Memories, 2003-2005, Part 7

This post is part seven of a series about what happened to me after I graduated from college. Everything in my life went horribly wrong over the course of 2003-2005, and I’ve written a long story (or a short memoir) all about it. I think it typifies the challenges that face my generation that no one is really talking about, but it’s also a story about heartbreak. These posts will go up automatically every Sunday until the story is over. All names have been changed, and some situations have been changed slightly for the purposes of anonymity. Read parts one, two, three, four, five, and six.

Henry/Fall–Winter ‘04

Henry was older than me, Eric, and Jim, and he may have been older than Nick. He had grown up in foster homes, and while he said it was an ambition of his to become a full-fledged Buddhist monk, he could not give up sex or smoking pot. I took to him at first, because he was charming, open, and very giving, but later I discovered that he was a changeable, many-faced creature with a rotten core.

Henry and Nick had been friends for many years, and Henry had been married to someone whom Nick had apparently also been in love with, albeit from afar. (Nick told Eric I reminded him of that lady, and Henry actually agreed.) He was in the middle of relocating himself and his girlfriend/fiance Gretchen to New England, moving from Kansas (I think) for the better opportunities here. Henry had been staying with another friend who began to keep him under some kind of weird house arrest. When I learned how he was being treated, I asked Nick to welcome him into our house. He could stay in the basement until he found a place for himself and Gretchen, whose arrival was not yet imminent.

I trusted Henry initially, because he was warm and friendly seemed to have the joie de vivre that I admire so much in people. I am embarrassed to admit how much I shared with him, and how much I began to look forward to talking to him. I felt sorry for him having to live in our basement, which was entirely unfinished and not a pleasant place to be. But he said he was happy for the shelter. I knew that taking him in imperiled our lease agreement with our landlord, but I thought it would only be for a short time.

I was wrong. Henry was there to stay. After he had been with us for a few weeks, we learned that Gretchen, his girlfriend, was being practically imprisoned by her family in Kansas. She came from a strict religious upbringing, and not only did her family disapprove of her dating someone so much older than herself – she was only 19 and he in his thirties – who was such a free spirit, but they also didn’t want her moving out to New England with him, or going anywhere at all. The way Henry explained it to us was not unlike a kidnapping; her parents wouldn’t let her make phone calls or leave the house, and when she tried to flee, her father knocked her down in the street and dragged her back inside. Henry got a great deal of abuse from her family over the phone, and at one point he was ready to give up on her entirely, because, as he said to me, “no one is worth this.” I was sort of amazed that someone who cried when talking about the plight of Tibetan monks was going to abandon the person he said he wanted to marry when she was probably in the most desperate fix of her young life, and I tried to talk him out of it by explaining what she must be going through. He relented and eventually helped her escape from her family, and soon enough she showed up in our house. Henry had told me several times that he thought she and I would get along famously.

Gretchen was blond, pretty in a freckly-upturned-nose kind of way, and I thought her entirely bubbleheaded. She was one of those people who drips ethereal, who favors drapey clothing and patchouli oil, who commits acts of art on a daily basis, and while I had always had a sort of awkward awe around those people before (since I am nowhere close to ethereal), on Gretchen I just found it annoying. I wasn’t sure what the hell she thought she was getting herself into by arriving halfway across the country at 19 to move in with a man who’d almost dumped her over some nasty phone conversations with her father. And I had no idea why Henry had thought we had anything in common.

So now Gretchen and Henry were living in the basement, and as far as I understand, they were putting their heads together about how to get one of the bedrooms upstairs. Luckily they didn’t have to scheme for long, because it was shortly after Gretchen arrived that the year turned and Eric found out about Elia. (That story will be posted in a couple of weeks.) I was terrified of going home, and very rapidly, Henry and Nick decided that Eric was going to kick me out. I don’t remember Eric expressing a concrete preference one way or another about this issue. I think I remember him offering me a spot on the couch, but Nick and Henry were vehemently against this idea.

Nick’s part in this was protecting his friend. Plus, Nick and I had started to really dislike each other by then. Henry’s part in this, I think, was far more conniving; I know he wanted a bedroom upstairs for himself and Gretchen, and this I can excuse by saying he was doing what he could to provide for his lady. But I’m almost positive he also wanted control of the house, and this is inexcusable. By the time I was out of the house, I had realized that he was a petty misogynist, among other things, and I know that since I held the relationship with the landlords I held the unofficial key to the house. He could not bear that, I’d imagine, nor the fact that I’d invited him to shelter there in the first place when he was in a tough spot.

After I moved out, Eric moved into the basement and Henry and Gretchen moved into Eric’s and my old room. Some time later Jim moved out, because his alcoholism got out of hand and the way he acted around Gretchen caused Henry to throw him out, and Eric moved into that room. Nick moved out later in 2005, and Eric moved out before the end of the year as well. Henry and Gretchen broke up, and soon enough Henry and his power trip were alone in that house. In 2006, though, I got phone calls and bills from Yankee Gas and Connecticut Water, along with Cox Communications. These were utilities that had been in my name at Garden Street, none of which had been transferred after I was kicked out, as was promised. Apparently Henry and Gretchen had not paid these bills for most of 2005, a year in which I had never occupied the residence, and I owed the money nevertheless. (Eric had been told that the bills had been transferred and were being paid.) Wonderful people, those two.

Although I know from Eric that Henry was the primary force in making me unwelcome at Garden Street, every time I had to stop by for one reason or another he was very friendly to me. Eventually it became a house rule that I could no longer step inside unless Eric was with me or I was invited in by someone, but before that he was just as nice as could be. I responded by staring him down. He could fool me no longer.

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Read part 8.