I met Billy Basement at a festival where he was playing with two different bands, which couldn't have been more night-and-day, musically.
One band was a sheer sonic-assault sort of metal supergroup, made up of fairly rough Billydelphia all-stars from various concurrent well-known punk and metal outfits; the other was a melodic, cello-and-piano driven group fronted by the adorably absentminded, heart-throbbingly tall-dark-and-handsome Billie Beautiful (yes, Billie - you know, Billies who are into other Billies), which was wildly popular in the artsy, alterna-hipster skinny-jeans Billie-friendly scene. By virtue of being a really talented musician, Billy Basement somehow bridged the gap between the two extremes.
On-stage with the metal band, playing to a headbanging crowd that was producing so much shoulder-to-shoulder sweat the walls were basically dripping with condensation, Billy Basement stood out because, despite the obvious genre-based expectations for dark-and-angry stage-persona, he was smiling. Like hugely smiling, projecting an unabashed grin for miles, just having a ball up there.
("No no, like moshpit-mad, not insane-mad.")
So I set the hook and we went out a few times, and then he invited me to his place for a cooked dinner. He did proactively prepare me for one quirk - he had a cat (errr, singledudewithcat reservations). He did not prepare me for the other - cacti.
OMFG cacti.
Outside, he had xeriscaped much of his front and back yard with chollas - the goddamn most aggressive, ill-tempered motherfucking plant in existence. I'm not kidding when I say, those evil shits are like the Bouncing Bettys of the succulent world. And inside his house, which he had purchased specifically because it featured an add-on sunroom, a veritable cactus coup had occurred.
The house was filled to the gills with cacti: short cacti, tall cacti, fat cacti, wispy cacti, feathered cacti, hook-spined cacti, cacti that looked like snakes-nests, cacti that looked, to me, like small turds in a cup only uglier - but all of them freaking cacti. Literally, in the sunroom, he had constructed a shelving system out of grates and 5-gallon buckets, which flanked all available window space and provided tiers of cactus storage (when just one plane of cacti is not enough!). He had a tripod and DSLR set up in there, in case he had to take pictures of one that flowered only one full-moon night out of every twelve years or whatever. He had special little cactus-sex paintbrushes he used to pollinate them, when they bloomed. Though for blog purposes, I'll stick with his nom de Billy, it should be stated for the record that in the real world, Punchin' Judy referred to him as Cactus Jack, a not-to-his-face nickname that proliferated like wildfire amongst my own inner-circle assholes.
(Imagery taken directly from Punchin' Judy's brain, exactly as pictured every time I talked about Billy Basement.)
Billy Basement was a very stand-up and worthwhile character in quite a few ways, into which I invested a couple years including some cohabitation-time to figure out, but here is the final, distilled ingredient list:
a) Obsessed with the Fibonacci sequence (hence the cacti).
b) Huge stoner. Huuuge.* (possibly hence item a)
c) Spent so, so much time in his basement, which was a full-on studio, composing, playing, recording, editing, mixing, mastering, and otherwise producing music (possibly hence item b)
d) Identity based on musicianship (obviously hence item c)
*(To his credit, he was also by far the most functional pothead I've ever met - well-employed in an actual career, super-responsible, not an idiot when high - in fact, I couldn't even really tell the difference, which was a good thing, since he was literally stoned for about 16 of every 24 hours.)
Billy Basement wasn't a bad dude, and we had a pretty good run. But in the end, things fell apart because I got tired of having every weekend from here to eternity pre-booked with band shit; because Billy Basement wasn't into much of anything physical and because of aforementioned pre-booked band shit, it was like pulling teeth to get him outside and/or out of the city with me; because Billy Basement sort of despised drinking and, for better or worse, that is one of my most favoritest hobbies (I was a bartender when we met, so not sure what else he expected there); and because - at least to-date - I'm a shitty girlfriend after right around a two year half-life, when boredom sets in. I don't mean the whole "from boredom springs whoredom" equation - but more like, "from boredom springs GodDAMN Susie why are you such a fucking bitch all the ti--HEY!! DID YOU GET RID OF ONE OF MY BLOSSFELDIA LILIPUTANA AGAIN? BECAUSE ANOTHER ONE IS MISSING FROM SHELF 11-B, SECTION H!!" (It was dead. Or at least it looked like it, which, as it turns out, doesn't indicate much for some of those turd-looking ones because Nature Fact: they go dormant and shrivel up for long stretches).
(Check the trash, Cactus Jack.)
So I called it, and we split.
It was a bummer in a few ways, not the least of which was that I was the one who had to physically move, since I had taken up residence in Cactopia. During most of the time we lived together, Billie Beautiful was our third roomie, too, and I immediately missed the awesomeness that was coming home from a shitty day at work and finding Billie Beautiful on the couch, two bowls of (low-fat, because superfit gay gymrat stereotype) ice cream already dished up, looking for a partner to marathon-watch the season of "Teen Mom" or "RuPaul's Drag Race" or "Honey Boo-Boo" or whatever rot he had queued up on Netflix. (If it's trash-TV completely devoid of any social value, Billie Beautiful is shamelessly all. Over. It.)
But the biggest downer of all was that I lost all access to Bomber, the cat, in the breakup. Yes, the cat.
I am a huge lifelong softie for dogs, but never really thought I would be very into, let alone fall nose-over-tail in love with, a cat. I mean, they shit in your house habitually. But this little dude was just constructed of one part run-to-greet-you-at-the-door, one part little-piggy-who-tried-to-snag-your-spoon-on-its-way-to-your-mouth, one part constant-vocal-conversation, one part purr-n-drool-n-rub-face-to-face-for-hours, one part stand-up-on-your-leg-and-ask-to-be-picked-up-like-a-toddler-on-the-regular, one part jump-on-your-back-if-you-bent-over-at-the-fridge-or-a-cupboard, and about a million parts just pure fucking love for everyone, and I missed him from the first night away.
(Man! I was in the middle of training him to do great things, too!)
***
While we lived together, I had to put one of my two beloved old dogs to sleep, and she was buried in Billy Basement's garden. A handful of months after I vacated, the full year mark since her death rolled around. Billy Basement and I were in loose touch still - not entirely friendly contact, but he had come to my new place to take my other still-living dog for a couple walks. So I fired off a text asking if I could come by sometime, just to be in the garden and, y'know, sit for a little bit. He told me he'd be at work, but I was welcome to just let myself in the back yard and do my thing.
I had kind of hoped Billie Beautiful might be home, but when I knocked, he wasn't around either. So I chatted with my old neighbors for a minute, then slipped into the back yard.
Sitting in the garden, even on a beautiful fall day, made me suddenly sad. Yes, there was the general ache of seeing my faithful longtime running buddy's grave. But beyond that, the garden itself, which Billy Basement and I had built up from scratch three summers ago, composted for, planted, tended, and which would have just been hitting a great third-season established-soil stride this summer, was in complete disrepair. The gate latch was nearly rusted shut. The raised boxes were splitting apart. Tall grass had taken over the walkways. Last fall's leaves, blown in over the winter, had never been removed. Weeds and neglect ruled over what used to be a riot of vegetables - the return on a huge investment of labor and love. And now, it was quiet, unvisited, full of ghosts. To get uncomfortably honest for a sec: it kind of completely knocked the wind out of me.
I might have unconsciously expanded the garden metaphor to all the time Billy Basement and I had spent together, and gotten nostalgic. I mean, I didn't then, and don't now, and never did for even one single post-breakup day regret actually ending things. But sitting among the ghosts in the garden, I was struck with a heavy sense of disappointment, faced with the tangible demonstration that those invested years would never be more than a fallow field, looking forward. Starting a garden, so to speak, is hard fucking work and it takes sustained effort to hit the full payoff.
I had to go. I pulled myself together, said my goodbyes to my girl, buried with her Frisbee under the unwatered skeleton of what had been her favorite-to-browse squash plant a year before, and headed out.
But I didn't get far, because coming through the backyard, I glanced at the big sunroom windows, and there, swimming in the standard sea of goddamned cactus, was Bomber. He was meowing at me from the other side of the glass. He was raising a paw at me. He was being his adorable loving self at me. The urge to pet him, to scoop him up and have his little kitty face in my face, to have his little kitty tooth poking me in the chin when he headbutted a little too aggressively, to just feel his fat kitty body rumbling my chest with a purr, was heartbreakingly. Fucking. Unstoppable.
And this is the part of the story where shit really starts to fall apart.
(And applicable second-degree criminal trespass statutes.)
- I used to live here.
- I'd broken myself into this house as a legit locked-out resident before, so what's the difference?
- I helped install that dog-door from the sunroom to the backyard.
- If Billie Beautiful had been home we'd have likely been sipping margaritas and catching up in the kitchen anyway.
- BOMBER WAS TELLING ME TO DO IT!
(Temporary-Insanity Susie swears, that troublemaking Bomber was even wearing a little hat, like so.)
Desperate measures, dudes. I forced the blocking panel out of the dog-door. I snaked myself through. Once inside, on hands and knees, I chased a suddenly-horrified Bomber down and hugged him and maybe cried a little and brushed him with the dog-brush I'd actually left behind for him when I packed up, because he loved it so much, and sat with him and come to think of it, now that he's no longer issuing questionably-legal instructions to me through the window, waitwhat holy shit what am I doing in Billy Basement's place? Did I seriously just commit a class 2 misdemeanor because I wanted to pet a cat?
Right then and there, with Bomber driving his face into my cheek and purring like an Evinrude outboard, it became crystal clear: everyone has at least one kinda hilarious, WTF? Crazy Ex story and, if he were to ever know what I'd done, I had just without a doubt become Billy Basement's.
Regaining sentience by the minute, I gave Bomber one last squeeze and a couple kitty treats, put the brush away, and shat myself hurriedly back out the dog door into the harsh light of reality, carefully replacing the panel behind me. It was all a little fuzzy, as soon as I was outside. No way, no way did that episode just happen! Right? I mean Jeezus Christ, Susie! I straightened up, got the eff out of the back yard, and drove away, never to return.
(No, I didn't let Bomber drive! Haha! That would be cray!)
That evening, literally as I was telling Billy Black-Ops the story (because who better to appreciate my covert maneuver skills than a highly-trained Green Beret, amirite?), a text came in from Billy Basement:
"Why did you enter my house?"
Whaaaaat? Heartstop. How the eff? Did I forget to clean the brush? Was the dog-door fucked up and I didn't realize it? Was there a go-pro set up somewhere filming me? (OK, if that was the case, I sincerely hope some day I can see the footage of me being awkwardly breech-birthed through the dog-door, because I guarantee it is pure. Comedy. Gold.) Did Bomber tell on me?!
I never responded, because just No. No no no no no. There is no coming back from that.
And we've never spoken since.
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