Johnny America

 

The Apart­ment Se­cu­ri­ty Man

by

The Apart­ment Se­cu­ri­ty Man wears his tight blue but­ton-up shirt with the black mil­i­tary straps on the shoul­ders very se­ri­ous­ly. His boots from Army/Navy Sur­plus are spit-shined to a flaw­less sheen. He has an ex­pen­sive look­ing po­lice util­i­ty belt strapped on un­der his over­hang­ing paunch. His moth­er bought it for him when he grad­u­at­ed from Se­cu­ri­ty Guard Academy.

The Apart­ment Se­cu­ri­ty Man wears mir­rored sun­glass­es on his pa­trol. He dri­ves a golf cart while search­ing for crime. He fights crime. He is much like a su­per­hero. In fact, he was the on­ly one at Se­cu­ri­ty Guard Acad­e­my to have every sin­gle back is­sue of Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, and every is­sue of Mar­vel Comics to in­clude Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, up to the Cap’s death in is­sue #25 of Civ­il War.

He cried when Cap­tain Amer­i­ca died. Some­thing in him died that day too.

The Apart­ment Se­cu­ri­ty Man lives for catch­ing peo­ple drink­ing in the pool area. His cam­era in the guard shack can see every­thing that hap­pens, but he knows that the col­lege kids and the Mex­i­cans some­times pour their beer in­to plas­tic cups and take it in the pool. For this rea­son the Apart­ment Se­cu­ri­ty Man goes deep un­der­cov­er. He will put his swim trunks on and base­ball cap and lounge by the pool when there is a par­ty. He will ask if any­one has a “cold one,” or a “brews­ki.” If they say yes….BLAMO! They’re bust­ed. He whips his badge out and writes an Apart­ment Se­cu­ri­ty Citation.

The Apart­ment Se­cu­ri­ty Man is a stud. He wears a Ma­rine Corps “high and tight” hair­cut. He has a yel­low belt in Tae Kwon Do. He has no sym­pa­thy for young punks with skate­boards. He busts them fast and he busts them hard.

The Apart­ment Se­cu­ri­ty Man was once flashed by Ms. Aguila in Apart­ment #4113. She squat­ted down in a short sun­dress to pick up her news­pa­per in front of him and he saw that she had no panties on. She clear­ly want­ed him. But he held his man­ly im­puls­es in check. Cap­tain Amer­i­ca would’ve done the same.

The Apart­ment Se­cu­ri­ty Man is very lone­ly in­side. Some­times, when he works the late shift, he will eat sev­er­al Dou­ble Quar­ter Pounders with cheese just to kill the pain. He sees the studs that Ms. Aguila dates dri­ving BMW’s or Porsches, and he knows he will nev­er be like them. They are sharply dressed young lawyers, very smart look­ing young doc­tors, or tall and mus­cu­lar young fire­fight­ers. They are just like the jocks in high school that teased him about his crooked pe­nis in the gym lock­er room.

But he is the Apart­ment Se­cu­ri­ty Man. That is his fate. That is his des­tiny. As long as there is crime, as long as there is beer in the pool area or skate­board­ers on the in­ner court­yard… he will be there.

Filed under Fiction on March 26th, 2008

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