Fungible Goods

Why does the word have only one “c” and two “u”’s? Or maybe it makes perfect sense that way.

The dog I had adopted during apartment number three, relationship four, really objected to the vacuum cleaner. He would bark ferociously at it from the moment it Hoovered out of the closet. It was a mystery, this antipathy; the vacuum cleaner was the only thing that made my dog bark. And bite—the thing was scarred with toothmarks after a year with the dog.

So I had just moved, still with my dog, but no relationship, from a second-floor apartment at 3133 North Calvert Street to a second-floor apartment at 3511 North Calvert Street. It wasn’t a far move, and so I did it in little trips, hardly even using boxes. I had a pickup truck at the time, and up and down Calvert Street I went. Different friends helped me on different days. I’m not sure exactly when I noticed it missing. I asked the various friends who had helped me move if they remembered anything about the vacuum cleaner. No, none of them did, but one of them told me that in French, the word is something like aspirator. Another of them asked if I had looked in the basement? No, I hadn’t—I couldn’t use the basement because it was full of the previous tenant’s belongings. It was part of the deal with my landlady: I would eventually have use of the basement—once she tracked down that tenant, who had paid up all his rent, but then vanished at the end of the lease, leaving everything behind.

For two months, I did without: I used a broom.

About two months after my move, I noticed a sign for a yard sale, marked with my address. It was early morning, not quite eight. I was out walking my dog. The sign was posted at the end of the block, it said 8 am till dusk, with that day’s date. Did it really say my address? Yes, 3511. I turned around, cutting short the dog walk. I hadn’t seen any sign of any such thing five minutes before as I had left the apartment. I remembered when I got back that there was a garage behind the apartment house.

It was a garage sale, not a yard sale. Anyway, plenty of people had already found it. They were milling around, one of them already had a small lamp tucked under his arm. There was my landlady. I waved, and started to walk over to her. The man with the lamp intercepted me, bending over to pet my dog. He was saying something about what kind of dog was it, when he (my dog) suddenly lunged, growling and snapping, jerking the leash out of my hand. He knocked the man slightly off balance, brushing past him—not at him—but still the man lost his grip on the lamp, which hit the ground with a huge crash ... no, the crash was the sound of my dog knocking over a card table stacked with a silver-plated tea service, then the cry of an elderly obese woman falling into a chair too small for her, as my dog rushed by her too, barking savagely, leaping, attacking ... my vacuum cleaner. There was no doubt about it. The same dingy beige, upright Electrolux. How could it be? But there it was, labeled: 1st Floor, in magic marker, in my ex’s mother’s hand. And the toothmarks, there they were.

Today, I live with the goods of that garage sale. I bought out that garage sale, and refurnished my apartment. A swap with the disappeared tenant: my things are in the basement now. Or is it me in the basement ... Was it the things I swapped, or the space (or did they swap me)?

Cultural Revolution porcelain penholder

On the front of this porcelain penholder it was the image Mao and Lin Biao together, reviewing the Cultural Revolution Army. On the back was Mao’s words, “Revolution improves productivity”, a famous slogan in the late 1960’s. Interesting imprints are found on the bottom of this porcelain penholder, it stated the following: “In memory of Manufacturing Company’s Revolution Committee, October 1967.” The Revolution Committee was written in shortcuts to save the space. This was like a souvenir item to celebrate the establishment of the revolution committee for a manufacturing company.

Size: height 5.12", diameter 2".
Price: $28