Panel one – Daedalus replaced.

Aug. 03 2009 – RANT – Listening to my upstairs neighbor fuck is no fun. It’s a flashback to my ex roommate Ben. He fucked like a freight train. All day, every day. You could hear him from the Mallorca parking lot and the house we lived* in was at the other end of the block.

His girlfriend while he lived with me “didn’t like the cold,” which meant he kept the thermostat on 78 year round. The thermostat was in the living room, the living room had the front door, he worked out in the living room, and he’d open the front door to “catch a breeze.”

In February.

It just so happened that at that place, I had all the bills save gas. When Ben (second of three proper roommates at that address) rotated through, this payed off tenfold – I caught a glimpse** of the gas bill once, changing from wifebeater for (my room – the attic) to sweater (for outside) on my way out. Minimum amount due was over six hundred dollars.

Since I returned to Pittsburgh in September of 2001 I’ve had some perpetual thing in my life that’s driven me out of the house – first to the Beehive, and after the Beehive went toxic, bars. So many bars. Every page of ATC has been written in bars.

The situation has its benefits. Frugality is not one of them, unfortunately. Can’t write it off, either – Dee’s is Cash Only.

Listening to what sounds like hilariously amateur sex when the last date you remember having was around the ’04 election is a bummer. That it sounds like a couple of Yip Yips playing with a toy jackhammer is pretty funny… and I suppose it beats the hell out of watching my boots untie themselves with the help of his subwoofer.

* Brooke lived. Ben lived. Jen lived. I… shut off huge parts of my head until I got my own place. I didn’t live, I huddled. Bunker-style. Waiting for the bombs to stop dropping so I could hit the head without having to talk to anybody. Sometimes I’m good at the at-will conversation thing, but people talking to you or at you when you’re worse than not in the mood for it is about as much fun as listening to the fucking. Or the weird smacking/slapping noises that persisted across a couple of roommates.

** I am not, in the local parlance, “nebby.” I’m not going to go through your mail. You want something kept secret, stick it under something. A post card, a pineapple, whatever. If you leave it out on the counter, well… my adblock only goes so far. This level of privacy-granting seems to have been karmically equalled out by the frequent disappearance of mail addressed to me from the mailbox at my last long-term address.

20090904 (16) – Lettered.