A night in the pump house

Once I had to spend the night in a pump house. I am not proud of it, however, it is something that I will never forget. I am not going to tell you why I ended up there, let's just say, I needed a place to stay. In general, a pump house is a little building or closet where swimming pool pumps and equipment are stored. It is a noisy place. Always humming and jerking with the sounds of turning on and off. It was cold that night. Not winter, but a day in mid-fall when you knew that summer was dead. I actually thought that I could walk around all night. An hour later, I found myself looking for a hole in which I could crawl. The gate to the apartment swimming pool (where my girlfriend Pam lived), was locked. I walked around the wrought iron fence, eye-balling the comfy looking lounge chairs by the leaf strewn pool. "If I could just lay down in one of those, I could go to sleep and the night would pass by like a flutter from a black butterfly" The warm whirl of machinery clicked on under the buzz of the street lamps and I had an even better idea. "I bet I could get one of those lounge chairs into the pump house, close the door and snuggle up next to electricity and hot water”, I thought hopefully. I climbed the overly secure and viciously pointy fence, grabbed one of the pool chairs and headed for the pump room. It took some configuring but in no time I was able to wedge the chair into the little room and situate myself. "Fuck, the goddamn door won't close", I said irritably. No matter how I arranged the fucking chair, the pump house door stayed opened with the slightest crack. Believe me that little crack let in a whole lotta cold. Maybe if I listened to some music. I had a Sony Walkman with Billy Joel’s latest cassette, "Innocent Man" in it. I pushed the play button, "I ammmmm an Innnnocent Mannnn oh yes I ammmm" "Aww fuck no" I love Billy Joel but two o'clock in the morning made that album sound like shit. I tried like hell to sleep but who was I kidding. The pump house idea was a bust and I decided to keep with my excellent original plan: walk around all night. Then something wonderful happened… suddenly I remembered that I sorta-kinda had a friend that lived in the apartments. Well, he was the boyfriend of a girl that I barely knew. Mark. He would let me stay with him. I mustered up every ounce of courage I had and rang his doorbell at 3am. It took a few times but his roommate answered all sleepy-faced and sloppy. My pitiful appearance and woe some tale must have melted his early morning heart and he let me sleep on the lumpiest couch in the world. It was dirty red velvet and had a 2x4 block of wood separating the head from the foot. That block of wood cut straight across my back like some torture device but compared to the pump house it was heaven. Mark's apartment was cold but much warmer than outside and I spent much of the evening fighting with a torn hospital blanket trying to squeeze and ounce of warmth from it. I managed to get maybe 45 minutes of uneasy sleep that night and when day broke my stiff and sleepy ass was more than willing to seek more hospitable accommodations. I am 38 now and that was twenty-two years ago. So far I have managed to avoid any further stays in pump houses but I sometimes wonder how far any of us are away from a night in the pump house.