Sam Paul - Why I Committed Suicide

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.

I’m looking forward to mowing the lawn since I had that chore for the majority of my childhood. The two-year hiatus I took from mowing while I lived in the dorms has stirred strange longings for the grit and grime of manual labor. I think it’s just one of those things that appears a lot more fun after the unpleasant details fade away from memory. I guess I’ll figure that out either way soon. Besides, our little lawn shouldn’t be much of a problem compared to the giant acreage I slaved over in my youth. Maybe I was merely smaller then.

My next ambition is to build a half pipe in the backyard since we have more space than we know what to do with. Dan and Jim are both skaters even though they are a little older and not quite as die-hard about it as I seem to be. Although I must note, enthusiasm and skill are two different things, because I know Dan can shred his ass off when he wants to.

I’m excited to be moving in with Jim, he has a lot of savvy about him that I admire. Our ritual ramblings in his blue Mustang is one of the reasons I learned to appreciate smoking pot. We used to cut out of the dorms most nights and drive all around the back roads of Denton by the airport because it was such a pain in the ass to smoke out anywhere on or near campus. A lot of the roads we explored back then are the same roads Jenifer takes me out on when she gets that restless urge to drive. I have a lot of fond memories of Jim and me driving out by dinky-doo airport, smoking big bombers, hitting the proto pipe, listening to Paul’s Boutique on the tape deck and debating whether it is the greatest album ever. We’ve tripped our balls off on acid a few times and watched the lightning storms approach and rumble across the sky while listening to The Orb. Many philosophies and theorems about the secrets to life were debated and solved during our excursions and now we’re going to be living together so let the good times roll.

In moderation of course.

Looks like I’m going to the sows! I mean shows! Good news. Really good news, since there’s little more than a week left to get there. John Browning, one of Jenifer’s old boyfriends, is taking his giant white Ford Econoline van along with two other people up to the shows in Oregon and California. I don’t know how or why I got this lucky, but somebody must have cancelled on him for me to squeeze in a primo seat at the last minute. The deal with Jenifer and John B. is that they went out for a little while before she got bored. Then I suppose he was tossed aside like a bag of potatoes just like the rest of us. It’s a cruel, cruel world to live in when the girls get used to people constantly obsessing over them. Oh, the blessings and curses of having a sweet ass. Jenifer is one of those rare beautiful women that aren’t preoccupied with how much money somebody has or what they might one day be able to earn, (unlike some people who shall remain nameless) if so I would have been eliminated long ago.