In a town where I used to live, someone had spray painted this on a wall. It had been very well scrubbed off. So well, in fact, that the shape of the letters remained long after the paint would have faded. There is very little chance of missing text based on the condition of the bricks. I reproduce it as closely as possible from memory as this:
“I love Lorrie
and air conditioning”.
Since I used to step out of the office for a smoke several times during a day and this could be seen from my smoking spot, I looked at it a lot. I have yet to come up with any possible motive beyond the idea that buddy was drunk, wanted to immortalize his love for Lorrie, lost focus a bit during the actual painting, realized that he also loved air conditioning and added that in one of those leaps of logic only the truly hammered can make sense of.
That’s the most likely option, in my only very occasionally humble opinion, but it lacks something. There’s no poetry, no arc, no resonance. Help me find a story that I can take to heart and eventually, through the wonders of time and the human memory, decide that I heard from the guy who did it and bore my grandchildren with.
Lorrie was the woman that was the love of his life. But she liked to sleep with lots of covers in a cold room and he liked to sleep with the window open to the warm and scented night air.
As in many relationships, it was a little thing like this that led to an argument that caused them to split up. She moved out and disappeared into the night.
It didn’t take him long to realize what he had so carelessly thrown away – but it was too late. He couldn’t find her.
Months passed. He began to drink heavily. One night in a state of drunken angst and desperation, he scrawled this message on the wall:
“I love Lorrie
and air conditioning.”
For this was the wall where they had first met – taking cigarette breaks and sharing a little laughter. Maybe someday she would return and know.
Well, um, during the summer, when you, er, they, you know, it gets kinda, you know, and you sorta need AC.
/Shadez
[sup]Hey! You can’t prove nothin’![/sup]
Maybe he enjoyed two types of conditioning. As in, he enjoyed applying conditioner to his girlfriend Lorrie’s hair, and he also enjoyed the feel of the air conditioning when he got out of the shower when he was done with that particular chore.
Maybe the author got Lorrie in somebody else’s air conditioning. And then that other person got their air conditioning on the author’s Lorrie. And then he realized that these two good things go great together.
The author loves trucks and air-conditioning, and he’s British. Therefore, he is trying to decide whether or not to buy the perfect truck of his dreams— the problem is that it doesn’t have AC.
Or not.
Ah, come on. How the hell should I know? Dude’s probably a drunk anyway. Three cheers for unfathomable minds.
He had to choose between liviing with Lorrie in her non-air conditioned apartment, and living alone in his own air conditioned one. (She refuses to live there because of the smell.) There is much anguish over this decision, since he loves Lorrie and air conditioning equally. He attempts to sort out his feelings by spray-painting them onto a wall. It didn’t help much.
This is so obvious, I can’t believe no one has stumbled on it yet. It was obviously sweltering the day the guy wrote that. I don’t know about you, but when I get overheated on those days during the summber when the dewpoint is about 90 F, the only thing I talk about is the heat. Yes, I am unpleasant during the dog days of summer. I hate them with a passion.
And I have been known to skillfully hide little snippets of my distate for the weather in my dialogue as well as my writing during these days. In fact, I will even quote an old poem I wrote (a fairly bad one, but it is nonetheless relevant). The title of the poem was “My Angelina”. It was about a girl named Angie…and it was written near the end of August. One of the stanzas actually reads:
“I must declare
How I love thee
My Angelina
But not humidity.”
Take that as you will…I was trying to find a rhyme for thee, and humidity came to mind only because it was so damn humid that day.
It sounds to me that the guy got into an argument with some girl he loved because of the dog days of summer. This was just a trifle, really…nothing to break up about. He wanted to profess his loyalty to his girl (who may or may not have had central air) while he may or may not have been drunk.
When he was done announcing his conviction to the world, he looked at his art for a couple of minutes before he realized that he had another message that he wanted to portray to the public. He was sick of the heat.
Of course, I could be way off base here. I haven’t ruled out the possibility that it was some kid that was barely old enough to know how to spell “conditioning”.
… no, wait… hey, here it is… 