NEEDLING

Started my housemate search. First guy came by last night. Received an email from him and called him up as I got back from work last night.

“How late do you stay up?” he says.
“I don’t know... I’m sure to be up past midnight.”
“All right, let me call you right back.”

He calls me back and tells me he’s coming by in forty five minutes. Then Tracie calls to see if she can stop over.

This is great, I won’t have to face my first potential roommate by myself. I’m not always such a great judge of character on first impression. I tend to like just about anybody, and start seeing their negative sides later, or at least traits of their personalities which won't match with mine, sometimes a little too late.

Then Glenn and Kari show up as well, so we’re all four having a drink outside waiting for potential housemate # 1 (PH#1).

A loud finigled engine in a personalized muscle-car mustang drives by slowly, pulling up in the neighbor’s driveway. I catch the tale lights, grab my phone and go inspect on the street. Sure enough some car is at the stop-sign not knowing what to do. The phone rings. It’s PH#1. I tell him to back up, I can see him, that he’d pulled into my neighbor’s driveway.

He pulls up in his very loud, both in engine and in design, vamped-up mustang. He’s young, cool-joe attitude, but I like the fellow. We make our introductions.

I show him the place, he seems to like it. We chat a little. He’s a rapper, a writer, a painter, he says, which would be great, he could cover the walls with his paintings. I don’t react right away, but this morning when I wake up I thought to myself, but what if I hate what he paints, then what?

So we step on back outside and up to then everything was going fine. Relaxed fellow, no negative vibes, seems like the honest type, probably parties a little too much, but I’m thinking, hey, maybe this would be a good way for me to meet all kinds of new people, go out to concerts for free and stuff. We walk outside and Brutus who is a gentle dog, loves everybody and every other dog, growls and barks at him. Only for a second, but it still startles me. He’s never ever growled at anybody before. I reassure Brutus and everything is forgotten, still, I don’t like it.

We go to the table and sit with Tracie, Glenn and Kari. Everybody questions him about everything. Again, he’s real relaxed about his answers.

“Why are you moving?”
“Well, I broke up with my fiance two months ago, and I can’t afford to live where I’m living anymore. I told the landlords I was thinking about moving and when they heard that, they gave me three days to get out, so I need to be out of there by Monday.”

He has two dogs. Two pit bull mix breeds. That’s another bad thing. There’s all ready three dogs on the property, do we really want two more? And he says he’s gone a lot, goes out of town to do concerts and recording.

“What do you do with the dogs then?”
“Well... that’s the thing...”

After a couple of white russians, he leaves and we start breaking down the whole interview.

Tracie says, “And could you really live with somebody who voted for Bush?”
“Well,” I say, “this is after all a democracy we live in, I mean, I don’t like it, but I’d like to think that’s not what I’m judging him on.”
“Yeah, but you have to live with the guy,” Kari says.
“And two more dogs, I don’t know,” Glenn says, “seems like to me, he’s gone a lot, and we’re gonna be stuck with the two extra dogs.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Kari says, “and I don’t know, there’s something about him that didn’t strike me right.”
“I think he’s a good guy,” I say, “deep down at heart, he’s a good fellow.”
“Yeah,” she continues, “but when he made a point of telling us that he doesn’t steal, that just didn’t strike me right, and he had to bring the point home a few times, when all we were saying is that we’d had a couple of thefts in the last ten years, but that overall the neighborhood was a safe one, we weren’t putting his honesty on the spot, we weren’t even suggesting anything like that, but he took it to heart anyway...”
“Yeah...” I said, “I guess you’re right, and when we were talking about politics, and I said I had trouble with the current administration because, among so many other things, their openly born-again Christian views on governing, and he said ‘well, what’s the problem with that?’ ‘The trouble is I firmly believe state and religion need to be completely separated, and should have nothing to do one with the other.’ ‘Why, a person has to govern with his personal ethics, and anyways, the two presidential candidates, Bush and Kerry, they were both openly Christians, I don’t see where the problem is there.’ And I didn’t push it further.”

On and on, we decided one reason after another why he wasn’t the right person for our little commune. Also, Kari or Tracie made this point, he’s a DJ, and hangs out in the hype bars and clubs all night every night, that means he’s a late night person, and would probably never be home before late hours into the night. That would not be okay. His loud car, his dogs, all that rilled up every other night at three o’clock in the morning. That would get old real quick.

Nice fellow but not right for our little community.

On to PH#2.