Adventures in Bachelorhood

By Jeffrey Stoker

A groundbreaking compendium that brings together three bachelor-struggling-to-make-sense-of-the-modern-singles-scene stories, Adventures in Bachelorhood demonstrates Jeffrey Stokers sly sense of humor and uncanny knack for finding the bizarre in everyday situations.

Ranging from desperate virgins to shameless social engineers, from industrial-style coffee houses to lowly one-bedroom apartments, this literary triptych showcases a major American talent whose insights into the human psyche are unparalleled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543439892

Jeffrey Stoker

JEFFREY STOKER lives in Layton, Utah, taking his dog for walks, working out at the gym, and hoping to one day regain his sense of smell. Iconic Reflections is first book, although he’s also written a novella, a one-act play, and numerous film reviews. He’s currently working on a collection of short stories.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Jeffrey Stoker.

Library of Congress Control Number:                   2017911727

ISBN:                   Hardcover                      978-1-5434-3987-8

                           Softcover                         978-1-5434-3988-5

                          eBook                               978-1-5434-3989-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/11/2017

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

765461

CONTENTS

Follow These Simple Instructions

Something for Nothing

A.P. Upended

FOLLOW THESE SIMPLE

INSTRUCTIONS

Eugene steps into his one-bedroom apartment from the building’s outdoor, concrete stair landing. Then he shuts the brick-red-painted door behind him, leans against it with his back, and stares past the living room into the kitchen (this end of his apartment, the front end, has an open floor plan). Shrewdly, he looks the room up and down, his subtle head and eye movements causing him to resemble a boxer who is sizing up his opponent just before the bell ringer rings the bell.

People do this all the time, he says under his breath. If they can handle the pain, so can you. Don’t be a wimp.

Eugene has been looking forward to this all day — and dreading it. From 8AM to 12PM, and again from 3PM to 7PM, he sat with glazed eyes in his assigned tollbooth in the parking lot of the local mall, calculating parking charges, collecting fees, issuing receipts, and, when applicable, counting back change. Try as he might to get himself into a patient, positive frame of mind, however, he couldn’t help feeling restless and frustrated throughout his shift, like he was just marking time. And for good reason: His job as a tollbooth operator won’t give him more confidence with women, thus enabling him to lose his virginity, the thing that he wants to accomplish most in life, but improving the look of his body, which he’s going to do right now, possibly could (unfortunately, the improvement will only be transitory, requiring constant upkeep to maintain).

Because he’s excited, it doesn’t bother him that much that it’s 8:17PM on a Saturday and that, instead of being out on a date somewhere, like he feels he ought to be — he’s twenty-eight years old and single — he’s spending the night here, alone in his cramped, murky apartment with its depressingly chintzy, utilitarian furniture and its boringly unadorned, off-white walls.

Gritting his teeth, he tramps forward and lays his car keys, wallet, and cell phone, as well as the plastic sack from the beauty supply store he stopped at on his way home, onto the kitchen’s white-laminate-covered counter. Then he reaches into the sack and rolls his acquisition, a honey-colored, 5½ x 3¼ x 4½ cardboard box, out with his fingers. Finally, he digs his middle fingernail under the tab on the box’s top end, finds purchase with his thumb tip, and pulls the tab up, freeing the flimsy flap from a dry, translucent sliver of glue. Once he’s pulled up the other three flaps, he folds all four back to keep them from getting in the way, then dumps the box’s contents onto the counter, spreading them out into a straight, evenly-spaced row: one stack of ten muslin strips, one jar of wax, one bottle of solvent, and one stack of five applicators (or, as Eugene whimsically terms the applicators in his head, hourglass-shaped popsicle sticks").

After searching the box for a set of directions and not finding them, he deduces that they’re printed on the jar’s label and sets the box back down. Promptly, he grabs hold of the jar, raising it to eye level. Then he rotates it counter-clockwise in the palm of his hand, nodding his head knowingly as the directions slide into view:

1. Remove cap from jar.

2. Place jar in center of a microwave-safe plate.

3. Heat for 30 seconds on high setting.

Define ‘microwave-safe,’ he says.

Shaking his head with disdain, he attempts to lift the edge of the cap over the jar’s lip. When the cap refuses to budge, though, he realizes it screws on.

Would it have killed you to use a more specific verb? Technically ‘remove’ is accurate, but it’s also vague. ‘Unscrew’ would have been a far better choice.

Standing there, jar in hand, it suddenly occurs to Eugene that he could write better directions than the ones this technical writer wrote. Then he ruminates for a second about the college course he’s taking this semester, Introduction to Technical Writing & Editing, and, with a casual roll of the shoulders, says, "Come to think of it, I am writing better directions than the ones this technical writer wrote."

Eugene is a freshman at the university a couple of cities away — as with losing his virginity, earning a bachelor’s degree is a goal he’ll be accomplishing relatively late in life (that, of course, is assuming he does indeed accomplish the goals) — English Literature being his major, Technical Writing his emphasis. Originally he considered choosing Creative Writing for his emphasis, but ultimately, in light of his left-brain-dominant personality, Technical Writing seemed like a better fit.

Technical Writing, as Eugene describes it to his friends, family, and coworkers, is the anal-retentive art of familiarizing oneself with a highly complex concept, then articulating said concept in a concise-yet-thorough manner. Interestingly, this process could serve as a metaphor for the way in which Eugene lives his life. For him, the world is a place full of chaos and confusion, and the only way that he can stand to live in it, the only way that he can cope, is by creating order from the disorder, harmony from the discord.

Lining an entire wall of a 7’ x 14’ storage room in Eugene’s parents’ basement is his plethora of white, office-style, 18 x 11 x 9" cardboard boxes. The boxes’ outsides are labeled by category with a black felt-tip marker, and inside each one sits a stack of manila folders, said folders’ index tabs labeled by subcategory and arranged alphabetically for quick and easy access.

When Eugene has errands to run in different parts of town, he plots out in advance the best possible route to take — the quickest, most efficient route with the fewest number of left turns. When life presents him with a sizeable task, he meticulously breaks said task down into a series of sub steps (doing this makes the task seem more manageable to him, less daunting somehow). When life presents him with multiple tasks, he composes to-do lists (not only does this prevent him from forgetting even the smallest, most inconsequential of tasks, crossing items off lists gives him a sense of accomplishment, buoying his spirits).

Still holding the jar of wax, Eugene gives himself a heads-up by reading farther ahead in the directions:

4. Carefully break surface of wax with applicator. If wax has not melted, reheat in 15-second increments until wax, when stirred, takes on a smooth, creamy consistency.

WARNING: DO NOT HEAT WAX FOR MORE THAN 1 MINUTE TOTAL, AS WAX MAY BE TOO HOT TO APPLY.

5. Remove jar from microwave.

6. Apply a thin layer of wax onto muslin strip.

7. Place muslin strip onto area to be epilated and rub strip firmly down in the direction of hair growth, removing air pockets.

8. Pull muslin strip off with one quick motion in the opposite direction of hair growth.

9. Apply solvent to remove any wax residue.

Eugene strips to avoid damaging his clothes. Then he folds said clothes and stacks them neatly on his cheap, black, not-particularly-comfortable futon. Outside it’s thirty below, snow-covered but not snowing, and within seconds every muscle in his body constricts; additionally, his nipples turn rock-hard, goose bumps populating his arms, chest, back, butt, and legs.

Brrr! Wrapping his arms tightly around himself, he sprints away, heading north along the five-foot-long stretch of carpet that’s the closest thing his apartment has to a hallway.

After making a right into his bedroom, he switches on the wall heater and flips its dial all the way over to the HIGH setting. In retrospect, he realizes he should have seen to the heater before stripping, not after (had he done that he wouldn’t be experiencing all this physical discomfort right now). It’s not like him to conduct his affairs in a higgledy-piggledy manner, but the combination of excitement and fear he was feeling when he walked through the front door threw off his usually-logical mind.

Last month, when he mentioned to his coworkers that he was moving out of his parents’ house and into an apartment and that this would be the first time he’d ever lived alone, several of them informed him that the best part about having your own place is having the freedom to perform all of your household chores and recreational activities (e.g., cooking, cleaning, watching TV) in the nude. Now that he’s officially performing a chore in his own place in the nude, though, he fails to see the appeal. He might appreciate the experience more if he was in better shape, but he has a pronounced gut, flabby upper arms, and the unsightly beginnings of man boobs, and because of this his overriding feeling is one of gloom, not joy.

After a minute, the sight of his body turns his thoughts to the subject of self-improvement, and no sooner does that happen than he’s gripped by an overwhelming feeling of anxiety. When there were only two or three things about himself that he felt needed fixing, self-improvement-related thoughts didn’t stress him out so much; unfortunately, over the years the number of tasks on his self-improvement list — his official name for the list is The Eugene Improvement Project, although, for the sake of brevity, he usually shortens that, both in his thoughts and to himself aloud, to The E-I-P — has grown considerably.

At present, The E-I-P is comprised of the following ten tasks:

■ Lose weight

■ Get chemical peel(s)