Homeless

I finally walked out of our apartment just three weeks after my best friend Mike accidentally killed himself following a night of drinking and passing out in his garage with the car running. That morning I said something to my girlfriend about missing Mike.

“Jesus. When are you going to get over this?” was her response.

And that was it. If the three previous years of her chiding me and insulting me and reminding me how unemployed I had been during the recession wasn’t enough, this was. I was done. After a fight she picked with me about why I like to do favors for friends and how she thought I was terrible at grocery shopping, I headed for the door. Usual breakup words were exchanged, including her saying, “Getting over you will be the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do.”

“Good,” I said. “I hope you miss me.” With that, I was out the door, in my car, and over to a bar to meet an old college friend, where we got so hammered that I don’t remember the girl’s name or driving her home, and I certainly don’t remember why I decided to sleep in the backseat of my car instead of the couch in my friend's apartment. I suppose, like most of the decisions I made over the next four months, these seemed like good ideas at the time.

I bounced from couch to couch until I could find a job and get my own place. The little money I was making as a freelancer was going right to handles of J&B Scotch and packs of cigarettes. I saved money by using matches I’d stolen from restaurants instead of buying lighters. It’s hard work maintaining a steady stream of drunkenness while simultaneously trying to get work, plow strange women, and not roll your car at the off ramp of the freeway.

Four months after the breakup, I was at a bar near our old place where she was still living. When I was thrown out for puking in my beer and demanding a clean glass, I stopped by the late-night liquor store and picked up another handle of J&B. I walked to the apartment and sat down in the alley that looked into our old bedroom window. I drank half of the bottle and passed out with a cigarette in my mouth.

I woke up at dawn to a homeless man covering me up with a blanket.

“You should have this,” he said. “You look fucking pathetic.” — David Himmel

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