Going anon since I’d rather the person in question, not be able to easily locate me online.

Set the wayback machine to 1999, when I was in my early 20’s and living with my boyfriend in a small 1 bedroom apt, and a mutual friend of ours, lets call him “Mike” got a job in town at a pizzeria and needed a place to crash for a while since he was living with his parents a good hourish drive away from his job.

We decided to let him crash on our couch for a few months and share meals, etc in return for $50 bucks a week to cover expenses while he saves up for an apt. He was fine with it, and paid $200 the end of the first month and restocks the fridge with more 20oz bottles of mt dew. (He was a real soda junkie, more on that later.)

The end of second month end comes around and he doesn’t come home from work that night like he always had. No phone calls or anything just, no Mike. Okay no biggie, we figure he maybe hit it off with someone and scored a hot date, so rock on?

He comes home around 2am that morning drunk, and explains he “ran into a friend and wound up going to titty bar, and spent his rent money and the cash he was saving up for an apt on a lap dance and strippers, ”but it’s all good cause I brought you back some beers!” And hands us two piss warm Heineken bottles and staggers off the living room to go to sleep.

Not cool. not by a long shot, we speak to him the next morning about it and he’s indignant, goes into a rant about he “earned his night of fun and we’re just butt hurt he didn’t invite us and refuses to pay the rent he owes. (Um… Why would either of us want to go to a titty bar with him? I’m not real interested in seeing other naked gals, and my boyfriend is pretty into me.)

He gets nastier about it and doesn’t want to pay it back at all, even when we offer to let him repay it over the next month or so, and in the end we tell him he has until the end of the week to get his stuff and find somewhere else to stay and that’s where the story would end except…

A couple days later while cleaning we find an unopened bottle of southern comfort between the couch cushions and my boyfriend and I decide to help ourselves to it since we’re clearly never seeing the $200 in rent he owes us.

So we hit the bottle that afternoon, (plus the beers he gave us that other night) and get pretty well hammered. My boyfriend decides he’s too drunk to walk to the bathroom and instead pisses in one of Mikes empty soda bottles he’s left on the coffee table.

We manage to make our way to the bedroom, have some drunken fun and pass out, waking up that evening when Mike comes home and is asking where supper is. we try hide our hang overs and claim we laid down for a nap and over slept.

He “generously” offers to order a pizza from his work place and “you both can just pay me later.” (pay you when you owe us $200?) My boyfriend and me just sigh and roll our eyes and exchange a look. Hey, free pizza is free pizza, we’ll just deduct it from the money he owes us. He sits on the couch, picks up the phone and orders the pizza, afterward he grabs the Mt Dew bottle off the coffee table and just swigs it back without a second thought.

Time freezes. His eyes do this sort of twitch, like that cat in Bill and Opus, as he stares at the now half empty bottle in his hand and begins doing mental calculations to explain the discrepancy between what his tongue is informing him, and what his brain is expecting when it comes to the contents of his favorite beverage bottle.

My boyfriend and me are just standing there trying not to laugh as Mike manages to gasp out “That’s not my soda!” With this look of growing horror as he sniffs the bottle. My boyfriend (still pissed off at him for the previous night.) Just gives him a sly little grin and says. “Yeah, I recycled those beers you brought us and put’em back in a bottle for ya, didn’t seem right not to let you enjoy them too since you thought they were worth two hundred bucks.”

Mike looks at the bottle a second time, then up at my boyfriend, who just grins again, as if daring him to try something. (Mike was kind of scrawny compared to my boyfriend who worked out pretty often.) Mike gagged a bit, packed his things into his duffel bag and walked out without another word while I tried not to laugh and resisted the urge to remind him to take the rest of his “soda” with him when he left.

Which is where the story ends, since we haven’t seen, nor heard from Micheal piss drinker in over 20 years now. (And yes, we called back the pizza place right after he left to cancel the order, given he worked there and we figured he’d hurried off to do something nasty to the pizza as pay back.)