Aw snap… you thought I was done, but this horse isn’t dead yet. Call this story “the lost years part 6 and a half”:

Do you ever find yourself doing unspeakably crazy things? Like you are watching yourself from afar and you are powerless to stop it? I can think of three distinct times in my adult life that I have gone bat shit crazy and as much as I wanted to stop myself I was unable to – this is one of those times.

It was the end of the 90’s – probably sometime mid 1999ish, who knows? I was living alone in my one bedroom on University Ave and decided one day that even though I loved my apartment and my solitude I was 24ish and maybe I should think about being around people my own age, in a setting that was somewhat less responsible than the one I had created for myself. I decided to find a roommate and move closer to the beach.

I put an ad in the Pennysaver, something along the lines of “want to find the perfect apartment, with the perfect roommate? Call me!’ I was bound to find someone good, right? I got hundreds of calls – I got calls from a lot of scary sounding people. I got a call from an entire platoon of marines looking for somewhere to ‘live’ when not on deployment, I got a call from a man I’m pretty sure wanted to pimp me out and offered to get me any place I wanted – I got so many calls that I eventually pulled the ad and stopped answering my phone.

But I got one call from a reasonable sounding girl who was also in her mid 20’s who lived in Ocean Beach but had recently found an available two-bedroom townhouse seven blocks from the ocean that she could not afford on her own – it sounded perfect, it sounded too perfect. I immediately went to meet this person whom we will call Samantha. She was living in a tiny one bedroom ‘cottage’ that was tastefully decorated, she seemed like someone I could get along with, she had a small dog that after a trial meet and greet was tolerated by Ruka.

We toured the two-bedroom townhouse that was big and bright and just a little bit 70’s mod to be fun – we picked bedrooms, I filled out an application – in my head I was already blending our living room furniture and determining how the new commute would fit into my work and school schedule.

I was on my way out the door with my landlord’s notice in hand when I decided to call her to confirm move-in dates and that’s when she tells me that she thought I should know she was still interviewing other potential roommates. WHAT? THE? HELL? I had already filled out the application and paid the application fee, I had already taken boxes from work – I had already created a new life in my head. I was beyond pissed off.

Without stopping to think about what I was doing I immediately grabbed my keys and drove to Ocean Beach ready to confront her in person, I thought maybe I could still be reasonable and talk this thing through. I called her from a pay phone around the corner from her place and told her I’d like to meet with her  – she got so outraged that I had come ‘into her neighborhood’ that she basically hung up on me.

At that point what I should have done was turned my car around and head home, cut my loses and be glad I dodged a bullet, but fuck Samanatha, you know? She called me, she asked me to see this apartment she found, she asked me to fill out an application. I nearly gave notice and lost the last affordable, rent controlled apartment within easy biking distance of my office. OMG – I WAS MAD!

Instead of going home I stopped at a dollar store bought a pad of paper and a pen, made my way to a corner bar, ordered the cheapest thing they served and proceeded to write Samanatha a letter.

I was in that bar for hours, the first couple pages went smoothly but by the time I was on page 4 or 5 I knew I was out of control – I remember seeing myself scribbling injustices to this girl that I barely knew and realized I had crossed a line. Whatever inhibitors that should have fired in my brain telling me to stop where asleep or deeply zoned out because I wrote Samantha a 16-page letter basically telling her how awful she was – like I said up front I was powerless to stop myself.

I stormed out of the corner bar and put my manifesto under her windshield wiper of her car and headed home.

She called me after work the next day to tell me that I was insane and that she never wanted to see or hear from me again, and I said something clever like, “yeah, well tell your new landlord to rip up my application – I already stopped payment on the check I gave you, bitch.”

And that my friends is how I almost lived Ocean Beach.