Until today I hadn’t thought of the tenants in my apartment complex as anything but honest, caring people. Aside from the select ass wipes that don’t hold the elevator as you hurriedly approach, everyone is caring and chivalrous, if not fun as well. Until today I hadn’t suspected my neighbors to be anything other than trustworthy, but until today I hadn’t found my favorite pair of boxer shorts missing from my flimsy chest of drawers.

I’ve taken the time to understand how it happened. Yesterday I had started my laundry late, primarily because my alarm clock was one minute and seventeen seconds slow and secondly because I was near-orgasm close to solving the Rubik’s Cube. That lost me another minute and twenty-seven seconds. Finally, Sidney arrived an unfashionably early nine minutes and twenty-two seconds for our date. Now if you add up all the numbers of the individual times in a row—like one plus one plus seven and so on—you end up with thirty two, or how old I’ll be tomorrow morning. In addition, that left eleven minutes and six seconds of time on the drier at the exact moment I stepped into the elevator. Eleven minutes and six seconds can also be viewed as six-hundred-and-sixty-six seconds, so it’s really no wonder this disaster occurred in the first place. We’re all predestined to be victims of entropy at some point in time. My fate unfortunately fell on my thirty-second birthday.

Stopping time for a moment, I walked outside to great Sidney. “You smell like peanut butter again,” she told me the minute I opened my mouth, though I hadn’t yet eaten anything but a plastic cupful of Lucky Charms since I woke. I was hungry, and Sidney wanted to try a new fondue restaurant called “The Melting Pot” but I’d left my pills back in the apartment and the experience seemed trivial without the cheese. “Do you think you turned against lactose because it turned against you,” she asked, “or is your stomach just really made of Kleenex?”

The night proceeded as a series of arguments starting with the reasons behind my weak stomach to whether or not the state of Texas exists, and by the time we arrived back at my apartment we were both so aroused that I yet again forgot about my laundry, now two hours seven minutes and twenty seven seconds--or eight thousand eight hundred and forty-seven seconds overdue. Strangely, if you convert that number into American Standard Date Format, you come up with August eighth of nineteen-forty-two, and if you add up all the numbers you’ll end up with thirty-two, again. I become a little obsessive mid-coitus and all these numbers start running through my head the minute I see a clock, and I have six clocks in my apartment. When I’m with Sidney, time stops. But when we’re fucking, we’re not ourselves anymore. We’ve been that way for almost three years, or almost one thousand ninety-five days, or almost twenty-six thousand two hundred eighty hours. And I get to the point where the numbers won’t stop. They keep rapidly multiplying and building up until I have to release them somehow and that’s when the sex is over—but not tonight. Tonight I left my keys in the door somehow and there was a knock. I broke from my calculating head in the midst of one million five hundred seventy-six thousand eight hundred—right before the eight—and instead of being premature I screamed the eight loudly and clearly through the door, through the halls, and heard it resound in my teeth. Sidney waited five seconds before laughing as fully as I’d ever heard, gave me one of those fart kisses on my neck—the ones with the vibrating lips—and doubled over on the bed. I made myself decent and answered the door.

On the other side was a: “Oh my god, hi! Your keys were in the door!” She was a P.R. girl for Fallon McElligot. You could tell. She was riddled with personalities. Cute figure, button noise, peculiar face and feathered hair that reminded me of Jenna Elfman, who for some reason just gets me going every time. Coincidentally she was born with a “J” name: Julie, and I was intrigued by everything she had to say. Sidney hid under the covers so I left her in the apartment. I went to see Julie’s—her room was nicer.

We complained about the building, laughed about the superintendent, juggled all sorts weird topics until she told me about this nifty Laundromat down the street. “It’s too expensive here, my god, a dollar seventy-five? For sixty minutes? Puh-leeze!” The numbers had me thinking again, and I remembered my clothing in the drier. Spurting forth came my visceral incisiveness in all its glory. I needed my shirts, my pants, my towels. I wanted my Downy-soft blankets of warm golden fuzz, my sparkling green cake-eating bib. I paid nearly three cents a minute already, which I could’ve spent on a twenty-nine minute long distance call through Lucky Dog ten-ten-three-four-five. Now whether you add three cents a minute to twenty-nine minutes or you add ten-ten-three-four-five, you arrive at the same number: thirty-two, my age tomorrow morning. Could one argue this wasn’t becoming some sort of maddening coincidence? I think not.

I ran back from the laundry room with a pile of clothing in my arms. I apologized to Julie on the way into my apartment and promised to speak with her further at a less hectic moment. I apologized to Sidney for leaving her alone while getting to know my neighbor, but something was wrong. Sidney had turned to metaphors like she always did in times of despair.

“Have you ever knocked a glass of water over on a carpeted floor?” she asked. “It doesn't make any noise, and before you know it, all the water's gone. But the thing about a cup is that you can refill it. It's a simple mistake. But when people leave you in silence, you are forever empty.”

“It’s okay,” I told her, “Where is it? I’ll clean it up for you.” She pointed to the glass of water she had knocked over. “I’m sorry, Sid, that was just really messed up what just happened.”

“It’s okay, I forgive you.” Sidney watched me clean the cup while I stood in my boxer shorts and Flaming Lips tee shirt. I smiled back at her. “Cupboard…cupboard…cup-board,” she said with a bite, “yeah I wonder where that word came from.” I tickled Sidney until she agreed to help me put away my laundry, and we fell asleep together peacefully. It was not until the next morning that I realized my favorite boxer shorts were missing from the drawer. I was angry. I had just turned thirty-two and this was my welcoming to the club. I didn’t get that toaster I wanted. I didn’t get to see God like all my zeitgeist-y friends did off on their psychotherapy retreats. I didn’t get anything. I got less than “anything”.

“Sid,” I said, “I don’t remember exactly who said ‘common sense is not so common’—maybe it was Voltaire, but God, I hate being reminded of how true that is every frickin’ day! It’s not just young people but old people too—except middle-aged people, who don’t really do anything. I mean, I look forward to being forty, that is, until I hit my turn for a mid-life crisis, paint myself pink and purple and become worn out and dejected. Then I will be old. That is how one becomes old, you know. It isn't the aging process. It isn't Maalox. It's failing at middle age and then complaining and spitting over it. Then you become senile, think you're still functional, and run over people in your car thinking they're just a line of trashcans. The only things worse than the elderly are the brats they whine about. Don't stand in front of a door when you're talking to your friend. Don't throw your used condoms on the street, assuming you have the rationality to use one in the first place. Don't wait for the light to turn green before you jaywalk in front of my car, because I will hit you. I have no reservations about murdering stupid people. But most importantly, don’t steal other people’s underwear out of the drier! Who does that? I know retarded people with more common sense then the assholes in this building. Retarded people know how to listen. If the entire world was retarded, what a wonderful, peaceful, world it would be!” At that point in my rant, Sidney made the bold move of walking out the door. I continued to call out to her: “No, Sid, I can understand! I eat too much cheese and end up constipated. I pick at a sore and sit and wonder if it's blood or pus when I can just check in the mirror. I even use Q-Tips! But, Sid, it’s my underwear!”

I shut up when she returned with my boxers in her hand. “Next time you’re running with your arms full, try looking behind you. People are careless when they’re in a hurry. You’re no exception. So stop complaining, okay, peanut breath?”

So I kissed her. She laughed and pushed me away, but I kissed her. “Sorry,” I said.

Sidney rolled her eyes. “Happy birthday, dumb ass.”