My First Apartment

Everybody remembers their first apartment. For me ... it was a REALLY BIG thing. I felt like an adult for the first time ... responsible for monthly payments, cooking my own food, cleaning up for myself ...

Well ... the cleaning part really didn't happen.

You see I had two new roommates: Jeff Adair and Bobby Horowitz (everybody called him Horo). None of us were particularly fond of cleaning and we sometimes left a few dirty dishes around. Okay, it was more than a few dishes. We were ... what's the word for it? Pigs. Truth is ... after a while the kitchen looked like a science experiment ... lots of colors and things growing out of the food and stuff that sat out for weeks. We took great pride in sharing it with everyone who dropped by. No girls of course ... at least none that we were truly interested in ... just other pigs in the neighborhood that wanted to take pictures and compete.

Once every couple of  months, even we couldn't stand it anymore so we hired a guy named Willie, who was the apartment complex handyman. We paid him about 20 bucks to spend the day cleaning (more like gutting) our place. He would come over dressed in a one piece coverall with big rubber boots, rubber gloves, a hood and a mask. He'd hose down the whole place after he disinfected everything from floor to ceiling. (Willie, if you are reading this ...  I thank you from the bottom of my heart. None of us were strong enough to do what you did.)

Jeff was the grown up of the group. He was also the resident "business" man. Every weekend, he drove to Atlanta and brought back cases of turtleneck shirts from his dad's factory for us to sell and make money. We sold them for $4 and kept $3 from each sale. Can you believe that? I thought Jeff must have been stealing these shirts from the factory.

One day I sold three to Larry at the frat house (I guess he wanted to see what it would be like to wear a shirt for a change). I saw him the next day with one on ... and the turtleneck had separated from the rest of the shirt.

He bit me.