If I Get Shot I'll Stop the Bleeding With Toilet Paper

I moved out of my parents home in the late 80's, the summer I turned 21.
Living at my parents house had become unbearable as my late night, "wild" lifestyle was too noisy for them.

I went to school full time during the day and worked a full time job in retail at night. My shift ended at 9:30pm after the store closed and the cash drawer could be counted and the floors swept. I usually arrived home at around 10pm. In our open floor plan, ranch style house, their master bedroom was just off the kitchen/family room combo and they went to bed every night at around 9pm.

The biggest factor to our domestic problems was this: they refused to close their bedroom door, saying that it made the room too hot. So if I tried to fix myself something to eat after arriving home from work, no matter how quietly I crept about, the noise woke them up and one or both of them would get up and yell at me to be quiet. Ditto for watching television in the family room, or talking on the phone. (Hey kids! Once upon a time in the olden days there was no such thing as cell phones! Whacky!)

Everything I did it seemed, woke them up and they always woke up angry. I was paying them $150 a month for rent, which included groceries I never got to eat, cable TV I never got to watch, and a phone I never got to use.

During this period of my life is when my greatest dream was to get the hell out of that house as soon as possible.

Eventually I just stopped coming home from work altogether and found myself hanging out in the library of my university until it closed and then after that I would go and hang out in bars. This wasn't a great plan either because the later I stayed out, the more likely they were to be woken up when I unlocked the door to come in the house, which resulted in more yelling. On more than one occasion I actually slept in my car in my parents driveway rather than run the risk of waking them up. It was a really shitty and exhausting way to live. Essentially, I was homeless.

At this point my lifestyle became every bit as wild as my parents had originally believed it to be. College life started to interfere with the bar hopping and socializing (and there was that math phobia I mentioned in a recent post), so I dropped out.

After I dropped out of college things got really bad at home because in addition to being upset at my noisy ways and wild lifestyle, now they were seriously disappointed in me. To "teach me a lesson" they doubled the rent and said I'd have to start buying my own groceries.

I remember feeling very trapped. Nothing I did was right, and I was giving them a large amount of my very hard earned money each month to live this way. In the end I didn't so much "move out" as just not come back. I took nothing with me but some clothes, my alarm clock and a sleeping bag.

My friend Psych Major, was a beret wearing, Shriekback fan who went to school during the day and worked as a waitress at Friendly's in the evenings and on weekends. She was getting over a pretty serious break up with a long term, live-in, cheating boyfriend, whom I had made out with several times behind her back, while she was at work. My confession of this to her was likely the key factor in her resultant break up and need for immediate housing. To my amazement, she didn't hate me and even suggested that we move in together.

The apartment was pretty nice for a first timer, like me. It was a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom duplex built at around the turn of the century (the other century, as in 1900), that Psych Major (never washed the pots and pans she cooked in and didn't flush the toilet when she peed) and I shared with Dancer and Debbie, who were friends of Psych Major's.

I had my very own bedroom in which I slept on the floor in my sleeping bag with my alarm clock next to my head. It was absolute bliss. I could eat, watch TV and talk on the phone whenever I felt like it. I could stay out as late as I wanted and with whomever I wanted. Na Na! Whee!

Dancer (fought loudly with her boyfriend late at night and constantly slammed doors) was an OSU student majoring in modern dance and minoring in fine arts. She was the kind of goth-ish girl that came from a very wealthy and educated family but wore unravelling sweaters held together by safety pins with wrap around skirts and colorfully striped knee socks. We didn't have much in common, but a love of Bauhaus and combat boots worn with fishnet tights.

Debbie (lost 3 sets of house keys in the span of 6 months, drank my liquor supply and lied about it and beat my cat with a rolled up magazine and then complained when he shit on her pillow) had a steady boyfriend majoring in cinematography, whom we all liked very much. He was thoughtful and a lot of fun and the kind of guy that stumbles into cool things without even trying, like the time he went to JC Penny to buy a new pair of Chucks and the escalator ate the toe of his shoe so the store manager gave him a new pair of Chucks. Things like that were always happening to him.

Debbie on the other hand was a bit of a scuzzball. I remember coming downstairs for breakfast one morning and seeing Debbie eating a big bowl of instant oats. I sat down across from her and said, "You've got a little oatmeal on your cheek there."

"Where?", she asked, and we proceeded to do that little wincing face dance you do when you're trying to help someone get a smudge or piece of food. She wasn't getting it so finally, I reached across the table and touched it with the very tip of my index finger. "Oh, that's just some dried sperms", she said, and carried on eating her oats.

Debbie also allowed her brother (hogged our parking spot, left whiskers in the sink and left the toilet seat up and little urine droplets all over) to come and live on our couch indefinitely without kicking in for the rent or bills. My other roommates and I pointed out that we had been sharing, bathroom time, hot water, groceries, cable and phone bills and square footage, not to mention an entire couch with him for nearly 3 months - so it was time for him to get the fuck out or chip in. For some reason she thought this was an unreasonable request and moved out to go live with her boyfriend. Her brother stayed for another 2 weeks until he found a place of his own.

I had many other roommates over the years, including my friends Dan (monopolized the TV and kept letting my cat outside) and Nature Boy (never washed a dish or made ice cubes and had noisy sex), and it's all pretty much the same.

Other people are irritating, weird and filthy in ways that I cannot appreciate and other people don't seem to appreciate the ways that I myself am irritating, weird and filthy (I will not answer the phone or take your messages and I leave my clothes, shoes and coats all over the place). This leads to arguments and unhappiness with people who you may or may not like.

There was only one solution for it so I traded the hip urban scene within walking distance to the bars and clubs I frequented for a neighborhood on the other side of town in an apartment complex known popularly as "Uzi Alley".

It seemed OK at the time because my friend Bob lived there too, for exactly the same reason - she desperately wanted to live alone. The rent was $250 per month for 600 square feet with utilities and heat included. Awesome.

I lived there for 5 years.

Yes. It was a terrible neighborhood.

Yes. My apartment complex was on the news nearly every night because of some gang related shooting or drug bust.

I didn't care.

It was a sweet little oasis in the middle of hell and living there meant living alone, so I was willing to put up with nightly gunfire, police sirens and low flying helicopters at all hours of the day and night. You get used to it in the same way you get used to train or airplane noise when you live next to the tracks or under a landing pattern. After awhile you might even miss it when it's not there.

When I could afford it, at the urging of my constantly worried friends and family, I moved somewhere less crappy. I never regretted living there though because having bullets whizzing over my head was better than fuming over dirty dishes or sitting down to pee and realizing that there isn't any toilet paper in the house because it was your asshole roommates turn to buy it and they forgot.

I lived alone for almost 11 years and never once ran out of toilet paper. After living with MDH for nearly eight years, the record remains unbroken.