A brief foray into solitary habitation, part 2

.....and that's when things began going to shit.

It was a gradual process, really. Honestly, the first few months of having a roommate weren't that tumultuous at all. Phil spent most of his time either at work, in his room, or at the hotel across the street. Why the hotel across the street you ask? Well he wasn't banging hookers. At least, I don't think so. You see, he walked across the street to call his girlfriend at the hotel because he didn't have a cell phone. In fact, neither did I. We weren't particularly poor or anything, cell phones just weren't as commonplace back in the late 90s. Hard to imagine, right? I mean, these days cell phones are an obligatory purchase for every human being upon learning to walk and consume solid foods, but there was a time when an apartment full of college kids didn't have a cell phone between them. I remember watching Clueless and thinking how fucking spoiled those kids were for having a phone that they could take to school. Nobody I went to high school with had a cell phone. A few kids had pagers, but the school figured they must be drug dealers and banned those right-quick. So yeah.

Things were all fine and dandy until Phil lost his job. He was doing some git-er-dun type of job (washing windows, I believe) and making a shit ton more than I was bringing in at Busch Gardens. I remember him talking about doing some cleaning work for one of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers players, so I assume it was a pretty legit operation. He also had a car, so provided we could decide on something to do on the weekends (which usually involved getting drunk off cheap beer at our shitty apartment and going to a punk rock show), I didn't have to rely too much on my bike for transportation. I didn't realize it at the time, but Phil and his boss had a bit of a rocky relationship, and if you've ever worked in a trade-type environment, you know that developing a thick skin is even more important than knowing what the hell you're doing. Apparently they got in an argument over god-knows-what, Phil mouthed off and got himself fired. Without a job, he no longer had money to spend on essentials such as rent, food, and laundry. This created more than a few problems for me.

issue number one - trust? gone.

Remember how I said Phil would walk across the street to use the payphone? Well it's kinda hard to make daily payphone calls without any quarters, and that little detail brings us to issue number one. I'm not saying Phil was a thief, but I kept a small jar of change on my dresser, didn't have a lock on my bedroom door, and gradually watched my overflowing jar of change shrink to a quarter of the way full. Coincidence? No, he fessed up when I confronted him. He also admitted to eating my food (even fast food leftovers and kool-aid weren't safe), and wearing my clothes and hanging them back in the closet afterwards. Now I'm no Sherlock Holmes, but when someone at least two sizes larger than you wears your t-shirts, it tends to stretch them out just a wee bit. It's noticeable. That's not even mentioning the giant white deodorant stains he left on both the inside and outside of the shirts. Speaking of clothes...

 issue number two - the laundry doesn't wash itself, yo

Another downside to apartment living was the lack of an in-unit washer and dryer, but we made the most of it. It was customary for us to wait a week or two until we almost had to start wearing our underwear inside out, then the four of us (yes, I said four,,,more on that later) would pack up the car and make a communal trip down to the local laundromat. It was an event. We would order pizza from the Hungry Howie's next door and hold Ms. Pac-Man competitions on this really rad little arcade unit. We would throw each other into those big industrial dryers and take rides in the laundry cart. Good times. For a while. When Phil lost his job he barely had money for food (see above), let alone the expense of maintaining an unsoiled wardrobe. He started locking his bedroom door and staying at his girlfriend's apartment for weeks at a time. Mounds of dirty clothes sat in his room until the point in which the smell actually started to creep under his bedroom door and make the entire apartment smell like a dirty jock strap. Something had to be done.