I'm just gonna exclude the tumultuous childhood and skip straight to the later years. Or else we'll be here all night.
When I was 16, I went to North California for what was supposed to be only a month to visit my friends/boyfriend. I ended up staying for a year, couch surfing, camping out in the backs of cars on the beach and generally being a drain on society. With the help of some of my newfound (mostly hippie junkie) friends, I managed to land a few jobs. My first one was in a porn store, but after only 3 days of working, I was let go because they had caught on that I was under 18. I stole a box of edible underwear on my way out and hungrily devoured it all on a park bench, for dinner (One of my favorite stories~). Shortly after that, I rented a room with my then boyfriend and a psychotic lesbian. She would stay awake all night having guro roleplay sessions via AIM; her furious typing would often keep me awake. I once farted on her out of sleep deprivation and a burning need for vengeance. The owner of the house we were staying in was a grumpy, alcoholic South African man who liked to take our things and throw them onto the sidewalk if we were ever late with our rent. So I went to live with an artist, her mother, their chemist lodger and an endless wave of permanent house guests in a 200 year old house on the edge of the marshlands. By then I had landed a job in a small cafe shop as a barista and baker's assistant. It was a good job, except for the fact that the baker I was helping was also a neurotic 30 year old coprophiliac who was sleeping with the owner's teenage daughter. By then my mom had tracked me down and told me that I should really consider coming home and finishing high school before she got the police involved.
One of my souvenirs was a picture of me with my hair dyed pink, sprawled out on the floor wearing nothing but a velvet catsuit-- tail, ears, the whole getup. Sexy as a motherfucker. I had completely forgotten about the picture until one year ago, when I was back in my home town, visiting my best friend from high school. I had gone into his room for something and there it was on his nightstand.
"...J-- you're going to have to explain this."
"Oh! Shit! Um, I found it in your room when we were still in school and... I stole it."
"Yes, I deduced that, but why is it STILL on top of your nightstand?"
When I was 19, I left my high school on the last day of classes and went straight home to pack for my move to Houston. I said goodbye to very few people. By my high school graduation ceremony, I was already in my apartment in Houston and working as a waitress for a catering company. This involved me lying a whole bunch on my resume and working 16 hour days hauling massive amounts of food through parties for the academic elite while wearing a stifling polyester tuxedo. I made so much fucking money. One night, after working a wedding party, I stayed after with the Swedish and Mexican chefs (not the Muppets) and the busboys and drank so much tequila, they had to lift me onto my bike and give me a push off to send me on my way home.
I had a few people live with me in that one bedroom apartment, one of them was an Italian-Belgian-Peruvian who had dropped out of the seminary because he wanted to marry a girl in Boston. He taught me how to smoke my body weight in pot before working out, studying or playing chess. I also took up fencing and got a job as a secretary in a Catholic university. Even though I worked there for years, I never really fit in. This was mostly because they were all convinced I was a lesbian and also because I had made an ill-placed Natural Family Planning joke at a faculty Christmas party. That and all the times I called people on their shit. That may have had something to do with it.
When I decided that, yes, I could be a good writer without having a degree, I discovered that I could also be a good writer and still be unemployed. So I quit the university job in favor of one that would have more flexible hours so I could attend classes. Probably waiting tables or something like that. What I landed was a job as an unlicensed massage therapist (no happy endings) and a compulsive-liar-cosplayer-pig-dog roommate with a rental house that was quite literally falling apart. I didn't really feel it though, because by this time I had joined Iwaku, started college and trained in Jujitsu 5+ days a week and had been for the past 3 years.
Then I got my current job, which I quite like most of the time, and an efficiency apartment from a shifty Vietnamese man who didn't mind too much if the rent was late. My upstairs neighbor was a 20 year old crackwhore who liked to bring her John's home, which caused a few awkward mix ups that involved me threatening a stranger with a frying pan. When Asmodeus and I first started talking on Skype, I had to frequently apologize for the booming noises of my neighbor's crack-fueled jungle love. She also liked to blast Adele's Rolling in the Deep and Pink's Pretty Pretty Please at all hours of the day and night. On repeat.
Now I live with my good friend in a cozy apartment. Things are mostly calm, between the influx of Somalian English majors, traveling tarot reading dancers, pompous British guys and my brother passing out on our couch. But it is the calm before the storm, because after Asmo and I marry, we're going to be renting a room in my parent's house, in my haunted home town, while I finish my degree. Hurk! o.o
Stay tuned for the next exciting installment!
