on fire: a faux-squatter’s odyssey

About 5 minutes after waking up, I sat down at my desk to see what I'd missed. As I pulled up my browser, I noticed two things: the cats running towards me and a bright yellow column of flames rising from my bed. Despite having just woken up, I leapt out of my chair, sprinted the distance between here and there and began beating at the flames with themselves, whipping the blankets around, watching the bigger flames vanish while a smaller set was eating through the boxspring. I ran to grab the fire extinguisher from under the sink and after a 2-second lesson on how to work it (set it down, pull the pin, aim, squeeze the trigger) and doused the flames with a limp stream of white powder (an experience far less exciting than in the movies).

My robot-sized air-conditioner, complete with charming musical beeps and pretty blue lights and a mouth that opens and closes to breathe the breath of air-conditioned life upon me, had just gone into full batshit cardiac arrest and melted down the jerry-rigged system of plugs and adapters it was running off of, leading to a bright orange extension cord that goes up the wall and through a hole into the next room to plug into a rickety socket. Apparently when the manual says plug it into the wall, they mean you really really should plug it into the wall.

This constitutes one of many lessons I've learned while living here. Among the others are:

• when an outlet looks shaky, check it before trying to plug something into it (lest it crumble mid-insertion and fire sparks at your face)

• 100+ year old floors cannot be mopped, cleaned or in any way made to look any better than they do, and any attempts to do so will only make them look worse.

• heating 6,000 square feet is a costly proposition (my $800 gas bills, let me show you them)

• when you blow a circuit in an ancient building, it's gonna go ahead and stay blown.

• duct tape is the best cure for a broken window

• when you live in an artsy stretch of neighborhood, lock your door, even if you're just walking across the street to shoot a photograph, because you will come back to strangers wandering around your house.

• a 4-day, go-all-night dance competition will start off as an obnoxious ocean of squeaking floorboards and dragging feet and transcend into a calliope-music-scored orgy in your head if you hear it long enough.

• kansas city, kansas has a swinger's club called Menages.

• plugs will melt and burn, given enough time.

• not everywhere is a war zone where walking around after midnight is a life or death gambit. and some cops can be nice and actually wave.

• summer sucks when you live in a concrete box that spends all day absorbing heat and all night spitting it out.

• community actually exists on blocks and streets, in a feel-good, Dave Chapelle kinda way.

• breathing fire extinguisher dust is bad for you

I just learned that last one after putting out the aforementioned fire, becoming quickly convinced I was going to die, my heart going all a-thud a-thud on me, my lungs struggling to get enough air in them. This wasn't helped by the lack of a/c and the rise of the high-pressure dome we've been taught to fear in summer months, a dome personified by humidity that just skirts rainstorms and heat that just skirts hell. Laying in bed, staring up at the defunct central air system that hangs on an equal amount of metal braces and faith, counting out my sins and trespasses, waiting for the sweet taste of death, I thought to myself, "Well, at least I'm gonna die somewhere cool."