Cody. 1

The first time I saw Cody I thought I wouldn't live with him. I had walked a long time, mostly my own fault for being lost, and I remember being addled by him, and then chastising myself. I got drunk off the apple martini he gave me as we discussed my backstory, which was a complete lie.

He gave my friends a toaster when he met them.

We went through his old roommate’s things: a pair of drop-seat pants, two complete sets of schoolchildrens’ hand bells, and all his old computer files. The roommate married someone he dated for six months and moved to California, and I think it’s because he’s dying. One of his files was a doctor’s report he had sent in to work about his undergoing a surgery that one in five people survive. Cody hated him.

After Cody went to work I checked out his room. Anyone would notice all the teddy bears and pornography. The pornography was of a very low grade. Teens from 1990.

Cody will often ask me how to spell things. I wondered what it would mean when he wrote me out my “depoist.” Now other friends will call Cody to have him ask for a spelling. One time he became very sullen when he thought, through a misunderstanding, that I had said “irregardless” was a word, when it wasn’t. …I thought he’d asked about “irregular.”

Cody took me out to his favorite bar and introduced to me his friend Randy. Randy told me he’s slept with over 200 people. He was innocuous though. It excited me to meet him. I tried to get him to show me how he would talk to men, but he wouldn’t do it.
We went to dinner with his pregnant friend Pauline. There I became drunk again after a single martini. I liked Pauline. Early social success with them was ultimately damaged by their observation that I had a little interesting fact to add into almost any conversation topic. Afterward, we went shoe shopping, at 9 PM, and then out for some drunk driving.