(written over several days.)

Since I'm stuck in an airplane for the next few hours, I figure that this
would be a great time to catch up on life in general. However, you'll
have forgive the presentation; we're experiencing what we in the industry
call a "clock skew". Most of this is ancient history, a good portion is
told in the wrong order, and maybe some of it hasn't even happened yet.
Since novelists consider this to be good technique, I'll make no furter
apology for it.

(And the details of the Manhattan trip are STILL forthcoming. --Ed.)

I'm now settled into my new apartment, and not a minute too soon. Living
at Lance's house was a little too wierd for me. Don't get me wrong, the
house itself was really great, but the occupants were getting on my
nerves. Let me attempt the roll call:

Lance. Okay, Lance is pretty cool. He is the personification of the term
"weekend warrior" seven days a week. Some of his favorite activities are
skydiving, rock climbing, and motorcycling. He's one of Loki's "suits",
but I don't think he's ever owned one. 90 miles per hour is his idea of
driving slow. One time I peeked into his room to see if he was home, and
on his table was a Book of Mormon under a copy of "How to Read Auras"
under a huge roll of 100 dollar bills. What a metaphor! Lance is great,
and I really looked forward to living with him, but I didn't count on the
other residents.

Lance's girlfriend, Dulcie, also lives in the house. She's a prime
candidate for Jerry Springer. When I first moved in, she told me that she
couldn't wait for Lance and she to get married. Yikes. She would tell me
that she wouldn't know how to exist if they ever broke up. Yikes. And she
would tell me that she knows Lance really loves her, and he's clearly
just afraid to say so. YIKES. I asked her how long they have been a
couple, and after some amount of strained calculation, the result was,
"almost a month and a half."

Oh, yeah. Did I mention that Dulcie's currently married to another man?

Dulcie's husband, Mickey, is a real piece of shit from what I can gather.
Since Dulcie wasn't willing to have sex with the guy unless they were
married, they had a rather hasty knot tying, and were fighting before the
honeymoon was over. Since then, he has pretty much split his time between
smoking large quantities of marijuana and watching professional
wrestling, which I suspect he believes to be real.

Dulcie has a pit bull, named Sierra. I had never actually SEEN a pit bull
before this one, but I had heard lots of stories of these dogs removing
the arms of small children, so I wasn't too thrilled to find one suddenly
living in my house.

The dog itself doesn't bother me. In fact, Sierra is the friendliest (and
perhaps the most enthusiastic) dog I've met. I think it's the fact that
Lance and Dulcie used my shower to bathe her, and didn't clean the hair
out of the drain. And my towel mysteriously began to smell like wet dog.

Dulcie also has a sister, in whom she confided about her relationship
with Lance. Naturally, her sister immediately called Mickey and told him
all about the new guy Lance and his big house and big Mercedes. In short,
she's a backstabbing bitch. Dulcie told me that she would never be able to
trust her sister again.

One morning, around 3a.m., I came into the house and almost tripped over
someone sleeping on a foam mattress in the foyer. Upon interrogation, I
discovered it was Dulcie's sister. I guess trust is a lot like the
weather.

Maybe spousal abuse is genetic, since Dulcie's mother is apparently also
married to a real piece of shit.  One night, while Dulcie's dad (or maybe
stepfather?) was in lockdown for some sort of domestic disturbance,
Dulcie and some friends rescued dear ol' Mom, and brought her to Mickey's
house to live with the happy couple and their pitbull. Under happier
circumstances, this would be a decent setup for an NBC sitcom.

One morning, around 3a.m., I came into the house and almost tripped over
someone sleeping on a foam mattress in the foyer. Upon interrogation, I
discovered it was Dulcie's mother.

Now I can just imagine Mickey sitting on a worn couch, lighting a joint
and watching Monday Nitro. He normally hears the noise of a wife, a
mother-in-law, and a dog moving about the house. Now there's nothing but
the hooting of Ric Flair echoing through the silence. I wonder if he ever
started to suspect anything. White trash has a talent (if not an
instinctual need) to follow people; it's a 90s incarnation of hunting
skills. Thus, Dulcie's indiscretions would lead Mickey right here, and
probably sooner than later. I began to expect that he would show up at
Lance's one day. He would then shoot everyone, the dog, and finally
himself. They would make a Lifetime miniseries about the killings, and I'd
probably get played by Eddie Furlong.

So that's us: Lance, Dulcie, Dulcie's sister, Dulcie's dog, and Dulcie's
mother.

Oh wait. There's also Will. He's the ghost.

Nobody sees Will except Dulcie, but she claims to have talked with him on
several occasions, and has told him to "go to the light." In this case,
this is a Christian suggestion to go be with God, making Dulcie one of the
few truely devout people I've met that loves both Jesus and Ouiji boards.

Anyhow, apparently Will was murdered decades ago, and his body is
still buried under the foundation of the house.

And he doesn't like me because I'm "closed minded". Will, if you had an
email address, I'd send you this journal entry and we could discuss that
matter. Shame you haven't got an email address, cause you're just a
figment, you imaginary fuck.

Kiss my close-minded butt.

--ryan.