There are two man-children living in my house. The first one is my fault, he is my brother, and after several tragic events in our lives, I take pity on him and try my best to ensure he sticks around for the rest of our family, and myself of course. The other, is getting on my last nerve. He is a long time acquaintance. I can’t say that we have ever been really good friends but due to my many defense mechanisms, I can’t say I have many real friends these days. This post is going to be about that one, his name is Harley. It is actually James but he goes by a nickname or his middle name, I am not even sure – but that alone is slightly shady if you ask me.

He finds himself in the strangest predicaments and I don’t think his attitude towards life helps him much. He needed a place to stay last January because his polyamory relationship with a married couple, that he was living with started to decline quickly. I can only imagine he started acting like he ran the place without paying for a thing, but that’s just an educated guess – I really have no idea what the issue was.

We met back in 2001, when I was working at a Subway in a gas station in NB and he was working at the Hastings. The population of NB was just under 40K back then and there were far less options when it came to shopping. He ate at that Subway and I shopped at Hastings so much, we became friends.

He and I didn’t really keep in touch but ran into each other from time to time. He was living in my neighborhood, next door to a friend many years later and we ran into each other again. Now that Social Media was prevalent, we kept in touch.

Fast forward several years to where he is now my resident couch boy. He was doing the dishes and mopping the floors incessantly, but something changed that and he stopped abruptly. He has been asking me for money nearly daily for vape juice, coils and kratom but I finally put my foot down when I accidentally bounced a rent payment because so may people were “borrowing” money from me, I couldn’t even keep up anymore. I was fortunate to have the needed money in uncashed checks, but my broke as friends were starting to take advantage of me.

He hasn’t asked me for money since, but whenever I say something, he argues. This guy is a self proclaimed feminist, so I badly want to call him out when he mansplains why it is okay for him to smoke his vaporizer in my closet next to hand-made 30 year old dresses that my grandmother made me that I do not plan to ever wash again. My take on that is, if you are in my house for free, have your office set up in my closet and vape constantly to the point where all of my clothes smell now and I ask you to stop, you should just fucking stop, even if you are the scientist behind vape juice and know that it ‘disappears’ and leaves behind no residue.. I don’t want to hear about it, I want you to listen.

I may have an inferiority complex, I may be controlling – but I am not a charity that is obligated to care for disrespectful men that feel they are better than everyone else but can’t even support themselves.

He used to donate plasma for his income but since my subsidies were cut off, he got a job at AJs BBQ. He owes me quite a bit of money since he claimed he was borrowing those daily $30 transactions but I have not seen a dollar yet. He doesn’t buy food for the house. He doesn’t share and no longer cleans. I hate to break it to him but he is not here so I can check out his fine midget body. Pardon my unruly attitude but he better start doing something to make himself useful.

Today the argument was because at 3 PM I turned some faint lights on in my living room so that I could walk through there without tripping. He had the audacity to ask me if he could turn them off and when I said no and explained I want to be able to walk through my house without tripping he tried to explain to me that I am never in there – I had to bit my tongue not to be more rude. The reason I am never in there is because its pitch black and full of all of his shit. I feel like I am losing control over my house and this type of thing just stresses me out.