Skeleton Key.

I knew this guy once: Didgeridoo Stu. He was wacky – wacky the way you should be only after you’re old or have survived a traumatic experience. When I was seventeen and Stu was nineteen, we lived in the same apartment building. An old run down block of apartments above the liquor store; Stu, he lived in the apartment next door to mine.

Sometimes Stu forgot to take the garbage out and sometimes Stu forgot to shower, but sometimes Stu would invite me over for dinner. He would warm a can of creamed corn on the stove, stirring it methodically with a wooden spoon as he held a hard cover collection of Eliot’s poems in the opposite hand, reading The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in a mock English accent as the yellow juice of the corn sloshed over the edge of the pot. His shirt un-tucked, the hole in his sock, his sideways hair bent with grease and sleep, tapping the spoon on the edge of the stove when, measuring his life in coffee spoons J. Alfred accepts his fate, Didgeridoo Stu would take a bow and I would clap, clap, clap, sitting there on the floor in the middle of the linoleum in Stu’s dirty dank kitchen trying hard not to touch too much in case it all rubbed off on my new white sweater.

Stu’s dad died a long time ago. Stu always told stories about telling other people about his dad, like when he told me he told his best friend about telling his mom about missing his dad and how Stu and his best friend swung in the hammock in the backyard sun all day when they were twelve. Stu cried a little, when he talked about the hammock.

Stu came over to borrow a pot one afternoon, saying he’d bring it right back. Not quite sugar, but not quite clothing, I agreed and dug one out of the cupboard. I took the lid off as I handed it to him and he dropped his pet snake right into it.

Stu had a skeleton key to the building. He would let himself into people’s apartments while they were at work and sit for while. He would listen to their music and try on their shoes and sample the food in their fridge and sit on the couch and pretend to be them.

After work, at least he’d knock before trying the key.

xoxo

M.L. H’art