"Nothing I Ate Tasted Right."

We lived together in a house with three other people. It was just Palmer, who was a little older than us, and my college friend Cole. My friend Cole and I had just graduated from college. We had planned to live on our own, but we quickly learned that our salaries wouldn't allow us to do so. We met Palmer through a friend of a friend, and we were able to find a pretty cheap place to stay.

I don't think we ever really "got along" with Palmer. Though we liked everything about the guy, we still didn't know much about him after living with him for over a year. We quickly learned that Palmer didn't leave the house very often. That's what Cole called it: "agoraphobic." Palmer might go grocery shopping once a week or every two weeks, but he would never be gone for more than an hour. After the fact, some people have told me that having someone always around and in your face 24 hours a day, seven days a week while you're at home would have been a problem for them. But it wasn't really like that. Even though Palmer had problems, he never made them our problem. He was pretty polite about our space. Not only that, but he paid to live there, so he could stay inside as much as he wanted.

Since Palmer always paid his rent on time and kept his kitchen well-stocked, we thought he had a job. He could do it from his desk. What about computers? That's how little we knew about him. We had no idea what he did for a living.

Palmer was a weirdo. Cole had a word for this too, but I can't think of it now. Cole and I were both slobs…