It would be cool if I could find some opium too, but I’m not holding my breath. Among the Grateful Dead fans there seems to be a riptide of desperation underneath the happiness so I don’t know what to expect. The people I’ve spoken to say that this might be the last year to see the shows because Jerry Garcia is rumored to die soon. He looks pretty old I suppose but I don’t know why he would suddenly keel over. Maybe it’s a fan thing, but geez they sure are pessimistic.
Well it’s official, I’m moving out of the Delta Lodge. I am sad to leave a house I truly love but there are some good reasons for this. I’ve written before about how I keep getting sick in the room I’m living in. Even with that it might be tolerable if the room wasn’t so accessible to revelers and hoed out all the time. Plus if the heat abated a little our room might actually be downright cozy for about the only 4 months of the year Texas weather isn’t intolerably annoying. Of course I’ll miss all the free marijuana I get to smoke around here (thanks to someone always needing a nearby room to light up in) but while I enjoy smoking dope, ever since I met Jenifer I’m enjoying being a little more aware.
My second reason for leaving the house, and I’m not fucking kidding about this, are the giant possums that wander the hallways at all hours like ambling diseased ghosts. A literal family of possums have taken over the first and second floors. The front door got ripped off during a party last week and several windows are missing so there isn’t really any way to keep an animal that can climb trees out of an open house. One of my alternative fraternity housemates tried to kill one of the possums with a garden rake but the creature was too damn big. I’m serious, we’re talking at least the size of a medium dog here. It’s extremely disconcerting to stumble into the bathroom hungover, or barely hanging onto reality thanks to varying drug combinations, and find a salivating mangy possum between the porcelain god and me. Hangovers and tetanus shots are not a good combination. And despite what I’ve heard about possums, these motherfuckers do not roll over and play dead like in the fucking Deputy Dawg cartoons. I’m speculating whatever keeps making me sick probably mutated them into a new smarter and larger species. I thought they were cute for about five minutes, then back in reality I learned it’s not really cool in any circle to cohabitate with rodents. Jenifer’s pet rat Rico is the exception I suppose.
My third and most important reason for moving is that I found a new place to live. Jim Heines, my friend from the dorms, and his friend Dan found a neat little house on the opposite side of campus, right by the school. I initially didn’t really think they would find any houses at all, so I kind of off-handedly offered to move in with them if they could find one near the campus, knowing that’s a near impossible task in a college town. But less than a half hour after I sent them out on a snipe hunt they came back and had a fresh pad. The rent is cheaper, the house is cleaner and I’ll have my own room.
Ernie wasn’t too thrilled to hear I was moving out on him, but he understood. I think he is secretly ready to get the hell out of the Lodge also, between the crappy room we rent and me being sick and complaining all the time I think it’s for the best. He’s going to move in with Kirk (yet another good friend from our dorm days) so I’m not just leaving him hanging.
Being poor has advantages. I calculate I can move all my belongings in a few quick carloads. I’ll miss controlling the Delta Lodge sound system from my room with the souped up 70’s stereo system I have rigged up with a genuine working 8-track player. But really, how many times can people listen to STYX in a row before the novelty wears off? Still, the feeling of power that goes along with controlling what people are listening too while they are drinking free beer is intoxicating in its own way. I’ll miss being able to subconsciously influence drunken partygoers and exposing various sorts of people to groups like The Smiths, Talking Heads, The Police, Nirvana, Johnny Cash, Mr. Bungle. And some good old N.W.A. & Easy E. The thrill and novelty of being the music god wore off the night some drunken chick pounded on my door over and over and over until I finally answered her insistent pounding and the crazy bitch tried to come in and smash my Dire Straights’ “Brothers in Arms” disc because she thought it was country music. What a damn shame.
It’s moving day! It’s moving day! The protagonist says gleefully with the enthusiasm of Steve Martin yelling “The new phone books are here!” I am so totally stoked about moving into our new house. There are four bedrooms and two bathrooms. Dan and his younger brother Jerry (Jay) are staying there also, rounding out our numbers to four. Four people, four rooms, what a deal. D & J put down all the deposit and they were able to get their parents to help set us up with utilities and all the other stuff that’s so hard to get turned on the first time. I know Dan from the dorm but mostly from him hanging around with Jim at the Flying Tomato on one of my Thursday or Saturday shifts. It seems like a larger percentage of my friends are alcoholics and I love them for it. They love me for it too, because I have the hook-up for free beer on Fry St., so it’s a fucked up symbiotic relationship I suppose.
There is only one usable air conditioner in the house. A giant motherfucker of a window unit that is in the living room, so I imagine we’ll be spending a lot of our time there. The house does have a lot of windows and we all have fans so we should be able to circulate a lot of air through the house and keep moderately cool. If all else fails, I’ll have no problem camping out in the living room and sleeping during the worst of the heat. Dan and Jay have some old furniture from when their parents redecorated, so our new digs already sport a couple of lazy boys, some carpet, a TV & stereo (w/cabinet) and a microwave. All the necessities. Our home will be a hodge-podge of varying styles and comforts united by a mutual appreciation for B-boy flavor.
Jay got what was/is the master bedroom since he was the one who plunked down the $450 deposit. I took the leftover room that wasn’t originally a room but more like a porch area where the original owner probably kept the lawn-mower. My doorframes have no doors in them. They open directly to the kitchen and Jim’s room so I hung up thick blankets for partitions, we’ll see if this lets any of the cooler air into my room at all. Jim’s room is a lowered out area in-between me and Dan. He has to cut through one of our rooms to get in or out of his room, which is kind of cool for his privacy, but it’s kind of restricting for the rest of us. I’m sure it will work out fine. I know Jim is going to hear Jenifer and me when we are rooting around in the bedroom, but we won’t mind. Jim’s got a longtime girlfriend named Simone and I’m sure we’ll hear our fair share of them going at it also. We are both dirty dogs and we’re both down with it all. Isn’t that one of the long-debated gender separations? Guys will encourage other guys to get their groove on as much as possible while girls don’t tend to support their friends who hop in the sack with everybody very much, but they do like to have one friend who sleeps with more people than they do so they don’t feel like sluts.
My room has a backdoor that opens to the humongous backyard which is one of the best reasons for living in this house. Years and years of previous tenants and typical college student neglect has left a veritable garden of wild jungle attitude right in our corner of the city. It’s muy plush and green and I’ll have to add some of my own special plants and see how they do.
Behind the house, near my backdoor, is a garage apartment. The guy who lives there is named Andy and he’s a pot smoker who is one of those people who are so white that they look borderline albino. Andy is pretty chilled out, he seems like he keeps to himself most of the time. Andy’s an all right guy to get high with, except he critiques the weed and his pot is usually superior to whatever I can contribute.