Beginning of Chapter Two

(1995)




I share an apartment with Holly. We’ve been roommates going on two years now, ever since Kristy, her old roommate from the dorms, broke up with her boyfriend, got really depressed, cracked one night, and tried to slit her wrists in the cute pink and white Laura Ashley bathroom she and Holly shared. It was a horrible situation really, that shouldn’t be joked about, but for some reason now, looking back, I feel like the whole ordeal sort of just lends itself to comedy, like so many things that happen to college-aged kids who take themselves way too seriously.
Kristy had been sliding downhill for weeks, locking herself in her room and listening to The Smiths and Lou Reed, refusing to come out when Holly pounded on the door to make sure she was okay, refusing to eat even a bowl of Fruit Loops or drink a can of Red Bull. She ended up completely snapping one night after a Primus concert. Holly found her on the bathroom floor at two a.m. holding a razor in her hand and trying to slice up her wrists, blood everywhere, screaming about needing lithium or ecstasy or codeine or something to make her feel better. I guess her meltdown was spawned by standing too close to the speakers at The Bomb Factory all night, eating too many ‘shrooms and listening to Les Claypool manhandle his bass and scream the lyrics to “Tommy the Cat” in her face; She’d been fine before the concert. Holly called 911 and an ambulance arrived a couple of minutes later and took Kristy away wearing Holly’s purple plush bathrobe. Whenever Holly tells this story, she always mentions that she never got that bathrobe back.
Our apartment is a two bedroom, just a few blocks from campus. It’s an older complex, probably built in the early 80’s, but it’s been well maintained. We have an extra room that the apartment complex calls a “den.” It’s across the hallway from the kitchen, and it doesn’t have a door or a closet. The original plan was to put a couple of desks in there, so we’d have a place to study, separate from our bedrooms, but that plan fell apart a couple of weeks ago, when my parents decided to finally cut Brian off. Now, it’s temporarily Brian’s room.
My brother just completed his fifth year of college last spring. This entire time, my parents have been paying his tuition and his rent, under the pretext that he was actually going to graduate at the end of this year, in December. But my brother has changed his major so many times that it just hasn’t happened yet, and he failed to mention this to Mom and Dad until just recently, when Mom called to ask if he’d ordered his graduation invitations. The real truth is—he admitted this to me drunkenly one night as he sucked on a bottle of scotch he’d ripped off from our Dad’s liquor cabinet at home—that he doesn’t want to actually graduate. He loves, not so much school itself, but the lifestyle he has here. He sleeps late most days, goes to a few classes and gets his work done, then spends his evenings getting high or drunk with our friends. He doesn’t have to work because Dad pays for everything, and he has no intention of getting a job unless he absolutely has to. This is something he and I disagree about. I used to feel the same way about working, but then I started feeling guilty, like I should be pulling some of my own weight, and it just seemed silly and selfish of me to be in college with no job. All of my friends had jobs, and I wanted to experience the independence that comes with receiving a pay check. So for a couple of years now, I’ve been waiting tables.
When Brian was finally forced into admitting the truth— that graduation was going to be placed on hold again— he also told our parents he hated being a business major—even though they had finally talked him into it—and he was switching back to philosophy again. Graduation wouldn’t be for another year and a half.
“Majoring in philosophy is ridiculous!” Our father shouted. I wasn’t actually there to hear this shouting, but my brother believed it was so loud that it must have traveled all the way up I35 to Denton and into the library where I was studying that night, so I pretended to humor him. “What kind of job are you going to get with a philosophy degree?” He demanded. “Selling hot dogs!” He answered his own question. “That’s what you are going to be doing!”
“Dad, you love hot dogs,” Brian said.
“This is NOT a time for jokes, Brian! How do you think you’re going to make a decent living? Do you think money is just going to float into your life magically whenever you need it?”
“It kind of always has. Thanks for that, by the way.”
That was Dad’s last straw. That day he went into the bank account he shares jointly with Brian, and withdrew the $1000 he’d just put in there for my brother to live on for the month, and then he closed the account. Next, he picked up the telephone and called me. “Kate,” he said. “If your brother asks you for money, you are NOT, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCE, to loan him any.”
“Okay, Dad.” I said. I knew instinctively what had happened. It didn’t surprise me at all. Our parents give both of us money every month, but I know it upsets my dad that I still choose to work, but Brian doesn’t. I knew that this, combined with the fact that my brother was extending the shelf-life of his college career yet again, was going to eventually cause some serious shit to go down with our parents.
When Brian showed up at my place after the ill-fated conversation with our dad, he had a duffle bag full of clothes with him. “You’re going to have to let me crash here for a while,” he told me. “Dad’s flipped out.”
“Uh, I’m not ‘going to have to let’ you do anything,” I said.
“Come on, Kate,” he whined, “he took all my money. I can’t pay my rent, and I had to move out of my apartment. It’ll just be for a few weeks, until I can get a job.”
“You should have seen this coming and already had a job.”
“Ugh. Don’t side with them.”
“I’m not, but seriously Brian, what did you expect?”
“They have tons of money! It’s no sweat off their backs!”
“I think you’re missing the point, here.”
“I know. I get it. Just shut up and move out of the way,” he shoved by me. “I’ll sleep in the den. You won’t even know I’m here.”
“You have to ask Holly first. I’m not the only one who lives here, you know.”
“Holly doesn’t care.”
“Uh, did I just hear my name?” Holly stuck her head out of her room; her glasses were perched on her nose, so I knew she’d been studying.
“Brian wants to live with us,” I said.
“What’s in it for me?” Holly asked Brian.
“I have weed.”
“You idiot!” I shouted. “You don’t even have a job. You can’t get weed. Don’t listen to him, Holly, he doesn’t have weed.”
“Look,” Holly told Brian, “I want to believe you. But you can’t just free-load. If we let you stay here you’re going to have to keep this place clean. We only have one bathroom, and you are a disgusting male. You have to clean up after yourself. And you have to get a job. And you have to pay rent.”
“I can’t believe you’re agreeing to this,” I said.
“He has weed Kate,” Holly insisted. “And he’s your brother. Have a heart.”
“Yeah Kate, have a heart,” Brian said. He was already dumping his bags down in the den and shoving our desks out of the way to clear up a space.
“Oh for….” I muttered. “Fine. FINE! But don’t even think about bringing girls in here. And you can’t tell Mom and Dad. I don’t want to get dragged into your shit.”
“It’s a deal.” He smacked me on the back, grinning cheerfully. Then he sunk onto the sofa in the living room and grabbed the remote control. “You won’t be sorry, Kate, Holly, I promise you that.”
“I’m already sorry.” I stormed past him and headed to my bedroom. Maybe a year ago this arrangement would have been fine with me, but lately, my patience for my brother had been wearing thin. I know this had more to do with me than it did with him. With my own graduation just a year away, I’d been really tightening up the reigns on myself, laying off the parties. Having Brian in the house would turn our place into a slacker’s den. He’d take over everything, as he usually did, criticize my study habits—which were much better than his—and ridicule my efforts to make it to graduation in a timely manner. Things between us were a lot better before I started to mature faster than him.