soggy bottom boy

The roof is leaking.
No, really.
Yes, i realize that my life is starting to sound a bit like a country song.
It all started last Friday. After about 24 hours of rain, drips began coming through the overhead light fixture in the center of my ceiling. I pulled my mattress away after a minute or less. My landlord Henry sent Shane the handyman. He looked at the roof, said it needed to dry before he repaired it, and that he'd be back tomorrow. By evening, two more spots were dripping, the larger of them a big bubble that had a steady stream of water coming out. If the rain had continued overnight i'd not have been able to sleep, as the bucket would have needed replacing every twenty minutes. I also realized that if another storm hit and someone wasn't here, the entire apartment could flood. A two-inch water bubble had appeared on the wall, above the electric wall heating unit. Kinda hard to put a bucket under a wall. I pierced it, and worked it dry like a big pimple.
So far, inconvenient, but such is the adventure of life.
On Saturday Shane didn't show, and i got Henry on the phone. We were expecting three days of rain starting Monday, but had all weekend to get fixin' that hole. On Sunday i went off to work, being lifted by and losing a wrestling match to a woman in a bikini on video (is this not a fantastic country??). I'm assuming the clip will end up online somewhere. It was my second such gig. I had done the first one for $20, kind of on spec (and well, because, well, wrestling a scantily-clad, strong woman doesn't "have" perks, so much as "is" a perk). The director, "Kasey", told me i'd get more money on future gigs. She loves me for my personality and because i have 1.9% body fat on a muscled 140-lb., 5'10" frame. On Sunday i did not get more money, however. I think Kasey justified it because it was a short shoot, but i'll not be manhandled so if she wants me again (except by the semi-clad woman, of course). At a thrift store near Kasey's, i spent $6 of my loot on a Mike & the Mechanics cd and the new Annie Lennox disc. I also passed a bag on the road, and something about it was strange, so i doubled back. There was an NYFD T-shirt inside, with the tag still attached, so add that to the day's haul of $14 and two cds.
I got home, and there was no sign that any work had been done. Since Saturday morning, i had been unable to get Henry on the phone. I called him, and later in the evening i finally got a text message saying "i see you called, what's up?" With a storm coming in the morning, "what's up" was not the sentiment i'd been hoping for.
And please, dear reader, check my reponses as you read along. I'd like to think that i've not acted in an alarmist way, but if anything, i've been notably restrained. If the rain continued for three days, i was facing no sleep for three nights. Plus the spectre of a flood, if i had to leave for work (which i did, on Monday). At the time, i wasn't even thinking of other scenarios...friends have since told me that more dire possibilities include electric fire, electrocution, and a collapsed ceiling.
On Monday morning, i got Henry on the line. His attitude was that he would get to the problem when he could, and he re-invoked the need for the surface to dry, implying that the repair might have to wait for the (three-day?) storm to pass. I was a little stunned, and told him that if something weren't done by the time i got home, i would get on the roof myself with wet/dry sealant. He took a little shine to this idea, and asked me my rates. I couldn't even wrap my mind around "rates", and told him so (in my mind, i told him that the time for that brilliant idea had been the sunshiny day before, not when i was off to work in a rainstorm). Before, when i had broached the idea of checking out the roof myself, he assured me i shouldn't, for insurance reasons.
I spent forty-five minutes trying to get everything in my room off the floor, then biked to Manhattan for a moving job, as the rains fell. Hard rains. I called Henry again to say that i would be a bad choice for the job, because of my relative inexperience and because it needed to be taken care of right away. He got a little curt, and denied the urgency i was suggesting.
Then, what was scheduled as a three-hour work day extended to eight hours. Normally i'd have been delighted, but i experienced something that day for which i have little frame of reference to relate it to. Stress. Physical manifestations of stress. Understand, my combination of temperament and how i've structured my life has literally resulted in me being an almost-stranger to stress, or certainly of stress that one can feel physically. It's nearly fair to say that never in my adult life had i experienced what i was feeling. It was a twisted feeling inside, and when the time came when i should have been very hungry, i felt no appetite at all.
Sensations like these may be familiar to you, dear reader. It makes me understand why so many of you are constantly hurting one another, and yourselves.
Stop doing that, okay?
Anyway...i got home after my long day, not knowing what i would find. Henry had said that Shane's assistant might come. There are indications that nobody came, but...there was no disaster. There was a little water in the three buckets, but no sign of flood. I learned that my flatmate Stanley had emptied one full bucket. The rain continued a bit longer, and the bubble on the wall was joined by many others, most of them small, but one which was a foot long. I got Henry on the phone, still temperate in my approach. He said that the assistant had probably been there, and that he himself had come down with the flu. I told him to rest.
So today i awoke, knowing that the time for patient inactivity was past. Storm or not, i would be on that roof, sealant in hand. Happily, the day passed without any rain.
And my roof is newly sealed, as best i could.
There weren't any egregious holes, so the problem may be somewhere i couldn't even see.
But for now, i'll hold my breath a little, and wait for the rains.
Don't get the weeping fiddles and pedal steel guitar out, though...if appetite is a good indication, i'm fine. For the past forty minutes, my stomach has been screaming "finish the article, finish the damned article!"
Loving you all, from wet Bedford-Stuyvestant...