I Better Get A Spot In Heaven

It's almost 2 AM and I'm just now getting "wound down " for the night. I've been up since 6 AM, my feet hurt, and I am just one hundred percent ass-whupped.



The cause of all this exhaustion is Tim, my former roomie, CR's former best friend.



(Minds out of the gutter, everyone. Tim is NOT my type--a scrawny balding white guy, about my height, with a drinking problem and a persecution complex. I'll take LJ--an extremely-non-scrawny 6'7" black man with a fondness for cannabis and no complexes at all.)



No, in fact, if this exhaustion was at all sexually-based, I'd probably feel better about it; instead, I spent six hours after work getting Tim and his belongings out of his old apartment. It was more of a race, really; it was either me or the Cook County Sheriff's Police that were going to do the honors, and Tim decided that he actually would rather KEEP his belongings, instead of having them strewn all over Kenmore Avenue in the rain.



Tim's drinking, as you may have figured out, has screwed him up yet again. It wasn't bad enough that he lost his job for repeatedly coming into work under the influence--in fact, he was fired on the day his daughter was born. It wasn't enough that his baby's mother finally got fed up and left him when the baby was about six months old, after giving him chance after chance to clean up his act and get a job so they could move out from her mother's house. It wasn't enough that she did this shortly AFTER he rented an apartment for them--and calculated his ability to pay the rent based on BOTH their incomes, an apartment he couldn't begin to afford on his own even if he DID have a job. It wasn't enough that the baby's mother then took up with a guy with even more problems than Tim had; it wasn't enough that he hasn't been able to keep a job for more than a few weeks, and can't seem to get called back even though he's filled out dozens of applications at every restaurant in town.



No, none of that was enough to give him a revelation--so finally his luck and time ran out, and he got evicted. So now, in addition to the charges for the LAST lease he broke being on his credit, he's also going to have a judgment against him entered into the record. Instead of just coming clean with his landlords about what was going on with his work situation, he made promises to pay money he didn't have, and when he didn't pay, they did what landlords do: reported it to the credit agencies and sent it to collections.



He's been calling me for weeks, reporting on the progress of the eviction proceedings. When the Crap-Wagon was in the shop last time, he called and said he wanted to get his stuff out of the apartment as soon as possible, and could he use a little corner of my basement?



What could I say? I mean, no matter how messed-up he is, it's a little harsh to expect him to just lose everything because he can't find anywhere to put it. "It's just a LITTLE stuff," he said. So I told him I'd come by after work today, we'd throw all his stuff in the truck, and we'd ride back and put it in my basement.



His "little stuff" included a 4'x 5' box of clothes, two huge Rubbermaid bins also full of clothes, a video camera, his pool cue, his Bob-Marley-smoking-a-joint poster, three HUGE boxes of CD's, two boxes of cassettes, his stereo speakers and stereo, a ton of other small boxes, and three cats and their paraphernalia. The ENTIRE back of the Crap-Wagon--with the seats folded down and everything--was cram-jam-full, to the point that I couldn't see out the back window. "A little stuff", my portly white ass.



What's worse is, I had promised LJ that I would get this over with as soon as possible so he could have the truck. He didn't complain--he's a sweetie--but what I envisioned as an hour's work took THREE hours. And that was just to get all the stuff in the truck. It would have been easier if Tim hadn't gotten super-anal about the packing order. If he would have just hauled all the crap out to the area around the truck, then looked it over and put pieces in where they fit....but no. First he brought out the big box, then rotated it through every angle. Then he studied the truck again, went back upstairs, brought out another box. EVERY SINGLE BOX went in just like this. I kept dro[pping hints about needing to get home--he kept apologizing, assuring me that he was going as fast as he could, and then returning to his one-box-at-a-time jigsaw puzzle. And I really couldn't bitch--after all, those boxes contain his whole life, or what's left of it.



Oh yeah. Three cats. Did I mention them? Mikey, Sosa, and Cassidy. Cassidy is a huge tortoiseshell who lived with Tim and I in the studio, and then with Tim and CR and I in the place we all shared. Mikey and Sosa are littermates, orange and white shorthairs, and Sosa is a polydactyl--he has six toes on his front paws. The three of them together were all in one carrier, and when we brought them into the house, Whitey and Foof were waiting at the door to greet me. You could almost SEE their little expressions change when they realized there was something in the carrier...



So now the three newcomers have been placed in my office room, with their accoutrements, and with the door closed. White Cat is PISSED. I mean, he is one BOTHERED kittycat. He's been stalking around the house with his back-hackles standing on end, his tail aswish all night, occasionally pausing near the door of the office room to let out an unearthly growl and a hiss meant to strike fear into the hearts of all feline intruders. (Foof-cat is lying at my feet like half-past give-a-shit. Poor old girl...)



I walked Tim to the Blue Line at about 10:30, and gave him train fare for the ride home; then I asked him who he was staying with tonight. He said no one--he had nowhere to go--but when I offered him the sofa, he turned it down, several times. So I put him on the train and walked back home, wondering what else I could do. You can't make people take things they don't want, I suppose, but it's the end of October, and freezing cold outside. I feel bad for him...and part of me wonders what it's going to take to make him realize "I don't like this kind of life anymore," and do something about it. He came close when the baby was born, but then when the girlfriend left him, he decided it wasn't worth staying sober...which, to me, seems like he's letting too many other people determine his courses of action.



But then again, I can talk; I'm not the one who has to make the changes. I just have to cat-sit, probably forever, or thereabouts.