misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

As per your requests, here is an apartment update:

Stephen has degraded into his previous self, which is to say, I regularly pass him on the stairs, as he crawls down the steps, pantless, smeared in vomit, mismatched slippers clinging to his toes, hair like dead worms writhing from his scalp. He grips his dark wood cane, white-knuckled, as if he'll float up into the sky if he lets go even for a moment. His face looks like the grim reaper ejaculated a pound of ash over his skin. He's always headed to the corner store, for two more big, cold cans of Foster's. People in the building have tried to talk to the corner store cashiers, but they still sell him the life juice. What do they care? Two Fosters brings in 6 dollars every time. His sobriety lasted about a week after he got out of the hospital. Most of us in the building don't even have sympathy for him anymore. He's throwing his existence away, and none of us have the training or desire to intercede. I'd rather spend my time working on something or someone that can actually improve. Now, when I come across him, I either push right past him shaking my head in disgust, or, when in a bad mood, yell. "Stephen," I say, "what the fuck are you doing to yourself? It's fucking sad. You're fucking sad. We tried to help. What can we do?" He doesn't reply. He just looks at me blankly, with eyes smeared by the opaque crust of alcohol. I hear him during the night again, falling, puking, dying. The only positive lesson here is that the human body is clearly a tough son-of-a-bitch. This guy is deliberately trying to destroy his body, and his body is defying him. Almost like it isn't even part of him. Mind over matter, my ass. The only thing keeping Stephen alive is his body, which refuses to let his diseased mind take it down with it. I almost feel more sorry for Steven's body and organs than I do him. His liver, kidneys, muscles, must be frantically trying to deal with everything, doing the best job they can, trained by millions of years of evolution to survive at all costs. But they are being betrayed by their owner. Is every life worth saving? It calls to mind the discussion about brain-dead patients, or terminally sick people. At what point is a human life beyond redemption? At what point is the pain of living worse than the fear of death? Stephen is toeing that line, and those of us in the apartment are woefully ill-equipped to deal with it.

On a lighter note, the characters in our apartment continue to grow, beyond Steven. Future installments of this blog will describe our gay, rich, incredibly eccentric neighbor Rudy, a 65-year-old man named Lou who never leaves his tiny apartment, even though he has $550,000 grand in his savings account (I've seen his bank statement), and the ghost of a grotesquely fat woman who lived and died on the 5th floor. I've walked my right into a movie manuscript, and I'll use this blog to record all the details.