Gary

Between the ceiling of our apartment and the floor of the place above is, is an empty space about a foot high. There can be found up there electrical wires, there can be found cotton candy pink chunks of insulation, and there can be found a six inch tall little man named Gary.

Gary's a bassist. He has an inch long replica of a Fender fretless that he plays, mostly at night. He is currently working on his epic bass opus that, depending on his mood, can last up to three hours. It doesn't sound bad, but occasionally you can hear where he has lifted entire parts of other songs, mostly from the Zeppelin catalogue. And his dallying in techno may be ill advised, but shoot, I'll see where he’s heading with it.

He's been there for years, Gary has; he has furnished his rut as they say. He's furnished it with miniature chairs and miniature tables, a tiny couch that he made himself in his workshop above our shower. He gets his materials from the trash on the rare occasions that he leaves that small space up there.

And Gary rarely leaves, the outside world is way big for him and he is continuously being treed by rampaging cats. Gary can climb a tree like a tiny little lumber jack, all nimble and full of purpose. Gary gets pretty lonely up in that little crawl space. One time, his sister (Fiona, normal sized, lives in Vancouver) brought her newborn over to keep Gary company. While it was with best intentions that she left the infant with him, the baby was not happy being in the dusty, dark, insulation filled space and continually wailed. And honestly, what the hell was Gary supposed to do about that? He's six inches tall for fuck's sake.

As he's lonely and doesn't have many friends, Gary is constantly snatching snapshots from occupants of the apartment building and creating a photo-collage on his one foot walls. I know somewhere up there that there's a picture of the nine year old me shaking hands with a man in a Dale (of Chip 'N Dale fame) suit. Actually it could be Chip, I could never tell the difference.

Most of the time, I'm okay with his decorating schemes, but at my most paranoid I get concerned that he's using his Gary powers on the pictures to turn us residents into a zombie army that he can command. Sometimes I think I hear him whispering plans through his floor, my ceiling. I can rarely catch what he's actually saying, but I've got ideas.

The other day I made Gary a mix tape and placed it in the little hole in our ceiling that's in the closet. Because I thought it was funny, I included "Gary's Got A Boner" by The Replacements on the second side. I hope he likes it.