mysterious stenches of hot days in New York City began to emerge.

One particularly sticky and stinky weekend, some guests came to visit from somewhere rural. I can't remember exactly who they were – when you live with 5 guys in their 20s, and have an Irishman as an ex-roommate, your home is basically a hostel – but they decided to spend the better part of their visit to Brooklyn in our backyard. To maximize their comfort, they bought a plastic kiddie pool. There they sat for hours drinking beers and savoring the bizarrely New York moment. No doubt they had Chinese food for dinner.

They left, like all of our visitors did sooner or later, and the pool became the social hub of our house. It wasn't unusual to get home from work and find someone sitting out there with his butt in a chair and his feet in the cool hose-filled basin. Some nights all 5 of us contorted ourselves into the pool itself. Good friends, a cold can of Bud on a warm night, the same old selection of Christy Moore, Dave Matthews, and Van Morrison spinning around the multi-CD changer... for a while, we all forgot about uncertain career paths and the inevitable realities of a more mature life.

What about Precious, you may be wondering. Well, she joined us by the pool, of course. When? How? I don't know. Somebody found her inside, blew her up, and brought her outside for a swim and an embarrassing photo or two.

Pool season ended and the air leaked out her seams, but we didn't bring her inside. Deflated, she was draped over the back of a cheap chair by the time the leaves began falling.

Our house was in Boerum Hill, one of two buildings that bookended two long, perpendicular blocks of brownstones. As such, the backyard sat between backyards owned or rented by more respectable people.

Around the corner, with a yard abutting ours, lived a white lady who always reminded me of the old hag in The Dark Crystal. She was often chatting with a guy who looked like a a member of Sexual Chocolate in Eddie Murphy's Coming to America. They were friendly enough, but we weren't friends. It was just "hello, how are you?" as we walked by. I wasn't even sure which home was whose, or if they were a couple of just neighbors.

One day, on my way home from work, I decided I had to speak with them. It went like this:

"Hi. How are you? I'm J.J. and I'm one of the guys who lives behind you."

"Hey," said Sexual Chocolate.
"Hi," said the hag.

"I was wondering if either of you lives in the house with the dead tree in the backyard. It's dropping bigger and bigger branches on our yard."

"That's me," said the hag, "I've told my landlord about it a bunch of times. He refused to do anything about it."

"Well, if it'd be helpful, I could call him or something. The branches are getting pretty big and it's getting kind of dangerous."

"No, I'll call him again and let him know you complained. Wait, which house are you again?"

"I'm in the one directly behind you. You know, the young guys who make too much noise, hahaha...."

"That's not the one with the...never mind."

Before I could speak, Sexual Chocolate said, "With the blowup doll?"

I debated walking away right then, because, seriously, what do you say to that? The best I could do was, "Oh...ummm....yeah. That's the place...heheheh....It was a joke. Forgot it was there. Sorry about that. I...uhhh."

Sexual Chocolate offering an out: "Don't worry about. It's not offensive...."

The hag jumped in, "It is too offensive!"

Crap, crap, crap. I had to get out of there. While they debated the offensiveness of an inflatable, three-holed plastic lady, I plotted my exit.

"Well anyway, about the tree. If you want me to call the landlord I will. Something has to be done. Sooner or later one of those branches is going to hurt someone, break the fence...or pop our doll."

With that, I left. When I got home, I brought Precious inside. It was getting too cold for her out there anyway.

Fast forward a few months. After an amazing three year run, it's time for us to move out. We had accumulated  a lot of junk – never a good idea to let 5 guys have a basement they don't particularly need. It was like a clutter farm down there: empty boxes, bags of logo paraphernalia never worn, abandoned futons.

Upstairs, the legless chair, broken beer signs, worn-out clothing, and rickety old IKEA tables would never survive in the outside world.

The night before trash day, we built a mountain on the curb. The scavengers came quickly. Within an hour, there was an unholy mess out there. The next door neighbor (not the hag or Sexual Chocolate, mind you) came out to clean it up.

They weren't being generous. They were trying to clear a path to their own door and avoid a fine from the Department of Sanitation. We ran out to stop them.

"No, no, no. We got it. Sorry. This is our fault. "We'll clean it up."

The neighbors protested briefly. To prove the seriousness of our intent to clean things up, I said, "No, really," and reached blindly into the pile for something to tidy.

When I pulled my clenched hand up, there she was. I had Precious by the ankle. The neighbor said nothing, just went back inside.

Precious stayed in the trash heap that night. She was gone by morning.

I like to think she's inflated and strapped to the front of a garbage truck, with an old sweatshirt and swim trunks covering her most unacceptable bits, and the wind tousling her silly tuft of hair as she patrols the streets of Brooklyn looking for new ways to embarrass and amuse.

But maybe the world would be a better place if she were never seen again.