FUNNY STORY!

So on my way home from post work-work, and I give one of my best buddies a buzz... He answers?!?! This never, ever, ever happens... Always the machine.. For months we will leave messages on each others machines... Anyway, we go through the normal routine of catching up and apologizing for missing birthdays and congradulating one another for our accomplishments... blah, blah... I found out he is at school working late...

While we are talking, he walks out back into an empty part of the school and into the rearmost parking lot... This is where he used to live last year. This is one of the smartest people I know... He attends a prestigious architecture school in so Cal. But he did indeed live in the parking lot behind school...

Quick history; I've known him for years, I met him through a mutual friend, he moved in the next day! He has lived as far east as Massachusetts and as far west as Bumfuck, Alaska... He has lived with me off and on for six or seven years... Now hes in grad school in L.A.

He lived in between two shipping containers last year to save money. Uder a blue tarp. He lingered here in Big Sur too long and moved back on the first day of class. Leaving him no time to shop around for a house... His truck was already set up from weeks of traveling back from Alaska, so he just kind of set up camp at school and never really left. He had a bar-b-q and a chest of drawers, cabinets, a rug, couch, etc. You get the idea... All the comforts of home...

He became quick friends with the security there and they "watched my stuff" when he was away or whatever... Here it starts to get better... He would have people over to his place and have parties and shit... He even had some rudimentary hot water and electricity there! After party-parties and even a few hook ups! Bonfires and school events!

Somewhere in those months he met his present girlfriend, a young lady from Colombia... Three times as smart as her parents, who are published architects and presently in the U.S. under asylum status. I digress. Well she didn't really want to stay at his bachelor pad much, so he relented After the year eneded and summer abroad, he got himself an apartment next to the beach.(which in four months he has not ever even been to!)

Alright here is something.. So during our conversation he walks back out to this old secret spot to get some privacy and for whatever perverted memories he was trying to revisit... Only to find out it is now a popular hang out! Ashtrays and litter, more chairs and some one else is now quasi crashing there... Of course they don't have it as nice as he did, but it had that used sort of feeling.

My buddy is totally a.d.d and h.a.d.d. with some good old fashioned gentlemen built right in. One of the most generous guys I know! But spent the better part of the year, living in a parking lot to save money, it just didn't make any sense to him to get a place... He spends between twelve and eighteen hours a day at school, seven days a week... It would take him forty minutes to an hour to get to a house that he could afford to stay. Add the gas and bills that come with renting a place and it just didn't add up!

I can understand it! fucking guy lived in the bush in Alaska for months at a time, imagine all the amenities that this parking lot had over that!

Whatever, we thought it was interesting that now his old place is a gathering spot for a lot of other folks at his school... What do you think?