Last night's adventure wasn't really an adverture where I went out and did stuff. It was an adventure had in the comfort and safety of my darkened kitchen. I say darkened because not one, but two floodlight lightbulbs had blown, leaving nearly half of the cozy studio in a sort of grey, poorly lit dusk. The first bulb had blown last week, and leisurely procrastination had kept me getting up and doing anything about it. The second, however, shorted out with a little pinging sound the night before last, and I grew determined to replace them both in one fell swoop.

The first step in accomplishing this task was to go buy the bulbs. Easy enough. Instead of riding the 6 to my usual 77th street stop on my way home from work, I hopped off at 68th street, so that I could walk past the rows of convenience stores on 2nd avenue, and so pick up some bulbs. One thing I forgot to mention - I had scoped out the blown bulbs from the kitchen floor, and it looked like they said 40W, 120V. In hindsight, this not only makes no sense (who buys a 40W, 120V bulb?), but could also have been more accurately achieved by standing on the kitchen counter. At the time, however, I didn't think much of it - a crucial mistake, one that came to haunt me as I stood in the kitchen just a day later.

I stopped in at the Eckert on 68th street and 2nd avenue. I could have gone to the Genovese or That Other Store, both of which are closer to the apartment. But I figured, I'm here, I might as well get the bulbs now. So I got the bulbs - three 45W, 120V floodlights (one spare). Perfect, I thought. Now all I gotta do is install them.

Flash forward 20 minutes later. I'm perilously balanced on the kitchen counter, wobbling up on my toes like an untrained ballerina. I extend my hand to grab hold of the middle bulb, the one over the stove, when I make another crucial mistake: I look at the bulb up close. Ignorance of the bulb's true wattage would have resulted in adequately-lit bliss, but bliss was not to be my fate. If only I didn't know how to read, didn't have eyes to see the horror dangling in front of me. If only all the bulbs in the apartment had blown, so as not to light the numerals and digits spelling out the true wattage of my despair. The bulbs were 120W, 120V. On the stovetop, I sank from my toes to my heels and cursed.

This would require a trip back to Eckert. But while I'm already up here, I thought to myself, I might as well unscrew the dead bulbs. Easier said than done. Each bulb was filmed with a pattina of dust, which, as I grabbed it, congealed into a gray slime on my now sweaty fingers. My forearm worked, my calves strained, but to no avail. From the vain, grasping gestures of my hand, it was as if I was trying to lay hold of a soapy breast - digits extended, their tips slowly converging on a rounded target, only to slip off and crash together like jammed typewriter armatures. I was panting. This required assistance.

I got down from the counter, and grabbed a rubber glove from under the bathroom sink. Surely, this would enhance my grip, and I could easily twist the bulbs to my will. But only partly. Using the glove, I did unscrew the bulbs. But goddamn, it was hard work. The glove improved my grip only marginally, and by some curse of rust or residue the middle bulb refused to come undone. Unable to turn it by simple left-right means, I had to rock it back and forth, up and down, all while turning it with one hand, grasping the cabinet next to me for dear life with the other, and trying not to lose my footing on the
slippery stove-top surface. Finally, the bulb came unscrewed. I wept with relief.

Then, of course, came the task of exchanging the wrong bulbs for the right bulbs at Eckert. After my battle with the light fixtures, I was very weak, but I decided to make the 7 block journey just the same. Who wants to spend the night in an ill-lit kitchen? Customer service at Eckert proved surprisingly helpful, even finding me a third 120W, 120V bulb when I could only locate two (I wanted an extra). I paid the $3.79 difference, and began my odyssey back to the apartment.

The saga of installing the new bulbs was a trial, a passion play, a battle of wills. Man vs. Machine encapsulated in my efforts to screw in that middle bulb. The other bulb? Went in fine, no muss no fuss. I flicked the switch, and bang, let there be light, I am God. But that middle socket...that middle socket did not wish to be mastered. Thrusting the ridged end of my new 120W, 120V floodlight into it's rusted cavity, I could feel it squirm with discomfort, close it's legs to the incoming phallus of my freshly purchased fixture. It whined and cursed as I twisted the bulb this way and that, trying desperately to lock it in so that the illusive mistresss, illumination, could once again be mine. The screw took hold, and I jumped down from the counter. "Submit!" I shouted as I hammered the light switch. Nothing. Cold where there should have been heat, darkness where there should have been light. The other two kitchen bulbs burned with the brilliance of a thousand suns, but the middle light sat dormant, gray and lifeless like a bloated corpse.

I leapt up onto the counter. I would not be defeated by this recalcitrant socket! It would bend to my strength, open itself to my rent-paying authority! I grasped the bulb in my rubber-gloved hand, twisted and pushed, panted, sweat, grunted, howled. But with every return jump down to the light switch, the bulb did not fire. Like Job, I rent my clothes and tore my hair.

Then I had an idea. I grabbed the spare bulb. Without much trouble, I unscrewed the current middle bulb. It remained dark in my hand, and I set it aside. I quickly said a prayer, and then drove the spare bulb home. It spun in perfectly, and I dove for the light switch, flicking it in triumph as the middle bulb sprang to life, the socket singing with joy as its teeth wrapped around it's new mate! The kitchen became a paradise, every appliance and surface sparkling with the divine radiance of my new floodlight bulbs! I danced in celebration, picked up Robin and tossed him in the air, shouted with joy!

It was right around that time that one of the living room bulbs blew, this one without a counter beheath it to stand on. I'm going to need a ladder for this one...

Whoever's reading this, I hope y'all are having fun, wherever you are.