My (Thirty) Five-Year-Old Boy

The problem with Semi-Homeless was that he didn't need a wife. He needed a mommy. And the problem with me was that I believed God was playing some hideous trick on me by sending me that fool and calling him my soul mate. It never occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, dating a smelly dufus wasn't a life sentence from Almighty God, it was a personal choice.

Semi-Homeless and I settled into a dysfunctional and totally stifling routine.

Initially, on days when he worked and actually got paid, I might spend the night with him in a $30/night ghetto motel. Where he might suck on my toes even though I've always hated people touching my feet. Or worse, despite the fact that he never brushed his teeth, he might lick my privates, while I secretly worried about germs making my already-infected lady parts even more drippy and disgusting.

I say initially, because eventually it devolved to me paying for the ghetto motel more often than not, with money I didn't have. He was always going to pay me back, but somehow never did. And it wasn't just motels. Often, I found myself reaching into my purse $3 at a time, even as I fumed, Why am I buying a hamburger for a 35-year-old grown man?

He wasn't just a drain on the little money I had, he was also a drain on the money I was trying to earn.

I had decided, at the urging of Mr. Sweet Talker, to stay with my Great Aunt. Mr. Sweet Talker bribed me with a salary of $800 a month, on top of the free room and board I already had. It was just enough to pay my car note, my phone bill, my acting class. In exchange, I tried to turn over a new leaf, sitting with Great Aunt more often, cooking occasionally, taking her to the doctor.

Meanwhile, I found a part-time job reading tarot cards on a psychic line. I could set my own hours, and I could work from home. It wasn't the easiest job in the world, listening to the problems of redneck housewives and ghetto girls, of blue-collar cowboys and hard-luck home boys, none of whom could afford $3.99-per-minute amateur advice. My tiny piece of the action was $.25 per minute, and the clock started only when a client was on the other end of the phone.

In order to make money, I needed to be disciplined and work at least six hours a day. Most days, I worked no hours a day. Or two hours. Or three.

There were the inevitable Great-Aunt distractions. She constantly wandered uninvited into my room to ask pointless questions, even when I was on the phone. Or I'd plan to spend the morning on the line, but instead find myself searching every conceivable and inconceivable place in the house for her missing teeth, only to find them three hours later wrapped in paper towel at the bottom of the kitchen trash can.

But Great Aunt was nothing compared to Semi-Homeless.

In addition to paging me 10 zillion times a day and leaving 10 zillion messages on my answering machine, our dates and get-togethers were a study in wasted time. A one-hour dinner break would turn into a three-hour, multi-stop excursion through the streets of South Central L.A., as I ferried him here, there and everywhere on his various shoeshine-boy errands.

By the time our relationship finally ran its course, he had progressed (or regressed) from paying for motels to me paying for motels to sleeping in my Great Aunt's garage to showing up unannounced in the middle of the night so I could let him in the house.

What finally made me give Semi-Homeless the boot? Urine and a drug-addicted uncle.

(Semi-Homeless Diaries Part 9 of 12: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | Lessons Learned 1-2: 1 2)

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