I moved into the loft apartment with Roger the week I dropped out of Brown. Benny joined us a few months later once he had graduated. Me? I just couldn't stick it out. I had known Roger from high school; he was the popular, "rock star" guy, and I was simply the AV geek who wished that he could turn invisible. The only way I actually knew him was because he saved me from Blake Jennison, the school bully, and we started talking. I filmed his first "gig" for him, it was 1989, and he, along with his band, had been booked to perform at that year's prom. Our senior prom. They got paid about 20 bucks each to perform there, and Roger paid me about six dollars for a copy of the tape. I still have it somewhere too.
Collins came and joined our "family" not two weeks after Benny. We needed another roommate to help pay the rent. He fitted in well with our haven for the abnormal. I have yet to meet anyone as smart as he was.
Roger met April after a show one night at CBGBs, and originally thought she was just some over-obsessed fan. Turns out, she had been a waitress at the restaurant that the Well Hungarians went to for breakfast after each night of performing. She came to live with us, well, live with Roger really. April introduced Roger to The Man, and then she introduced him to drugs. After about two months, Roger was a junkie, and April was almost as addictive to him as drugs. Then Christmas rolls around. April finds out that she has AIDS and decided to kill herself rather than take medication and die slowly. Before slitting her wrists, she left Roger the morbid note of his having AIDS in her brilliant red lipstick on the mirror. It tore Roger apart. He got tested, and it turned out that what she had written was true. My best friend was HIV positive.
We met Maureen not long after that night. And I was practically putty at her feet. Looking back, it seems pathetic to the point of silly. We dated.
He got clean after that, and that was a battle Collins and I went through with him, Benny had met Allison, and moved in with her. Soon after they moved in together, he proposed. Roger went through with-drawls and side-effects from the AZT. It was a trying time, and none of us were left without battle scars; we had both visible and invisible. Roger would always live with his disease, and the chance of doing drugs again. Maureen was a fighter, and she spent many a night standing in front of the door arguing with Roger about his having no need for "Those shots of poison that eventually would kill him," and Roger would physically shove her out of the way. He almost broke her arm once. Collins was really the only one that was strong enough to physically retain Roger. Me, I tried, and most of the time, got thrown aside too.
After Roger was clean for a few months, Collins decided that his strength was no longer needed, and went to MIT. Maureen and I were left alone with him. After that Roger didn't leave the loft.