They're everywhere and they're invading. My roommate inviting them inside to take a look at the place. People pushing in, inspecting my apartment, feeling it out. A parade of faces flashing fake smiles. I'm detached, but courteous, hiding in my corner room, with the door closed just enough to let them know I don't want to be disturbed, without being excessively rude about it. One by one, they open without knocking, and flash a disarming smile. They all ask, “Is that your bathroom?” Yes. Everyone is interested in my bathroom.

It was the kind of place where the inherited, white bathroom walls were gesturally painted over with a dull genius green which didn't do its job of entirely covering the coat underneath, perhaps on purpose, and broke the cardinal rule of room painting by leaving abstract expressionist brush marks in any place, mostly the awkward ones, where a single stroke wasn't enough to entirely cover the base beneath and seemed to say: Here I am, take me or leave me, I'll be here if you change your mind. We always did.

I walk outside to buy a full rotisserie roasted chicken for six dollars at the corner store (the pre-made, individually wrapped sandwiches there cost anywhere from four to six, so why not buy a whole chicken for the same price? I firmly believe that anybody who doesn't is either insane or selling something. Perhaps both. But, as I often do, I digress. (Side note: I love parenthesii, but am not sure what the plural of parenthesis is (or do I, actually?) and I don't want to look it up, because then I can't write this sentence, and also wonder at what point they would be better as footnotes? Ok, I'm done here.)), to find that the area outside my apartment has been turned into a makeshift, post-preppy grunge campground. It's unnecessary urban survivalism at its finest. They're waiting to get the best apartments for next year, at the aptly named PENN STATE APARTMENTS ®(capitals are [sic]), on the day, the minute they go up for sale. It bears to be stated again: people are camping out, in a single file line nonetheless, homeless outside my apartment so that they can get an opportunity not to be homeless a little under a year from now. I'm told that this is called “ planning ahead,” by one of them, when I tell him to move his green, ten foot by ten foot tent away from the door to my building, albeit rudely, so that I don't have to be homeless tonight. Prep-school graduates crammed into sleeping bags and street-tents, armed with thermoses and packed lunches assuming the bummy loose clothes, stained hooded sweatshirts and all-too-disinterested stylishness of faux-homelessness. What they'll do to know their future early. For a chance to seal it. For a chance at certainty. I think about that as I realize that I'm probably never going to have a real job and don't care to begin looking for one.

The faux-blonde cashier, making an overt attempt to not look cute at her job at the corner-store, but failing, asks me, “Do you want a bag for that?”

“Would you want to carry a whole, still hot, rotisserie roasted, barbecue chicken down a street full of starving fake-homeless campers?”

“Yeah, that might be kinda weird.”

She laughs. I don't. She gets me a bag.

As I tear into the chicken, I hear disembodied voices via echo and realize that we have four TVs in this apartment. There aren't even that many rooms. Embrace the information overload. It was a big moment, when I allowed a television in my room. My roommate was overly enthusiastic about it, but I was skeptical. I was secretly afraid of opening a gateway directly to the seventh circle of hell (I have been reading Dante), via digital portal, next to my bed, in the place where I sleep. Of course, I didn't say this to him. Just hinted that it would maybe, possibly, perhaps, ahem, definitely be a bad idea.

But, they're everywhere and they're invading. Now a long, time delayed echo circles through our halls when all four TV sets are on at the same time, which is all the time, and my life becomes the equivalent of living in the purgatorial liminal space where the four disc, Flaming Lips concept album, Zaireeka, was recorded, while being doomed to wonder if the time delayed echo on the television sets, which are invariably all tuned into the same channel, can somehow subtly disrupt my brain chemistry. I dread it, but for some reason, secretly hope so.