Living with Francis.

When I first moved out of my parents house I moved into a friends house, with my friend. It was owned by him, a little three bedroom house on the side of a busy little street. At first it was just him and I, but eventually our other friend, Matt moved in with us. Let me say up front that I could have been one of the worst roommates/tenets ever, well second ever right behind Matt. I did try to maintain a friendship, a good tenet status, and still have a good time finally being on my own. I failed. Most of my mistakes fell back on Francis. Because of that we would always hate each other for a day because I wanted to party, and he wanted to maintain the house to eventually sell it. We would always come back around to be best friends, with everything behind us and our bikes under us.

One winter, in that house, Matt and I were always home, while Francis was usually busy and rarely home. Matt and I, against Francis' will, kept turning the heater up while he was gone. Once Francis had found out that we were turning the heater up he again, advised us not to because the heater could burn out. Matt and I only got trickier, or so we thought. We would turn it up if we were home, and when we left always remember to turn it down. Well, as you can guess, one day the heater broke. As you can understandably agree, Francis made Matt and I deal with the consequences of that freezing house for a few days while he was gone. I will always remember cuddling up in a cold, hard blanket those few days. I will remember completely loathing showering those days with out a heater because stepping out of a hot shower into an unheated house during the winter was worse than miserable. These lessons learned would obviously only last till the heater was fixed, which it eventually was. Francis knew that Matt and I needed something to continually remind us to never touch that heater again, unless supervised by him.

One day, both Matt and I came home to a large cardboard poster of a charcoal drawing of a girl. It was a huge piece of art hung right next to the door. The newly hung piece stood out in our undecorated house. The girl had long black hair, no face and was nude. Covering her breasts was the broken circuit board of the heater. In a word bubble next to her, she informed the both of us, "I love the way you turn me down."