Earl Buckets: Maintenance Man

That Leftbanker guy ain’t in today. My name is Earl Buckets, the maintenance man in his building and I’ll be writing to you today. I’m in his apartment cause I had to fix the toilet. Like some pretty boy writer can fix his own toilet when it’s broke? Yeah right.

What kind a job is writer anyway? All the people in this building got faggot sounding jobs: computer programmer, web designer, software engineer—where’s the MAN in them jobs. Hell, my sister could do them jobs—if she wasn’t in jail. Get a man’s job: Police MAN, fire MAN, maintenance MAN.

Most a the time I just sit around in the mop closet down in the basement. The manager locks me in there for safety reasons but when they is a problem, when they got what I call a ‘situation’ they call on old Earl. Just like in that movie Top Gun. When the commies started getting righteous they went and got the Mav. Same thing here in maintenance; the sewer backs up, toilet gets busted, maybe there’s a grease fire, they come wake up old Earl.

I live my life like that Top Gun movie and it really, I don’t know how to say it, it really EXPANDS my world. It helps me see things clearerer. Example: I took a look at Leftbanker’s busted toilet. The safe way to fix it would’a been to just crouch down and take it apart. Sure, that’s how Iceman would’a done it. But I tried to think how Mav would do it so I leaned over the toilet, sorta upside down. Very unorthodox, you might even call it dangerous, but I took care of it. Mav and me don’t care what people think, we just get the job done, period. Flying jets and what I do ain’t so different.

Now I’m kicking back sipping a little of Leftbanker’s booze. Scotch, I told ya he was a fruit. What kinda guy ain’t got a bottle a Jack Daniels or some tall boys lying around? Not one goddamned Billy Ray CD or Skynyrd in the whole collection, neither--nothing but classical. I’m half afraid to look through his clothes cause I’ll probably find a few dresses.

I’m just getting a little head start on the drinkin’ cause later I’m going out partying with Oscar Bungston. He’s the urinal cake representative for this whole part of Seattle so I don’t need to tell you he’s a pretty important guy. He’s got a way with the ladies, oh yeah he does. He starts working the charm on the ladies and there’s no stopping him. Most a the time they give him a head start before they call the cops on him. I still get warning shots fired at me and maced pretty regularly, and I got enough restraining orders to wallpaper the mop closet.

I learn things from Oscar. I bet you didn’t know that if you drop a couple a urinal cakes in the tub it makes for a very refreshing soak, just like a Jacuzzi.