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.