Diary of a Wolfeman

This will be a recurring topic, so watch for it to be updated in the future. Here I will describe some of my fellow inmates at the assylum for your bemusement.

Note that aliases have been granted to protect the guilty.

At some point in our lives, usually not long after we leave home, we all end up in some sort of multiple-roomate situation. Here’s how The Townhouse went down.

Follow the bouncing toad…

Shortly after the EMC and I became engaged, we moved into The Townhouse in Las Vegas with at least 5 other people – the exact number changed almost daily. The principal inhabitants were of course myself and the EMC in one bedroom, Andre in another, The Barbarian and Lady D in the master, Geordi in the cupboard under the stairs with his dog Cricket, and Couch Bob Nos. 1 and 2 out in the living room. The Barbarian, Andre and a third friend were the original inhabitants, with Geordi staying there whenever he wasn’t on tour as a Dead Head. After the third friend’s untimely death, the EMC and I were invited to move in – almost concurrently with when Lady D moved into The Barbarian’s bedroom.

Now, we called the Couch Bobs ‘Bob’ because their identities tended to change frequently, but there was usually a couple of freeloaders sleeping on the couches for lack of anything better to do. We were friendly folks, and pretty much just kept the door unlocked for those who knew us well enough to ask. Come to think of it, some of them were the best roomies…

In any case, two of the frequent visitors at the townhouse (but never couch Bobs) were Peter and his girlfriend ‘Connie’. This was one of your almost textbook fiery romances, as these two probably spent as much time fighting as fornicating. We were all so used to it after a while, it became background noise whenever they fought. Which was pretty much every time they came over.

One particular morning, Peter showed up with his girlfriend. It had been a couple days since we had last seen them, so it was no surprise to find them here again – only there was a slight change in the line-up. It seems that shortly after the last time they were there, Peter and Connie had finally had the nuclear blow-up we were all waiting for and split. Somehow, Peter had managed to scour Las Vegas in the intervening time and find Connie’s doppleganger. I mean, really – this girl was a dead ringer. Even her name was close to Connie.

Being only partially a morning person though, it took me a beat when I openned the door to realize that while the girl standing next to Peter bore an uncanny resembleance to Connie, it was, in fact, Not Connie. Which were the first words out of my mouth, in fact.

“Hi, Pete, hi Co…you’re not Connie…” with a slightly confused look on my face. At which point Pete introduced her. She just kind of looked at me funny as she came inside. Then Lady D tromped downstairs in what was left of her blue bathrobe and said the exact same thing.

Not-Connie gave Peter a Warning Look.

Five minutes later, The Barbarian comes downstairs. And says the same thing.

The Look gained a few degrees of heat.

About then, Geordi crawled out from under the stairs. You guessed it, he said it too. Only slower and with confused stoner hand gestures.

The Look could have started fires. If she were a grenade, the pin would have been bouncing on the floor, with only a very slippery finger holding down the spoon.

The EMC came down about then, but she’s faster on the uptake than the rest of us, and she managed to shut her mouth on the words when Not-Connie looked at her with fire in her eyes. Not-Connie still noticed the stunned look on the EMC’s face, though.

And then we all heard Andre stumble out of bed, knowing things were going to get very bad for Peter, very quickly. There was an air of anticipation and loathing as we waited for the inevitable – some of us were considering ways to stop the imminent conflagration, while others of us were quietly trying to edge away from the couple. Geordi, of course, just stood there mildly dumbstruck.

Ya see, Andre is one of those people who can either be very well behaved, or so completely obnoxious you wonder how he has managed to live past 15. The kind of guy who gets the cops called on him for throwing firecrackers out the window at 6am.

Needless to say, that morning was a firecracker morning.

Andre came stumbling down stairs still mostly drunk from the night before and stared for a full 30 seconds before realization dawned on him, at which point he proclaimed: “You’re not Connie. Peter, where the fuck is Connie?”

*Pling!* as the spoon goes flying, and we all sit there stock-still, wondering if she has a 10-second fuse, or one of those new 3-second ones. Peter knows it’s coming, but has no idea how to stop it. You could see the gears spinning furiously behind his eyes as he scrambled to find something to say, but nothing caught.

Needless to say, she had a three-second fuse, and the resulting explosion was truly historic. Peter hustled his ass out the door with Not-Connie right on his heels, and we could hear her over the sound of his bike as the two of them took it someplace with less witnesses.

We didn’t see Peter again for almost a week, and we were beginning to wonder about his health when he finally showed back up, somewhat the worse for wear. She had dragged the fact that he had broken up with Connie only days before meeting her out of him, and was livid that he had sought out a replacement and that she would always be referred to in our heads as ‘Not-Connie’, and promptly dumped him.

The funny part is, he swore that he couldn’t see the resemblance between the two women.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 18th, 2005 at 11:39 pm and is filed under Proof!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.