"Those who can, do. Those who can’t, bitch about it on the Internet." -Simon, from The Book of Simon
Some bios list credentials, such as: Education BFA in Illustration, Massachusetts College of Art Occupation Former Production Slave, Ballantine Books Comics Credits Columnist, Writer, Artist, Editor Etc…
And some bios tell a story, such as: I can remember sitting in front of my television one morning, watching the old Batman show, when Julie Newmar appeared in that skintight black leather outfit as Catwoman. It was my first boy/girl thing. >A year later I was in kindergarten telling Katherine Burke that I loved her. It’s pretty much been a string of stupid mistakes ever since…
Still other bios state an intent, such as: This is a series of essays illustrating the life of one particular struggling artist as he plods through the world and occasionally bumps into some interesting shit.
But most bios just sit to the right of the column and are never looked at. So ignore this space and just read the damn column already…
I’d like to start this week by saying thanks to all the people who took the time to write in about last week’s column. I didn’t do it to get sympathy or pity. For lack of a better phrase, I was just trying to keep it real. Any portrait of a struggling writer that doesn’t include the downs along with the ups is painting a false picture. All the same, I do appreciate the advice and the well wishes.
And for any of the pros who felt the need to shit all over someone when they’re down, you can kiss my ass. Being able to handle rejection and criticism is one thing. But I hope I never get to the point where I’m detached from my roots enough to mock a beginner for making a mistake. I’m sure none of you got where you are without a few missteps.
Now, on with the regularly scheduled Monkey House…
With eviction looming over me for the first time in my life, my thoughts are often occupied with my living situation. For the past year and a half I’ve experienced the joy of living alone. If I can somehow manage to pay my rent for the remainder of my lease, I’ll get to continue that euphoria until next September. But what then? I could renew my lease for another year or two. I could move somewhere else. Or I could attempt a third option. A couple of weeks ago my friend Moby put forth the idea of getting a roommate and I told him I might just be interested.
A Barrel of Monkeys I was the first born and our house at the time had three bedrooms. So by default I ended up spreading my stuff out over two of them. Maybe that amount of space that early in life established the attitude toward personal space I would have for the next twenty-six years.
I lost one bedroom when my twin brother and sister were born. Once they were old enough to have beds I got stuck with my first roommate. Isn’t it interesting that if you take one letter away a brother turns into a bother? Considering nowadays you can’t put the two of us in the same room without a fistfight breaking out, you can imagine how I felt back then about someone intruding on my territory.
Once we moved I got my own bedroom again. I had the happiness of personal space again for a good ten-year stretch. When I was eighteen I did the very comic book geek thing and moved into the basement, setting up my own little den of sin two floors removed from the other bedrooms. I think that level of isolation helped create the worst possible roommate anyone could have. And just in time for college too.
My second year of college I decided to live in the dorms. I applied for housing late and was lucky enough to be near the top of the wait list. When space became available I was one of twenty-five people to get a spot at a Boston Conservatory building my school rented out. But my spot also came with not one, but two roommates to deal with. It was a terrible shock, but I didn’t really have much choice. All things considered, though, it went as best it could. The one roommate I got along with spent his nights down the hall in his girlfriend’s single. The roommate I didn’t get along with spent most of his time commuting into town for reasons I never bothered to ask why. Plus, halfway through the year I started dating a girl who had a single upstairs. So my one and only dorm had three tenants but went unslept in the majority of the time.
The next year my school lost that building and gained another, at an all-girls college down the road. Their one remaining building was set aside for freshmen. So, basically, if you were a guy beyond your first year you were screwed. This led to my first apartment. The roommate I could stand and his girlfriend found another girl and the four of us went through the hassle of getting a place in Boston. Thanks to some bickering and paranoia on others’ parts, we ended up renting a two-bedroom split, meaning the living room got transformed into a third bedroom. I had my own space, but having to share a bathroom, kitchen and hallway with three other people, one of them an immense slob, wore on me. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see any reason for another person’s dirty jockey shorts to end up on the eating table in the hallway. And having a girl in the house whose voice can suck the life out of the sun ain’t much fun either.
After a little over a year with three people I grew loathe, my girlfriend and I got a place together. Our colossal mistake there was thinking we could survive as two people in a studio apartment. We got along for a while, but let me tell you, when you get into one of those fights where you don’t talk for a couple days, no blanket will keep you warm in a bed that cold. And, as has been well documented here in the past, my parent’s split up around this time and I decided to rethink the idea of living with someone. The irony is that when we were together without any definite end we fought all the time, but once I announced I was moving out our relationship was mostly gravy for the next four months.
Following college I spent a month and a half living on a couch in my mother’s apartment until my father relinquished his siege on her house and she moved back there, leaving me with a two-bedroom in the suburbs. My best friend from high school was living in a real shithole at the time, as well as suffering from roommate disillusionment syndrome, so he was happy to escape there and move in with me. Living with him was proof that friends should not live together if they want to stay friends. But then, few people are as out there as this guy is. When I decided to move to New York and was trying to get another friend of ours to move in with him, the friend said living with my roommate seemed like it would be too ‘intense’. Six months later he had no choice and ended up living there anyway. Last month, almost two years later, I got an e-mail from him saying he couldn’t take it anymore and was finally moving out. So make of that what you will in regards to the kind of person that roommate was.
The last roommate I had was the only one who I ever had violent thoughts about. To this day, if I ever saw him walking the streets of New York, I wouldn’t hesitate to punch him in the face. And I also wouldn’t mind if he knew there was someone out there that is willing to do that to him. I’m not a violent person for the most part; it takes a hell of a lot to drive me to such animalistic, Republican tactics. To this day there are only three people I wish pain and suffering on; the guy who raped my first girlfriend, my brother, and my last roommate. Without going into details, about eight months into our time together I found out something so repugnant about him that I couldn’t stand the idea of being associated with him in anyway. We were already drifting away from anything resembling friendship. But once it was revealed some of the things he’d done to people I used every scare tactic and intimidation technique to get his ass away from me as soon as possible. He ended up moving out a full month ahead of schedule thanks to a little incident over a spoon.
Oh yeah, and he left his cat’s food out for so long that maggots grew on it. I hate cats, but that is one feline I feel truly sorry for.
Solitary Man And now I live alone. Not having a roommate has so many wonderful advantages. The first to spring to mind is that I can walk around naked whenever I want. This extends to watching porn in the living room and not worrying about someone walking in on you just when you’re about to cross the finish line. But also living alone means not having to be social with someone when you’ve had a bad day, not having to deal with someone when I just want time to brood. Most important is that not having someone else around means you can keep the place as dirty or, in my case, as immaculate as you want. At the base of every downfall my past roommates have experiences has been their inability to maintain a cleanliness level I find acceptable. Whoever is going to live with me next is going to have to be as anal as I am.
Which is why a gay man is the perfect choice. No one knows anal better than a homosexual.
Thank you, I’ll be here all week. Try the veal.
Anyway, like I said, Moby presented the idea of getting a roommate to me a couple weeks back. Since the blow up with Kahloz, I find my friendship with Moby really developing in good ways. More and more I’m seeing him as a lot like me. We share the same attitudes and insecurities about a lot of things, and have the same personal and social problems. On just a friendship level I think we’d be pretty compatible. I don’t foresee any dark secrets or intense situations arising.
As for my biggest pet peeve, cleanliness, let’s just say Moby is close to godliness. I’ve been to his apartment and it is a pretty tidy place. Of course, the only times I’ve been there are for parties, and one should always clean their apartment before having guests (you’d be amazed how many of my past roommates didn’t understand that), but I get the impression that he’s overall a fairly neat kind of guy. And that makes him aces in my book. As long as he understands that I have to do all the dishes, because I have issues with eating off a plate someone else has washed, we should get along swimmingly. (Most people don’t object to the dishes clause).
Similar personalities, an acceptable cleanliness rating, and hey, Watts thinks he’s the cat’s pajamas, so that’s a plus for him too. Moby may just be the ideal candidate to share an apartment with me. When he presented the idea he said that he liked living alone but would like a chance to lower his rent and maybe pay off some debt, which I can totally understand. He also said that, initially, he wanted to live alone to prove that he could do it and that now he feels like he’s done that. I’d agree with that sentiment as well. Finally, we both acknowledged that, despite all the benefits of having an apartment to yourself, alone also means lonely. Not having someone there makes for a less social environment. Sometimes it would be nice to not be sitting on the couch talking to the television and, instead, having another person around to goof off with. As someone who is inclined toward a hermetic lifestyle, I think it would be good for me to compromise a little in the interest of sanity and financial well being.
Some of you may be asking why I don’t just move in with Watts. Well, Watts and I both agree that the closest we ever want to be is maybe having our apartments across the street from each other. We’ve both lived with significant others in the past and we’d like to see a relationship actually work this time. Of course, this could all be moot if I get evicted, because you know whose couch I’m going to end up on.
From The Monkey House a/k/a Simon Deluxe apartment in the sky
The Random: What the hell good is any type of apology going to do for Trent Lott? The fact that he made the same pro-segregation comment back in 1980 as he did last week obviously shows he is a lifelong racist (big surprise). You can’t apologize for an opinion you’ve harbored for twenty-two years. And the fact that he helped stop a race riot at his college when they admitted their first black student doesn’t vindicate him. It just shows he was trying to prevent violence in his vicinity. Besides, a fuckwad like Trent Lott was probably scared the black folks were going to turn into jungle savages and put a spear up whitey’s ass.
