this isn’t my first home for wayward squatters

Back at the end of 2004 I lived in Shell Beach in a pretty cute little one bedroom house. It had a yard and if you walked on to the driveway, you could see the ocean kickin’ it at the end of the street. It was within walking distance of a couple of okay bars and pretty close to work. I knew all of my neighbors there and even though I didn’t get along with all of them it was a comfortable place to live. It was also way out of my price range to afford alone after the great Engagement Break-Off fiasco. So Jen Wa moved in with me to help with rent while we looked for a place to move into.

A couple of my friends got wind of this arrangement and decided they wanted in on it too. That we were going to find a house together to save money all together and they headed out to the Coast. When this started, it seemed like a good idea. R-Boogie was a friend I’d had for years and we’d already gone through that awakward “hey you’re hot and we drink together, let’s hook up,” business years before and T-Money, well he liked boys. We all got along great and thought it would be a lot of fun. So the boys came out to squat on the floor for a couple of weekends to look for work and help us look for an apartment.

Except there was a lot more drinking and cavorting (T-Money) and lecturing and judging (R-Boogie) than actual useful shit going on. But T-Money got a job straight off and asked if he could crash at the house for the last month we were there.

Again this is a one bedroom house, but Jen and I agree, figuring we’d make it work. All while keeping this underwraps from my landlord who lived across the driveway. R-Boogie took his ass home to back and plan and put in notice on his place and left us girls there with T-Money. This is when things started getting more… sour.

T had never left his parents home before coming to “stay” at my place. He was used to being taken care of and being spoiled. If Jen and I cooked food we bought after he didn’t offer to pitch in for groceries, he thought he was entitled to it. Same with anything in the cupboard, be it potato chips, vodka or whatever. If it was there, he snarfed it down. On the flipside though, he did consume a lot of fast food, and while he was eating Jen Wa and I out of house and home, he never offered to bring us anything to eat when he’d come home with a bag of whatever he had picked up. He also never replaced the booze we liked when he drank it, but would bring in endless cartons of shitty Coors Light.

This was not the worst of the issue. For one he was an internet fiend. All three of us were, but Jen Wa and I always made it work. The computer was pretty much always on and we’d rotate depending on what else was going on in the house. But like many gay boys of T’s age, he had the myspace addiction. I don’t know what it is, but every gay male friend of mine under 30 is FUCKING OBSESSED with that Myspace and he wasn’t any different. He could honestly sit there for HOURS cruising for cute boys and emailing them and chatting. Sometimes he’d get up and leave and meet one, but mostly he was on the computer. And if Jen or I were on it when he wanted to use it, he’d read over our shoulders or stomp around the house or sigh loudly until we got off. It wasn’t even his computer, it was mine! Yet when I got hit with a 300 dollar DSL bill that I found out about by surprise because the phone had been my ex’s utility, and I asked if anyone could kick in toward that bill, T was no where to be found.

Then there was the bed issue. As I said, I had a one bedroom house, that I had shared with my fiance. It had ONE BED. Jen Wa was living on my couch and T was supposed to sleep in the floor in his sleeping bag. He wasn’t helping pay for shit so I didn’t feel obligated to help him sleep more comfortably. Well one night we were all drunk and I think Jen wanted to go to sleep early so I let T come into my room to hang out so she could get some much needed sleep. Well he ends up sleeping in my bed and I didn’t mind, except every night after that he thought he was invited to crash in my room with me. This was not okay. He snored and was also sick constantly. I started going to bed earlier and locking him out of my room. This wasn’t enough of a hint though and he would routinely hint around that he needed to get to bed earlier because otherwise I’d lock him out of my room.

I found out later that he was getting up after I’d leave for work in the morning and going into my room and going back to sleep in my bed. This was especially rude when he had an ear infection that was dripping weird ear shit all over my pillow. I came home from work, boiled my laundry only to find him back in my room the next day after I left for work. The fuck?

Needless to say we drank a lot during this period of our lives and soon enough T started lecturing us about it, mostly because it was the only time we’d tell him to fuck off. I was waiting for R-Boogie to come back so I could have him try talking some sense into this idiot but then R-Boogie fucked off and decided not to move out to live with all of us after all. And T started bringing his friends over to my house. ALOT.

One night I’d actually gotten to bed at a decent hour and was even sober. I get woken up at 2 in the morning by T coming in with like four people. One was his friend Asshole who he always brought around and the other three were some underage drunks he was friends with. They’d been kicked out of the house they were partying at and were going to sleep at my house? I got so pissed about being woken up I threw a shoe at the wall and got called a bitch for it. And T just went on getting these people blankets and shit like he actually lived in my place. The second to last straw that broke this camel’s back was finding one of these kids puking into one of my salad bowls in the living room floor when I got up for work in the morning.

T got another nasal infection that week and Jen Wa IM’d me at work to inform me that T was in the shower BLOWING HIS NOSE INTO MY SHOWER. I was all “What the fuck? I take baths in there!” But there he was blowing snot rockets into the shower. I’m sorry that’s just gross. So when I got home from work I raided the cleaners under the sink. I filled the tub with bleach, windex, commet, soap and god knows what else, probably ranch dressing and hung a sign on the door “THE SHOWER IS BEING DISINFECTED. IF YOU NEED TO BLOW YOUR NOSE, USE A FUCKING KLEENEX.”

Jen and I left to go to an event for the radio station and when we got home T was blasting emo kid music and packing his shit to go back home to his mom. He claimed it was because he needed to go to the doctor, but he left his key and moved in with some other people when he came back and about two weeks later, Jen and I moved into the Grover Beach Crack House. It had it’s quirks and a few squatters too over time, but never to the extent of the Shell Beach Punk Rock Squat house.

It’s not to say Jen and I were perfect to live with either, but my favorite story of a moron I brought back to that place is best saved for another time…