Life Lessons Learned The Hard Way

Whfropera is so kind to have agreed to help me troubleshoot my radio.blog issues. Hallelujah! Thankyouthankyouthatyouthankyou…

In the meantime I am going to tell you about my Houseguest From Hell. This happened several years ago and I am sure I have blocked out a great deal of the truly heinous things that happened. I will tell you about what I can recall.

Several years ago I got a phone call from a friend’s ex boyfriend. He had been in New Zealand for a few months and was back in town. He was also homeless due to the fact that his roommate had installed interim roomies in his room and they had to be given sufficient notice before he could reclaim his place. So he asked if he could stay with me for 2 weeks. I said no problem, as I am nice like that. I also had no idea what was to come.

I should say right off that I live in the world smallest apartment. My total space is 385 square feet. The rent is cheap and the location prime. What can I say? Normally, it is just the cat and I. When you work 12+ hours a day you don’t need a lot of space to clean on your precious days off. I have a tiny bedroom, a slightly larger living room, a miniscule kitchen and a larger bathroom than you would expect in such a hovel. I have a sofa bed in the living room which, when unfolded, takes up the entire space. He was sleeping there. I was working on a film at the time so I set up these rules:

1. No TV hockey games while I was home. I needed my peace and quiet.
2. No friends or girlfriend when I was home (I know this sounds bitchy but I was away so much, including all nighters, that he had plenty of fun-time when I was gone)
3. Contribute to food.
4. Feed the cat.

No a lot of restrictions but you can guess what happened. There were plenty of times, after 16+ hour days when I would come home to a house full of rowdy drunk hockey fans and a crabby girlfriend. Add a frightened, starving cat and an empty fridge and I would be pissed. Really pissed.

But I thought that two weeks of hell would go by quickly and things would end. Then he told me that he needed to stay for an additional month. He had nowhere else to go. Let me just say that the Kranki that is writing this now would totally evict this hockey watchin’ ass to the streets. The Then Kranki felt bad and decided a stern talking to was all that was needed to rectify the situation. Um…. nope.

He had no money left either so I found him a little job so he could pay me some token rent and contribute to food a bit. He totally blew off the job and ate me out of house and home. I then started hearing from my neighbours that he and his almost-too-young-to-be-legal girlfriend were having door-slamming fights when I was not there. I heard one for myself that night. I gave them another stern talking to and got hostile looks. No apology. I bought my neighbours gourmet cupcakes as compensation.

I have to say I just don’t know what to do when you tell an adult to do something and you get blatant childish defiance in return. When you are doing them a fucking favour no less. Well, you throw their defiant asses to the streets, is what you do. I have really learned my lesson.

So for a whole six weeks I had a smelly guy, his pubescent girlfriend and misc. party dudes watching hockey at my tiny home. Did I mention that I don’t have any doors in my place? Well, except for the bathroom but that one didn’t even have a lock. The cat hid under my bed for the whole time. He said he would forget to feed the cat because he never saw one. I could have joined her under that bed. Everyday I would go to work and get a lunchtime crowd begging for a daily update of gory details of the angst that was my life. It got to be almost comical. I could write a screenplay.

The girlfriend eventually practically moved in as she got jealous and felt she had to be around to stop things from going on between her boyfriend and me. Believe me, NOTHING was ever going on between me and The Sponger. I told her so. It didn’t matter. I then had to literally walk over their bodies on the sofa bed to get to my kitchen in the early morning hours. I would tell him to get rid of her and he would agree and then she would be there the next day. Same with the friends. Same with the hockey. There were times I came home and his friends were over and he was out. Seriously. I could have wept. I think I did.

I have no idea where this guy is now. It turned out he was terribly mentally unstable and ended up doing some bad shit in the world and to himself. He fled back to New Zealand for a while but about a year ago I saw him waiting for a bus. I drove right on by.