his boy Elroy

Condo meeting the other night. There should've been a two drink minimum. I hadn't met the guy who was hosting before, but I'm always curious to see the other apartments in the complex because we all have the exact same layout. Keep this in mind when I tell you that Mr. Silk Shirt and Jeans took me on a tour of his place and proceeded to trash everything that was there originally: He got rid of the "God awful" bleached hardwood floor, which is still all over my downstairs. He gutted the "terrible" kitchen; I've done no such gutting. He got rid of "that horrible thing" in the doorway between the kitchen and living room; I affectionately refer to my odd countertop extension as the peninsula. But he was kind of one of those people who thinks they've made the place hip and modern, but it's really just a robot maid away from being the Jetson house. Clusters of tiny silver lights suspended from the ceiling by thread-like wires that look like they belong on the inside of a control panel sure say home to me, after all. Then he moved onto the artwork.

"These are all original Bowies," he said, with that mixture of casualness and pride that only a guy in a silk shirt and jeans can muster.

Bowies? I'm probably going to regret this coming out of my mouth, but, "David?"

Turns out, I'm right. Then he points to a ginormous one over the fireplace, all bright red except for a big blue-green circle in the middle. "That one, too. That's his eyeball."

I tried to smile. Of course it's not a Monet or a picture of little girls running through a field of wheat. No, it's David Bowie's eyeball enlarged 10,000 times, because I live in a freakin' funhouse.