Doors of Love

By DesDownUnder

Copyright © 2008 By DesDownUnder. All Rights Reserved.

Chapter 1: The Garage Door

It’s Friday afternoon and I am picking up an old friend’s ancient computer, for which he no longer has any use. I will give it to a deserving family I know.

At least, I would if he was home. Harvey is late. Twenty minutes late. So I am sitting in my car waiting, when I hear a door slam in the house next door.

“Sorreeee,” says a voice that I just know does not belong to an Australian outback construction worker.

Sure enough, a young man in his early twenties appears, wearing a shirt and shorts designed to show his decorator muscles he must have got for Christmas. At least I have something to look at whilst I wait.

I immediately think that his name is probably Twinkie as he walks gently around the car parked in the driveway. As he turns around to get in the car I decide his name is probably Hot-bot.

Anyway, he started the car, one of those nice little 4-cylinder cars from the Far East. Then he gets out of the car and walks up to the garage door, which is one of those full-width, roll-up type doors in a lovely shade of suburban beige. I watch Hot-bot as he reaches up to a ledge and takes down what is obviously a remote control.

Now I have never had the money for such luxuries, but I am pretty sure this must be a remote control for the roll-up door. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense for it to be the TV remote unless the door was particularly slow in rolling up. Then again, it didn’t make a lot of sense to keep the garage door remote outside where anyone could find it.

Our hero gets back into the car and waves the remote at the door, which sure enough, slowly, but not that slowly, begins its ascent into the garage ceiling space.

When the door is half-way up, I watch as the car slowly moves forward towards the door. The bonnet of the car goes under the rising door, and just when you would expect the young man to exert those delightful thigh muscles and apply the brakes, the car sped up and rammed the upper half of the now-bent and stationary garage door.

It was about now that I realised I was privileged to watch an actual urban legend occurring before my very eyes. Would I see a Darwin Award?

The young man sat in the car with his mouth open. He seemed genuinely surprised that the door had been hit by the car. Possibly he was wondering why the car had been hit by the door.

Slowly, he backed the car away from the door, but the now-hanging bottom bar of the door was caught on the front of the car just where the windscreen ends and the bonnet starts. He continued backing the car away and somehow managed to pull the roller door so it was bent in the other direction.

The door tried to return to its previous instruction to roll up, but gave up after another few feet, looking quite the worse for the ordeal. It looked a little like the Sydney Opera House sails would have looked if they had been made from roofing iron.

The car bonnet seemed okay.

Again, I heard the door from inside the house slam, and there suddenly appeared another young man of the tender twenty-something years wearing torn-off jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt adorning his own decorator muscles. They must have bought a matching set, although this one might have paid extra for the super thighs version with golden tan.

Twinkie got out of the car and rushed up to the damaged door, touching it, caressing it as one would an injured animal. “Oh No!” he exclaimed.

“How did that happen?” asked the other set of muscles.

“I don’t know. One moment, the door was going up; the next minute the door stopped as I was driving towards it,” and with that, he burst into tears.

The other young man tenderly put his arms around his friend and patted his shoulder, “It’s okay love, we will sort it out, come on.”

They reached up and grabbed the bottom of the bent door, that was now about five feet off the ground.

I watched as they twisted and pulled at the door. I tossed up whether I should try to help, but decided that as neither of them knew I was there and that I had forgotten to put on my own set of muscles before I left home, it was probably best for me to remain hidden in my car. Less embarrassing for us all, I thought.

Then they gave me an insight into their bedroom antics as they topped their previous contortions by grabbing the bottom of the door, lifting their knees towards their chests and swinging furiously, like a pair of delicate chimpanzees.

I placed my hands over my mouth and eyes, lest I should betray my presence with an audible sound from deep in my throat. Looking between my fingers, I saw the miracle of the door slowly starting to descend till it nearly reached the ground.

“Stand back,” said the torn-off jeans-clad super-thighed one of the two, and with that he performed a flying Kung Fu leap that meant he probably worked as a stunt man. His foot landed in the middle of the dent in the door.

He bounced off the now-straightened door and fell to the ground. His friend rushed to his side, “Are you alright?”

He knelt down and placed his friend’s head in the folds of his lap, right on his very thin shorts.

I was about to reach for my cell phone to ring emergency. Damn, I should have recorded this.

His friend stirred and lifted his arm to pull his friend’s head down to him and they kissed in the driveway.

No, I am NOT making this up.

For some reason, I was almost expecting them to burst into song.

1. There’s a place for us,
2. A time and place for us...
3. Somewhere.... *

* Yes, I know it’s West Side Story...again, but it did happen in an Adelaide Western Suburb.

Slowly, they picked themselves up off the ground and helped each other into their house. The door slammed behind them.

A short time later, my straight friend turned up. I asked if he knew the next door neighbours. He told me he thought they might be gay and that they were accident prone.

“No shit!” said I.

“Yes,” he said, “they’ve only been there a week, and last Tuesday one of them drove over the rubbish bin. I don’t expect them to last the month out.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “They seem quite resourceful and very much in love.”