A Tom Without a Home

Somehow, my housing arrangements never work out.

In my younger days, it was probably because I was an ass...these days...well, who knows.

I thought I had found a home in my last place. It was a dude's house, and he was only there on weekends. Three bedroom house for two dudes, pretty sweet gig. Four months into my six month lease, I sent a note in with my rent check saying I would like to extend the lease. I didn't hear back. A couple of weeks later, I brought it up with the dude, and he told that he and his dad would terminate the lease after it's completion....they wanted to rent the entire house instead of a couple of bedrooms in it.

It's the third time I'd move in about 14 months.

It followed my sister kicking me out of the house in Baltimore.

Ugh.

I've lived with some dandies.

My first roommate after moving out of my parents house was great...but we had different lifestyles and I moved out to go to college in Mankato. My first roommate in school was a fruitcake.

He called himself by his middle name, and did all kinds of creepy shit. I would play video games, he would stare at me. One night, I was up reading at about 3 a.m. (he had been in bed for about six hours), and I glanced over and he was staring at me. I got drunk for the first time that spring, came back to the room all chatty, and he recorded it. I came back from lunch the next day, and he was sitting on the sofa, transcribing it...stopwatch and all.

The following fall I had the same room and a different roommate. That f-ing guy. I guess I kept him up at night when I'd be up late playing video games, but he wouldn't tell me. I even asked him point blank once...and he said it didn't bother him. Then one day I came back, and my dorm room was half empty. This was like three weeks into the semester.

It turned into one of the greatest semesters of my life. I turned my room into a fort. I took both the beds and used them to block the door, and had the biggest living room on the floor. We played a shit-ton of Madden in my room. The next semester, random dude was assigned to live with me, and he was the greatest roommate of my life.

We clicked. We had similar views on everything. We were mutually quirky. I tried to get him to live me the next year, but he had already committed to living with a buddy from back home. Then he moved away and didn't say goodbye.

Sigh.

I spent the next year living with Jenks, in the heyday of his alcoholism. Jenks is one of my favorite people in the world, but I grew weary of him eating my food and drinking my beer, and he grew weary of my locking him out of the apartment naked. He moved out.

I could go on and on, but the basic truth is this: I have only lived with one person for more than a year, and we didn't speak for about three years after living together.

In my younger days, I'd do all kinds of crazy stuff, from coming home belligerently drunk after a night at the bar to strolling naked in front of the TV while a roomy was watching it...I GET why I had a hard time keeping a roommate....

NOW though, I'm a Tom possessed by a job. I want a place that's relatively quiet that won't evict me.

I guess I'll let you know when I find it.

On a side note, my season is ROLLING, I apologize if I'm not able to post again for a while.

T