This past PROMPTuesday, I wrote a little snippet about someone hiding under my bed. In the story, this person was an undesirable someone. A someone you’d most definitely NOT want to find lurking under your bed.

And it really happened.

A lot really happened those 12 years ago, stuff that I’m going to write about now. I’ve written about it before — in appeals to the police, my apartment manager, credit bureaus, but I’m hoping this time, the story loses its impact and immediacy. It’d be about time.

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In the Beginning….

I first saw him in a bar on Fairfax in West Hollywood. I’d just moved from Chicago and a vanilla relationship and I often painted the town, trying to shake out years of boredom with the wrong person. I stood at the bar, and nudged my friend when I made eye contact with a startingly blue-eyed tall man from across the way. Intensity burned in his gaze, a fire I now know was fueled by crazy, but at the time, he was different, alien to all I’d known in Chicago, and that was all I needed.

A few minutes later he made his way beside me and ordered a beer. I passed it to him from the bartender and he and I began to talk. I learned that he was an artist, wanted to make a movie called “Acirema,” (”America” spelled backwards), shot entirely in infrared, using dwarf actors. I know. But at the time, it sounded Lynchesque and brilliant and so L.A. that I went along for the ride.

We ended up at his place an hour later, a studio apartment just around the corner from the bar. My friend and her boyfriend were waiting for me, so I made my visit quick. Just enough time to check out his artwork and receive a multitude of stolen kisses. His apartment suffered under a coat of dark green paint, punctuated with the infinity symbol splotched across the walls, and even drawn on the windows. A single mattress lay on the floor and books wound their way in serpentine, double-helix patterns between strewn clothes and paint supplies. Large canvasses slanted against every wall, looking vaguely Pollock-like, with a dash of Picasso.

My creative heart nearly burst. Why, here there be books! Art! Weird symbols on the walls! What more did I need to know? Turns out there was quite a bit more, as you might guess. But that came later.

{{I’m sorry…but this must be continued…not on purpose…but I’ve got to wrangle me some peanut butter-wielding kids… I do want to publish what I have though, because if I don’t, I may never write it at all}}

Part II Here

Part III Here.