These Are Troubled Times

Though I was planning on having an alcoholic Saturday night, due to a miserable headache, I ended up in bed around 12:30 am. I fell asleep watching Hancock, which I finished today, definitely worth a watch, but that's another story. Anyway, around 4am I awoke to the horrible screeching of the smoke detector going off in the house. Because of my headache coma, I didn't really comprehend the implications of this, and tried once or twice to just ignore it, then fell back asleep immediately after it stopped.

Well. I woke up this morning pre-work and walked out into the living room, looked off to the right, and saw the remnants of The Boyfriend's computer sitting on the breakfast table. At first I thought the light was playing tricks on me, but upon closer inspection I saw that the screen was indeed missing huge chunks of glass, and what remained was cracked in countless places. I feared there was only one real explanation for this. My aforementioned poker deviant roommate is notorious for being both boisterous and incredibly dangerous when he's adequatedly intoxicated. It's not that he means to break things; he's just huge. He's like 6'4" and of medium build, and he's very physically expressive. Anyway, it worried me, because he and The Boyfriend, although they've been friends for years, have a long-standing history of getting into nonsensical, roundabout fights that usually leave The Boyfriend stinging. I feared this would be the last straw in what seemed to be an increasingly strained relationship.

I should pause and explain a little further. The Boyfriend is my roommate and, obviously, boyfriend. He's a producer for a local hip-hop group which happens to include my card-shark roommate, who we'll call Hip Hop. (Everyone else does...) The Boyfriend is about 5'9" and small-framed, which wouldn't be so small if both of his male roommates weren't towering giants. Besides Hip Hop, there's another boy we'll call Snake, who's about the same size as Hip Hop. Needless to say, The Boyfriend winds up on the receiving end of a lot of crap from these two. Hip Hop is loud and obnoxious, the self-proclaimed asshole, who prides himself on the ability to make other people uncomfortable by saying things that don't need to be said. He's also smart and hilariously funny, with a quick wit and a keen observation that shows up in a lot of his rhymes. He loves to argue but hates to be wrong. He'll shout over people and make insane points just to end up with the last word in any discussion. Most people who know Hip Hop just avoid the confrontation with him, or at least drop it on their part, but The Boyfriend, for some reason, just can't let it go when Hip Hop starts in. As a result, The Boyfriend usually ends up insulted and down a peg or two, and where Hip Hop forgets the argument immediately and moves on, The Boyfriend has Anger Storage.

So the tension in our house this morning was understandably thick. I've never been so happy to go to work. I think I left at 11:05 for a shift that didn't start until 12. I came home to find both of them asleep on different couches with the Philadelphia game on. Maybe they won't wake up til I go to bed.