While I was living with Bro in 200X or so, I started to have extreme anxieties about Crime. Specifically, I was afraid that somebody would bust in on me while everybody else was at work and do unspeakable things to myself or my property. One day, Delbert called me and said his Mom was kicking him out of her house, and he needed a place to stay, but he couldn’t afford it on his own. I jumped at the chance. I told him I would move back in with him in [REDACTED].
I left the details of the move to Delbert, which sort of turned out to be a mistake. Delbert’s brother, Jeremiah, lived in a crappy cement block apartment above a garage behind the house of this old lady named Peanut. He only paid $250 a month rent, though, and Delbert was keen on getting a place for cheap. Jeremiah was moving out of the place in order to have more room for the kids that were on the way, so Delbert decided he would take over the place. I believe I’ve talked a little bit about this apartment in a previous entry. Anyway, we ended up paying $350 a month because we weren’t a married couple, which is what the old lady preferred to rent to.
It turned out to be a terrible decision. The place had no insulation. It always seemed to be hot in the summer and cold in the winter. The baseboard heaters were caked with dust, risking a huge fire hazard and forcing us to use space heaters all the time, which caused our electricity bills to skyrocket. In the summer we had to use window unit air conditioners, also not efficient in the electricity department. I’d estimate we spent $200 – $300 in electricity in particularly hot or cold months. Inconceivable for a place so tiny!
Nevertheless, things were good at the beginning. Me and Delbert hung out all the time and watched movies we had rented. We frequently paused the films when one of us had a comment or discussion to make, and often we would extend the time spent watching a movie by an hour or more with our constant jabbering. I vividly remember watching Jesus Camp with Delbert and pausing it very frequently to discuss the absurdities. It’s a fond memory of mine.
Another thing I remember is playing World of Warcraft. I set Delbert up with a spare computer of mine I had bummed off Erin, and we each bought a copy of the Base Game. We played whenever we both had free time, and it was fun at first, when we didn’t take it too seriously. He would only play when I played, and we would always do the same quests together. He was a gnome warlock and I was a dwarf paladin, so we could both start out in the same zone. I vividly remember running around the snowy area of Dun Morogh, fleeing in terror at the sight of lowly level five bears or whatever. Many months later we went back there at the level cap and laid waste to those bears and laughed that we had ever been afraid of them.
After awhile, things started to get a little bit worse. I took a downturn in my mental health and started sleeping all the time as opposed to hanging out with Delbert. (I would go to bed around 6 or 7 PM and get up around 4 AM.) Delbert got a little shiftless and would sometimes call in to work, and I began to worry that he wasn’t managing his finances appropriately. I constantly nagged him that he should try to keep his job and not waste money.
In addition to this, the condition of the apartment itself deteriorated. When we first got there I was fresh off my stint with Bro, where he forced me to clean up after myself. I kept up the habit for the first few months with Delbert, but then as time passed I just got lazier and lazier, until I wasn’t cleaning the place at all. It was a mess. I remember Bill used to claim that every time he came into our apartment, a couple days later he came down with some kind of illness. I myself never got sick, possibly because my Immune System was part of an elite Special Forces unit at that point.
Eventually Delbert lost his job and went on Unemployment and things got really bad. He couldn’t find another job no matter how he tried. He started playing Warcraft all hours of the day and night, playing without me, going on raids, becoming thoroughly addicted. When he wasn’t playing Warcraft he was browsing the web, aimlessly meandering about the refuse available on there.
When Delbert’s unemployment ran out, he made amends with his mother and moved back in with her, and I had to pay all the bills myself. (At least I was able to negotiate my rent back down to $250.) I still have a little resentment toward him over that. Thus another period of Great Depression began, without anyone to talk to, I became lonely and sad, and started sleeping maybe 16 hours a day again. My medications didn’t seem to help with my mood very much. My lease eventually expired, but I decided to extend it another six months until Bro’s lease would be up in Lexington, so we could move into a new place together.