Spring Break

I slammed my eight pages of writing down on the Professor’s desk and suddenly it became Spring Break.


In my creative writing class I started to hang out with the cool dudes. I think this is funny because sitting with the dudes would never have happened in my past rounds of education. I like to think it’s because I’ve connected to a couple of them in the gym. Most likely it’s because of our group projects. I like to actually read our assignments and give feedback during class discussions.

As one of the cool kids, last Thursday, we sat in the back of class discussing what we were going to do for Spring Break. There seemed to be a theme of non-shower sittin’ on the couch chillaxin. There was also a lot of mountain road trip talk. This is when I would have said “finally starting the Erik Larson novel and replacing the garbage disposer.” Something told me that this sounded lame even in my standards. Something in my head just clicked; I whipped out the iPhone and my HRC credit card. Finding the Best Western in Santa Fe that some friends were staying at, I booked two nights. Just in time to say, “I think I’m going to head down to Santa Fe, New Mexico for a while, chill out there.”

As I crossed over into the state of New Mexico, I started to giggle. I love road trips. Live for them actually, yet I couldn’t remember the last time I took one. The nineteen year old dudes in my class think they are pretty smart using me to do the majority of the class work, but they don’t realize that I’m using them quite a bit more. I used them to realize that when you get a Spring Break, you should use that time and enjoy life.

Demolition Man

There was just enough room between the last pole of the chain link fence and the side of the house. The fence was festooned with warning signs. “Keep Out” and “Guard Dog on Duty” but I knew there weren’t any dogs. At least I didn’t think so, at any point a couple of muscled watch-dogs could have leapt from the old Victorian house. I stopped halfway between the fence line and the massive edifice, hearing only my heartbeat and Interstate 25 humming off in the distance, I trusted that if there were dogs, they would have attacked me by now.

In my youth I did this almost nightly, just to look inside the hulking manors before they were ripped from the ground. My motivation was to be the last human to walk the decks of the Titanic before the rust and water pressure turned the iron to dust. Back then I would wander around theses houses thinking of the Silver Barons that built the brick and mortar, and within days the reception parlor and massive staircases would be gone from the Earth. These 1890’s monuments, sitting in the city’s once finest neighborhood were replaced by condo buildings to overlook Interstate 25 and downtown.

Now it seems the tide of obliterating our Victorian history has turned. The thinned out herd of massive mansions, with their stone and wrought iron filigree, do not get hunted down and murdered as they sleep anymore. Some survived. Somehow. In our new, enlightened and mature sense of preserving the past, the houses that once sat in the finest neighborhoods turned skid-row has now returned back to the city’s finest neighborhood.

“I hadn’t done this in years.” I thought as I pulled a sheet of plywood from a back window. I guess I didn’t need to. “They hadn’t torn down a Victorian house in ages.”

As I made my way through the house I could see a considerable change, this particular mansion wasn’t set for the chopping block; it was being prepped for “restoration.” Fifteen years earlier I explored the house that once stood next door. In a gaping hole in the upstairs bedroom I jerked off watching the city below me. Now condos “priced in the mid-300” have taken its place.

The feel of this house was different somehow. In the dozens of house I’ve explored I felt the Green Mile death walk sensation, this feeling was one of anticipation. Looking out of an upstairs window, out at the city, I started to jerk off. As I glanced over at the next-door condo building I met the eyes of one of the tenants on their balcony.

“Guess it’s all changed.” I said to the front parlor room as I kicked out the plywood on the front door. I ducked into a homeless shelter-turned-hipster club as the cop car turned the corner.

DEMOLITION MAN

I love to destroy things. I get some sort of thrill when it comes to ripping the crap out of anything. I usually control myself since the time I got trapped inside a Victorian house in the Highlands of Denver. Back in my early twenties

I climbed inside a beautiful mansion that was slated to be demolished. My goal was to photograph myself jerking off in one of the bedrooms that overlooked downtown and smash some plaster walls. After my territory was marked I soon realized that there wasn’t a way to get out of this massive shell. The first floor was strongly boarded up and the fire escape that was easy to climb up was impossible to climb down. I wandered around for a couple of hours trying to find an egress but nothing.

After jerking off again I decided to jump from the second story on to the only soft ground that didn’t have broken glass glistening in the moonlight. I dropped like a stone and rolled into a chain link fence. After that night of limping home with two twisted ankles and covered in my own seed I curbed my enthusiasm for breaking into abandoned houses.

When I get the chance of playing demolition man I jump at it. This is why when BFF Carl asked if I could possibly help him gut his fifty year old garage I acted like an eight year old. I had to pretend it was work since Carl slaved over a huge breakfast that morning. But, the entire time I was giggling behind my mask.