The journey to the door of my first apartment was very much that: a journey. I'd packed up way too much stuff in all of the wrong box sizes and freighted my possessions via U Haul three and a half hours westward from Sheridan; my trusty Buma in the passenger seat. Of course we got lost.
A year later in 2003, I moved out of the cozy two bedroom, two bathroom place on Range ave when my roommates and I decided to part ways. I'd moved out with two friends from high school, one of which was pursuing education as an English teacher at Sonoma University. It wasn't explained why we were doing this to ourselves and each other, though I'm sure my 19 year old idiocy played a part in it. After a year of adventures in Santa Rosa with my roommates, we simply moved on.
I found my next roommate, a Costa Rican (called "M") who'd moved to the area from Minnesota, through a coworker. Based on the hindsight and a memory bank rife with unsavory antics this roommate and I got into over the next two years, I really should have been smarter about trusting the judgement of my coworker and passed on his recommendation.
After moving in with M, my coworker (Called "T") spiraled into a raving lunatic before my eyes over the next few months. I've always suspected T's downfall was a result of some chemically synthesized narcotic. You know...the kind that makes you speak quickly, spit while talking, tap your feet while sitting, sweat profusely, and yell "YOU'RE A RAT! YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE? A RAT" at the top of your voice into my face on a Thursday morning while we're stocking denim pants before JC Penney opens for business.
Our first apartment had the largest living room known to man. When you're a bachelor young enough to get turned down when you set a six pack of PBR on the counter, interior design isn't such a high priority. I had plenty of room to put all of my kitchy junk, allowing me to fool myself into thinking this was "Home". Miguel hated it, being a minimalist himself. It didn't matter how loud the traffic was outside of my bedroom window, we had free cable.
This gift from some kharmic deity was such a delight to me, Mr. Raised on TV. Moving into an apartment with free cable is like finding a one dollar bill on the ground, shaking it off, then realizing it's actually a hundred dollar bill...every. single. month. We were so happy to have this free portal to entertainment until the day the knock came upon the door.
"Hello! My name is [no way, lady. I did not store away your real name to recall at this moment]. I'm stopping by to tell you about Comcast Cable. Do you have cable?" and I froze. I'm not supposed to have cable. What if she knows there's a feed active into our apartment but she doesn't know it's not being paid for? What do I do?
"Yeah we actually have comcast." escaped my mouth before I realized what I was saying. 'Well...that should be ok. We have it already. Maybe she'll go away now.'
"We have an offer going on right now for premium packages. If you add on HBO, you can get that and Showtime free for three months."
What a sucker, this lady. We have free cable already. They probably won't be able to figure out what's going on and we'll be able to keep the whole thing. Maybe someone else is already paying for this. I signed up for the additional channels and sent [still can't remember. Sorry, ma'am] on her way.
Three months and one day later, M and I were sitting on the couch looking at the television. "Idiot," he mumbled as we clicked off the television. Black and white static dimmed to black and an image of two defeated young men on a couch became clear in the reflection of the glass television screen.
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I play back the scenario over in my memory at least once a year. There's always at least one event annually that reminds me that I may be witty but I make terrible, uninformed mistakes. Over the last two weeks, I learned that the bad luck associated with my younger self's free-cable-fumble is hereditary.
Some time in February, I noticed a profile had been added to the Hulu account my parents allow my wife and I to share. I am unaware if Hulu cares about shared accounts, but I know that I care when I see that Cam is trying to make their way into the family plan. I don't know a Cam. No friends or relatives are named Cameron or Cammy or Campbell. I swiftly deleted the profile and went back to watching that week's episode of Law and Order: SVU.
My mother doesn't know any Cam, so I figured I'd solved the problem. I should have advised her to change her password immediately, but thought nothing of it and moved on. A few days passed and, after a full day of work and school one day, I sit down with my wife to enjoy old episodes of Fresh Off The Boat...or at least to try.
"Did you change your password? Can't log into Hulu" I texted my mother. I didn't receive an immediate response, so we sought entertainment through Netflix. The next day, though, I started to feel something very familiar as I read my mom's response.
"Didn't change passowrd. I can't log in. I'll look into it later" wasn't the response I'd hoped for, but I know how many times I forget my password and lock accounts, so I assumed she'd work it though. Ten days later, she'd spent a full day on the phone with support, tried resetting the password, and had no luck.
K and I were and are despondent. In the solitude put upon us through the Covid-19 related mandated quarantine, it's going to be important to maintain a varied source for entertainment AND to comfort ourselves by watching series we'd already invested our time and emotions in. That resource has been tied to a skiff and gently and lovingly been shoved off of the banks of our entertainment shores.
"Unless I open up another account, we're not going to worry about activating this hulu account. There's so much you an find on the Ruku," my mother explained, mispronouncing the popular streaming meta-platform like a true Boomer Captain.
"Why are you doing this to us! You're getting the whole thing free from Apple! Who cares if they're none the wiser?" I clung desperately to the idea that this defeat was not final. My mother worked for Apple as a customer consultant over a decade ago, so the sweetness of this resource and the bitterness of its loss is intense.
This metaphorical skiff now meanders toward the fading horizon, heavy with our dreams of laughing at Officer Jake Scully, Eddie Huang, and Daria Morgendorffer. Resting against the corpse of our access to commercial free (TRULY FREE) Hulu access are koffer's filled with hopes of watching Lieutenant Olivia Benson track down the fiend who left that poor immigrant girl naked and afraid in the abandoned subway tunnels under New York City.
How will we ever survive with only access Amazon Prime, HBO Go, and Netflix?
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