Valentine's Day Surprise and The Llama's Curse

It was Valentine's Day many years back when I returned home to a giant party at the hip warehouse I was at living with my friends and bandmates. I had recently had yet another bad break up. I had quit yet another bad job the day before. 

Kicking stones with a stuffy nose, y'know? Yes, I think unhappy was a good word to describe me around then.

Oh, and dare I say hip AND my friends in the same sentence, really it was the surrounding people that lived there that were trying very hard to "keep cool", not us of course. All of those nominally famous punky celebrities, indie cred-soaked twee folk, tight-panted L.A. art rockers we lived with... and us, separate from them, my friends and I. We were proudly called the Geeks. 

Thing was we Geeks tended to agree with Lenny Bruce when he said, "There is nothing sadder than an aging hipster.". But all of this hipness and our disdain for it didn't stop us from taking a cheap space in this warehouse the second we were offered it. It was outside of our shitty hometown and closer to where shows were happening, so fuck it, we got up and got out. Action was better than apathy.

So, I get home to a giant party, right? A popular band is playing in a common space or maybe it was an office of a hip label or magazine as the place was full of those offices, I dunno. 

The band was doing all cover songs as to show their love (Valentine's Day, remember?) for another popular, older, dead and gone band. I enter the door of the warehouse and head towards my room, wading through the tons of people rocking out in my living room. Someone excitedly says, "Hey man, you should really watch them! They sound just like them!". I said that I needed to go to my room, but that I would be out to catch some music a little later. 

I opened the door to my room. 

Oh... no. God, no. 

Things had just gotten worse. Everything I owned was covered in poop. 

A sewage line had ruptured above my room. Carpet, clothes, books... soaked in poo rain. My room was right next a bathroom. Funny that I stood at the door to my room and even heard someone flush the nearby toilet... then saw that relieved someone exit the bathroom only to see their poop fall high from the broken pipeline above my room and splat on my floor.

A three word phrase I had been solemnly told to abide by only a few weeks previous rang through my head. 

"Honor the llama." 

It all finally made sense. Last night, the llama had been dishonored and now it's curse was raining down in brown.

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A friend had left to live in Chattanooga and gave me dibs on her now crap-covered room. I had been waiting for a room to open up in the warehouse and when she decided to move to the dirty South, it was my golden opportunity. 

The night before she left she took me up to the loft in the room, saying she wanted to show me something special. As I arrived in the loft, I saw that it was bare except for a small stuffed animal standing in the corner, flanked by a can of beer and a bottle of wine. My friend then explained with great seriousness that in order to take her room in the warehouse that I must only, "Honor the llama.".  

"How absurd.", I thought. Then I got a closer look at the llama. 

It was of Mexican origin and covered in white feathers. Touching it, I could feel that it seemed to have bones, possibly those of a chicken, for a skeleton. It was decorated with tiny velvet ropes and golden frill. I got a some serious Santeria vibes from it. A bit freaked out, I left the loft in the room, agreeing to respect this strange object.

A few weeks later, the night before the poo rain, I was stoned and drunk. I asked my pal, Dylan, a seasoned dungeon master, a keeper of cursed entities and a knowledgeable person in regard to them, to take a look at the llama. We climbed the ladder and crawled over to the llama and it's wine and beer. 

I slurred to Dylan, very serious about my subject, "Do you think the wine and beer are an offering... or is it guarding them? I was told to honor...". 

Dylan quickly, and supposedly not as drunk as he wanted to be, grabbed the beer and said, "Only one way to find out!". As he cracked it open I yelled in horror, "Nooo!!!". 

I expected he was going to give it a good inspection and give me a report on the creepy statue... instead Dylan's sense of fun and adventure took over. His lack of the fear of the unknown, not unlike that of say, Indiana Jones... 

No. Actually, he just saw a unopened beer for the taking. But still, I don't blame Dylan for everything I owned being covered in poop the very next day.

Maybe I can blame the hipsters who ran the place and their shoddy craftsmanship assembling sewage lines. Blaming insecure hipsters from Orange County or the Midwest... or ANY hip transplant from anywhere other than the Bay Area for that matter, always feels gratifying. 

Sue me. 

Some haters would say the wash of shit was karma coming back around for all of my vocal hipster hatin'. 

Others might say it was bad luck or off chance.

I'm damn sure it was the llama.