Couch Surfin

And now, an actual monologue of the Wacko variety. Feel free to use it as your next audition piece.

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This post comes to you live from a friend's couch, transmitted from a mobile device. Got a long history of sleeping on couches that dates back to my first sleepovers. Then, it wasn't even a recliner I slept on; Twas the floor. See, my best friend had a large family in a small home so technically he didn't have a bed but a fine claim to the couch. And I would gladly accept the cushion he offered me as I dreamt on the imaginary bottom bunk next to him. I did this any time I would visit my father, not because I hated him, but because I felt a closeness to my friend I didn't see often enough. I even fought off roaches for this luxury. 

This standard of not sleeping in my own bed manifested itself in my college years, when by senior year I felt at home enough with my friends that instead of walking the mile back to my own dorm I'd simply crash on their uncomfortable blue sofa, occasionally forgoing a blanket. Years of stiff floorboard conditioning had done me well. Even once one of my friends graduated a semester early and his bed was free to claim, I refused to move in - not because I didn't want to, but because I enjoyed having two options to sleep and actively choosing the crappier option, unconsciously deciding to show my dedication to them. 

Then I graduated and found my own place. And I was working minimum wage. And I slept on the pillow pad of my roommate's lawn sofa in my own room. And this bothered me not, because I had trained for this and the cheap mattress I ordered was on its way. Except one month passed. Then another. And another. And another. Until it was the Super Bowl and I had my first post-college hookup and I didn't have a bed to fool around on and I never heard from him again. That's when I mustered up enough funds to buy another mattress. And this one arrived in a week, I was so overjoyed. It had a pillow top and everything. But then, two days later, the unimaginable happened. UPS must have finally figured out where I lived, because when I returned from work that night there was a box marked "From Walmart" and I immediately recognized it as the first mattress I was too much of a punk to trace or call about. 

It was then that I knew my days of couch surfing were over. You learn to appreciate your own bed when you buy two of them in less than a year. Not to say I won't still sleep over a friend's place. Obviously, I'm on one right now. Shit, I won't even bother to pull it out if it's one of those fancy 2-in-1 types. But never again will I purposely sleep for weeks on end on anyone else's sofa, loveseat, recliner, or carpeted floor when I have a fine ass Queen mattress in a big ass room in a big ass house to call my own.

Word.