Up On the Roof

You’ve got to know when to “cut and run.” I was living in an artist’s loft downtown, rehearsing the band there, but the place was getting destroyed by drunk roommates. It was leased to me, but when they lined up in solidarity, I grabbed a few things and ran. I signed the lease over to my drinking buddy, left the landlord a voicemail, and found a quiet apartment on the Hill, left empty by my gregarious sales pal who was away, working in Hong Kong. I wrote at the kitchen table, looking out at a small back garden with a stone path, winding its way into a grove of plants and bushes before disappearing. There was free laundry down in the basement, a student upstairs, and a cute, fun, flirty girl on the third floor, whom I’d met at gigs. But as I retrieved my remaining stuff from the loft, the scene got grimmer. One guy bought a pot-bellied pig, who ate the food left out by non-stop partiers. They cooked endless crockpot-stews, each day adding more meat or vegetables to it, but never starting the thing over.. My ex-buddy tried to rein it in, but with no luck. They partied so loudly at night that he bought a tent, and climbed a rusty fire escape, sleeping on an adjacent roof, boasting how he could cross the narrow ledge between the building and a lower roof, even when drunk. A few weeks later it all ended, on the morning news. A drunk woman had fallen, crossing the ledge, attempting to reach the tent, tumbling onto the lower roof, about 15 feet down. The firemen used a ladder to hoist her stretcher up and away from the buildings, her slowly-rotating, sedated body crossing the sharp-edged brick and iron cityscape, while a reporter mumbled she had suffered only a dislocated shoulder. I saw my drinking buddy directing the firemen, frantically waving his arms, dragging on his non-filter, sensing his empire in ruins. At a bar, the next week, another roommate sheepishly recounted how the landlord had sent three hard-nosed guys, a work crew “borrowed” from the prison, and a dumpster, to immediately empty the place out, and it was all gone within a few hours. I asked if any cops were there. He replied, “Oh, no.. they didn’t need ’em.”