Hunter S. Thompson, Tolkien Tweed girl, and Guapo...

This was my housemate. For the sake of simplicity, we'll call him Hunter.

Now, imagine Hunter and the horror house of purple walls + the likes of little old tweed me...


Okay, so maybe that's not quite me. But it's close. Maybe more like this:


Yeah, closer, but minus the preggers and the young high school age and the smugness. Okay, add a little hipster smugness, and keep the pipe, and add a few years into college, and we'll say that's about as close as we're going to get.

So, it's sort of a wacky goth version of The Odd Couple, but with more people on the odd side. Not my side, I mean. (Oh, there's that smugness.)

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention the other member of the band living in the house.

Guapo, the Amazing Sleepytime Disaster Ape.

...

Yeah.

Guapo started out as just a costume lying around...somewhere. I really don't know his precise origins. Some say he's been around forever, but I'm fairly certain he didn't move into the house until after I did. Guapo has never paid rent (being an ape costume and all) but continued to lounge on the communal couch, being worn by any number of people for gigs, and generally causing amazing sleepytime disaster wherever he went (and still goes).

Guapo has a pierced ape nipple, and smells like a combination of the various drunk peope who have worn him to shows and signings. His daring disaster deeds include, but are not limited to accosting various patrons of Hot Topic (and almost causing the band to be banned from the mall, oh my!), humping various band fans, humping various band members, and jumping around on stage and into the crowd from the stage to cause general mayhem and madness. He is a smelly sort of band member, and being hugged by Guapo is sort of an interesting (not entirely pleasant) experience.

Even worse is finding an empty Guapo suit draped over your couch the next morning, drunken-ape-smellifying your mythology textbooks and paper which were also lounging on that same couch. How do you explain to your professor that that reason your paper on Gilgamesh smells like PBR and ape musk is that a monkey suit named Guapo was smothering said books and paper on said couch for several hours?

It was never that I disliked Guapo. Don't get me wrong. It's bad form to hate anything that is larger than you and can crush you with its smelly ape hands, I think. But, neither was I an enthusiastic Guapo-fangirl.

"You should do it," Hunter told me once as we stood chatting in the kitchen, Guapo draped over the back of a chair nearby.

"Hm?"

"You could be Guapo! Don't you want to try?"

I did not.

"Oh come on," he wheedled. "Just try it, just this once."

Living in the house with Guapo was one thing, but there was no way in hell I was going to don the suit myself, I thought.

The House of Tits

“We can sort of…close the band room door while I move stuff in, right?” I asked my boyfriend (we'll call him Ringo) as nicely as possible.

It was moving day, and my mom was going to be bringing some things over in her car that didn’t quite fit in mine.

“Sure, I guess," Ringo replied.

I breathed an inward sigh of relief. Best not to let my conservative Christian homeschooling (yes) mom in her denim dress see all of the Suicide Girls posters alongside the “Whore of Babylon” ones and all. It’s not that my mom would say anything – and that’s the problem. I’d just be treated to even more disapproving looks if she walked into the foyer of the house and saw not only the fake rubber bats hanging festively (in December) from the ceiling, but also a room full of naked girl pictures. It was bad enough that I was moving in with my boyfriend (little heathen that I was -- er, am), but moving into a house of tits was even worse.

I closed the band room door. And looked at the door. On the side facing out hung a huge poster of, well, mostly-naked Pussycat Dolls. That, too, would certainly not earn me any approval from Good Ol’ Mom.

I took it down. But inside, I had a sick feeling that if I ever wanted my parents to come visit for dinner, getting the house to Sensible Reasonable Nice People standards was going to take a valiant effort on my part.

For me, personally, I didn’t have any fears. Boobs, whatever! I could deal with a band room full of boobs! It wasn’t going to be that bad! Not bad at all! Nothin’ to it! Easy as pie! Flippant exclamation of carefree innocence!

Dun dun dun dunnnnn.

The thing is, it was my idea. Our idea, really. But I was actively involved. It wasn't some random dorm assignment, where you arrive at your freshman college room, all perky and glistening with golden hopes and dreams only to find that your roommate, Raven, is busy trying to paint her nails Black Death and fix her mohawk at the same time as properly ripping her fishnets and your golden hopes and dreams sort of droop and sag a little like sad old woman boobs (sorry old women; it's totally natural and I love our bodies and I've read "The Beauty Myth" and thought it was brilliant but I also thought saggy boobs was a good metaphor).

Nope. I was totally on board for the idea of living with members of a goth industrial band during my junior year of college. My boyfriend was (and still is) part of the goth industrial band, and the house had room, and it was close to campus, and affordable, and I figured what the hell, it's just a band. How bad could it be? What's the worst that could happen?

...

One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong:

Goth industrial band. Pet tarantulas. Loud drunken band practice nights with fire-breathers (no I am not making this up). One shy English major.

This is the story of my belonging in a house with a goth band.