back 2960 235th Street, apt. #6, Torrance CA 90501. Perpetual Slumber Party. The night we signed the lease I remember being nervous. Putting on my best T-shirt, stuffing tufts of blue hair under my Detroit Tigers cap, I let my older (he was 21), veteran roommate Craig do the talking. The landlord pulled up in his behemoth white Cadillac and ushered us into his office. He had doughy skin and wore the middle-aged white guy uniform of powder blue slacks and a chiffon yellow shirt. We would eventually call him Uncle Bob behind his back, but that night we used serious tones to augment words like Sir and respect and responsible and delighted as we attempted to convince Uncle Bob that we were housebroken. He raised an eyebrow when Craig explained our third, incredibly trustworthy roommate wasn’t present to sign the lease due to circumstances beyond his control: high school final exams. He would arrive in a few days to sign the dotted line and find he’d been left with the worst bedroom. The place was an unassuming two-story three-bedroom townhouse in a neighborhood of white stucco apartment buildings, only a cinder block wall and a parking lot away from work. Our living room consisted of a wide screen TV on loan from a friend, surrounded by a bunker of nappy, second-hand tweed furniture so conservative it even made the tan carpet look flashy. It would become home for the next two years, and what it lacked in flavor it made up for in bite. At first we only let our friends stay with us. But they had friends who wanted to come to California, too, so we made friends with their friends. Word travelled fast, and after only a few months it had spiralled so out of control that we were getting calls from all over the country, people we didn’t even know. These barnacles on our couch (and patience) inhabited the living room for all but about three weeks while we lived on 235th Street. Some mornings I would walk downstairs and the living room looked like Jonestown, smelled like feet, and there were tangled bicycles and skateboards everywhere. While we were at work these guys would help themselves to our food, use our towels and leave poop stains on them, borrow/lose our tools, or the worst possible violation of all, pillage the fancy stereo and record collection which I kept in my bedroom. About the only thing guests actually asked us for were maps so they could go sightseeing while we were at work. I became an expert at drawing maps and providing directions to Hollywood, San Diego, Huntington Beach. Of the three, I was the responsible roommate, or so I thought. It was my duty to remain in a constant state of paranoia, worried that Uncle Bob would notice how many people stayed there, see the grease stains on the carpeting, or a neighbor would complain about excessive noise, and that would be it. We’d be evicted, thrown out on our asses, never to rent again. Ruined at 19. Big Trouble was my favorite saying, as in, “Jesus you guys, knock it off or we’re gonna get in Big Trouble.” Even in my sleep, I couldn’t escape this feeling: Music provided the soundtrack to my dreams, and sometimes I played the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa/Come on Pilgrim CD to fall asleep to. There’s a sound byte between “Oh My Golly!” and “Vamos” of singer Black Francis arguing violently with someone, swearing and carrying on. The acoustics of this track on the CD sounded just like there was a fist fight about to happen in the courtyard below my bedroom window. “Those FUCKERS!” I would hiss, leaping disorientedly out of bed and tearing back the curtain, expecting to witness one of our teenaged house guests about to get socked in the eye by a neighbor, but there was nothing. This hallucination happened so often, I finally stopped listening to the Pixies. What we paid for with woes was cheap, considering what we received in exchange. Boredom and loneliness, those bastard twins, were kept at bay by spontaneity and action. The energy our guests brought to town with them made us a part of their travels, and we introduced them to our customs. On any given night the apartment was teeming with dubious activity, awash in restless young minds churning up stuff to do that would make us feel like we had the keys to the world. Bringing our own cans of soup into the Denny’s down the street and trying to convince the waitress to cook it for us, while members of our party rounded up salt, pepper, and silverware... Visiting the nearby Shibui apartment complex in the middle of the night to leap off the balcony into the swimming pool and then escape the furious manager... Donning costumes and trick-or-treating in mid-November... Determining a Michael J. Fox movie on TV was a sign from God to climb in the car with nothing but the clothes on our backs and drive six hours to Las Vegas for a fried food buffet... Using a roommate’s newly-purchased video camera to create no-script-no-plot violent soap operas and documentaries about a ceramic armadillo... Attempting to lure anyone we met on the street over to watch these videos... Exploring the luxurious Hyatt by the airport at 4:00am, seeking out the linen closet to harvest towels and shampoo samples...Tinting mauve an entire load of white T-shirts, socks, and underwear after trying to dye a jacket and some pants in the washing machine... Experimental haircutting festivals on the back porch... Holding a marathon candlelight beatnik-o-rama after our power was shut off... Voyaging into seedy Hollywood nightclubs, testing different Kiss lyrics as pick-up lines (note: to my knowledge, this was never, ever successful). And so forth. Living with the threat of getting in Big Trouble at any given moment gave us an edge. It was a rarity that anyone was ever denied check-in at the hotel 235th, but there were two people we banned from the house. Both cases are sterling examples of our ineptitude at dealing with the sensitive issue of honesty versus feelings. First there was the 10-year-old Japanese boy from across the street named John. He came by one afternoon selling candy or something and was the worst salesman in the world. Taking pity, we led him door to door through the neighborhood and helped him rack up some quick sales. John was back the next day, and we happily greeted him again and gave him stickers. By the fourth or fifth day in a row John stopped by, we started getting worried. Where were this kid’s parents? What would they think of him hanging out with us? Should he be in here? Fearing possible Big Trouble, we told John he needed to find friends his own age. “I don’t have any friends. Can I please be friends with you?” No. We felt like shit, but at least we were honest and up front with him. Unfortunately, he was 10 years old and didn’t understand. Then there was Katherine. One night we had a party and went to pick up some pizza. It was one of those deals where a carload of boys pull up next to a carload of girls. We did all the gawking and hollering, an American teenage ritual on wheels. They were persuaded to follow us home and join the festivities, which should have been a clue; anyone willing to hang out with the likes of us had to be desperate. The girls were nice, but sort of annoying, and after they left we all let out a collective sigh of relief. Their leader, Katherine, took a liking to the apartment and began dropping by out of the blue. Before long it was nearly every day that the doorbell rang. Rather than honestly tell her we didn’t care for her company, we opted for the non-confrontational route hoping it would be a painless realization that we were hard-livin’ BMX-ridin’ bachelors, too busy for women. Instead it turned into a nine-month sitcom of trying to avoid her with varying degrees of success. The doorbell became our fire drill, and whenever it rang it sent us madly scrambling toward escape out the back door. But she would always manage to catch us off guard. “Yeah, we came over and knocked and there was nobody home, so we tried the back and the door was wide open, and I hope you don’t mind but we went in and the TV was on full blast and there were noodles boiling in a pot on the stove, but nobody was home. That seems really dangerous,” she would say. “Hmmm, God, that’s weird. It must have been somebody else, because I was definitely at work,” I would say, still wincing from the cuts on my feet after sprinting out the back door and escaping down the alley, stepping on rocks and debris. I wore shoes at all times after that episode, and deserved every ounce of pain. We were complete fools. But stupidity doesn’t seem so stupid when you’re with five people who are doing it too. Besides, since we all rode BMX bikes or skateboards, we were automatically at the bottom of the social totem pole anyway. We had nothing to lose. It felt good to flex our freedom while relying on our still-just-a-kid status, trapped between the ages of old enough to vote but too young to drink (although I seem to remember a fake ID constructed in the art department at work). The hundreds of visitors and several temporary roommates exposed us to just as many cultures. Like a great toilet overflowing, histories, humor, musical inclinations, regional slang and vernacular, religious beliefs, shared dreams, fashion tips and relationship advice were spilled in our living room. It was like travelling to a different state, city, country or planet without leaving the house. Between the ages of 19 and 21, I thought the more keys on your keychain, the more responsibility you had. Recently a friend (and influence) who’s 32 explained to me that as he grows older, his life becomes more consolidated. Less keys. Less locks. Less doors. He said the tolerance for sleeping on floors and couches is nil once you hit 30. If that’s the case, I say do it while you can. Be young, be foolish (but avoid Big Trouble), swim in experience. Learning to live with people is learning to live. ©2001 Mark Lewman