www.chrisdriggers.com

Like I was saying in my earlier post, when I first moved to Athens, I lived with my Dad and Fat Janet. I slept on a couch with no room of my own the entire time I was there. Let me tell you that I have a great appreciation for my new house and furniture. It was a fucked up situation.

The apartment we all lived in was at the top of the hill on North Ave on Berlin St, right across from the Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall. It was a 2b2b with a living room. Dad had his own bedroom. He kept the door shut at all times because there were two cats who also lived there who liked to sneak into his room and hide. Fat Janet had her own bedroom where her fully functional hospital bed took up most of the room. The living room had a couch which was covered in cat scratches. This was my bed. Also in the room was a big comfy chair. This was Fat Janet’s. There were two desks with phones that made up the office. This is where Janet would sit each night and make her telemarketing calls. In the kitchen was the dining table. This is where my computer was. Dad also used it for his desk once a week when he did the books for the business.

We had two cats. One was named Cat. She was a pitch black bitch straight from the bowels of hell, which explains why my Dad liked her so much. When he was in Atlanta living with Al and Janet in a motel, Dad would feed Cat scraps of fast food. She lived in the woods behind the motel and was obviously feral. One day she came into the room and decided to stay. I found out very quickly that Cat made the fucking rules and if you didn’t follow them, you would get fucked up. You didn’t pet Cat. She would make it clear when she wanted some affection. If you dared to touch her, you only did so on her upper back, never her sides, stomach, or head. If you veered off course, BAM. Cat Scratch Fever.

One time I was laying on the couch and Cat sat on my stomach and fell asleep. I was trapped. You didn’t pick Cat up, unless you wanted a divorce from your fingers. So I sat there for hours until someone in the apartment above ours dropped their refrigerator (or something really damn heavy) and Cat hit the ceiling. She left deep scars on my chest that are quite visible today. Dad wouldn’t go near her to cut her claws, so they just grew. When they were retracted they stuck out half an inch.

The other cat’s name was Booty. She was the complete opposite of Cat in every way. She was very affectionate and in a perpetual good mood. Nothing seemed to perturb her, even Cat.

We also had a dog. A Rottweiler named Annie. She was great, even though Cat bullied her on a regular basis. These animals helped give me some perspective while I was living there. They didn’t give a rat’s ass about anything. They just lived life from minute to minute.

So anyway, we had a packed house. And my personal space was whatever was on my body. I was my own room. If you know me personally, you probably know I’m one of the most intolerant non smokers alive. Maybe you’ve ever wondered just why that is? Well, my dad was a smoker. He smoked at least 3 packs a day. I already didn’t like smoke before I moved in with him thanks to my Mom smoking also. But when I don’t have any personal space to speak of, and I’m laying on my couch bed thinking ‘this can’t suck any worse’….then Dad lights up a Doral. With every breath I take I breathe in the smoke, which has come represent everything I hate about my life. Everything in that apartment was covered with a brown film from the smoke. If you took a picture off the wall, there would be a stark white square surrounded by nicotine. I could feel the molecules blanketing me, infiltrating my nostrils and poisoning me. And there was nowhere I could go to escape it. That my friends, is why I’m so sensitive to the smell of smoke, and why a smoker’s natural selfishness reminds me so much of my dad, who was perhaps the most self centered person I’ll ever know.

I was constantly fighting that sense of claustrophobia. It was made worse by living in the same house as Fat Janet. She would sit in her chair and listen for anything you might say, so that she could tell everyone else. This is how she communicated with others. No originality. Only parroting back what others had said. Every time she would tell Dad “Chris said such and such” I would tense up a little inside. I didn’t really notice but I’d become very tightly wound while I was living there. If anyone ever needed some personal space it was me. But there was none.

You might be asking yourself why the fuck I lived in this hell hole? If it hadn’t been for my presence, Dad would have killed himself. He would have begun drinking again, and then it would have been over. I kept him focused on going to his AA meetings, and I helped him deal with Fat Janet. It was the reason I’d come. I had a strong sense of duty, and that’s what kept me there.

Dad mostly stayed in his room and read his many many paperback books. I was left out in the living room, so I had to interact with Fat Janet. I began to take an interest in trying to figure out exactly what the hell was wrong with her. She was not a regular person in any way. She looked different and behaved different than anyone else I’d ever even heard of.

She was fat OK. I know it’s mean to call someone Fat Janet. My brother made up that name, but damn it! It fits her so well! She was very short and very very fat. She lived for food. In fact, food is the only thing she would talk about with any semblance of originality. Everything else was “Chris said this” or “Bob said that”, but when it came to food shows on tv, or recipes, or anything like that, she’d talk your damn ear off. She loved food and she ate a lot of it. Dad finally had to put her on a diet. But it didn’t work.

Every night at about midnight, after Dad was asleep in his room and I’d turned off all the lights, I’d be lying on the couch with Cat, thinking about how fucked up my life was. Then I’d hear the creaking and grunting of Janet trying to get her fat ass out of that hospital bed. Then I’d hear the sound of fat legs swishing against each other and breath shooting through two flat nostrils. She’d lumber around the corner and make a beeline for the fridge, trying to be quiet. I’d lay there pretending to be asleep, wishing I was asleep for God’s sake. She’d open the door and that light would hit her. I’d be watching from under my eyelids as she’d take the jug of milk out and just chug a lug. And my Dad didn’t believe in that pansy ass 2 percent shit. it was whole milk. Vitamin D baby. it would be running down the sides of her mouth. Let me tell you that the sound of a fat woman with no teeth sucking milk out of a gallon jug is just horrible, the stuff of nightmares. And the next day when I look at her legs and see rippling wiggling stalactites of cellulite and fat hanging there, I think about milk fat and how many pounds of it are encasing this woman.

I started buying my own carton of low fat milk. I knew no one would touch it but me.