I am not a completely solitary person. But I like to be alone. A lot. Friends come to visit and I will spend 24/7 with them, because I know they will go away sooner than I want. If I lived in town with them I would be ducking their phone calls, trying to tear free some "space" to sit by myself and think, or just eat pickels without using a fork in the jar, fishing them out with my fingers and then licking my fingers and putting them back in the jar. I live with three people right now and I wish I lived alone. Right. Now.

outside of a few short-term exceptions, i haven't lived with anyone since 1989 when i had a freshman year room mate. i've dabbled in sharing living space since then, but the end result has always been fucked up... like letting my girlfriend move in with me in college. i must've been drunk when i agreed to play out that wack scenario. of course the positive perspective is that it escalated the process of underlying issues becoming overlying issues and brought the whole messy situation to a head. just thinking about it makes me flinch. the only other time was when i moved into a two-bedroom apartment in seattle and soon thereafter got a phone call from an old friend from high school who had just gotten out of the navy and was persuing a promising career as a meth-head in san diego. he called talking about wanting to get out of the whole scene and wondered if he could come up to seattle to get straightened out and on track. that was another one of those instances when the phone rang in the middle of the night and i made the wrong decision by picking it up. bastard still owes me $1000 in loans and phone bills. not to mention his miserable life. i doubt i'll ever live with anyone ever again. i can't compromise on living space. if hell ever does freeze over and i end up getting married, we're gonna have to live in separate houses.