The Economist

When I moved into the apartment, everything was in Steve's name. The power, the cable, and the lease and just general monthly bills were all in his name. I did not have a problem with that because I would just give Steve a lump sum at the beginning of the month that would take care of my share of the bills. I would always give him cash because who writes checks any more? After a couple of months I noticed that if the amount was like $603.50, Steve would always insist on getting that fifty cents.

Whenever he needed me to pick up something at the store for him (I quickly became Steve's "shop at home" network. He stayed home and stayed drunk while I did the shopping) and the cost would be $10.75, I would just say, "Make it $10 and we will call it even." After about three months of him insisting on that extra fifty cents, I started insisting on the exact amount and I didn't care if it was three cents. My philosophy was "I am not going to quibble over something less than a dollar" because if fifty cents is going to break the bank at this point, I was in more financial trouble than I thought. Steve's philosophy was "I need my money badder than a hog needs slop" because every penny helped him remain drunk, unemployed, and at home. I always thought Steve should go into politics where he could put his budget plan to good use and start his own business program at Milwaukee's Best Ice University.

Steve The TV Repairman

I was Steve's roommate for about eleven months. When I first moved in, our mutual friend told me that Steve was a "functioning alcoholic." I did not know exactly what that meant but I eventually figured out that it meant you could not tell if he had drank one beer or one case of beer. He acted the same no matter how much he had to drink. There was no slurring of the words, no loud behavior, or any of that.

I had a job and Steve didn't. I worked with the public and the only human contact Steve had was with the cashier at the grocery store where he bought his beer and the clerk at the liquor store. I would come home at the end of the day and see Steve's drunk ass sitting there watching bad movies on the SyFy Network or Judge Judy and I would want to twist his head off like the cap on a Jack Daniel's bottle. I just wanted to go in my room, kick back and watch some TV, and just forget the day.

One of the things that I eventually picked up on when Steve had to much to drink was that he liked to follow me around the house and talk to me. One night he stood in the doorway of my room while I was trying to watch The Big Bang Theory and droned on endlessly about some bullshit. I turned up the volume on the TV. Steve talked louder. I turned up the volume some more. Steve started yelling at me. I turned the volume down during the next commercial and Steve told me, "Something is wrong with the volume control on your TV. It got pretty loud there for a few minutes. I was afraid you couldn't hear me." He offered to take a look at my TV. The poor drunk dumbass was clueless. For a brief moment, I thought about beating him with the remote control but I did not want to risk breaking the remote.

The Judge

Steve was always watching TV. If he was awake, the TV in the living room was on. One of his favorite things to watch was shows like Judge Judy and The People's Court. He watched these things for hours at a time and luckily for me, that is all one of the television on our cable network showed. I think Steve's biggest aspiration was to be on one of these shows. He may have even wanted to sue our landlord from one of the many face plants he did on the property. He was always blaming his bad feet but I am sure it was the lay of the land that made him dive face first into the driveway. I would have loved to have seen that episode. If you are going to dream in a drunken stupor then dream big. He was also always wanting me to watch these shows with him. I politely watched them a couple of times but I got tired of watching people present their "cases" to a retired judge who probably knew less about the law than I did. These shows have zero entertainment value for me. Steve was always theorizing about how he would present cases to the judge and I guess that is where his law degree from the Jack Daniels School of Law comes in handy.

I Feel The Spirit

My ex-roommate Steve had an uncle that had supposedly been in the mafia and then turned Baptist evangelist. His uncle was a combination of Joe Pesci in Goodfellas and Jim Bakker the televangelist gone wrong. I was lucky enough to be informed that Steve had an audio tape of one of his uncle's sermons that he insisted that I sit down and listen to. Steve insisted that I sit down and listen to this at least once a month until I pretty well knew the tape verbatim.

The first time Steve insisted that I listen to "the sermon from the mount" he said that "it would really put the spirit in me" and that listening to his uncle's tape "really motivated" him. Of course, when it came to Steve I had to wonder what it motivated him to do. Drink more? Be lazier? Watch more bad movies on the SyFy channel? Eat more "Drunken Man" dinners?

The first time I heard the time, I sat there and politely listened and I must say it did motivate me. It motivated me to barricade myself in my bedroom and put in ear protection so I wouldn't have to listen to it any more. About a month later history repeated itself and he wanted me to listen to it again. Let's just say there wasn't going to be a third time although Steve tried. I told him I had heard it before. Steve insisted that I hadn't. I gave Steve the Reader's Digest condensed version of the tape and Steve looked crushed that I had heard it before. He said he didn't remember me listening to it.

I told our friend about the tape and he confided in me "I have listened to that tape a thousand times." I guess I wasn't the only one that needed to "feel the spirit." Steve had the spirit coursing through his veins but it came in the form of Jack Daniels rather than the word of God.

The Drunken Man Dinners

My alcoholic ex-roommate lived off of Hungry Man Dinners and had at least one a day. I told my friend about this particular dining habit and he started referring to them as "drunken man dinners" and thus a cooking legend was born. Steve missed some serious endorsement opportunities.

The camera shows Steve in the kitchen taking a drunken man dinner out of the oven and starts his sales pitch. He staggers over to the dining room table and slurs "A drunken man dinner and a case of beer with a Jack Daniels chaser. Just like my Mom used to make." He then stumbles and face plants right into the mashed potatoes. These are the things that commercial legends are made of.

Steve had this toaster oven that he swore by and I made the mistake of opening it one time and it had about two years worth of crumbs and crud in it. I don't think he had cleaned it since the Clinton administration but since he was the master of the toaster oven and an expert on drunken man dinners, I thought maybe it added flavor. When I moved in, the microwave looked just as bad but since I used it, I cleaned it myself.

When Steve moved out, he cleaned out the freezer and I was shocked to see that I only had one item in the freezer- A box of toaster strudels. The rest of our space was taken up by drunken man dinners and other toaster oven meals that only a drunken man could see as gourmet cooking at it's finest. I now have a craving for a drunken man dinner but I am out of alcohol.

The Face Plant

I see videos all the time on Youtube and on other video sites of people face planting. Face planting is the art of falling down and not being able to brace yourself for impact and your face is the first thing that hits the ground. It can be quite comical for the viewer and a little painful and embarrassing for the face planter. It has probably happened to all of us at one point and time.

Steve turned face planting into an art form. It was almost like watching a Three Stooges short or a Charlie Chaplin movie. He fell off the porch, he fell while being on flat ground, he fell down the mountain, he fell in the house, he fell in the neighbor's yard. Steve stood a chance of face planting wherever he happened to be standing. According to Steve, alcohol was never the problem. It was always his feet. He never quite connected the dots. His feet didn't work because of the alcohol.

One of my favorite Steve face plants had to be Memorial Day of 2015. He was having people over to the house because he was having a cookout. To say he was "three sheets to the wind" by the time they got here is an insult to the phrase three sheets to the wind. Everyone was playing lawn darts and Steve was sitting in a chair watching everyone play and then he decided to get into the game. I am standing back watching all of this and thinking "Now there is a good idea." Steve tried to get up and it is hard to describe what happened next but I will try.

When Steve stood up, he couldn't quite get his feet under him and he looked like he was doing a cross between the Funky Chicken and the Electric Slide. He staggered across the yard doing his hybrid dance and I was watching him the whole time. As he tried to gather his feet under him he started picking up speed and his body was well out in front of his feet. I knew he was going down. He did this little dance for about twenty feet and then it was face first into the gravel driveway. He didn't even brace himself for the impact. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cheer his athletic prowess or to be worried about his safety. He did not feel a thing. He swore up and down the next day that he did not have a drop to drink.

I was telling our friend about it later on that week and because Steve's drinking exploits were already stuff of legend, I asked my friend "How much would Steve have to drink to face plant like that?" His answer was, "Enough to float a battleship." I don't think Steve is quite ready for Dancing with the Stars but I can see a new dance craze sweeping the land.

Steve The Dog Walker

Another one of the hats Steve wore around the house was dog walker. Unfortunately the dog being walked was my dog Molly. After Steve's dog got tragically killed, I gave him more leeway with Molly than I ordinarily would have. I was afraid that Steve would let something happen to Molly in his highly inebriated state or maybe even fall on her doing one of his "face plants." I did make it clear that if something happened to Molly under his watch I would shove a Jack Daniel's bottle right up his ass without the benefit of getting to drink it first.

Steve staggered all over the neighborhood with Molly in tow. He took her to the neighbor's house, down to the mailbox, down to the creek, and they pretty much staggered all over the neighborhood. For whatever reason, Molly liked the booze hound Steve. Every once in a while she had to snap at him as a means of telling him he stepped over a line. As Charlie Murphy once said, "He was a habitual line stepper." I think she felt a compassion for him. When he moved out about three months ago, Molly went into a deep depression for a couple of weeks. She even started sleeping in Steve's closet. I can only imagine what their walks were like but at the end of the day, Molly was always waiting at home for me and that is all I could hope for. It was probably more of a scenario where Molly helped Steve find his way home or when Steve was really sauced, she acted as his seeing eye dog.

Tittyous

Every once in a while, the woman whi is my girlfriend "invents" a new word that I should probably enter into the Urban Dictionary. Yesterday's word was "tittyous". She was attempting to say the word "tedious" but it came out "tittyous." I immediately thought of what context that word could be used in the English language. I think it could be used as an adjective or an adverb and the definition could be "Acting like or in the process of being a titty," with titty being defined as sometimes looking good but for the most part useless." A friend of mine's father used to tell my friend when he complained about doing his chores, my friend's father would say "C'mon, Gene, don't be a titty!" So don't be tittyous in your actions and first and foremost, don't be a titty.

Steve The Exterior Decorator

Steve wore many hats during his time as my roommate and one Saturday morning he thought he would try his hand at "exterior" decorating. I remember one of the Cheers story lines for a short while had Norm Peterson as an interior decorator. He had a flair for interior decorating but he had to act gay in order to attract clientele. Steve didn't have to act drunk because he really was drunk.

I got up this particular Saturday morning and I look out of my living room window and Steve is in the front yard messing around with the lawn furniture. I had two plastic lawn chairs and a table that I had bought on the cheap at Wal~Mart. Steve would move one of the lawn chairs over a couple of feet under a tree and stand back and study the chair intently for a couple of minutes and then he would study the chair at a different angle. He would then position the other lawn chair with it and then the table in between the two. He would adjust them a couple of inches one way or another and then study the set from all angles. It looked like he was getting ready for a tea party but I am sure his brand of tea would have been a special blend of iced tea from Long Island.

When he was finished with his "work" he stood back with a look of pride on his face. I stood at the window watching this the entire time until I could finally stand it no more. I knew better than to ask but I had to find out what the hell he was doing. I leashed my dog Molly and walked outside and casually asked what he was doing.

"I am rearranging the lawn furniture. The creative juices are really flowing today. It looks good, doesn't it? " I don't think it was so much the creative juices as it was the cheap Canadian whiskey he drank.

The sad part was is that Steve was serious. I complemented him on his expert placement of the lawn furniture and I said "Steve, you are a goddamn genius!" In his state of constant inebriation, Steve completely missed the sarcasm. He thought I was serious. I went on to tell him that he had staggered, I mean stumbled, into a new career path, "Steve the Drunk Interior and Exterior Decorator."

Barbecuing Steve Style

Steve's drunk ass was always wanting to barbecue and I know if I heard the phrase "jerk marinade" one more time, I was going to shove a grilling fork in his ass. One day he staggers into the kitchen and offers to grill us some hamburgers. He didn't want to grill me just a hamburger, he wanted to make it his way. He gets the hamburgers out and soaks them in tabasco sauce and barbecue sauce and when I objected to this torturous treatment of the hamburgers, he said after they were grilled, I would not even be able to taste it.

He went out to the grill and came back in about 15 minutes later and I could smell the tabasco sauce as soon as he walked in the door. I politely told him I was not eating that so he wolfed down both burgers and was telling me the entire time I did not know what I was missing. Yes, yes I did. Five minutes after he finished them, he was vomiting in the kitchen trash can. When I asked if the burgers were just as good coming back up as they were going down, he swore up and down that it was not the burgers. He went and passed out shortly after that. Maybe he should have had his own cooking show "Drunk Grilling With Steve." Justin Wilson stayed sauced on his Cajun cooking show but the difference is, Wilson could actually cook.

He Held On To That Cigarette

One of my first stories about Steve has to be the "cigarette incident." When I moved in, Steve told me he only smoked about three or four cigarettes a day and he probably should have amended that to three or four packs a day.

It was getting close to the winter time so Steve started going out back on the balcony to smoke. We had been roommates for about three months and by this time I had started shutting myself in my bedroom to get away from him and his stories. I was in my room about 7:30 one night and I heard something fall on the balcony and it shook the house. I came out of my room to see what it was. I see Steve through the back door laying on the balcony. I was afraid he had a heart attack or something. I tried opening the back door but from where he was laying he was blocking the door and I could not get it open.

I yelled through the door, "Steve! Are you OK?"

"I think I hurt my hip."

After several attempts to get out the back door and he wouldn't budge, I said, "Forget it. He'll get up when he gets up," and went back to my room.

I came to check on him about 15 minutes later and I finally managed to get out the door. He had fell in a pile of dry leaves with a lit cigarette and Steve AKA Boozo the Clown AKA Drunkenstein kept smoking the damn thing. That drunk dumbass could have burned the house down but he kept laying there smoking that cigarette until he had smoked all of it. He was proud of the fact that he had smoked the whole thing while he was laying there and thought it was quite the athletic feat worthy of ESPN's Sportscenter or the Drunk Hall of Fame.

I asked him what happened and his version was that a bench sitting on the balcony had flipped over on him when he sat down on it. The closer to the truth version is that his drunk ass went to sit down on it, missed the bench, and fell on his ass. The important thing to remember is that he held on to that cigarette and smoked all of it.

Thus The Story Begins

First of all, I recognize the fact that alcoholism is a disease. I consider it an infectious disease that affects everyone in the alcoholics life. The alcoholic does not realize that. It affected me, even as his roommate, more than I am willing to admit. I am trying to make light of a very serious, debilitating illness but I can only deal with serious issues with my sense of humor. It seems to be the only way I can process information and I deal with it the only way I know how.

My friend referred to Steve as a "functioning alcoholic." I was not exactly sure what that meant but I quickly learned the meaning. You could not tell how much Steve had to drink at any point during the day but if he got to where he was falling down drunk, he had drank enough to kill 99.9 percent of the human population. In the 10 1/2 months he was my roommate, I only saw him that way three times although he drank from the time he woke up until the time he went to bed.

Drunk And Drunker

I used to have an alcoholic roommate. Since I was an aspiring writer, he always wanted me to write his story. He thought his life was that fascinating. Outside of the fact that he was the only man on the planet that drank Milwaukee's Best Ice with a cheap Canadian whiskey chaser, and that I have never seen a man drink that much and still be functional and still be alive, his life was not that fascinating.

For reasons of anonymity I will call him "Steve." I was telling a mutual friend of ours Steve's delusions of grandeur and he met the story idea with the proper amount of skepticism. He asked me "What are you going to call it? Drunk and Drunker?" We both laughed at that but there is a ring of truth to it. Our friend asked me "How are you going to start it? 'Well, there was this one time I was drunk...' or 'I got drunk this one time and got my ass beat...'" We both laughed about it but as Steve and I continued to be roommates, I realized that he did have a fascinating story, just not one the Walter Mitty type of story that he envisioned. Steve was a legend in his own mind so Steve here is your wish, I am writing your story but it is from my perspective.