In the early nineties I found myself being booted gently out of my mother’s house. I’d been allowed to move back home after buying a car, the pretext being that I'd pay off the car while I was there.

Of course, nothing of the sort happened. I potted along, making my car payments on time but otherwise blowing all extra cash on CD’s, books and beer. No headway of any kind was made and I even managed to lose my job of three-years.

My mom didn't say much about this but, after an evening of noisy sex with my girlfriend, I was told the time had come for me to move back out.

At the time I was hanging out with a rather interesting, flamboyant fellow from Illinois named Rafe James. Rafe was sleepy-eyed, of medium build, and possessed a mouthy charisma that bounced him from situation to situation with such flair and pizzazz that, if you didn’t hate him, you had to like him. I liked him.

Though we weren’t really what you’d call close friends, we spent an awful lot of time together, mostly on the weekends. I even accompanied him on a short visit to his hometown in Illinois where the tap water reeked of sulphur and I was treated to an unasked for viewing of his grandfather’s angry, red heart-surgery scar.

Rafe was my primary form of entertainment, getting me out to bars and parties and exposing me to a social life that I otherwise would never have seen. Different as we were, we understood each other on a basic level. Rafe suffered the indignity of being treated as an outsider during his school years, like myself, and neither of us was afraid of ideas that many people consider too different. These facts alone put us on a somewhat even footing with each other. When out, we both derived endless fun from observing and aping the foibles of those around us. We enjoyed a mutually wicked sense of humor, though, while I am more of a passive aggressive little creep, Rafe was less subtle. To a certain degree I was his sidekick or, more accurately, the fat girl to his pretty girl.

Of course, Rafe was not pretty, nor I fat, but our contrasting personalities, Rafe outgoing, me awkward, amounted to the same thing.

Maybe you’ve noticed that many a pretty, young girl will pal around with a not so pretty friend? This is not accidental and the plan is three-fold: First, the pretty girl does not have to go alone to a social event. Secondly, her compatriot will not form any kind of competition for her. Lastly, said less attractive friend will help her to shine all that more brightly.

I knew this intuitively but didn’t really mind. What fat, boring girl doesn’t want to attend parties? I enjoyed having someone to hang out with who was braver than I, able to walk right up to girls at the bar and talk to them as if he had a right.

Not that Rafe had more luck than I with the girls.

He was always looking for new angles with which to impress upon the girls his unique personality. He would say startling things or effect strange mannerisms. For a period of about a month he took to licking a prospective girl on the cheek. Not surprisingly, this was not very effective. As ill-advised as this behavior was, I believe his biggest mistake was in telling them all that he had a tiny penis. I don’t know if he actually has a tiny penis or not, but he certainly convinced a lot of the girls at the bar that he did. I’m not sure how he came up with this particular approach, but, if a girl listened to him, seeming charmed by his wit and panache, he’d saunter into the startling caveat about the size of his penis, apparently figuring that, if they were listening to him he had a chance so, instead of causing big disappointment later, why not get the shock over early? Or maybe he thought they’d figure he was just being bashful and, in fact, had some monster schlong. Whatever the reasoning, it was faulty, though Rafe seemed unaware of this and kept right on with the announcements for quite some time.

When I related the sobering news to Rafe that my free ride at Ma’s house was over, he became excited.

“Perfect! You and I and Tony can get a place together!”

“Tony?” Who the hell was Tony?

Rafe’s answer was muffled as he pawed through the ever-growing pile of trash and belongings in the backseat of his car.

“I said: Who’s Tony?”

“Tony Neidigger’s an old friend of mine from Illinois, just out of the Air Force. He’s half-Japanese, kinda mean and a guitar player –pretty good one, too. Hold this, willya?” Rafe handed me a sticky can of Fix-A-Flat as he extracted a Gumby bendie and two loose cassette tapes from the rear of the car. “I knew I had Garage Days Re-revisited. Cool. You need this.” He handed me the other tape, a battered copy of ‘Surfing With The Alien’ and took back the Fix-A-Flat, turning it to squint at the instructions. “Guy’s a fucking amazing guitarist.”

“Tony?”

“No, ya goon.” He pointed at the tape.

“Yeah, I know. I’ve got it. You made me buy it last week.”

“He’ll be here this weekend.”

“Satriani? Where at?”

“No, dumb-ass. Tony. He’s driving out from Illinois and he’s gonna need a place to stay. We can all get a place together. You’ll like Tony. Here, it says you’ve got to shake the can.” He said, handing me the can to shake.

“Won’t he need a job?” I asked, shaking the can. “Hell, I’m living on unemployment right now, Rafe. You’re the only one of us with a job. How can we get a place?’

“He’ll get a job. He was in the military, guys like that can always find jobs, and I’ll get you a job at Rawlings.” Rawlings, the big record store in the mall, was where Rafe worked.

Rafe took the can from my hands, affixed the nozzle to the stem of his eternally flaccid, left-rear tire, and began injecting the goo.

“Oh, shit! You see that chick who just walked into Baskin Robbins?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.” I whistled. “Sweet.” The girl was pretty and young, perhaps a high school cheerleader, at least seven years our junior –not that it mattered to us.

“Here. Take this,” he said indicating the can. “I’m gonna go try to get her number!”

I knelt dutifully and continued to fill the tire, watching as it oozed out around the stem and onto my fingers, a viscous, clinging sap.

Typical, I thought, he’s talking to the pretty girl and I’m just sitting by myself with sticky hands.

I did like Tony, sort of. He was quiet, polite, maybe shy even, but there was smoldering fury just behind his eyes that made me wary.

He had lots of earrings in both ears (I only had two holes in my left) and jet black hair that he was beginning to let grow out. About the only music he would listen to was thrash metal, though he also had a soft spot for Rush.

Music was very important to all of us, as it defined where we fit within the social strata of our peers, though I never took this as seriously as Rafe did. For him, the music you listened to, as well as the movies you liked, clearly defined your character and worth in a way that mere actions could not. If Jesus Christ came back listening to Garth Brooks and liking Goldie Hawn movies, Rafe would write him off as an mentally impaired, unimportant loser.

True to Rafe’s prediction, Tony found himself a job in no time as a late-shift, convenience-store clerk. We commenced apartment hunting and found a fourplex in the back of a cul de sac that would suit us. All we had to do was convince the landlord.

This took some doing.

First of all, it was only a two-bedroom place. Rafe and Tony decided early on that they could share a room if it was big enough, so that problem was solved but the landlord seemed dubious about renting a two-bedroom to three young men with long hair.

It was decided that I should do most of the talking, since I had the shortest hair and, having just come off a security guard job, would be the most likely to pull off a professional front but, as soon as we got within earshot of the guy, Rafe couldn’t contain his personality. Tony and I just followed along behind.

The place was perfect: a large living area, a good-sized kitchen, two bedrooms and a full bath. It was a daylight basement, too, the windows just peeping out at ground level, meaning it would be easier to heat and cool. The neighborhood looked clean and quiet.

Still, the landlord was doubtful and tried to get rid of us by insisting that the place wasn’t ready to be rented yet. It needed painting.

“Well, we’ll paint it –for free! As part of the deposit.”

“I dunno.”

“Aw, c’mon. We’ll be good. Corey here was a security guard.” I smiled dutifully and tried to look professional.

“Well . . .”

We signed the papers and tore off into the dusk with an excited squeal of tires and a blare of raunchy guitar rock, our new landlord staring after us, horrified.

The painting job went smoothly and soon we were moved in. Rafe invited a bunch of folks over for a housewarming party and, though only a few showed, there was drink and merriment so that was a good sign for the place.

Tony’s huge PA system, which we used for a stereo amplifier, dominated the living room. Rafe had a large, blow up Gumby that took up what space the PA didn’t and the furniture was grab bag of what I already owned and whatever could be found in dumpsters.

Neither Rafe nor Tony had much in the way of belongings when we moved in. I was the best supplied of the three of us, providing cups, plates, silverware, towels, sheets and pillows. Nothing fancy, just the stuff my Mom had given me or I’d acquired over the years as a swinging, ramen-noodle consuming bachelor.

I also possessed more non-essential belongings than either of my roommates. Bringing in many more boxes than either of them to Tony’s vocal dismay.

“What the hell do you need all these books for?”

Rafe spent most of his money on liquor, clothes and food while Tony, beyond buying guitar strings and cigarettes, saved almost every penny from his paychecks. It was not long before Rafe and I figured this out and began hitting him up for payday-loans, lowering his opinion of us considerably.

His opinion of Rafe wasn’t that high to begin with. Very shortly after we all moved in together Tony opened up about how Rafe had been seen as a little weenie in high school, getting picked on and beaten up weekly -sometimes by Tony. His disgust for Rafe manifested itself often, either through a sneer at Rafe’s constant babble, an eye roll at one of his suggestions, or a disdainful curse at his opinions. It was obvious he considered Rafe a big loser. That being said, I never could figure out why Tony decided to move from Illinois to hang out with him.

I took a part time job selling frozen yogurt in the same mall where Rafe worked at Rawlings Records. I could see their big green sign from where I worked, the employees talking to each other and enjoying new music as I wiped up sticky spills and served overweight women in polka-dotted pant-suits large portions of fat-free, frozen yogurt.

At the same time I was also working at a liquor store, a job I got through my girlfriend. Despite the fact that they were both part-time positions, the hours were clumped all over my week creating strange juxtapositions that afforded me only one day off and limited my sleep time.

Tony found a band to play with almost as quickly as he found a job. The lead singer, drummer and organizer of the band was an exterminator who’s style perfectly mimicked the then still thriving eighties hair-band aesthetic. Tony wasn’t too sure about the guy at first but, once the band got together and cranked on a few Metallica tunes, he seemed happier.

Not to be outdone, a few months later Rafe found a band to be in, too.

When I first met Rafe, he could do a lot of the gymnastic guitar work that was such a part of the metal scene of the late eighties. It was cool watching his left hand noodle around like a speed-freak spider on the fret board while his right goosed the whammy bar, his mouth all screwed up stringing drool just like a real guitar hero. Unfortunately that was all he seemed able to do. He got bored, he said, playing a whole song so he just worked out the hard, fast bits. By the time we moved in together, he’d not practiced in a long while, so it wasn’t too surprising that he auditioned for the band not as guitar player but as lead singer.

Except, of course, that Rafe couldn’t sing. Tony about laughed himself silly when he heard what position Rafe was trying out for. He respected what little Rafe could pull off on the guitar but a singer?

Yet Rafe somehow managed to get the job. His unstoppable, magnetic showmanship won the day and Rafe threw himself into the role, energizing the band with his presence.

Not long after we moved in, the apartment upstairs was rented to a young couple –Dan and Diane. Our introduction to them came when, after a day of moving their belongings into their new apartment, they celebrated by having a good screw.

We knew this not because we were peeping toms but because of the force with which Dan drove himself into Diane. Despite the otherwise efficient soundproofing of the apartments, Dan’s pile-driving thrusts resounded through the ceiling of Tony and Rafe’s bedroom as if whole encyclopedia sets were being dropped onto the floor. Each thrust came harder and faster, until, with one final, bone-jarring slam, it was over. The three of us, shocked and amazed (and maybe a little alarmed –had the woman survived that?) burst into a ragged cheer, clapping and even beating on the ceiling our appreciation. Later, when I became friendly enough with Dan to bring it up, I asked if he had heard our response but he reported he had not. I’ll bet he did but confused it for the blood pounding in his ears.

As they were of our age, if a bit more mature, we all soon introduced ourselves.

Diane was heavy, frumpy, wore glasses, and seemed a kind, normal, secretary type. There was nothing about her public persona that made her seem likely to appreciate the kind of shagging we’d heard her take.

Dan was another sort. Of medium build and height, there was something about him that radiated an intense and creepy intelligence. He reminded me of the nerds I hung out with in high school only a damned sight darker. His main interest was in plants, specifically cacti and succulents, and two, tall shelves filled with the things took up about half of their dining room.

Dan and Diane were not married but acted like it. Dan loafed around the house, taking care of his plants and reading while Diane worked, supporting both of them. It caused a little tension in their relationship but not so much as you might suspect.

One night, shortly after they moved in, Tony invited Dan down for some beer and talk. Though Tony and Rafe were far more outgoing in their attempt to get to know this new neighbor, he gravitated to me instead. We had a lot more to talk about, it seemed.

I still couldn’t shake my discomfort with him and, as if to confirm this, at some point he got it into his head that he was going to tickle me. Maybe we were all talking about being ticklish or something but I believe I foolishly mentioned that I am quite ticklish or perhaps I lied and said I wasn’t, I don’t recall but, as I learned about Dan, either of these are just the sort of comment to set him into action.

When he announced his intention I said: “The hell you will!” and then bolted when it became obvious that, indeed, he would.

The situation reduced me to that of the child who ran from his older brother’s weird and evil schemes. I hated it but my nature left me helpless to do little more than retreat.

He tackled me before I could get far and did actually tickle me a little, stopping quickly but only when he had proved his point, whatever that was. Still, I was very embarrassed and disturbed: What was up with this guy? Had I sent him some signal that I would like to be tickled?

After this perplexing interlude, the evening continued as if this strange intermission of male on male tickling had never occurred but, later, Tony called me on it.

“I can’t believe you let Dan tickle you.” He said, eyeing me up and down, his homophobia palpable.

“Yeah,” I replied nervously. “That was weird, wasn’t it? Creeped me out.”

“Yeah but you let him do it.”

“No I didn’t. He tackled me!”

“I heard you giggle. I think you liked it.”

“I didn’t giggle! I laughed. I was nervous! He freaked me out.”

“I woulda hit him. I think he’s a fag” then, as a parting shot: “–and I wonder about you.”

I wondered about me, too. Not sexually, though. My endless fantasies about nude girls and the deviant, naughty things I wanted to do with them, to them, precluded any possibility of homosexuality. No, I wondered what I was doing living with someone like Tony.

Dan’s quirks became more apparent after he fixed the cable junction box for the apartments.

After moving in, Dan and Diane subscribed to the local cable company but the signal was fuzzy and intermittent, especially when the complex’s communal laundry room was being used. Dan correctly assumed that said junction box was somehow being effected by the vibrations and electricity generated by use of the washer and dryer.

Not being the type to call for a repair man, Dan took his tools and limited knowledge down to the laundry room and fiddled about with the junction box until he not only had a clear signal but we all did, even those of us who had not paid for cable. Interestingly, Dan’s amateur fiddlings also inadvertently provided every set in the complex with whatever he or Diane chose to watch on their VCR via channel 3.

We discovered this little window into their lives one evening as Tony flipped aimlessly through the channels. He stopped confused at the scene of a small boy sliding backwards down a long banister that was being played and then rewound and played again, over and over. When we realized that it had to be Dan and Diane’s VCR, we giggled nervously, wondering why he wanted to see the scene so often. Often we would pause and watch as Dan dissected a movie, rewinding and still framing select pieces of signage or other details, most of it prurient.

Though I suppose as good neighbors we should have immediately told Dan or Diane about their transmitted VCR viewing, neither of us did.

Eventually I was hired at Rawlings Records and spent a hellish month working 12 to 20 hour days, seven days a week. It is amazing the amount of money you can save when you have no time to spend it. I soon realized I couldn’t go on like that and quit all but the Rawlings job.

The store personality reminded me an awful lot of high school. Most of the employees were still in college and great emphasis was put on how cool you dressed, talked and what kind of music you listened to. I was out on all three counts and, worse, the manager hired me in hopes of grooming me as an assistant manager. I was not well received and Rafe, finding himself in the unenviable position of being a roommate and friend to a total dweeb, distanced himself from me.

After a few months everything settled down. I made it obvious that I was good for the job of clerk, if not assistant manager, and even managed to stop being quite so annoying to all my coworkers, but the initial strain damaged my relationship with Rafe.

Tony’s military training was only the latest in a series of life experiences that left him a very angry man. Though he possessed a tender, fun-loving side, quick to laugh with a sparkle in his eye, more often than not he was fuming or bitter. I got the impression that it had a lot to do with his mother, who was native Japanese and apparently put up with very little foolishness from her children. Being raised in that kind of household, while all around you others are spoiled and allowed to be soft, can make for a very trying childhood and Tony showed all the signs. His incendiary temper manifested itself very early on in our rooming together and it was a thing to behold.

Luckily his anger was usually aimed at Rafe –and with good reason. In a very short period of time we both found numerous reasons to be more than a little miffed at our roommate:

Rafe never brought any food into the house yet always claimed innocence when something of ours was mysteriously eaten.

Even though Tony and I would dutifully wash ours when finished, dishes would pile up in the sink, yet Rafe acted just as confounded by said phenomena as we.

Rafe’s clothes and belongings began to pile up almost immediately after we moved in. This was particularly true in the bedroom he shared with Tony. Granted, none of us were exactly candidates for Good Housekeeping but Rafe took the cake.

Most annoying, Rafe dominated the answering machine, leaving daily messages such as:

Hi. Rafe here. I’ll be at work until 3 and then I’m going to go over to Austin’s to get ready for the bar –check us out at the Ram or, if we’re not there, try Washington’s. Austin, if this is you, call me at work. Jen, you too. Laters.

He would update the message throughout the day whenever he felt the situation merited it - sometimes every half-hour.

No matter how we complained, no matter how Tony would roar and threaten violence, Rafe would not or could not reform. It was as if he lived alone and viewed Tony and I as a couple of roaches that scurried about the apartment whenever he wasn’t there.

This so enraged Tony that he began sleeping on the couch in the living room in protest -an insane decision considering he worked nights. Unlike Tony and Rafe, my favorite place to spend time has always been my home, so Tony’s decision impacted me the most, making my days off great fun. I felt as if I was tiptoeing around a hibernating bear that would growl if you woke him, long and low.

Rafe and I begged him to reconsider his choice, particularly when the noise of us going about our day would cause him to shoot up, half naked from the couch to rant angrily about our lack of sensitivity, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

I’m convinced another reason he decided to stop sharing sleeping quarters with Rafe was his fear of it looking odd to his he-man friends. Tony was always concerned with his and other’s masculinity. Frequently he would look me in the eyes, questioning my manhood. Being the only guy in the house with a steady girl, I found Tony’s concern odd but it apparently wasn’t evidence enough of my heterosexuality and he once said to me, with a dangerous look of suspicion in his eye: “You sure say ‘butt’ and ‘fag’ a lot.”

Perhaps I did. The thought that those words once came out my mouth often enough for him to comment is a bit worrisome to me now, not from a sexuality standpoint as much as from a sensitivity one, but at the time I found the statement humorous and ludicrous. I told people at work about it and, shortly thereafter, when I was leaving a message for Tony on our answering machine, the assistant manager leaned in and yelled “Butt-fag! Butt-fag!” into the receiver.

Right before Halloween, one of the girls at work, Janelle, mentioned that she knew someone who was going to let her buy some of the hallucinogenic mushrooms he was getting for a Halloween party. Rafe asked if she could hook us up, too, so she gave us directions to where they were having the party, saying she could meet us there and vouch for us so we could score.

On Halloween Rafe and I left work together, planning to get the ‘shrooms, then leave in time to meet my girlfriend at Barleycorne’s, a popular pub and Italian eatery on the main drag. After that, who knew? We figured we’d walk around the active downtown area and see what found us. We were going to trip on Halloween -did any other plan matter?

We found the house, a crappy little rental job, with little trouble. Parking was harder but I managed to find an illegal space under a shrub about a block away.

Janelle saw us walking up so we got into the party with no hassle and even received one cup each for the keg. We sat around with her for about an hour, waiting to score and being ignored by the revelers. It seemed like everyone was either tripping, drunk, high or a combination of the above –except for us.

Only a few of the people were in costume; a guy in a dress, a few masks, a funny hat here and there, the obligatory toga –your typical college party, really. Some guy had one of those fancy, glue-on masks stuck on to the front of his head and it looked good. The glue must have started bothering him though because about halfway through our stay he reached up and peeled the latex from his face with one long, careful pull. I watched the process with mild curiosity but others, in the grips of the potent psilocybe, had a much stronger reaction, reeling away from him in startled horror, one turning and asking in a hysterical voice “Oh, man! Did you see that? He just peeled his face off!”

Janelle finally caught the attention of her buddy who was lucid long enough to tell her that he’d had just enough mushrooms for everyone who arrived early. We were S.O.L. She apologized and we left, late for meeting my girlfriend.

Traffic downtown was a nightmare and parking was worse but this was usual. A regular at Barleycorne’s, I knew of some good places on the parallel block behind the place to park and, as others cruised in vain for an elusive spot, I nosed in to one of my regular slots.

We walked to the bar disappointed in our failure to score and wondering where else we might be able to get something -anything!- that might make our evening less boring than it was turning out. As we neared the front entrance we couldn’t help but notice a girl screaming at her boyfriend.

“You’re fucking up, Steve! You’re really fucking up!” she cried as she kicked and punched his truck.

He took it pretty well, angry and embarrassed but keeping his cool, asking her to calm down and get in. She almost did but, once the passenger door was opened, she again lost control and began throwing herself against it, attempting to spring it from its hinges. Rafe and I watched out of the corner of our eyes, amused.

Barleycorne’s was packed with rowdy, costumed college students. It took us a few minutes just to get past the press near the front door. We made our way through the boisterous tumult, enjoying the chaos but seeing no one we knew –or could recognize, anyway.

Rafe shrugged at me and I returned the gesture so we headed back out. It was always like that with us: never satisfied with just each other’s presence. We needed a third at least, to make things enjoyable.

Outside the girl was still beating on the truck to the amusement of two passing pedestrians in clown costumes. Her anger had lost a lot of its fire; dwindling into a drunken, limp rage.

“You spoiled little bitch” the driver, Steve, called, no longer interested in putting up with her public tantrum.

She kicked his door, beat on the hood with her fists, and then climbed in on the passenger side, slamming the door and pouting.

Rafe and I chuckled.

“She’s a ballsy thing.” Rafe said. “Hot.”

“Cute or ugly, I wouldn’t have let her in my truck after the way she was beating on it” I replied. “I woulda killed her . . . or just left her dumb ass here.”

We watched as the truck backed up and began to accelerate. It was abreast of us, just getting into second gear, when the girl, who the next-day’s paper named Carol, decided she didn’t want to go home with Steve after all. She opened her door and leapt out as if to trot away –but she was drunk and the truck was nearing 30 miles and hour.

When her feet hit the blurred pavement she sprang into a front flip, arcing forward in mid air like a gymnast. The first thing to hit the street after that was the back of her head, sounding like a softball receiving a grand slam. Her body went limp, flattening out as it came down, the momentum rolling her over a couple of times to stop in a slight twist, mostly on her side but face down.

Rafe and I just stared.

Steve stopped his truck in the middle of the street and began to march back towards her, shouting and angry.

“Goddammit, Carol! Get up! Quit acting like a fucking baby!”

The two clowns turned at the sound of Carol’s head hitting the pavement and now, reading Steve’s intent, ran back down the sidewalk towards us, one of them shouting “No! Don’t move her!” but he didn’t hear them. Reaching her he flipped her over onto her back –and stopped.

Carol stared vacantly upward, her pupils dilated and unseeing, a wet button of blood at the end of her nose.

“Carol . . . ?” Steve said. Blood began to pour from her nostrils, a copious, pulsing nosebleed.

Someone behind us screamed. I looked around and noticed people coming out of Barleycorne’s.

“Call 911!”

“Don’t move her!”

“Oh my god!”

“Get a blanket!”

“Back up, back up!”

“Oh no! No!”

“Clear her airway!”

Rafe and I just stared and stared. I realized I was in the road, had walked out towards her, drawn by her tragedy, her big, empty eyes. I stepped backwards onto the sidewalk, never looking away from the spectacle.

Steve reached down and opened Carol’s mouth in an attempt to ease her troubled breathing, calling her name with a small voice. Blood began to flow freely from her mouth in wet, splattering gasps, bubbling and patterning her chin. Steve backed away, a look of utter terror and dawning enveloping his face, the enormity of the situation sinking in.

The sound of her breathing was ghastly. She was drowning in her own mortal syrup, splapping and gurgling in a way that made my skin crawl –but I was even more afraid that the terrible sounds would stop.

The crowd grew ever larger as the sirens approached. I’d felt as if I’d been standing there ages but it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes. Carol’s one good choice that evening had been to commit her stupidity within walking distance of a fire station.

The scene was soon awash in the eerie red and blue strobe of an ambulance’s emergency lights, their erratic throb matching my heartbeat.

A paramedic approached, asking Carol what her name was.

“Carol.” Steve answered.

“Carol, can you hear me, honey?” the paramedic asked, shining a light into the twin tunnels of empty black that were her pupils. Blood was now seeping from her ears.

I became very self-conscious at this point, aware of my morbid spectator-hood. What did I hope to gain from staring into this dying girl’s unseeing eyes, from watching her life leak out onto the pavement through rings of youthful, golden hair? Why was I so fascinated? I felt like screaming ‘Why don’t you take a fucking picture?’ at myself.

I turned to go, disgusted and disturbed, Rafe already waiting some feet away.

“It’s terrible,” he said as we walked “she's so beautiful.”

I wanted to ask if he would have felt the same if she were ugly but didn’t. Rafe hacked some yellow bile up onto the sidewalk and stopped, looking at it.

“Did I just puke?” he asked.

“Can’t handle it, eh?” I asked back, the perfect ass.

“I’m gonna make myself puke” he replied, trotting over to a bush and vomiting, his retches echoing unnoticed around the cement courtyard.

Carol lingered in a coma for a few days, surgeons operating to remove a blood clot from her brain, but to no avail. We read in the papers that Steve was charged with DUI and reckless-endangerment leading to her death, the theory being that he’d pulled out before Carol had a chance to get her door shut and she’d fallen from the vehicle as he sped away. Near as we could tell, they were getting this idea from the two clowns who were ahead of us on the sidewalk, not near enough to witness her stepping of her own volition from the vehicle as Rafe and I had.

As witnesses to the tragedy, we became minor celebrities, telling and retelling our tale to whoever clustered nearby. A day or two after the incident, Rafe and I were sitting in the mall deli, discussing the irony of Steve’s predicament, when one of the servers explained with excitement that her boyfriend was a legal secretary for a lawyer working on the case. She was happy to get further involved, promising to pass along our story and contact information so that we could at least attempt to help exonerate the fellow from the more serious charges.

Understanding that the legal process takes time, we didn’t think anything about not hearing from the lawyer until we read in the paper that Steve had been convicted and sentenced to a prison term for Carol’s death. Shocked, we approached the girl in the deli again and asked if she’d passed along our story to her boyfriend.

She shrugged and said “He works for the prosecution.”

At one point, in a bid to save money, Tony began an all potato diet. He came home from the grocery store one night with a five-pound sack of potatoes, a tub of margarine and announced his intentions. The potato, he said, was full of vitamins and could be prepared so many ways: mashed, baked, scalloped, fried. There were even potato pancakes –and what about potato chips? He brandished a butter knife and called us fools for wasting our money on such extravagances as jelly and frozen waffles. All one needed was potatoes. Whistling, he set to work peeling some for his evening meal.

Rafe looked at me, his eyes saying: “Tony’s crazy.”

I looked back thinking: “Oh, shit. You’ll be relying entirely on my food, now.”

I don’t remember how long Tony kept up the diet but it was quite a while. I began watching him more closely. When would his hair and teeth begin to fall out? When would his legs begin to bow from scurvy? But his hair just kept getting longer and more luxuriant and his frame retained its sturdy, springy power. Maybe we were the fools.

I was the only one in the house without a band to practice in, talk about, and hang out with and I felt the difference every day. Of course, I was also the only one in the house with a girlfriend but this was seen more as a weakness than a boon. ‘Why buy a cow when milk is so cheap?’ was the attitude. Besides, my girlfriend was so nice. She didn’t wear leather, lots of makeup or talk about blowjobs. Worst of all she was going out with me, the loser of the trio.

After Rafe joined the band his confidence –and thus his ego- grew with each appearance on stage. The amount of pretense either of us fostered regarding me being his social equal began to fall away. He had new friends to follow his lead. They worked with him for a common goal of bright lights, good drugs and willing groupies, and it was working. He no longer needed me to get his back at the bar as he launched himself at a never-ending succession of semi-sober girls. Now he had groupies.

Rafe’s raw charisma and energy served him well on stage, masking the mediocrity of his vocals and making him a natural for the spotlight. Years of endless obsession with rock and roll bands, the hours spent glued to MTV, turned out to be a useful background upon which he could draw, like a graduate recalling paragraphs from a college text book.

I was asked and performed many simple duties for the band, taking pictures for their demos and running video camera at their gigs but I was bored, annoyed and jealous of the whole affair. Being fifth business can be terribly tedious, especially when you consider yourself to be worthy of a better role. The more I was exposed to my peer's pastimes and passions the less I understood them. When I saw them succeed, the more I questioned myself, slowly growing smaller in my own estimation and bitter. This ate at me and my relationship with Rafe. It wasn’t long before we saw each other only at work or in passing in the apartment.

I saw more of Tony but it seemed like less. Never very social to begin with, he rarely hung out with Rafe or I, preferring to spend his time practicing guitar or partying with his band. The time we did spend 'together' consisted of him chain smoking and noodling on his guitar with the TV on while I sat nearby reading, my head insulated with my headphones.

He once accused me of snobbery for not wanting to accompany him to his band practices or parties and I was hard pressed to argue with his theory. I met a couple of his band mates and they were a varied lot, a few of them talented musicians but most just stuporous, blue-collar workers looking to lure girls into their backseats via the rock and roll pose. I didn't hate them; I was simply on an entirely different plane. What the hell would we have talked about?

The last and final nail in my social life was brought about when my girlfriend dumped me. My idea of being a boyfriend at the time included talking with her whenever she showed up and trying to get a little. I didn’t work at all to maintain the relationship, not realizing I was supposed to, and was flabbergasted when it blew up in my face. It was the first time I’d been dumped, and she was the first girl I’d ever been serious about. I spent the first horrible night trying to call her on the phone to patch things up and the rest of the nights that year drinking in earnest.

It was not the beginning of my alcoholic phase but was, most certainly, the worst knot of it thus far. While still remaining a moderate drinker by my peer’s standards, I began to drink at least a six pack of tallboys a night while chain smoking, reading, and listening to music.

Yeah, a whole six-pack of tallboys. I know: Wow. Fairly mundane, I suppose, but for me it was a lot -and frequently that was just the beginning of the night.

I carried a big, plastic cup in my car in case I needed to throw up while driving to work in the morning and spent many a day glowering at customers and fellow employees through harrowing, hang-over eyeballs.

My job at the record store made me painfully aware of just how much of a social life I was missing out on. Every day I was surrounded by countless young people who seemed to be dancing, drinking, and fucking their lives away while maintaining a decent grade point average. Every time I looked in the mirror, I saw a loser.

In response to my changing social life, I began spending more time with Dan and Diane.

Ever friendly, they warmed to me quickly and I to them as the three of us held mutual interests in what we considered deep thought and wry humor. Our conversations ranged over a spectrum of subjects: history, religion, politics, music, common culture, sex, the future, you name it. Nothing was taboo except taboo. Upon finding out that I had dreams of being a writer Diane invited me to use their computer whenever I felt the muse. I had dinner with them on occasion and we traded books. Dan and I started brewing beer together and they even took me to a play in Denver. In short, it was the kind of relationship I’d not had before with people my age but hand long dreamed of.

I was never completely comfortable with them because of Dan, however. He oozed cynical darkness, claiming to be the son of a sociopath and to have spent some time in an asylum for symptoms of such during his adolescence. He often wondered aloud if he wasn’t also a sociopath and made comments such as: “I’d never kill myself unless I could take the whole world with me.”

His sadistic tendencies and lack of proper boundaries frequently found me wary and this was compounded by the fact that sexuality, while not flaunted, was definitely loose in their household and manifested itself in odd ways.

One evening, when I came up for a beer brewing session, I was startled to see a large, double headed dildo drying in the dish drainer as innocently as if it were a set of tongs. My eyes must have betrayed my surprise because Diane gave an amused smile and whisked it away. Dan only shrugged and said: “Diane had a friend over.” Then went back to preparing the wort.

It became obvious early on that I was as welcome in their bedroom as their living room but I never took them up on it. Not only was I not sexually attracted to Diane but I also wasn’t too keen about getting naked with Dan. I’ve never been interested in a ménage-a-trois that consisted of two men and a girl anyway, but Dan made me doubly uncomfortable.

Once, on one of my days off, Dan invited me up to go on a bender with him. I agreed and, as the day grew, the conversation wandered over every hill and dale. I even took some notes.

Eventually, after about three hours of steady drinking, Dan reminded me of the video he made of he and Diane having sex.

“You wanna see it?” he asked.

“No, not really.” I replied.

“Well, I’m gonna put it on, anyway.” He said, and did so, angling the TV screen towards me. I turned my chair and ignored the combined groanings and slappings that began to emanate from his entertainment center. In short order I even forgot it was on, reminded only when I’d inadvertently turn my head and catch sight of a grainy Dan administering some kind of fetishism to the large, curded moon of Diane’s upturned, pale buttocks.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Tony came home and turned on the TV. As he channel surfed, the sight of hardcore porn being broadcast startled him until he realized what channel he was on. Say, those people look familiar!

I may have been very uncomfortable but Tony had a grand old time.

Another time I foolishly decided to take a hit of acid I’d gotten from co-worker. I didn’t know if it was any good or not but my perverse sense of humour allowed that it would be damned interesting to see how I could maintain myself with Tony snoring away on the couch. At first I thought the hit was a dud but it soon became obvious that it wasn’t and I didn’t know what to do, tiptoeing frenetically from room to room, talking to myself in whispered tones and generally freaking out. I made a pizza and videotaped myself eating it, an utterly disturbing scene. The person who appears on the screen is so obviously insane that I cannot bear to watch it all of the way through.

When the pressure became too great I left our apartment and went upstairs to see what Dan was up to. He was overjoyed to have me helpless on LSD and insisted that I accompany him on a drive.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

Dan just shrugged knowingly, an evil glint in his eye.

“If you don’t tell me I won’t go.” I said, nervous.

“Yeah you will,” he said, “because you don’t want to stay here.” And he was right.

We drove over to the library, a destination he admitted once we were on the road, and then somehow talked me into going inside, though the last thing I wanted to do was appear in public with my blown pupils and my stomach vomiting laughter. I survived it but only just barely. Numerous times Dan tried to freak me out with some subtle gestures, comments or actions but I proved to have more sand than he ever suspected.

After the library he proceeded to drive aimlessly out of town towards the freeway, never letting on to his next plan despite my repeated questions.

When he turned off the highway and began cruising down a barren and desolate farmers field I was terribly confused. What the hell were we doing here? The highway receded behind us until it was just a wavering line covered with little black dots.

Dan stopped the car and told me to get out. I did so and, at his insistence, we traded sunglasses. My world became intensely orange behind the frames of his blu-blockers and I stared from the furrowed earth to the blaring sky, spinning around and muttering in discomfited surprise.

“Give me back my glasses.” He said. I did and, after my own glasses were back on my face, he ordered me to walk deeper into the field.

“Why?” I asked.

“Just walk away from the car.” He said in a more soothing tone.

“Why?” I asked again but I was walking.

Dan began to throw dirt clods at me. Not tiny, poofy ones tossed underhand but good, fist-sized chunks of hardened mud and grass that exploded behind me like ordinance as he pitched them at my head.

I tried to laugh, to take it all in stride as I dodged and ran like a rabbit among the furrows, but I was disturbed by this turn of events and just under my confusion was a skin of fear.

Dan finally caught me in the side of the head with a good-sized clod, blowing my sunglasses off and causing me to drop to my knees, gasping and spluttering, grit caking my eye socket, mouth and nostrils.

“Fuck! Stop!” I cried, spitting mud and coughing.

For some reason he did and, having accomplished whatever it was he was trying to do, he drove me back home, apologizing.

When I told the story to Tony he said: “He was taking you out there to kill you, man. You’re lucky to be alive.”

I’m not sure when Tony started coming home and throwing the dining room chairs around the kitchen but it was shortly after he stopped working nights. He would come home, walk directly to the dining room, grab a chair, and begin hurling it into the kitchen cabinets, snarling angrily. When asked why he was doing it, he would always give a different answer that amounted to him being enraged and frustrated by the circumstances of his life. The act became a kind of hobby for him. Something he could do to relax after a hard day’s work. It was theatrical, therapeutic and offered light exercise.

I sometimes suspected that he was trying to scare me with his kitchen chair throwing, for Tony enjoyed intimidation but, though I disliked the idea of my portion of the damage deposit being eaten up by of his antics, the ridiculous picture he presented didn’t frighten me. I was more frightened by the graphic descriptions of his hemorrhoids and his extended, after-work toilet sessions –until his legs fell asleep, he said.

Rafe and Tony began to argue a lot, if they even spoke at all, and I had no qualms about telling my friends and coworkers how much I had come to hate Rafe. The situation was becoming ugly. Finally, less than a year after we all moved in together, Rafe decided to move out. He and a couple of band mates found a small place and Rafe was more than ready to get away from both of us.

This did more than break up our less than merry group, it put Tony and I in a financial bind. While Tony could easily afford his newly increased rent, he was loath to, and I was stretched to the breaking point by the increase. The tension grew and Tony, whom I felt should at least have been happy to have his nemesis out of his house, showed signs of boiling over. Finally, on the last night the three of us lived together, it did.

Rafe spent the day moving his measly yet scattered hell-to-breakfast belongings out of our place and I honestly did not expect him to come back that evening. In recent months he rarely made it home to sleep and I figured that he and his friends would spend the night breaking in their new home by drinking but I was wrong. Tony must have thought the same thing because, for the first time in many months, he went to sleep not on the couch but in his own bed.

Rafe came back that night sometime after Tony and I had gone to sleep. A few minutes later, Rafe began asking about his bedclothes in a loud voice.

Where the hell was his pillow? Who took his goddamn blanket?

At first it was just Rafe but then Tony’s voice cut in. Rafe was mad but Tony was enraged, all the year’s hate and frustration came out.

What the fuck was Rafe yelling about? Why couldn’t he just shut the fuck up for once? Who gave a damn about Rafe’s pillow? Did Rafe want to die!?!

I lay in the darkness of my room, holding my breath. When the argument moved into the living room and things began being thrown, my curiosity got the best of me and I emerged to witness the spectacle.

Rafe stood by the front door, shouting about having his bedclothes stolen while Tony repeatedly roared back that he did not know, nor did he give a fuck about any of Rafe’s stuff. Rafe’s return comment lit the fuse and Tony picked up an armchair, not a dining room chair, mind you, but a big-ass armchair, and hurled it across the room at Rafe, advancing behind it with his fists balled.

Rafe dodged the chair, his eyes blinking and throat working like a toad caught in a flashlight’s beam. He tried to calm Tony down but I noticed he did not lessen his assertions that someone had taken his bedclothes and that that someone surely had to be one of us.

Well, of course it did. I took them.

They were my bedclothes. As I said earlier, I came the most prepared to the household, providing many of the furniture and dining necessities via leftovers from my Mom and earlier apartments.

When Rafe announced he was moving out I began to worry. He had no qualms about taking from those he did not like and, right at the moment, we were none too chummy. I could just see him taking whatever he wanted while I was at work so, when he was driving his first load of belongings to his new place, I snuck into the shared bedroom and grabbed my pillow and blankets, hiding them in the laundry room. Tony didn’t know this and neither did Rafe but, had they not been so intent on having a personal blow out, they might have soon figured out who it was that had disturbed both their sleep.

Tony chased Rafe around the room a bit, barely holding himself back from slowly squeezing the life out of Rafe, while Rafe did his best to stay one step ahead and to at least gain some satisfaction regarding his missing bedclothes. I was startled both at Tony’s seeming unwillingness to follow through on his threats and Rafe’s uncharacteristic bravery in the face of said threats.

It wasn't long before Rafe tired of the sport and, after grabbing some ratty replacement bedclothes, fled into the night, never to sleep in our apartment again.

As his taillights faded from view I was whistling and pulling my pillow and blankets from the laundry room.

cae 2003