Darron’s Girlfriend began to hate me shortly after she met me. She practically moved in with Darron while we were living together, and when our lease was up in 199X, Darron came up to me rather timidly and mentioned the Lease. I knew instantly what he wanted. I said, “So, you want to stop being room-mates?” And he agreed, “That’s what I’d prefer: to move in with Karen.”
An acquaintance of mine, Al DeLarge, had been living by himself in a tiny apartment on Richmond Road, and he quickly jumped on the chance to get himself a room-mate. He offered for us to share an apartment and I readily agreed. In 199X we moved in to an apartment on Montavesta Drive, across from the Lansdowne Shopping Centre, which featured Slone’s Market and an Arby’s, as well as a couple of upscale restaurants.
Al had a very large projection television that he inherited from his mother. The resolution on it was terrible and the projection lamp was failing, so the picture was pretty abysmal, but it was the biggest TV I ever had access to up until that point, so I was pretty pleased with it. I remember when he had it in his apartment on Richmond Road, I saw DirecTV for the first time, and witnessed an interactive channel guide. I thought it was impressive. I remember I watched Dark City with him there once, while drinking Port (which I hated, it’s too rich).
Even though Al and I were room-mates, we mostly lived separate lives. He was usually playing his Nintendo 64 or browsing the Web with WebTV in the living room, while I mostly stayed on my computer in the guest bedroom.
I remember several N64 games from that period, like NFL Blitz, which he and Darron used to challenge each other over, and Mario Tennis, which Al and I played quite a bit. I remember I got quite angry at him for winning all the time, and accused him of memorizing “patterns” that guaranteed he would score points. He in turn got enraged at this and insisted he was merely playing tennis the way it was meant to be played. Another game I remember was GoldenEye – we would have 4 player split-screen battles with that – and Jet Force Gemini, one of the first games to feature simultaneous co-op play.
On the computer front, the best game I can recall was Planescape: Torment, an excellent RPG by Black Isle Studios, based on the Infinity Engine from Baldur’s Gate. It had excellent writing, which was good because most of the game involved reading text and “role-playing” along by selecting various dialogue options. The game told the story of a man who awakes from death with no memory and no name (he’s called “The Nameless One”) and how he brings misery and torment to all who surround him. I remember “The Nameless One” used to bellow “Updated my journal!” whenever he added some text to the log of your adventures. It literally happened every few seconds, “Updated my journal! Updated my journal! Updated my journal!” and one time Al screamed from the living room, “That fucker sure does update his journal a lot!”
But by far the game that was most memorable from that time period was Halo: Combat Evolved. The XBOX came out while me and Al lived together, and though I was initially dismissive of the console, Halo turned out to be a truly great game. The best aspect of it was its multiplayer – it only offered split-screen or system link play because XBOX LIVE was in its infancy – but what it had was excellent. Me, Al, Jed and Christian used to play the multiplayer for hours on end, and sometimes we would invite some of Christian’s stoner friends over to join us. (I’ll have to write more about Jed and Christian in another entry.) The weed was flowing freely at that time. Al has told me many times that he misses those days, when we would have four players all playing split-screen. He didn’t realize what he had until it was gone.
Al developed a relationship with a girl while he lived with me. As far as I know it was the second relationship he ever had. He met the girl, Kathryn, at a sort of outsourcing company retreat held in Gatlinburg. (I’ll have to write more about Erin’s startup later, if I haven’t already.) The problem was there was a, shall we say … aggressive … but not exactly desirable … Cuban friend of Erin’s named Bonita. She had taken a liking to Al and insisted she was going to “conquer” him. In order to stave off her advances, Al maintained that Kathryn was his Girlfriend, and to keep up appearances, they shared a room at the retreat. They were together from that point on.
I tried to nip the relationship in the bud. I explained that I had just got out of a situation where my room-mate’s Girlfriend hated me, yet I had to live with her. I wanted to prevent that from happening again. So I questioned Al’s intentions and tried to cast doubt on the relationship. However, this was a mistake, because Al stayed with her, she practically moved in, and eventually they got married. (They’re married to this day, and now have a child.) I started to joke that I was a lucky charm to all my friends – if you lived with me, you would get a Girlfriend shortly after you moved in.
Let me talk a little about what kind of man Al is. He was raised in a very religious, Fundamentalist household, as many of my friends were. There were a lot of strictures placed upon him, and his life was very limited. He was forced to attend a small, private Baptist school, where his prodigious basketball talent went completely overlooked. As a result, he began to detest his religion, and the concept of an all-powerful Deity Itself. He revolted against it and became an ardent Atheist, announcing his lack of faith to everyone in the Church, much to their chagrin, and daring them to judge him. He has a rather reactionary attitude to everything Christian to this day.
As I mentioned, Al was very talented at basketball. He used to dominate in all the games he was in, and I believe he could have at least went on to play Division II college basketball, if not Division I. Everyone who played with him was impressed by his ability. But he never had the proper training, because he never had a really good coach, and no scouts ever noticed him since he attended tiny Saints Academy. It might not have worked out for him, anyway, because of his resentment of Authority Figures, but who can say?
In addition to basketball and videogames, Al loves ponderous art house films. His favorite director is Stanley Kubrick, probably followed by Jean-Luc Godard. He is infamous for insisting that people watch his incredibly dull foreign films quite stridently. He would actually say, “Man, you have to watch this,” and put in the DVD and practically force you onto the couch before you could protest. It’s a running joke to this day about how unendurable one particular favorite of his can be, and how Erin interrupted it by announcing she was going to bed. He’s not so bad about insisting on movies anymore, but he’s transferred that habit into videogames. Right now he keeps wanting me to start playing Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.
Al’s favorite band of all time is Radiohead. Whenever I lived with him, Radiohead was basically the soundtrack to our lives. He played it at home, he played it in his car, he played it at work. Each new Radiohead album was a huge event, and he would listen to it several times in the dark by himself shortly after he got it. Due to his profligate love of Radiohead and my resultant overexposure to it, I sometimes have a distaste for the band.
Al used to be really good at getting me out of the house. About every weekend we would go to the mall (where the primary videogame store was) and eat Chao Cajun, or to the Barnes & Noble bookstore, and eat Steak N Shake. We also ate a lot of food at the nearby Arby’s. He would take me wherever I wanted to go, and I really appreciated it. We hardly ever cooked. About the only thing I ate at home was cereal. Of course, I had plenty of disposable income for eating out, so it wasn’t really a problem. I don’t have that luxury anymore.
But most of all about Al, he was incredibly tolerant. I only remember him getting angry at me on one occasion, while he was single, when my punishing disagreeableness basically prevented him from “getting lucky.” Other than that, he tolerated my messiness and my selfishness and my inconsideration. I believe this came from his concerted attempts to detach from all material things and circumstances, and the resulting long-suffering attitude this engenders. He helps me out some to this day, and I always know I can rely on him to help me if I need it. As he is responsible for a wife and child now, though, I rarely ask him for anything.