Paying Rent..

I hold a special hatred toward the phrase "couch potato." The visual strikes too close to home...

Shortly after my big hair band failure, I went into hiding. The spirit of doubt set in and carried me along a new path of peril.

It started on a Sunday morning. The knock on the apartment door got me off the couch. Expecting the start of the next day's party, I opened the door. The landlord was standing there with a new tenant. They both looked very agitated as the stench of rotting chicken, cheap beer, and ash trays filled the apartment hallway.

Bob, my roommate, had forgotten to inform me that his physical threat to the landlord a few days prior, along with the absence of our rent, had gotten us evicted. The landlord gave me that afternoon to get out with the apartment left clean. Bob had vanished.

I was on to the next adventure. I was determined to allude responsibility and keep the party alive. I planned to couch-hop.

I would emulate the true meaning of couch potato. The connotations run deeper than just the lazy mindless T.V. surfer. The identity belongs to a person who preys on the weak-willed enabler. This particular predator cares little for those that do the hard work to perpetuate his addictions and lifestyle. After he has exhausted their resources and generosity and it comes time to contribute his part, he becomes a phantom. In summary, to couch hop, is to party at another's expense.

I moved from one couch to another. Mayhem often followed my path. Other's would clean up the mess. I would party until I woke the next morning on the couch I partied on. Usually the sound of another life taking responsibility for their day would alert me to the fact that it was time to hit the road.

I woke up on many different couches. Some couches alone. Some not. Some were in completely foreign places. Some came with surprises.

One morning I awoke around 8 a.m. on a couch with my head pounding significantly. I opened one eye, still feeling the remnants of alcohol and half my face throbbing. When I sat up, I noticed my pillow was a blood-saturated towel. I knew something went terribly wrong the night before. I hobbled to the bathroom to find a stranger in the mirror. Looking back at me was a mangled face. One eye was black and blue and swelled shut, and half of my face was a ripe red from forehead to chin. I could not tell if I was beat up, dragged across the concrete, or mauled by an endangered animal. I had no memory.

Behind me, in the mirror, suddenly appeared Mike, my good friend at the time. Woken by my gasp, it was as if he was expecting to see my ghost. He looked relieved and somewhat surprised to see me conscious.

He walked me through the story of the night before. My insistence to take his BMX bike off a large ramp at 2 a.m. would leave me in a pool of blood. I had convinced him that I was a professional biker. He somehow believed I would make the landing even though I was likely 3 or 4 times the legal limit. I landed with only half the bike under me and half my face embedded in the concrete. They carried me into the house unconscious while his girlfriend held a towel to my head for some time to help stop the bleeding. The group that had gathered for the party that night were not sure whether to call an ambulance. They felt somewhat responsible for my condition having chanted, "Go Mark!"

Somehow their compassion enabled me to see yet another day. I was on to the next couch. Yet, in this case, one more stop would be my last.

The next night I set up camp on a new couch of a good friend's, Kaela. Night after night I piled empty beer cans in her living room with friends I invited over. Each night carried with it increasing havoc from drug trafficking to occasional violence. She would remind me each morning that her day care center was about to open, and that I needed to hide out. I fled the scene. Then unsuspecting parents dropped off their 3 and 4 year olds. It was daycare by day and party mansion by night.

A breaking point came. She started whispering into my ear at day break very softly.. "time to start paying rent..."
Somehow her soft whisper was easy to brush away in the abrupt start of a new day to survive. I continued to snake my way in and out for several months with my charm and phantom scheme. Then one morning she decided the party was over.

She came down the stairs. She pulled the blanket off my head. An authoritative voice hurled out, "Start paying rent now, or get out!"

Like a kid in the cookie jar, I was caught as the snake that I was.
After all of the mustard sandwiches, near death moments, and humiliating scenes, those words..., "Pay rent!"..."Get out!" found me. She didn't just say "get out." She went to the jugular. The words I heard translated, "Walk like a man and not like the dog you are." She demanded a new man to rise that morning. I didn't know where he would come from, but I became wiling to find him.

Mike and Kaela would be there when I most needed them. One couch to save me from the storm. One couch to hurl me into the sea where I would have to learn to swim.

I left that morning determined to never be caught couching again. A new will was birthed in my soul. Whatever the cost, I would find a new man. I would rise above.... I, would pay my rent.