Even as a child, running around unattended in a virtual junkyard, I’d been an optimist. Sure, my outdoor playground was a giant pile of trash, but even garbage had its treasures…No way! Check out this broken chair! Take off the legs and it will be perfect for the fortorIt’s still in the wrapper, so of course it’s edible.’No matter that I’d get scrapes, bruises, and tetanus shots transforming the landfill pieces into riches or spend hours throwing up the ‘edible’ food item, the important thing was that I wasn’t afraid to try; and that positive outlook had followed me through the good times and the bad, and had afforded me the unique ability to find fun in all thecraziness.
Admittedly, the last year had tested my fortitude, chipping away at my idealism. Being a nice guy didn’t always work to my advantage, especially when pessimists attached themselves and tried to drag me down with them. Alexis – the memory of her betrayal was still fresh in my mind. Flicking an ice cube off my nipple, I shook my head at the nasty memory. She’d forced me to reevaluate who I was and what I wanted out of life. One thing I knew for certain, it definitely wasn’t this: soaking in a tub of slushy, mind-numbing regret with an icy side of subzeroballs.
Trying to distract my mind from the things I couldn’t control, I played back the events of the day, and was pissed at myself for not reacting sooner. It was mistakes like this that ended careers… and in my line of work, the ending sometimes proved fatal. Every day was a new bruise or ache or swelling. Some days I loved my job; others, like today, I thought maybe a nice, boring nine-to-five sounded pretty damnappealing.
The bathroom doorknobjiggled.
“I’m in here,” Icalledout.
“I gotta shit,” my roommate, Richie, said. The desperation in his voice was clear, but I was hardly in the position to vacate the premisesquickly.
“I’m in the tub. I bruised my ribs today at work. Give me tenminutes.”
“No can do, Finn. I’ve been prairie-dogging it since OrangeCounty.”
Oh, sweet Jesus! Panic consumed me. A shit-needy Richie was not something I ever messed with… at least, not since the Freeway Shart Debacle of 2014. I now clearly understood that when my roommate had to go, he had to go. We’d been driving down the freeway on our way back from San Diego when a simple, harmless fart went horribly awry. Before I even understood what was happening, Richie was sitting in a pile of crap, and I was hanging out the passenger side window trying to keep from passing out. With few options, Richie stepped on the gas and swerved through traffic to get us to safety. The lights and sirens of the motorcycle cop behind us could not have come at a moreinopportunetime.
“License and registration, please. Do you know how fast you were going back there?” The officer started in on his standard spiel before taking a whiff of the vehicle’s interior. His eyes immediately watered over as he covered his nose with his gloved hand.“Good lord, son, you need to eat morefiber.”
So amused was the officer at Richie’s predicament that he gave us a police escort to the nearest gas station and let us off with a warning, explaining through his uncontrolled laughter that we had bigger issuesathand.
The pounding on the bathroom door jarred me back to my present Richie-inducedpredicament.
“Okay, I’m getting out,” I said, gripping the sides of the tub and gritting my teeth with the effort it took to lift my battered body out of the water. “Just give me onesecond.”
“I can’t wait. I’m popping the lock.” Richie grunted like a sumo wrestler intimidating thecompetition.
“No, youaren’t!”
“Sorry, dude, I’ve crowned. You’re getting company, like itornot.”
Not!Naked and exposed, with my ice-shamed dick retracted up into my throat, the last thing I craved was companionship of any kind, and especially not the foul-smelling kind Richie was offering. The lock rattled as I grabbed for my towel. My roommate, his face beet-red and sweaty, burst through the door, his pants already around his ankles. We wore matching horrifiedexpressions.
“Do not!” I demanded, scrambling forsafety.
Hedid.
Yes, it was days like this that optimism came in handy. While I could’ve chosen to beat my roommate to a bloody pulp, I decided that getting even with him when he’d least expect it – like, say, when he was sleeping – would bring me more pleasure. The monster mask I’d seen lying around work and the police siren app should do thetrick.
“You wanna get some burritos?” Richie asked, all freshly showered and feeling good. His megawatt smile told me he’d completely marginalized our bathroom meet and greet, no matter that our dual nakedness in such a confined space had come dangerously close to crossing thegayline.
“Mexican food seems a bold choice for a man who’s just given birth to a ten-poundbabyturd.”
“You’d think,” he said, slapping his hard abs. “But I’m as good as new.” Of course he was. Nothing fazed him. Whereas I had a tendency to fall flat on my face, Richie always made a graceful landing. “What do you say –mytreat?”
Richie and I had been friends for seven years now, and had been roommates on and off for most of them. We’d met on the audition trail while still struggling young actors. Little had changed except the fact that we’d gotten older and the trail had become overgrown with weeds… at least for me. I’d all but given up on my starry-eyed delusions. Richie, having been only slightly more successful in his pursuit of stardom, was still plugging along and had just recently wrapped up a movie where he’d played a brutal gang thug. It wasn’t the first time he’d been cast in such a role, and it always made me laugh to watch him rough people up on camera when the closest he’d ever come to a fight in real life was when the middle-aged lady next door accused us of piggybacking off her Internet connection. Hey, we were betweencarriers.
Richard Cortez the third was no badass. The privileged son of a very successful businessman and his fashion designer wife, Richie hadn’t grown up on the mean streets of Compton but in the lap of luxury in a gated oceanfront community. Watching him so convincingly nail the role of a vicious Mexican drug lord hours after getting a salon pedicure attested to his exceptional acting skills. More impressive was the fact that he’d been typecast to play south of the border characters, presumably because of his Latino heritage, even though he spoke less Spanish thanIdid.
Still, I was happy my friend got any work at all. Being an unemployed actor was not for the faint of heart, and Richie pounded that pavement full time, never giving up hope that his moment to shine was waiting right around the bend. Of course it helped that he had the world’s most supportive and deep-pocketed parents. At least, they had been up until a month and a half ago, when their patience finally ran out. Eight years of financially supporting their son’s dream turned out to be the cut-off point. They’d been warning him for years before finally delivering the ultimatum: get a real job or find a different funding source. I was surprised it took them that long. He was, after all, a twenty-six-year-oldman.
Even so, Richie had never actually believed his parents would follow through on their threats, even after they stopped paying his portion of the rent. It wasn’t until the eviction notice went up that he finally understood: his safety net was gone. Forced out of our pricy Hollywood duplex bungalow, a comfortable five-minute walk into the beating heart of the most eclectic, wild scene in Los Angeles, we now found ourselves in a cramped little apartment a few miles down the road. And those were significant miles, given that an evening stroll in this area could culminate in a violent death. Whether he liked it or not, Richie was finally getting the gangland training he portrayed so convincingly on television. And, let me tell you, he didn’t like itonebit.
As you might imagine, my spoiled roomie was taking the move pretty hard. I’d grown up in squalor, so this wasn’t a huge stretch for me. That being said, even I couldn’t wait for Richie to get his act together so we could get the hell out of here. Sure, I could have spotted him the money for a few months to stay in the other place, but I had visions of becoming my roommate’s new sugar daddy. Besides, I felt a sense of duty to do my part in supporting his maturation to adulthood. And what better way than to dump him into the middle of his ownpersonalhell?
Richie and I drove out of the sketchy parking garage in his black, pimped-out Mercedes, one of the many gifts his parents had allowed him to keep. After all, you needed to wean these types of children off life support slowly and with theutmostcare.
“Hey, did you see that redhead in apartment 675? She’s pretty hot for a crack whore, plus she offered to blow me for $10. Is that a good deal in these parts? Ican’ttell.”
