517 Livingston

Fifteen people would show up on a random Wednesday night. We didn't have a phone so we couldn't exactly turn people away. They'd just knock on the door and we'd let them in. Hell, some of the time they'd just walk in without warning. It's all the same, anyway. Had we had a working telephone though we still probably wouldn't have turned many people away as they always seemed to bring beer, liquour, drugs, and occasionally women.
There was always something interesting going on, like the night Tex decided to smash every dish in the house for no reason at all. Of course Nate and I helped him. Who were we to deny the man of breaking his very own dishes? Things would get out of control rather quickly and easily. We were all drinking a lot of whiskey back then and whiskey tends to make you lose your mind. Or at least make our kind lose their minds.
The landlady was a terrible old lady from England. We'd made her son, our roommate at the time, lose his mind, check himself into a mental institution, and move out of the house so we weren't exactly his mother's, our landlady's, favorite people in the world. The grass would get so long the city would give us fines. I told the landlady we didn't have a lawnmower and she told me I'd better get out on my hands and knees and start clipping away with a pair of scissors. I drank a beer and watched the grass grow longer, instead.
We'd get drunk and stoned every day and something would always get broken. Like the microwave. Or the TV. Or the kitchen table or the fan or the lamp or various other objects. Hell, I think we even broke the diningroom window once by throwing bottles at it.
We had bunkbeds in our diningroom and lived without lightbulbs and our kitchen was littered with trash and fruitflies because we didn't want to spend our beer money on such things as lightbulbs or trashbags or fly strips. It's hard to say how many people actually lived there, but only two of us paid rent and we didn't actually pay it all the time.
Andy broke a girl's heart outside there once and she cut herself with glass and attacked police officers. I broke a girl's heart there once and she just sat in her car crying, making me feel bad. Tex never broke anybody's heart but he did break his teeth once. He also spit his false teeth into a Funyuns bag and beat Dave with them, but that was a different house.
We used to fight a lot. We'd play music so loud we had to scream to each other just to hear a single word. We did acid with a fifteen year old girl and I was convinced she was the devil. That same night tripping on acid I'm still convinced a squirrel tried to attack me and even hissed at me like a cat.
Tex smoked too many cigarettes. I listened to too much Rolling Stones. Nate drank too much vodka. Andy bitched and moaned too much. Cyndi was just too pesky. Jessi was too moody and wishy-washy. Dan was too stupid. Dave was too Dave. Glew was too fat. Jay was too annoying. Scott shot too much dope. Emily was too horny and didn't shave her pits. I'm sure there were more people, but I've flushed them out of my memory for good reason.
Jessi would come over and complain about boys and I had a crush on her. Cyndi would drink all of our booze and smoke all of Tex's cigarettes. Nate would just be over, drinking, smoking, and being lewd and obnoxious.
It was fun while it lasted, but if things would have carried on the way they had been we would have all died. Things started spiralling out of control and it started to become not so fun. It became more depressing. Drugs and drinking were no longer used as means of stimulation or for fun but became essential for us to be around one another.
So when the landlady told me we had a month to get out of the house it was somewhat disappointing, but somewhat of a breath of fresh air. We could all go back to being normal kids again and it would be great. I started working out and getting healthy. Even started seeing the same girl again. Started a new band. Kids looked up to me as their hero because of my positivity... Of course that didn't last long. The damage was done and that was all just another phase. That wasn't the house. That wasn't the right time. She wasn't the girl, and I, well I just wasn't the one.