Before things got really bad, they were pretty good for a couple of weeks. With the tax money I got, I was able to afford a studio apartment and furnish it with some things. Since it was a studio apartment, I just got a futon, which doubled as a couch, so it worked.

I was going to school on time and every day. The same with work. Things were great!

But, like I mentioned in the last installment, one of the inspirations for me to move away from the college dorm environment was because of a guy. Bad, BAD Tina! I always learn from my mistakes the hard way.

So, there is this guy that I met online through vampirefreaks.com. Your typical delusional goth club kid. Now, I absolutely *LOVE* going to gothic/industrial clubs, so I am not ripping on anyone that does, but this guy was a complete exaggeration of that. His main goal in life was to become an industrial DJ and party as much as possible. My current stride was about to be busted.

Mistake #1: Because I believed that this guy was good for it, I put up the money for a bus ticket for him to come from Tennessee to Arizona. I was old enough to have known better, but I guess I was still naive in some aspects of life.

We got along well and had tons of fun. We slept together a couple of times and I could have sworn I overheard him refer to me as his girlfriend. Okay. But, that attitude didn't even last for a week, though he didn't really bring any other girls around. I think he just had some huge mental problems and didn't want to deal with being close to another human being. Well, I found out later that he was an unmedicated bi-polar.

Let's just talk about about his personality. He got SUPER drunk and high a lot. For having no money at all, he sure was good at getting hooked up with drugs. He absolutely hated staying in, which I love to do sometimes. Not just hated it, he despised being at home for longer than five minutes. I tried to help him out, but the entertainment I provided wasn't enough, I guess.

I took him to clubs, parties, hung out with my friends, and we even had parties at the apartment.

He didn't really talk to me much unless he was drunk or high. And when he was, oh my god, it was a task to get him to shut up. He was always RANTING about how the government keeps him down, his parents keep him down, society keeps him down, he was never going to be able to go to college, etc. He had this really strange mentality of being homeless. Hello?!? I've given you a roof over your head, food, alcohol, and even took you out to do things, yet you're homeless? I never got it. It was always my feeling that as long as he kept that attitude, he was always going to be homeless, no matter where he lived.

And true to this homeless attitude, he went out and do what a lot of seemingly homeless people do - asking for spare change from people that walk by. This is how he met a lot of people that he brought home.

One time he brought this really nice homeless guy home that I would have preferred to live with.

Oh wait, my new roommate didn't have a name. He had a number. His normal name started with a J. So, we'll call him the number formerly known as J, or J for short.

Another time, he brought this cool group of kids that stayed over a couple of nights. They were nice, funny, good-looking by my standards, and had a lot of fun.

Around this time I was getting seriously fed up with J's crap. It had been at least a month and he had no job. It didn't seem like he was looking very hard either. And, with all of the people that were hanging around my apartment, I was getting no sleep AT ALL.

Mistake #2: I stopped going to my job entirely.

That was the weekend that things went downhill at an exponential rate. I hadn't answered either my cell phone or my home phone all weekend, so my parents feared the worst. My sister was about ready to fly to Arizona to check up on me.

Really, the only explanation I have is that my cell phone wasn't charged and we were too busy out partying to care about answering the home phone. The police went to my door right around the time that I got around to calling my mom back. She was so pissed!

Well, I don't blame her. That was a horrible thing to do. I was probably putting off talking to her because I didn't want to get any lectures about what was going on.

The group of kids left for Oregon for college.

Shortly after they were safely in Oregon, I was suddenly -$500 in my Oklahoma bank account. I filed a police report here, filled out forms for my bank, and the money was returned to me.

I wanted to kick J out, but I wasn't really good at confrontation. I was halfway afraid he might do something to hurt me. Sure, he was a little guy, but I really hate violence and it scares the hell out of me. And this was right around the time that he started kicking, throwing, and breaking shit.

So, I just spent all of my time with my new friends - Alex, Bekah, Justin, and A.J. Screw it, I'm tired of the letters. This was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. We all had the most amazing time together and they were the kind of friends that you keep forever.

Mistake #3: Falling in love with one of your best friends.

Alex had become one of my best friends and I think on some level that we were sort of soulmates. Now, I knew that nothing would ever happen romantically between us, though the signals he was giving me were extremely weird. We got really close and it was getting harder and harder for me to pretend to be just a friend, but I chickened out everytime I went to talk to him about it.

I wish there was a way to describe how wonderful the next couple of months were. It was an amazing combination of having found a group of people that stimulate you on so many different levels, having fun without having to be high or drunk, and doing things you're pretty sure that no one's ever done with another person.

Like, being homeless on a busy college strip. And, going to porn shops at 3AM on a whim with a really fucked up barefooted roommate of Alex's.

We spent probably close to 12 hours wandering around this strip, listening to musicians, talking to homeless people, attending independent films, drinking coffee, talking about deep subjects, and just acting crazy. From then on, Alex and I referred to it as the night we were homeless.

Overheard in the porn shop - "Where's the paraplegic porn? Dude, that's hot."

This was Alex's INSANE ex-roommate. You could write a book on this guy.

After that, our small group had become an interesting melting pot of the most unique people on the planet, or so it felt like. And, it made dealing with home so much better.

I was unemployed and not really looking very hard for another job, so it made life harder on me and my family. My parents were helping me out as much as they could so that I could get an education.

I am still paying them off. :)

Not having to work gave me the time to work on interesting things, like a collection of horror shorts that my friend Brian was working on that even got mention in Fangoria!! Brian and his directing partner had paid a sum of money to get Calico Cooper (Alice Cooper's daughter). I got to meet Calico and Mrs. Alice Cooper. They were quite nice, but it gave me an interesting perspective on Alice's music career. I also worked on another horror short film or two, directed by me and another of my friends from school, Morgan.

We covered one wall of my apartment with fake blood and spelled out something like - SATAN 666. It was huge! That sat caked in my walls for probably a month.

By this time, things with J had gotten to a complete low and then he just disappeared. A few things happened, though.

1. He was talking to some underaged girl online and on the phone. I overheard him tell her that he likes to take advantage of people for as long as he can. I didn't confront him on that because I knew he had plans of leaving soon.

2. My parents got a call from the bank. It turns out that ANOTHER stolen check turned up in Oregon. Oh, gee.. I wonder who stole my checks. J didn't think it was a big deal because people screw him over all the time. So, I guess that makes it okay. Whatever.

3. One day I came home and he was just gone. Most of his stuff was gone too. I was so freaking happy!

Well, a few days after J left, I had taken down one of his drawings that he did. Guess what was there? A HUGE hole the size of his foot.