EDIT* Sorry about the text color, folks! I was just re-reading and found it fairly difficult to read everything clearly. I was 1 notch darker on the green than usual.. I made corrections. Apologies.
*Disclaimer: Due to laziness and this post being arbitrarily too long, if I have made any spelling or grammatical errors, I apologize ahead of time.*
So, I missed last Wednesday and I honestly can't tell you why. I totally forgot and didn't even think about it until Thursday afternoon, sitting at work. I worked a couple hours, ran errands, went shopping, messed around online, then chilled with some beer last Wednesday. It never occurred to me to jump on here, whoopsie!
ANYWHO...
So, I finally get out of that first house by finding another house on Craigslist. "GOOD IDEA, DUMBASS!" I'm sure most of you are thinking, if not muttering at this point. Yeah yeah, I needed a place and I needed it quickly. It truly is the easiest place to find some quick housing if you're in a bind. And, believe me when I say, I had the motivation to change my living conditions.
So, I'm looking and looking for a week with no real hits when I see "$375 bedroom for rent ASAP!" I'm like "$375? Absolutely. Let's see where you are and what kind of place it is". I click into the ad and it's your basic rundown of the house. "1 bedroom to rent for $375/month + utilities. Washer/Dryer in the house. Please no obnoxious frat boys. Dirty people need not apply..." etc. Then I get further into it and it reads " 5 bedroom house looking for chill roommate to fill an upstairs bedroom. We are 2nd shift folks and would prefer the same" WAIT. WHAT. 5 bedroom house!? Holy crap!
I end up emailing the ad and I get a response via text on my phone since I included my phone #. The guy wants to meet up someplace downtown to "interview" me per se. So, we agree to meet up at this bar around 11:30pm. I leave work at 11:00pm and find the bar. It's a random Tuesday night and the bar is pretty empty. I grab a stool and order a drink. I keep checking my phone as would any normal person, awkwardly waiting on a stranger, would do. Finally, a guy walks up and just blatantly asks "you Larry?" "heh, yes sir!" He introduces himself and he grabs a drink. We start chit-chatting and he's touching a little on his history. Used to live in New Orleans. Was enlisted in the Navy during Hurricane Katrina. Lived in Hawaii for 4 years. This guy was pretty cool. His only job in Austin was to find talent and bands for the bar we were visiting that night, little did I know. Needless to say, he knew a lot of people.
After about half an hour of B.S. he starts talking about the room available, the house rules, the other roommates that already occupy the house, and so forth. A girl walks up and hugs on him a second and sits down. She introduces herself as his girlfriend. He explains that the house has 1 downstairs bedroom and 4 upstairs bedrooms. He and his girlfriend have the downstairs room since it's the Master Bedroom. (Lovely, another couple in the same house. This can't go wrong again, right?) She seems pretty cool and mildly drunk. They ask if I want to party and get stupid with them that night to which I politely decline. I had no driver and no way to get back home. I have 1 more drink and I head out around 12:30am. The guy schedules a time to go look at the house and check it out the following Wednesday.
I show up at the house that next Wednesday. Ok, so, I started calling this place the "Mini-Mansion" rightly so. It was a 5 bedroom, 4 full bathroom, 4k sqft house. This baby was awesome! It was pretty huge on the outside and enormous on the inside. Dark brown brick covered the entire house with a two car garage. The entry way was adorned with exaggerated high brick arches. The thing looked epic. Check it out: Mini-Mansion
The girlfriend answers the door and she starts showing me around. Apparently, the guy was off somewhere else. 2 of the roommates were in the kitchen hanging out, we did our introductions and we proceeded upstairs to my room. Seriously, this room was the size of 2 of the rooms I had in the first house. And, they only wanted #375/month!!!!
1 roommate was a drummer in a band and was out of the house 4 of the 7 days a week. He didn't have a job and apparently didn't have too since he was making money as a drummer, I suppose. Another roommate was a kid (I use that term loosely. He was 4yrs younger than me) who had just moved down from Rochester, NY and was trying to make it in Austin just like I was doing 3 months prior. Least he started in an awesome house....
The last roommate was probably the most interesting. It wasn't so much his personality as it was his "situation" as we'll call it.
He was from Portland, OR. Moved to Austin a year before. Worked at the bar that the first guy worked at where I met him. He then left the bar and started on an oil rig in Wyoming. Already interesting. This guy would work 10 days on 10 days off. He was required to find his own way to work which means he was paying for his own flights to and from Wyoming every 10 days. He said that the job wasn't THAT difficult, unless something messed up. It paid 96k/yr. He was a single guy with no debt. This guy was loaded and I mean LOADED! Things he purchased the short 5 months I lived there:
-PS3 with 10 games = $800
-67" 3D LED LCD TV = $1.2k
-Year 2000 Car for him to have in Wyoming to drive around when he was there = $3k
-2007 Yukon Denali = $22k
-Brand new Rims and Tires for said Denali = $7k
-Brand new stereo system for Denali = $2k
-Brand new bed = ???
-Round Trip airfare every 10 days to Wyoming = ~$350/trip
And I last heard when I was moving out that he was thinking about buying the Motorcycle the Lease Holder on the house had for sale for $3k.
He stated his biggest woe was that he never had time to spend his money or play with the toys he had already spent his money on. 10 days off in a row after working 10 days seems like a vacation every 10 days, right? If you take off 10 days from work in a row, wouldn't you call that "vacation time"? Wanna know WHY he never had time to "play with his toys"??? I'll tell you. After the 10 days of work, he and his co-workers would then fly to places such as: VEGAS and NEW YORK and SAN DIEGO and FLORIDA for 8 of the 10 days he had off! Just. Because. He. Could. He was a really awesome dude, and we had a lot of fun when we were drinking at the house. It was just so weird being in such drastically different financial brackets.
Man.. this is freaking long and I haven't even moved in, yet.. Sheesh!
To be honest, it was quite uneventful. I mean of course you have the excitement euphoria of being in a new place that you actually WANT to be in. After that subsided, it was back to routine. Unfortunately, this couple was like the last in terms of rocky relationship issues. If you went downstairs to grab something from the ginormous kitchen, you could hear them yelling and fighting in the bedroom. Luckily, they kept the fighting in their room and not into the rest of the house.
I hung out with these roommates occasionally. They invited me downtown and we went bar hopping through Austin and up in Pflugerville (which as a total of 3 bars if I'm not mistaken. It's like going to Woodburn to bar hop. It ain't happening)So, I mean we had some great times. Now, what happened next, I never saw coming. Once I discovered pieces of the puzzle, the entire image came into focus and I stayed away.
Here's what happened. It was my day off of work and I had just gotten up and gotten around, so lets say around 2:00pm. (suck it, I'm lazy). I am set on heading to the store and then grab food, then head back home to chill. I start down the stairs when I hear ridiculous laughing. It's the girlfriend laughing in the kitchen. I walk into the kitchen and see her tipping back a bottle of wine. Next to her is the Drummer Roommate, holding a beer. They are both giggling and a touch of flushed face, going on. I ask them what's up and they laugh and state that "It's our day off! Getting our Day Drink, on!" Hmmm.. Ok, then. Now, I'm not one to judge alcohol habits or routine. But, if I'm getting my day drink on it's because I have said "Screw this day. I'm not doing anything else". It was only 2pm, and I found it hard to believe they had nothing else going on or wanted to do that day, but whatever.
Ok, obviously that looks suspicious. Minor lingering curiousness and questions pop up, but are shrugged off almost instantly. So, that was clue #1. I grab a granola bar from the cabinet and head towards the front door. "Hey.. uh hey, man. Are you going to work?" Says the drummer. "Umm.. Nope. I have Wednesday off, man." I reply. "Oh. like.. the whole day?" he says. "Uh.. haha.. what? Yeah. It's my day off. I'm gonna go to Wal-Mart and then grab food and chill upstairs." "Ah. Ok." Well, that was weird. But then again, he was drunk. I leave and I joke to myself "why do you wanna know if I work today? Are you trying to get the girlfriend?"
I get my shopping done and grab some food and head home. I open the front door and close it. I have sudden sense that something is happening. I don't know why, but I can feel it. I slowly and quietly walk to the kitchen. I turn the corner and see the girlfriend sitting on the counter top, her legs wrapped around the drummer who is standing next to the counter. They are embraced in a full on drunken kiss. "shit! I knew it!" I exclaim to myself. I now had 2 choices. Try to sneak upstairs or interrupt them. I walk back to the front door and carefully open it a crack. Then, I slowly pull the deadlock into it's locked position. I wait a second. I slam the deadlock so it's upright and unlocked. I try to simulate myself unlocking it from the outside as it would make a similar noise. I then wait half a second and slam the door shut as if I had entered the house and closed the door behind me. I hear slight rustling from the kitchen and carry by grocery bags inside. They are now both 5ft apart just standing still. Obvious awkwardness towards my abrupt interruption. "Hey, guys. Still drinking?" I say with a smile as I put my bags on the counter. "Um.. well.. YEAH" the girl stammers. "Nice nice, hope you guys keep drinking to prevent the hangover" I warmly advise. They both laugh nervously. I put my things away, grab my food bag and walk upstairs without another word.
I had no idea they had a thing for each other until that very day. Never saw it coming. I left it alone and never said anything since I didn't really know the lease holder all that well. I didn't know any of those guys that well. I figured I'd let it be and have them work out their own drama. The drummer or girlfriend never confronted me about it.
About 3 weeks later something very awful and terrible happened to my father, back home. Something I'd rather not share at this time. That's not the point, the point is that upon receiving the bad news, I bought a bottle of vodka, 3 Monsters and went to town. I had eaten a total of 1 Easy Mac Pack when I awoke that day. My Lunch and Dinner was Sky Vodka. After finishing the entire bottle around the Midnight hour I was beyond Annihilated. The lease holder came home and we talked for a bit..... I think...
Through his psychological trickery or my highly intoxicated, vodka soaked brain, this took place:
Lease Holder: LH
LH: "Hey man. You notice anything different about my girlfriend and the drummer?"
Me: "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.....? Noooooooooooo. Why, whash up?"
LH: "You drunk?"
Me: "Nope. I'm pretty..... blasted"
LH: "Well. I didn't know if you have seen anything suspicious between those two"
Me: "Well, I mean I don't know what you mean----"
LH: "Well I walked in the other day---"
Me: "YEAH! I SAW THEM, TOO!"
LH: "What."
Me: "You saw them, right?
LH: "Yeah man, I saw. I just wasn't sure if you saw anything, either"
Me: "Dude, I'm not a tattle tale and I hate stirring up drama. I was just gonna stay out of it. I don't know you guys that well and I feel bad. But, yeah, I walked in the other day and saw them kissing in the kitchen."
LH: "Really....?"
Me: "Oh my gosh.. you didn't know.. oh dammit. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to say that. I mean. I'm sorry man. I just had this horrible thing with my dad and.. I'm sorry.
LH: "No, no. I'm glad you said something. It's ok. I'll make sure he doesn't confront you or anything. I won't say you said anything"
Me: "Thank you"
I really truly felt terrible. I thought he had walked in on them doing something or seeing something as well. I misread what he was saying and totally through it all out there. I kind of planned on Armageddon to erupt the next day, inside the house. To my surprise, nothing. I heard yelling from the couple's bedroom like usual the next couple weeks, but nothing extreme. The lease holder seemed like he was a fairly intelligent person and seemed mature enough to handle a situation like this.
I did find out a few weeks later that the drummer found out I had said something. He gave me the cold shoulder and didn't speak to me that entire time. I figured it might be because of that, but wasn't sure since we didn't really talk a whole lot, anyway. He came into my room one night and apologized for his behavior and said that me telling the lease holder, everything actually helped the situation. We ended on cool grounds.
The lease at the Mini-Mansion was up in August. I lived there from March till August 1st. I put minimal effort in looking for a new place to live. About 2wks before the move out day was up, I started looking pretty hardcore. Nothing was going to trump a Mini-Mansion for #375/month. No one wanted to renew the lease. The guy working on the oil rig moved into a house 1 street over in the same addition. He found it on craigslist for $900/month. Not like he didn't have the money. The drummer moved in with his buddy. The NY kid found a place just north of downtown. And, the couple decided to move to Tampa, FL 2 weeks before the move. They stayed together and he found a place to go a week before.
Panic stricken and out of options, I submitted to moving in with a girl I had only been seeing for 2 months. I wasn't sure how it was going to work. I had only lived with 1 other female before and it ended horribly. Then again, she was... odd...
This girl actually borrowed her father's truck to help me move and we finished everything a couple days before August 1st. I payed the last remaining bills. Said my goodbyes and watched as the Mini-Mansion which I had came to adore, shrink in the distance.
I really did enjoy that house. It was a nice deck and a fenced in backyard. The rooms were huge and everyone was on a 2nd/3rd shift schedule in that house. I was the first one up everyday at 1pm!!! They were always up till 5/6am. It was pretty sweet and I'll miss it.
The move to the girls house wasn't that eventful. I had my own room and all my necessary items fit just fine. (Necessary i.e. my computer and tv).
If I remember next week I can cover the girls house and plans to move forward!
Hope you enjoyed the read. It really is all kinda lackluster to me putting it to text. It was quite interesting, tho.
Questions, comments, feedback, shoutouts, can all be delivered in the comment box, below. Can't believe so many people are reading these! Appreciate the traffic (Not that it fuels anything other than my ego and we all know that needs a bit of inflating)
Appreciate the views, I'll try to keep it up!
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