OMG y'all, it has been a minute since I left off this series... almost seven years in fact.
Just before I made the decision to move to Florida, I moved in temporarily with my friend John C. and took over two of his vacant rooms of his vacant second floor apartment which, though many years in the past, it had been made into a separate apartment, he had reconverted the whole three story house to a single family, so the second floor still had a functioning kitchen. In fact, it may have been the only functioning kitchen in the house as his very old house, built before the Revolution, was quite dilapidated and though his wealthy father owned it (amongst many other real estate holdings), he let John live in it rent free (I would guess) since it would have been uninhabitable by state code otherwise.
I'd been friends with John for a few years at this point and when my finances went to shit in the mid nineties and I wasn't able to keep my Rosebank place, I stayed with John for dirt rate rent for three months or so. Before I'd moved in, I'd only ever visited John in his basement where he literally spent almost all his time since his computer setup was down there and that, the small amount of time I actually lived there and the amount of time since those days, well, I just about can't recall more than half of the details of what shit looked like. But here's an attempt nevertheless.
I had to lose the waterbed as its frame wouldn't even fit through the door and John wasn't too keen on a waterbed on the second floor of a three hundred year old house anyway. He had a platform twin bed and mattress I used and it was actually pretty comfortable. I bought paint and curtains and a fish tank and... wait a minute, didn't I say I was broke? Well one must have interior decor funds, darling. LOL! (In a few months though, I wouldn't even have money for that.) I decked out my rooms nicely and John was honestly amazed. And I was puzzled at his amazement. Doth he not know the powers of the Bougie Decorator Homo Gene? John was an odd duck when it came to your usual gay man. He just didn't have any of the usual tropes. No fashion sense, no flare for the dramatic, no love of musical theater, and not a hint of interior design.
Like the above depiction, everything below is a very rough approximation. Beyond the limitations of my pitiful almost-vanilla Sims 4 (I've bought only a dribble of DLCs, I refuse to pay EA their ransom) and its atrocious lack of options to use in recreating anything real, there's the aforementioned vast number of years that have gone by and, as in the case of my next two "hangouts," like John's Duke St. house, I just wasn't there long enough to leave a lasting impression. Lake Fountain Drive lasted all of maybe four months before I ended up breaking the lease and Northlake Blvd. was just about five months.
Notice the Spartan furnishings of Lake Fountain Dr. Cheap bed from a factory outlet store in Orlando, the fold-up computer/drawing desk, the computer, the TV and I think one of the wicker chairs... that's it. Not even a majority of my clothes. All left to John. My Geo Metro was my transport to Florida and I only had so much room. I was planning on buying all new shit to go with my new Florida life. But, well, Corona Summer happened. And I met Justin. And I got reminded that telemarketing in paradise is even harder to do than in "not-paradise" 'cause "it's just too damn nice to work in a shitty office at a shitty job." Ah well...
And here was where I escaped to, with Justin helping me move. And the winds on I-4 not helping with my mattress on the back of his roommate's pickup truck. I let my imagination run wild with the decor here what with all the bougie shit in the common rooms and Steve's (the owner's?) bedroom. But I'm reminded that as I show in this illustration, the furniture was actually a bit on the pricey side since Steve did work as a furniture salesman for Montgomery Ward so he got it at an employee discount but I remember that the walls, the rugs, the appliances... they were all cheap and dated as fuck. So that's why I put a question mark on "owner." I don't think Steve was the owner after all, even though I think he told us he was. I mean he collected our rents (me and the revolving door roommates taking the other bedroom). Probably was his elderly aunt or something or other. I mean, I think Steve was in his fifties himself back then. I'd be damned surprised if he were still alive today what with all the whoring around he did with all the gay trade of crack Altamonte. (Altamonte wasn't quite the tawny place it is now back then.) Huh. It figures. I guess I did wonder back then how he could afford to own a condo when he was always broke just like "his tenants."
