The strangest people you have stayed with
51I spent about half a year living with an obese guy who'd do coke literally every night of the week. He'd always come home from his management job, which he hated, change into these tiny shorts and a soccer jersey, and lie on the couch watching the worst pirated movies you could imagine; usually tenth generation college frat movies (Sex Drive, anyone?) and Danny Dyer films about guys kicking each other's heads in. All his bowls and cups and glasses were super sized and he'd chain smoke, and pour litre after litre of orange juice and wine, and he'd lean off the couch, cackling like a maniac and slapping his hand off the table when some actor you'll never hear of made a retard joke. He'd probably go to bed around 5 and stay there until noon, eventually straggling into work. One of those situations where they tell you you've met them at a "strange time" in their life and you just watch the downward spiral. Whenever he got coked up and I wondered into the kitchen at night, for a snack, he'd start talking and I wouldn't be able to escape. I didn't want to seem rude and just walk off, so eventually an hour or two would get lost. I think he was lonely, though he assured me he was a "hard man". He'd go on and on and on about all his various thoughts and friendships and things he'd done. War stories. When he'd go off on tangents about how hard his older brothers were, he'd tell me about growing up in the troubled North, about almost getting involved with certain factions who'd wack friends of friends. Guys getting killed, being tortured by people he knew. He used to go around his small town with his friends when he was younger and look for fights, beat the shit out of people, get dragged out of parties smashing property. He even robbed his neighbour. He'd been convicted of something he didn't mention and before he went to jail, another friend of the family - a cop - wiped the record. Once when he was crossing a road, someone honked their horn at him, so he chased the car down the street and beat the crap out of the driver: "left him in a puddle of his own blood, I did". He'd laugh and look at me for approval, at which point I'd wince and he'd tell me he was just bad when he was a kid. In the past, right? Riiiiiggght?...He'd also fry goat's cheese medallions for dinner (placing a small twig of salad on top), and order pizza later on. At one point, his old school soccer team decided to play a reunion match (he was in his mid thirties by now) and he decided to "go back into training", since he was captain. He tore a muscle the first week at the gym from trying to run in his (240lb) condition. Yeah, he was meant to go to the US when he finished school and become a soccer player - he reckoned this is why he liked frat movies so much -but instead opted to work for "a friend of the family". Friend eventually "disappeared", leaving him without a ladder to climb on. His drug dealer was one of his only apparently trustable friends, and he always came over Mondays to get fucked up and laugh at some bullshit on TV. They considered trading pets for a while. Y'see, he had an expensive African parrot that he referred to as "his wee man", despite it being female. It learned to mimic all the various beeps of him cooking food in the kitchen and it'd sit there and whistle at ear-splitting volumes when it wasn't getting enough attention. You ignored it, and eventually caved, and so did it, and then you sat back down, and it'd get louder and louder... Weekends were awesome because he's scream at the bird from his bedroom, eventually getting so wound up he'd storm into the kitchen and throw a cushion at it, lungs roaring, wings flapping. He had a lot of stories about prostitutes and the kinds of "holidays" where him and his mates would go to nightclubs and have guys bring them coke and girls. You wondered whether they saw daylight. This didn't help his misogyny, which was fueled by the long-term relationship he'd come out of a few months prior. He'd refer to women as whores and exclaim "See! See!!!" when the bitch character in whatever he was watching would use someone. Still, he claimed he'd had many women and could get one easily enough in the club "if I was bothered". This, despite admitting he was "temporarily out of shape". Sure, buddy. Any day now we'll get back into the swing of things... Maybe he was telling the truth, though, about the women of his past. He'd signed up to an internet fuck site a few years back and his friend and he would trade the numbers of girls they'd screwed and try to "catch them out", when one would tell them they were at home, but out with the other. Again, the housewives he'd meet up with were all supposed sluts. I asked him once why he was any better and after looking puzzled for a few seconds, he answered "But sure, I don't give a fuck". Which reminds me that the first weekend I was there he drove a few counties away to screw "some fat bird" at her place. I asked him about it a few months later, when we were doing housework, and he explained how he shit on her chest and "she wiped my arse, like a baby"... ... ...
- Andy