Jeff is Almost Famous and Also: Manly and Competent

My Next Meeting with My Agent (Artist’s Conception)

So, I had an adventure. Not much of an adventure, just something slightly more exciting than my usual evenings which are filled with liquor and muttering and bomb-making and throwing things around for the cats to chase while The Duchess demands that I watch whatever awards show is on that night. (There are now 1,356 awards shows on television. True fact.)

It’s been really cold up here for the past week. Not, you know, Kill-Me-I-Live-in-Minnesota-for-Some-Reason cold, but cold. I’d recently been featured in the local alt weekly paper (hey, read the interview here!) so my neighbors on our little cobblestone street have been offering me awkward compliments of the “Jebus we all suspected home arrest or perhaps mild brain damage and yet you have written books for money” variety, which is nice.

The Duchess and I had gone out to dinner with some friends from the block and we were sitting on the couch afterwards watching someone – Taylor Swift, Idi Amin, who knows – accept an award of some kind when I got a call from a neighbor asking if I knew anything about boilers.

“Boiler Makers? Absolutely!”

No, boilers, as in, those thingies that heat the house. The neighbor in-between us lived with her elderly mother and their boiler was stopped working and it was about seven degrees outside. I knew what this was: This was a Call to Manliness.

The Call

There is, as there is in every neighborhood, that one older man who everyone calls for help with things. I am not that man, but that man was out of town and so they called me on the slim hope that I would know what to do. So I strapped on my trousers (after locating a pair) and headed on over to my neighbor’s house, where I was greeted like a conquering hero.

Did I manage to get that boiler lit again? I sure did. It’s not rocket science. You turn the switch to PILOT, you light a match, you start thrusting the flame around until you figure out where the pilot is and pray you don’t set yourself on fire (because of course you’d been drinking a bit and so such things are entirely possible if not entirely probable and now that you think about it several of your ancestors died from setting themselves on fire when drunk), then you hold the button for thirty seconds, let go, and if the pilot stays lit then the thermocoupler is working and you turn the switch to ON at which point the flames should leap up to start, you know, boiling.

So, I was an hero. As I left, my neighbor kept saying how amazing it was that a “famous author” had just fixed her boiler, and I kept looking around to see one and then realizing she meant me. Now, when people say “alcoholic author” or “asshole author” or even “failed author” I generally know they’re referring to me. But the famous part? Not so much.

Although at least now I know that if this writing thing really doesn’t work out, I can always get into boiler repair. And finally set myself on fire while drunk just like the Ancient Somers’ that came before me.