Friday, January 23, 2009

Silence Of The Roaches

This morning I was reminded of my living situation when I was 19. I had just been thrown out of my parents house for something like arguing with my dad, which was pretty much standard issue in those days. After living with my aunts for a few weeks I moved in with my friend.

My friend was an over six foot tall, bald gay man. Which went over really well with my parents because they were relieved he wasn't a 50 year old, unemployed pimp. Which really, if you carry the title of "pimp" that kind of eliminates the unemployed part right? I mean unless some government agency has their eye on you and then you are totally unemployed. I mean at least that's what I'm saying if they ask me. Wink.

We lived in a horrible part of town, in a nasty little apartment that we paid $400/month for and that? Was highway robbery. It was a six-plex with a staircase running up through the middle of the building. There were 3 apartments on each side of the building, 2 on each floor. In front of the staircase, running the entire height of the building was a large window. It was sprinkled with a rather impressive design constructed entirely of bullet holes.

Across the hall we had the "fisting daddies" as my roommate called them and downstairs we had the pot smoking "dude, it's all good" guy. There was a lot of activity in that apartment. The rest of the building was really quiet, except for the roaches. They were really loud. And I mean really loud, they actually made noises when you flipped on the light and they scattered. And they crunched when you stepped on them and have you ever heard a roach scream? No? Yeah, it's awesome.

So I have really fond memories of this apartment because another awesome part about it was that the laundry room entrance was on the outside of the building, so I had to carry all my stuff down the stairs, out the door and then around the side of the poorly lit building to go down into a dark room, with a door that never really closed all the way and I lived there in the winter months. It smelled of urine and decay but I think that might have had something to do with the hobo camp in the corner of the room. Not sure though. At least they always offered up their can of beans. And I pretended not to notice when they sniffed my clothes or actually swiped my underpants. It was a win/win situation only I felt more frightened than like that of a winner.

I have no point to this story at all except that one night a bunch of guys I knew came back from a party and even though it was the middle of the winter they somehow managed to have a stack of roman candles and they thought that shooting them off at 2:00 in the morning was a stellar idea and everyone would have the BEST.TIME.EVER!

Standing in the middle of the street, they lit the fireworks and held them in their hand and proceeded to have a battle by shooting them at each other. My roommate came flying out of his room and started screaming that they needed to stop it right this instant. And the thing with that is, I think they would have but seriously, they were only on the second shot and those things have like 12 shots in them so then they had to stand there and get screamed at while each one of those flaming balls came shooting out with a POOOFT! one at a time.

The good news is none of the neighbors complained to cops hauling the prostitutes out of the building a block down. The bad news is that the hobo camp was not as friendly after that. They're so touchy about being woken up in the middle of the night. Sheesh.


UPDATED: Okay if you clicked on the link and saw a picture of a fuzzy little kitten and his genitalia then you realize it made absolutely no sense why I was inspired to write THIS story. It's a long story that is really stupid because that wasn't the original post I meant to link to. But now that it's there, it's really random and whatever. Get over it.

10 comments:

LzyMom said...

I have some of those buildings in my past too. Although, one of my roommates was such a slut that it was not uncommon to find strange men in the house at any time of the day. Them, or cops. Oh and the huge flying roaches, cuz I was living in Sydney.

Good times. :)

J said...

Thats freaking hilarious. It reminds me of a house I lived in once. Not the hobo's, or the cockroaches, just the good memory.

LOL.

Rassles said...

I lived in a house for a year that got broken into, I think, five or six times. After the second or third we were just like, "Fuck it, that's what we get for paying $150 a month per person." Our septic pipe burst in our basement, so it was literally covered in crap. No hobos, though. We did have a neighbor named Buttons who got drunk with us once or twice, and he stole us a car as a gift for being, and I quote, "Fahkin chilles' white girls e'er."

KaritaG said...

OMG I grew up in a crappy hood and we had the most disgusting house next door and got a horrible roach infestation once (my mother was absolutely mortified, I think the embarrassment bothered her more than the roaches themselves, actually) and I know EXACTLY what you mean by turning on the lights and hearing them all run back into the walls....so sick!!! Shudder.

Miss Yvonne said...

I read your fisting buddies comment on The Bloggess and just HAD to come read your blog! Hilarious!!

Bird Shit said...

I am thankful to never have lived in a place w/ roach problems...I did grow up across the street from a refinerly though...LOL

Anonymous said...

You alone are funny (Crotch Mouse sprained my giggler) and The Bloggess alone is funny, but when you feed off each other it's sublime.

Oh -- you're absolutely right about noisy roaches. I've lived in a few apartments both here and in NYC where you could be lulled to sleep at night by the sound of little roachy feet clicking across the kitchen counters.

Sam said...

I lived there once too. But it put hair on my chest. :)

Anonymous said...

Oh, me too, Gwen... It's costing me a fortune in depilatory!

Anonymous said...

I haven't thought about my 1st apartment and the roaches that lived with us for years ,,,thanks!

#1