I often ponder the prospect of being murdered inside of CY Stephens Auditorium. Like every other overnight custodian who came before me, the dulled sound of silence takes its toll on my rationality by the time the moon sets. Each shift is a living rainbow, a mixture of my fantasies about mortality, predatory animals, and Renaissance-era England. While my body remains terse and assuming the entire night through, my mind continually wanders the catacombs of immaturity, often pausing for reprieve on each memory of the 1628 Petition of Right severely handicapped an English king’s ability to rule through insanity. Simultaneously, productivity suffers as I contemplate how long it would take a tiger to fully devour me.
While seventeenth century Englishmen developed the Globe Theatre, the best our supposedly improved new-world colonies can muster centuries later is Stephens Auditorium. Having spent the better part of my alleged adult life working in this facility, I can say with cautious certainty that modern-day Stephens Auditorium is a festering pile of kangaroo pelts. In the hierarchy of today’s public entertaining arenas, Stephens Auditorium ranks somewhere between the Metrodome and a production of the nightmare-inducing Broadway musical ‘Cats’ being performed in a dark alleyway during a thunderstorm.
The last, and only, time I attended a play at Stephens, an elderly couple seated in front of me spent twenty minutes noisily attempting to open a package of fruit snacks in the relative darkness, while a man behind me named Philip kept whispering in my ear an alphabetized list of his grievances against the English parliamentary government of 1645. His voice was both sultry and savage, though I agree with Philip in desiring a restoration of the monarchy.
Philip’s words have stuck with me, and I have since developed him into a lethal enigma. Years ago I struggled with the identity of which man was sent to earth to destroy me, but ever since the night Philip thrust his unwelcome words into my ear, I am positive he will be the one to undo me. Philip bears the descended name of a tyrannical Spanish crown, a name embodying simultaneous royalty, insecurity, and mastery of the seas. Before I sign into work each night, I sprinkle drops of my blood mixed with the tears of repentant sailors, a tribute to the English’s destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588. I hope Philip will someday recognize this offer of peace, but in my heart I know he refuses. For this reason I am ever wary of the inevitability of his impending retaliation, and I am free to project hallucinations of him into my everyday work.
Iowa’s “building of the century” last century, CY Stephens stands a dignified three stories tall, its external beauty masking the secret hells it harbors inside its whitewashed walls. The multiple stories of architectural symmetry would most certainly be alluring to the untrained eyes of building judges, but the absurdities hidden within are a functional nightmare for the underpaid and overworked maintenance crews responsible for its upkeep. There are plenty of nooks and crannies, plenty of shadows for would-be assailants or tigers to leap from. Cleaning Stephens is the custodial version of the game of Mousetrap, except Philip is the one throwing the die.
In many ways my life parallels the building which last thrived decades ago. Just as I reached the height of my fame as the 8-year old alpha-male of the Children’s World daycare center before steadily declining into the cesspool of my wallowing failures, CY Stephens reached the peak of its popularity as a beacon of possibilities for classy entertainers in its early years, long before its current and dramatic downward slide into a venue frequented by the lepers of modern entertainment. In this way Stephens and I both reflect the once-noble turned obsolete Henry VIII, although it’s a certainty Stephens has seduced more women than I. My inability to produce illegitimate heirs would make me a poor king, even if I’m certain Philip will prevent me from ever reaching manhood.
The life of a custodian is short, brutish, and utterly pointless, kind of like the nine-day rule of Lady Jane Gray. A custodian will never live the elongated life of Queen Elizabeth I. As she was considered the ‘Virgin Queen’ for never having married, my janitorial kin and I will also die alone, never having experienced anything more comforting than the embrace of a plugged toilet spilling all over our shoes. We are truly the bottom feeders of society; we’re the kind of people you’d likely find wearing dress clothes to Wal-Mart on a Saturday night while trying to pick up cashiers. No one has succeeded yet, though one ex-custodian was hired to be a Wal-Mart greeter. We wish him well as he moves up in the world.
There are nearly 2,500 seats in Stephens, which is, incidentally, a seat for each man killed at the Battle of Hopton Heath, 1643. The average event fills less than half of these seats, leaving plenty of room for the ghosts of these men to drunkenly carouse in the upper balconies. If audience members ever wonder why there are so many sticky spots on the floor, or why their seats smell of masculine discontent mixed with crumpet crumbs, the English are to blame, not custodial indifference.
Speaking of messes, the bathrooms in Stephens Auditorium are impossible to find on a good day, and pant-wettingly difficult to locate when you just need a relief. To get to an upstairs men’s room, you must descend one of the building’s notoriously unavoidable stair cases, pass through the darkened hallway of strained bladders, and then ascend a sharp incline to the hidden porcelain oasis.
The floors in the upstairs bathrooms, both men’s and women’s—though I’ll never understand the latter– are sticky; getting a mop bucket up to one of these bathrooms is an adventure most minimum-wage employees seldom dare undertake. It is easy to envision a death whereby an exceedingly witty Philip would coerce me into drinking enough fluid that I could not survive this voyage before my innards exploded, though I would certainly hope for a more glorious (and less smelly) end for myself.
I want my death to be clean, or at least confined to a circle no larger in circumference than the 55-inch waist of an aged Henry VIII. All building maintenance employees are trained yearly in safety procedures involving the cleaning of blood-borne pathogens, so a pool of blood, or whatever else might leak from me, should be of no consequence to their freshly exposed minds and bodies. In a way, being cleaned up by the very employees I once trained would be an enriching fulfillment in the circle of custodial life, just like the opening scene of the Lion King when Rafiki holds up Simba, only this time he would be holding up my bodily remnants to the trumpeting of elephants, and the silence of giraffes.
The backstage plumbing system features both aging and insufficient piping, pipes which back up and flood monthly, much like other things that happen regularly each month. The system is delicate enough that something as simple as the food-peddling catering department flushing excess rice down the garbage disposal is enough to start the water deluge, requiring our ever ready roto-rooter to correct. Its times like these I wish I could turn into a fish, a salmon, and swim upstream into the pipes to unplug their blockages with my newly developed fins. Of course, no metamorphoses is ever without repercussion, and it’d only be fair that on my return from the unplugging I’d leap from the pipes expecting to animorph back into a human, only to have my salmon-form snatched mid-leap from the pipe-stream by the jaws of a hale and robust bear. In this fantasy, Philip takes on the form of a bear to serve justice.
The stairs in Stephens become so redundant each night that even when ascending yet another staircase, I am still descending straight into hell. It’s as if MC Escher is the devil, and I am the hapless lost boy trapped in a staircase of endless geometric impossibilities.
The least satisfying of all my murder scenarios is Philip pushing me down a flight of stairs. Even though this simplistic notion of brutality would be more than effective, I am strongly opposed to the wait required for my broken body to flop and thump down multiple flights of staircases before finally reaching my pre-determined resting pose: face down, my mangled legs intertwined with each other, and both my hands stretched straight out over my head holding up eight fingers—eight fingers for King Henry VIII, the most profanely repugnant, and thus my favorite, of all the English kings.
The carpets at Stephens have been withered by years of misuse and inadequate cleaning. Once a bold red, the red of a fleshy, vital Gorgeous George Buckingham, the floors are now nothing but a washed out shade of decomposition, decomposed like King James I’s ability to rule after being seduced by Gorgeous George’s hunting pole.
The ground floor lobby is riddled with splotchy areas of decades-old mystery spills, spots not even a stomach-turning amount of ammonia will remove. These spots have become my proverbial janitorial shrines, untouchable testaments to the power of public wastefulness. Like Charles I, custodians fight a fight they can never win, only hope to temporarily negate before the endless messes of a metaphorical Parliamentary Army become overwhelming and mercifully relieve us of our worldly responsibilities.
While waiting for CSI: Miami aficionados to assemble the circumstances of my demise, my lifeless carcass would dissolve into the uncouth floors, meeting Stephens Auditorium in a final, intimate union, each of us comforting the other in an understanding embracement of our failed lives. If justice would have it, perhaps the remains of my spillage would also become an un-removable stain on the floors, my sole lasting contribution to this world. It would be fitting, after all; custodians are the human stain on society.
CY Stephens used to be something special. Like a 20th century King Henry VIII, Stephens began as a youthful injection of vigor into an otherwise pointless 1960’s society. Now, it’s nothing more than a senile old Henry VIII, gorging itself on the looted spoils of Protestant monasteries, or translated into modern currency, state tax dollars.
The events hosted at the auditorium run continually at a loss; half the tickets for most concerts and performances are giveaways. The management justifies this by explaining Stephens is providing a service to the community, and receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from the university and a handful of antiquated donors who would rather witness expensive live-action events than the free services provided on the internet. Apparently they’ve yet to be seduced by the siren’s call of YouTube cat videos.
Like myself at the hand of Philip, the performing arts are dying, and public indifference will eventually eat it dead. In this manner, just as in most manners, indifference is much like a hungry lady-lion. When she’s finished consuming the performing arts, I would offer my newly jobless self to the lion as a human sacrifice; one of my lifelong fantasies is to be devoured by a vengeful female lion, and I’ve all but assured myself there is a lion hiding behind every locked closet door I open. It would be easy to stable a lioness in the vacuum closet, for example, withholding its bloodlust until I unassumingly unlock the door only to discover lion-form Philip ready to make my final furry fantasy come true. Show courage, Philip; go for the throat. Give me the complete Serengeti experience.
There are multiple signs still proudly strung up around Stephens reminding its guests that this monstrosity was indeed Iowa’s architectural building of the 20th century. The banners proclaiming this award are affixed in a half-dozen locations around the building, and will likely be there for the entirety of the next century. Last century’s proclamations are the sole scraps remaining of CY Stephens’ former glory.
As my death would probably mark the end of the longest ever tenure by a student custodian, I imagine that my murder would similarly be commemorated with a banner. Perhaps a smaller one hung in a bathroom, or maybe they would just write my epitaph on the bottom of one of the existing banners of greatness with a crayon: “Thank you for setting me free, Philip.”
haha look! It’s a board game turned into one massive poop joke! As we watch the girl on the box cheering on the sweaty, straining dog’s presumed steamy release, potential parent buys are being sold on the hilarity of poop. And it really is hilarious, these back end processes. I can only hope the game includes a see-through dog so children can watch the food’s journey from the dog bowl to a rejuvenated form. And then we can make an upgraded version of the game where it’s a cow instead of a dog and kids are all like WTF?
Safety counts. But when the packaging for this knife is large enough to be used as a club, what’s the point? Bludgeoning or stabbing? I feel like a threat no matter how I hold this product. It’s like the knife company didn’t realizing that more packaging wasn’t always beneficial, especially when they additional packaging is nowhere near the dangerous area of the product. But then who am I to analyze a knife’s packaging? For all I know this could be one of those newfangled telescoping knives I’ve been dreaming of inventing. Perhaps I have already revealed too much..
Just browsing what was new in children’s movies at Target. Then this happened. Lion King, Dumbo, Bambi, Winnie the Pooh, IT. What a great lineup. Lull your children into a false sense of happiness and normalcy before crushing their souls with the most terrifying movie I’ve ever seen.
