Gut Job

The house still stands in Boston’s South End. But no thanks to the ministrations of my friend Pebbles and me. For several weeks, we lavished our destructive energies on gutting the old brick building for some friends of his. What did we know about the job? Just enough to be dumb and dangerous.

I was a convenient recruit, I needed a place to lie low while I hid from a pathological dingbat who wanted to shoot me. His former girlfriend, a nurse I had been dating, said it was over, but he said it wasn’t. As a result, I was on the run from an overreacting “former.” Pebbles, learning of my plight, offered the perfect hidey hole: the basement of the building he was gutting.

There was a dumpster out back, and our objective was to fill it. While Billy the Kid was hunting for me in my normal haunts – Beacon Hill, the Harvard Gardens, or Harvard Square, I was ensconced in a basement on South Newton Street.

After about two weeks, I couldn’t take any more dust, rusted nails, deficient plumbing, or sleeping below a collapsing ceiling. The real craftsmen would soon be coming in to build inside the gutted structure. As it now stands in a gentrified neighborhood, the house looks like it will survive until the Jubilee. No thanks to Pebbles and me.

I came out of the entire process with several lessons: Don’t always believe what you are told about the status of boyfriends, girlfriends, or significant others. And don’t mistakenly take down load-bearing walls.