Too Close for Comfort

Things better change quick around the Coleman house or there's going to be a homicide or two. I'm throwing down the gauntlet by this weekend, someone and all their friends and family have to get out or I'm calling the cops. Not me, of course, I'm not getting out, I pay rent at the place. Every few months at least.

You might be able to guess from that my dad is back from Mexico. He didn't like the natives, he was worried about the crime, and couldn't drink the water. I told him, "Dad, you were in New Mexico. If you couldn't make it there how did you expect to last out in the real one?" But he just turned up his Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock and pretended he couldn't hear me.

Like mom, who's been staying with me even longer, I can tolerate dad. He's family. But he had to bring that dildo Freddie Mercury with him, and both of them are friends now with some bounty hunter named Icepick. The guy was all set to bust both of them and turn them over for the reward when dad and Freddie Mercury made him a member of the gang. Most people you couldn't pay to make a gangmember with my dad and that clod, but Icepick was more than willing to give up $60 for it. Someone even lower on the totem pole than Freddie Mercury is now an accomplice, that's good news.

What really pisses me off is they can't even give me the courtesy of asking or anything. They just show up and say they need a place to hide and move right in. I don't have an ammo room, dad, I can't store all your shit. You dicks are going to have to sleep on the floor.

No mention of when they're going to leave or anything. And don't bring it up to him, he gets all indignant and everything. The way he sees it, he put me up for 12 years, it's time for me to pay back the favor. It better not come to 12 years 'cause I'm not going to last that long. The idea of me even being 37 is severely unsettling.

At least there's always food around. Mom gets lazy when dad's in jail or out of the country or what, but as soon as he steps back into the place the oven goes on and the dishes come rolling out like it's the kitchen at KFC. I haven't eaten this well since rehab, but nothing can make it worth sharing a place with these morons. If I come home and find the rodeo on TV again when I was geared up to watch Gilmore Girls I'm going to show those guys a 101st way to kill a man.

Don't get me wrong: I love my dad, to the full extent the law requires. I don't want him to go to jail or anything, that even works against my intention of getting mom the hell out of my place. But this group package bullshit has got to stop. Freddie Mercury is always talking about knocking down a wall and annexing a neighbor's apartment, and if he does it I'll probably get kicked out. And Icepick has rigged my fridge with a detonation device so I can't even get any booze to make me forget they're here. All this will have to change soon or I'm going to do something I'll moderately regret.

I'm desperate enough at this point to ask my sister to take them in, but once I mentioned the problem once on the phone she changed her number. I might go down to her office at the law firm tomorrow and plead with her to take them off my hands, but I wouldn't be surprised if the whole law firm uprooted and changed addresses. She takes family emergencies pretty seriously, or avoiding them.

What does all this mean? It means I'm stuck with an apartment full of family and A-Team rejects until I find the tactful, forceful, "let's-not-do-anything-crazy-here-like-set-that-napalm-off" way out.

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