Philladelpussy

Okay, graduation has long since ended and the partying….well it certainly has not but what can you do?

Aside from the general debauchery that is Savanarchy, a lot in my life has changed drastically and extremely rapidly. It all started with a planned trip to go visit my friend (and whom I thought was the love of my life) Codee. As I am not one for gossip and shit talking I will avoid the gruesome details aside from the ones that really play a role in said changed life.

We (Vic and I) get to 1314 S. 16th Street on the 19th of June, just in time to see Steveo’s, Codee’s roommate, band play at this warehouse called the Ox. Their band is called The Holy Mess, and they are actually pretty good. Aside from the space being brutally hot, I had a really fun time. I even had a good laugh when drunken Steveo smashed a few fluorescent light bulbs down in the basement, for which he got a response of “Oh. You’re in a band, I can dig it.” That was until our friend John Murphy followed suit and they kicked him out. (He’s not in a band. Go figure).

Anyways, my first impression of Codee’s new roommates was pretty good. They seemed down to party but entirely intelligent people too. Wild and crazy, but respectful. My kind of people, right?

Wrong.

As it turns out, they’re all a bunch of hipster pricks with crazy double standards. I’ve never heard so much talk about how they’re all about punk rock and helping others and then when our really good friend Eric shows up with his dog and simply asks to just sleep in the back yard he gets thrown to the streets and ends up sleeping in the woods for the entire week we are there.

Good ole Sara showed up too, and of course she can stay cause she’s the coolest cat in the world and maybe also because she’s a girl.

So Vic and Eric are sleeping in the woods. Sara and I are sleeping at Codee’s. Although it was stupid and didn’t make much sense, we were still having a good time. We all hung out during the day and when it was time for bed we split ways.

Until one day while Codee was at work and told me it was cool for us to just hang out at the house for a little bit. All of a sudden Steveo tramples downstairs and completely ignores all of our attempts to make jovial conversation. No more than two minutes after he returns to his room, I get a text message from Codee telling me that we all have to leave. That we can’t be there unless he’s there. And that We never had permission to hang out in the first place. All this after we had cooked two vegan meals, swept the whole house, did the dishes about 6 times, mopped the floors, cleaned the back yard completely, and gathered all the trash and beer cans.

Okaaaaay.

Given that we were guests we just decided to go ahead and leave. No need to start a ruckus. We had plenty of places around town to go cool our jets – and so we did. But as soon as Codee got off work I was expected to leave with him, ditch my friends, and do whatever I was told. This put me in an awfully awkward situation. Though Eric, Vic, and Sara were straight up cool about it, I still felt like a pretty shitty person leaving them there.

Upon getting back to the house, Codee and Steveo start talking about how Eric is a scumfuck and Vic is just some hipster poser punk that wants to ride trains. (Given that Codee rode trains for three years and is now “retired” and is “too old for that now” and “all I want to do is sit in the back of shows and watch”….which is fine with me, I don’t care what he does. But to pass judgment on people whom he hardly knows really annoyed me. Especially people like Eric who is a veteran, and Vic for whom the only reason Codee is a jerk to him is because we were in a relationship).

Anyways, I let that one slide because I was pretty drunk and honestly didn’t want to get kicked out myself.

So a few days pass, and it’s our last night in town. We had dropped off Sara at the Greyhound earlier that day so that she could go meet some other friends and find Gabe. Eric and Vic are already back in the woods camping out. Codee and I go to this sweet bar called 12 Steps Down where they have $1 PBR pints all day long and to hang out with the roommates. All is well and were having fun. As it starts getting late, Codee and I decide to go home ahead of everyone else so we can have some downtime and say some goodbyes excpet on the way home Codee starts talking trash about Eric and Vic again.

At this point I really didn’t care anymore. Codee, the guy I thought I was so in love with, the guy for whom I wanted to move to Philly for (kinda, but I obviously have other, more important reasons), proved to me once again that he’s not the same person I fell in love with in Tallahassee. I was so upset that we were both crying and I told him I wanted to walk home separate from him. This was not okay for Codee – he started to chase me and yelled at me a lot. When I came across a few kids sitting on their stoop they asked if I needed help to which I replied “No thanks, I’m fine we’re just having an argument and I want to walk a different way from him.”

I managed to slip away from Codee. Only to receive a message from him stating that those dudes (even though they were girls) had beaten the crap out of him. Sorry as I was to hear it, I didn’t really believe it because the girls were really small and specifically understood that I was fine and that Codee was not trying to hurt me. So I found a park and called a few friends. Alec, my sister, Britt. All of whom made me feel a lot better and convinced me to just go back to the house and try to sort it out.

Well, I get to the house and realize I had been locked out. Peculiar. Steveo and his stupid SG girlfriend Rayna open the door and, as I watch Codee who appears to be unharmed scamper off to the backyard, say “You have 5 minutes to get your shit and get the fuck out of the house.”

It’s 2am by the way. And the only place I had to go was to Eric and Vics squat. So here’s me with my arms full of shit and my darling dog Layla traipsing across SE Philadelphia at 2am with no clue as to how anyone with any moral standards could kick a girl my size out of a house at that late hour. Not that I can’t fend for myself, but my arms were full and I had my dog. Goodness forbid that someone should have tried something, I would have been absolutely defenseless.

After about 1 1/2 hours of painstakingly slow walking I finally find Vic in Eric. Exhausted, crying, unsure of what the hell just happened, I tired to sleep with little success.

Th next day I realized I left a few things at Codee’s house. Some underwear, a t-shirt, Layla’s favorite toy, and my Holga camera. The Three of us decide that what had happened last night deserved some sort of explanation…apology….or maybe just a dual. When we got back to the house, Steveo refused to let us in and threatened to call the cops. Yeah, real punk rock. Mmhmm. In which case my reply was “That’s immature. But go ahead because you’re holding my belongings and are refusing to give them back. I’m sure the police will love to hear what you did to me last night.”

They let me in. Though the entire time I collected my things, I was consistently berated for how unpleasant we all were. That were were nothing but ungrateful scumfuck kids who had ‘no idea what punk rock really is’ and that we ‘better not show our face again, or else’.

Whatever. We left.But not without Eric yelling at them through locked doors to quit being pussy hipsters and fight him like a real man. All to the pleasure of the onlooking neighbors.

Anyways, of course no more than about 20 minutes later Codees comes out with his handy dandy cell phone and spends a good 3 hours telling me how I’m not punk rock because my father payed for my college education and as a graduation gift he agreed to pay my rent for a year. Try as I might explain that being ‘punk’ has nothing to do with how much money you have and how its about your attitude and willingness to make things better for yourself and others, I got the response of “you had better cancel your lease cause you’re done in south philly” nonsense and “to get out of his city.”

Now, I’m not a violent person at all. But Vic and Eric had just about had it at this point. So we decided to invite them, yet again, to man up and fight us. If they were so tough and so punk rock and owed the city then they shouldn’t have been so afraid to fight a couple of ‘scumfucks’.

They said they were on their way.

Two hours later?

“We’re too old for kiddie games.”

Right-o then.

So were leaving the city and I leave one last message for Codee telling him he’s lucky he’s so scared, just to be an ass because at this point I think I’m allowed. For which he tells me that he was at the park the whole time and gave the police our friend car make and plate numbers and told them we had drugs. Real nice. Real punk. Real grown up.

Of course the cops never stopped us. And of course Codee’s next plan of action was to call my best friend Shellie and tell her that I stole his stuff, broke his window, trashed his house, and told some kids that he tried to rape him thus getting his ass kicked.

Anyways, I guess at least he showed his true colors sooner than later, right? It especially reminded me of how much I love Vic and how Eric is probably the greatest guy I know.

I’ll be moving to Philly anyways come August and after Vic and Eric are done riding the high line I think Vic is going to come to Philly too. It’s going to be real rad and I’m really excited.

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On a side note – I’m now in Canada with my mom and sister at our cottage in Rideau Lake. I will surely post something on the happenings here with loads of photographs as soon as I can.

~ by elizabetham on July 3, 2010.