Christmas In A Piece Of Shit Desert Town

If I could have been someone, anyone, else for Christmas last year, I would have. Since I had no ID, I technically could have been someone else. It was the not having the ID that was the problem. Somewhere during my three day trek from Boston to Arizona, I lost my driver's license. Again. I had managed to survive five months without the documentation, procuring two jobs, and even being served liquor by some very accommodating Mormons. Unfortunately, the people at Delta airlines were determined to make my life difficult.

All I wanted to do was go home. Not just for Christmas, but forever. I'd had it with Martyr Complexed "friends", cracked out Goth losers with too much ecstasy and not enough brain cells, and I'd really had it with being broke. Every paycheck I earned went to a roommate that I only actually lived with for two months, though I paid rent for three. She was a much better roommate than say...Melissa Plummer, but she certainly didn't make my Favorite Roommate of All Time list. Then, again, I'm sure I didn't make her list either. It was a bad fall. I wanted out of Arizona. I couldn't think of one thing about this state that I was going to miss.

Add to this the fact that one of my uncles, and my Grandfather were both on the other side of the country, getting ready to distribute their wills, and I was very anxious to get home:

***Author's note: Time jump. It is now no longer 2004, but December 2003. It was a short time jump, more of a time hop, really, but I thought I'd let you know.***

Synopsis of the week so far. Call airline to let them know I have no ID. Am advised to kill myself, there is no way on plane. Call VT DMV to find out how to get new ID. Am advised to call AZ DMV. Call AZ DMV. Am advised to get lost. I consider going Greyhound. Get good info from Steggy. Get an e-mail from a police officer/poet/friend informing me I need only file a report with the PD, and they'll give me paperwork to get on my flight (which is now the third scheduled flight on the third different airline).

I call the PD, fill out an incident/lost ID report. Am advised to call VT DMV, that they will fax a copy of my ID to me. Call VT DMV. Am advised that it is against federal law to fax me any ID info. This makes me comfortable security wise, decidedly cross on getting-homewise. They suggest I call the AZ DMV, that they can help me. Call AZ DMV. They are completely useless and can do nothing. They are the only people I called that are both useless AND rude. I call the airlines and update them on my situation: no ID, no ID related paperwork, one copy of my incident report. Am advised that I will probably be able to get a boarding pass, but that the gvt. security has the right not to let me on the plane without ID. I call the gvt. agency (Flight Security or something). Am informed by a very nice lady that apart from checking my bags, I should have no problem with the gvt. security, but that the airline will probably not give me a boarding pass. Call airline again. Update them on the gvt. security issue. Am advised that it's not up to them or the gvt. agency, but Phoenix Skyway. Call Phoenix Skyway. Am advised that it's not up to them, but really the airline.

The terrorists have already won. I just want to get the fuck home.

ATA airlines to the rescue. I don't know what ATA stands for, but they promise to give me a boarding pass, and let me deal with security. I damn near crawled through the phone and gave the lady on the other end cunnilingus. You have no idea how much I have to love a person to offer that.

My flight leaves on the 26th. Tomorrow. A day too late to spend Christmas with my family, but at least it gets me out of this fucken town. To celebrate, I threw on my bathing suit and went out to do water angels in the pool. Soon enough I'll be able to do snow angels. For now, this is comforting.

Several...ok, two...very kind people have offered to include me in their Christmas plans. Bob the Amazing has done enough for me. He got me a job, he tried his best to keep me from killing certain people who could have used a good dying, he even had me over for Thanksgiving for an amazing meal with his family. Chris the World's Cutest Straight Boy invited me as well. But, like Bob, he's done so much that I don't want to infringe on him anymore. He offered to get me out of my roommate's house long before I was unhappy there. He helped me move my stuff to his apartment, where I'm not paying rent, I even had to talk him down last week when my ex-roommate came buy to pick up the last check. I really thought he was going to rip the skin off her face and shove it down her sanctimonious throat.

Because I didn't want to alter their Christmas plans, I am on my own. I've got all the ingredients for Ground Nut Stew, a computer, a DVD of my favorite gay porn, and a two liter bottle of Cherry Coke. It's entirely possible that this Christmas will only Mostly Suck.

I toss the sauce I made for the stew last night in the microwave, put some rice on the stove, and turn on the TV. I don't want to risk being distracted by porn or The Internet while the food is cooking. The only things on TV are "The Married With Children Christmas" and "A Very Brady Christmas". I am officially in Hell. Although, "A Very Brady Christmas" isn't nearly as bad as I'd imagined. It's a reunion show. The kids are all grown up. Dad Brady is very obviously making eyes at Greg Brady. All in all it's---why is the fire alarm going off? FUCK!!!! THE RICE!!!!

I rush to the stove, pull off the pot. Curse myself for not thinking to use a towel. Put my now burned hand under some cold water. It doesn't look too bad. I grab a towel, pick up the pot and begin scraping the rice into the garbage disp---oh fuck. You don't put rice in the garbage disposal. I dig out as much as I can and then hit the switch. Grind grind grind grind grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgrgrgrgrgrgrgr

grgrrg sputter wheeze. Fuck.

I open all the doors and windows, and turn on all the fans, blowing the burned rice smell throughout Christopher's condo complex. Here's the smell of my holiday cheer Ari-fucken-zona! I then go to scrub the rice that burned into the bottom of the pan in the sink.

Joy of joys, my garbage disposal breaking is causing the sink to back up. How am I supposed to clean up this mess if I can't use the si...ahhh, I'll use the shower.

I don't think it's possible for anyone, even people who've known me for years, to imagine the look on my face when I realized the rice that was blocking the sink/garbage disposal in the kitchen, was now floating up into the bathtub. This was really Not Good. Christopher was Not Going to be Happy.

I cleaned up as best I could, popped the DVD in the computer, and prepared to pop myself.

Just as I was cruising down Ejaculation Alley, Christopher came home. I turned off the computer and zipped up. Most of the smoke had cleared, but he has Wolverine's sense of smell. "Burned rice?" he asked as soon as he walked in.

"Yeup."

"Hope you didn't try and get rid of it in the garbage disposal."

Velociraptor look.

"You did, didn't you? Fuck. I did it a couple of months ago. I had to call the condo people to fix it."

Man, my fuck up wasn't even original?

"I brought you some of the Girlie Beer that you left at The Kuk's house. If you put the red and green Skittlez in the Stoli Razz, it's almost like being festive."

Ok, maybe there was one thing I was going to miss.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/94370.html

Nerdy Punk Rock Animé Hair

Like I say at the beginning of all my support meetings, I am a nerd. I have a favorite comic artist and writer, and can give you in-depth reasons why I've chosen them. I write poetry. I perform said poetry in public. I've even done a couple of low-level national tours with other poets. I spent several years working at a renaissance faire. I liked it. I am a nerd.

I am also incredibly attracted to nerds. Sure the midwestern farm boy look is kind of hot. And who can resist a buff surfer boy. But give me mussy hair, glasses, and an IQ high enough to bake bread at, and I'm in love. And if they're multi-lingual...

Pardon me, I have to go change my pants.

Ahem, so...last year I was at a convention in Chicago. A friend of mine and I were staying at a hostel to cut down on the cost of the convention. It was the middle of August and the hostel had no air conditioning, and the free fans they supplied didn't work. We made plans to crash on the hotel room floors of other convention goers.

Why was I not whoring? Did I have a boyfriend? An STD? A sudden attack of morals? Hells, no. But in the five years I've been attending this convention I have never had the opportunity to stretch latex. Shit, I've never even been kissed by someone that I had a desire to be kissed by.

During the first day of the convention a good friend of mine reintroduced me to one of her gay friends. He was a hottie. Very punk nerd. Huge animé hair. I'd met him the year before and developed a mini-crush...until I caught him making out with my doppelganger (I have one...it's a story for another time). Note, I didn't stop crushing on him because he was making out with my doppelganger. The crush stopped when my doppelganger told me that Animé Hair was a terrible kisser.

At any rate, I spent some quality time hanging with Animé Hair and my friend (who might also have been referred to as Animé{e?} Hair), and decided he was a likable guy, but I refused to go all crush woozy. I was in fact chasing after a cute frustratingly straight attention whore who knew I had a crush on him (yet another story for another time).

At the end of the night, some friends and I ended up at the main hotel drinking and spitting words in the hotel room that contained, among other people, Animé Hair. As far as I could tell, no sparks were flying. Attention Whore left the room, to watch a couple of bisexual girls make out in one of the other rooms.

Over the course of the night, I had tried to get blitzed. Alas, I have a high tolerance for alcohol, and no love of beer, so getting blitzed can be expensive, even when the fairly unkind bud began being passed around the hotel room. Eventually, though, jet-lag, lack of sleep, alcohol, marijuana, and my interaction with Attention Whore made me dizzy. So when Animé Hair took my hostel room key and slid it into his pocket I was confused. Fairly soon after he took my key, his roommates decided that 4:28 in the morning was a good time to get some shut-eye, so I asked Animé Hair if he was coming to the hostel with me. He looked confused as I was and said sure.

We took an uneventful cab ride from hotel to hostel. We shot some shit and coy glances at each other. When we reached the hostel he said, "Well, I'd better get back to the hotel. I'll see you tomorrow."

"But" I stammered, as I fiddled with the door handle, "you have my room key."

"Huh?"

"My room key. You took my room key out of my hands back in your hotel room." I pulled the key out of his pocket. "See?"

"Oh. I'll come with you then." It made sense at the time. Really.

As I stepped from the cab I tripped a bit, and my canvas bag dropped to the pavement, spilling all my belongings. While I was collecting the books and papers, Animé Hair was snickering at me.

"What?"

"Progaine Shampoo?"

I turned crimson as my hair. "A pre-emptive strike against impending baldness."

He laughed some more. We went up to my room. I found out later that my roommate had crashed on Attention Whore's floor back at the hotel. We had the room to ourselves.

I'll spare you the coy boy flirtation ordeal and cut to the chase: he started talking about his boyfriend back home. Having previously learned my lesson regarding boys with boyfriends, I terminated flirtation. Or so I thought.

Animé Hair was spread out on my roommate's bed (which my roommate never got around to sleeping on). After every other sentence or so, he'd give me this incredibly flirtatious smirk. Finally, I could bear it no longer.

"If you've got a boyfriend, why do you keep looking at me like that?"

"Cause, hon, your dick is hanging out of your boxers."

Melissaphobia (Part 7: Inconclusion)

What Melissa didn't know was that I never had any intention of calling the police. I didn't have to.

When the college who cut me the check finally mailed me a copy of said check with my forged signature, I'd called a police officer friend of mine from Arizona. He'd advised me that the easiest way to ensure her suffering without having to get my own hands dirty, was to tell the bank that had cashed the check that the signature was forged. Then, the bank would reimburse the college, who would cut me a new check. Melissa would be at the bank's mercy, not mine.

But since she didn't know that (I hadn't called the bank yet), I figured I'd try to get a thousand dollars off her anyway because I was a poor bastard and she was a manipulative, lying bitch with a dog that had pissed all over my fucken clothes. I may have been a little bitter.

She didn't give me the thousand dollars. I never saw her again. Never had the satisfaction of knowing whether she was arrested or had huge penalties from the bank. I'm not even sure she got any financial comeuppance.

What I do know is that she got evicted. Whatever she did with the thousand dollars she essentially stole from me, she didn't use it to pay rent. Also, someone informed her landlord that she had been subleasing part of the apartment to me. She hadn't told him that. He was under the impression that only one person lived there, so he'd given her a great deal on rent. So during the year that I was there, I was paying 75% of the rent and had no idea. Since she was the one who was in contact with the landlord (I've been landlordphobic ever since I moved out of Hippieville), I just assumed we had been paying the same amount. One anonymous call to the landlord changed that.

I met the landlord one night while I was working at The Corporate Restaurant. He didn't know what happened to my bookshelf, my books, my comics, or my computer (and I didn't ask about the porn) but my bedframe and a few of my clothes had shown up in the basement, where (he informed me) all of my stuff had been stored while I was away. No wonder "the storage people" had easy access to the house, they lived in the basement.

I've only been back to the house once since the day Becca and I drove my stuff to storage. It's not too far from where I ended up moving to, but the house has some serious bad juju for me. Even though I know that Melissa hasn't lived there in about a year now, I always get really angry when I drive by, or when the subway passes within sight of it. I have the incredible urge to sneak into the driveway and let the air out of all her tires. But her tires aren't there.

If she didn't end up doing any jail time (and she probably didn't, I don't think she had any prior problems with the police or with banks), I'm imagining she moved back in with her parents. Why they should be punished for her crimes, I don't know. Then again, it was their terrible breeding and/or parenting techniques that contributed to the bipolar sociopath she became.

Blanket Statements

After a three month spoken word tour, I returned home to discover that my crazy ass bitch of a former roommate had changed the locks. For the next three weeks, I couch surfed between friends' houses.

Apart from the occasional shower session, I had been fairly non-masturbatory while I was on the road, and had greatly looked forward to crashing on my comfortable bed, and giving my hand the sort of attention it so desperately loves. So having to stay at friends' houses and sleep on their very public couches while they were at home, did not give me much opportunity for self-loving.

One set of friends, who we shall call Jerry and Lucy, gave me the key to their apartment for a few days. They planned on being home the entire time I was there, but just in case I went out to go grocery shopping, and came home after they'd left for work, they decided to play it safe.

The first four days I was there were so uneventful, I shouldn't have written this sentence. I took a break from staying with them to go visit some friends in a nearby town. I returned on a Wednesday night at around 1:30 in the morning. No one was home. Being lonely, and not very tired, I decided to throw in a movie. I saw the case for "Y Tu Mama Tambien", which several people had recommended to me, but which I hadn't yet come across. I popped it in, and was surprised to see naked hot guys pretty much immediately. Sure, they were having sex with naked hot chicks, and not each other, but it was still hot. As the movie progressed I became interested in it as something other than a cinematic experience. It was 2:30, the bars had been closed for over an hour, the people who lived in the house were not coming home.

Normally, when embarking on a ceiling semening session, I would prepare myself with Kleenex or some other form of cleaning material. But I hadn't really planned on seeing the session all the way through. But sure enough, just as I heard voices coming up the stairs to the apartment, the cork popped off the champagne bottle. I quickly pulled my boxers up, and threw a t-shirt on. The problem was, the blanket I was using was COVERED in cum. I folded the blanket in such a way that you couldn't see anything interesting, and sat up to watch the rest of the movie. Jerry, Lucy, and three of their friends stumbled drunkenly into the room.

"Hey, Safey. What's up?" Jerry asked, crashing down next to me on the couch.

"Nothing, just watching a movie."

We drunk talked for a few more minutes, and then he and Lucy went to their bedrooms, and the three friends took off. About five minutes later, Jerry came out of his bedroom. "Safe." He said, as I feigned sleep. "Safe, are you awake."

I opened an eye. "Not really."

"Mind if we switch blankets? Lucy's...Lucy's blanket isn't warm enough."

YES I MINDED, but how could I explain it in such a way that I didn't have to admit that I'd come all over their blanket? "Ummmm...I'm naked."

He stood there looking about four Cape Codders over the Sagamore Bridge. "The thing is...." He started. "The thing is....Lucy thinks I might have uh....There might be....It might not be a very clean blanket."

Did they know? Had they smelled the semen in the air? "Huh?"

"Before we left we kind of....and the blanket might be, uh, musty." Had I not mustified the blanket myself, I'd have thrown it off in an intense fit of ewww.

"Well, I've been underneath it for about three hours by now, any mustification has already come in contact with my body. But, like I said, I'm not wearing any pants. If you don't mind going into the other room, I'll get dressed and toss you the blanket."

While Jerry went into his room, I dealt with residual dampness, and tossed the blanket into their room. Jerry told me there was a cleaner blanket in the hall closet. I took it. Then I headed back to the couch, where I tried to block out the sound of Jerry and Lucy having headboard shattering sex under the blanket I'd mustified.

original post: http://community.livejournal.com/bad_sex/988370.html

Melissaphobia (Part 6: InHulkMode)

My first thought was that I could shatter her dog's spine by merely snapping my fingers together. So would end the suffering of Gussy and everyone else who knew her. But I rarely kill ants, there was no way I could kill her dog, even if it meant putting it out of its blissful misery. I debated burning her house down. Gas wasn't as expensive then, but I decided I'd want to wait around and see the flames. That would probably make me a suspect.

In the end, I decided that rather than killing her or having her killed, it would be much more entertaining to see her try and explain herself. I called her and told her I had the money for her (which I did) and that I wanted to meet her the following morning (a Tuesday) to pick up my stuff. She agreed. But on Tuesday morning she was nowhere to be found. On Wednesday she called with some lame ass excuse about a work emergency. She did data entry for a friend of her family's very small business. She spent most of her days playing with her dog in the office. Whatever. I made an appointment to meet her Thursday morning. She said the storage people would be dropping my stuff off at nine. She's meet me at the house then.

I got there at seven. Just in case. At eight she came out to walk Gussy and was surprised to see me there. "Oh, sorry." I said, "I thought you said to meet you at eight." She was definitely shaken, not stirred.

By nine-thirty, there was no storage truck.

"Hold on a second." she said, breaking the tense silence.

I assumed that she was going in to call the storage people or some sort of bodyguard. I was unprepared when she walked out of the house with a box of my books. "It looks like the storage people must have come last night after I went to sleep. Your stuff is in the back hallway."

The storage people had come in the middle of the night? "The storage people came in the middle of the night?" How did they get in? "Do they have keys?"

"I must have left the door unlocked." What-The-Fuck.

If I gave her any more of "the eye" it would have been two eyes. I went into my former home, and sure enough there were piles and garbage bags of my stuff in the back hallway. I was too flummoxed to do a complete inventory, but I did notice one thing missing right away. "Where are my bookshelves?"

"What bookshelves?"

"The bookshelves that held all my books. Two big ones. They were against the wall."

"I don't remember them. Maybe the storage people took them."

"The storage people stole my bookshelves but returned my TV and CD collection?" She shrugged. "Maybe they misplaced them when they were rummaging around in the dark last night when they dropped off my stuff, huh?"

No reply.

I called a friend of mine to pick me up in her truck, so I could put my stuff in real storage.

"Did you remember the receipt from the storage place?"

"Receipt?"

"Yea. You said that storage was costing you a bundle, and I said I'd repay you if you gave me the receipt."

"No. I'm friends with the guy who owns the storage place. He let me have it for free."

"Then why did you tell me it was costing you a bundle?"

"You misunderstood."

Whatever. I then began counting off the thousand dollars. I made to hand them to her. "Oh. One more thing. Do you remember cashing a check for a thousand dollars the day after I left?"

Blank stare.

"Because the bank and the people who wrote the check seem to believe that you've already been paid the rent for the three months that I was away."

"Oh. The check. I forgot about that. It wasn't the amount I was expecting, so I forgot it."

"It was a check for a thousand dollars, right?"

"Yea."

"I did pay you enough money before I left so that the balance of rent while I was gone was only $900, correct?"

"Yea."

"So..."

Blank stare.

"I'm not giving you this money."

"But I need it." She threw her hand in the air, "Why do you make things so difficult?" And walked to her car, where Gussy was shivering in the back seat. "If I don't have the money by tomorrow, I'm calling the police."

"Here's my phone. Call them now. I'd love to hear you explain to them why you forged my signature on a check, and stole my fucken mail, you psycho."

She drove off.

Becca and I moved my stuff into storage uneventfully. The storage facility was right next to work, and i had to work in an hour, so I spent that hour doing inventory.

Things that were missing:

My bookshelves
All of my books from authors K-Z
My bedframe
My DVD/VHS collection
My pornography
My old comic book collection
My two overcoats (one of them my grandfather's cashmere)
My computer (which didn't work, anyway)
A good chunk of my clothes

What was left of my clothes was covered in dried old dog piss. I called and left Melissa a message to call me back. She did not respond. I called about seven times that week. No response. So on the eighth day I left a different kind of message.

"Melissa, it's Insafemode. I've been very patient. If I don't hear from you in forty-eight hours, I'm calling the cops. You stole a great deal from me, and forged my signature on a check. If I don't get a thousand dollars in my hands by the end of the week, I'm having you arrested."

I then went to take a shower. By the time I was finished she had called my phone seven times but left no message.

original posts: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/30121.html, http://insafemode.livejournal.com/30689.html

Melissaphobia (Part 5: Checks And Unbalances)

"I don't live here anymore?" In my head I'm doing the five fingers of death (though Kill Bill 2 has not come out yet, I am intrinsically aware of its future existence).

"You said there'd be a check arriving for me in January. I never received it."

"But I called you in January, and February, and March, and you never mentioned it." I'm pulling out her eyeballs with my fingers, and squishing them beneath my shoes.

"I assumed you knew."

I was just sleep deprived enough to think this whole thing was my fault. I asked her what had happened to all my belongings, and she informed they were in storage. When I could pay her the three months of overdue rent, and the storage fees, she'd return my stuff.

It sounded fair.

I went to Corporate Restaurant and explained my predicament. I needed to work as often as possible in order to get my stuff back. Several of my coworkers offered me couches and spare beds until I found a new place to stay. My current debt to Melissa would be roughly thirteen hundred dollars, I expected to have to have about $1800 to put down on a new place. I was fucked in a way that brought me no pleasure. I was also pissed off.

I called the institution that was supposed to cut me the check. They "thought" they had sent it out to me in January. It would take a couple of days to track down, but they'd be in touch. I posted angry anti-Melissa comments in my other LJ. A certain former landlord's girlfriend (I think, I have no proof of who the anonymous fuckwad was) said of my homelessness and misfortune, "That's awesome. You deserve what you get."

I tried not to turn into InHulkMode.

I called Melissa and asked how much storage was costing her. She said she didn't know, but she'd get back to me. I called her back the next day to ask again, and received no answer. The following day, she called my cell phone asking why I was ignoring her repeated messages. I called my voice mail. I had six messages. None of them from Melissa.

The next week was my birthday. I worked eight hours, and then crashed on a coworker's couch. My mom called to ask me if I'd received my birthday money.

The following morning, I trekked over to Melissa's in search of my mail. In addition to the birthday mail (one from my mom, one from my dad, two sets of grandparents, and one aunt), I was waiting for a package from a friend in Pieceofshitdeserttown.

"You haven't gotten any mail here in months." Ms. Smiley Melissa Face informed me as she was putting her work cooler in her trunk.

"No mail?"

"None."

"You're telling my five people's birthday cards got lost in the mail?"

"I don't know what to tell you." She started to slam down her trunk.

"What's that?" I stopped the trunk with my hand. Inside was a package with my name on it.

"Oh, that. That arrived yesterday. I forgot." It was my package from Pieceofshitdeserttown. "Here."

"No, mail for me, huh?"

While there is no doubt in my mind that she did steal my birthday mail (a federal offense, mind you). I had no proof. She had not been stupid enough to forge my signature on those checks. A few days after the run in by her trunk, though, I got a call from the people who'd written me the $1000 check. They'd written it. They'd mailed it. And on January seventh, the day after I'd left on tour it had been signed over to and cashed by one Melissa F*n Bitchface.

Enter InHulkMode.

Melissaphobia (Part 4: Welcome Home)

It's 1:15 on a Sunday morning. After a two-day bus trip at the culmination of a three-month spoken word tour, I had decided to take a trip to my local venue for a surprise appearance. People were surprised. I was happy. I drank. I was tired. I was writing in short, choppy sentences.

My friend Joycee drove me home from the venue. I pulled my bags out of her trunk, walked up to my door, turned the key in the lock and...nothing. Fuck.

I rang the doorbell, but I had witnessed Melisa sleeping through me banging on her bedroom door when she had blocked our neighbor's driveway with her car. She probably slept through the sex she had with all The Midnight Men. They were probably just a bunch of crazed necrophiliacs (except the Coke guy, I'm sure he had no crazed fetishes).

I realized she had probably changed the locks due to a run in with one of The Midnight Men. Maybe somebody hit her, or maybe she had decided she was going to stick to only one married guy at a time.

When she hadn't answered the door to the apartment, and Gussy hadn't even barked at my knocking and doorbell ringing, I went around to the driveway to check for her car. It was there. While I was in the driveway, I realized that I could probably climb in through my window. I didn't remember whether I'd bothered to lock it. But the odds were that I hadn't. I hopped on to the ledge and ---

There was no furniture in my room. Bed? Gone. Bookcases? Gone. TV? Gone. Desk? Gone. Pile of films and porn? Gone. The closet was open and there were no clothes in it.

I decided that even if the window was unlocked, no good would come from climbing through it. Instead, I walked the couple of miles to Su's house and woke her up, explaining my unpleasant return. She thought I might have just been so tired that I mis-saw.

It was true that I didn't do an exhaustive visual search. There were no streetlights, no lights from inside the house.

At about five-thirty I walked back to the house where I had lived for the past year. Melissa was comingo ut of the house as I walked up to the porch.

"Hey, Insafemode." she beamed. "How was your trip?"

"It was fun. I got to see a part of the country I've never been to, amde enough money to live moderately comfortable, met some nice people. But when I got home the damnedest thing happened. My key wouldn't fit into the lock."

"Oh, yea. You don't live here anymore."

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/28964.html