Abed was 18 when I met him. I found out later that he grew up in Tularosa, a small town about 15 miles away from Alamogordo and about a two hour drive from where I grew up in Artesia, NM. At the time, he was living with his father in San Diego. Prior to his arrival, he had gone to Job Corps in San Marcos, TX. This was about the period of time that my brother Loyd lived in that same town. Abed told me that life with his mother was very contentious as she was ultra-religious and simply could not handle dealing with a child who refused to believe in God. Abed said he suffered abuse at both the hands of his mother and step-father. He'd also been kicked out of the house and was living on the streets for a brief period of time. The only problem with this is that there's not a lot of street in Tularosa to live on.
His parents split up because his father was gay. Abed didn't have a problem with this, except when he accompanied his father to social gatherings after he'd moved in with him. Often, his father's friends weren't aware he had a son and when they saw him with Abed, they tended to think.... Well, just that idea was the only thing that really disturbed him about it.
I wound up meeting both his parents and I just could not imagine any circumstance in which the two of them would be a married couple. Even Abed found this rather perplexing.
My initial impressions of Abed were not very good. He talked rather slowly and it was difficult to try to train him on how to run a cash register, count money and calculate concession sales based on inventory. But the more I got to know him, I discovered that he was very intelligent and creative. But it was still hard for him to do the concession tallying in an efficient manner.
After the theatre had been opened about a year, Abed decided to move back to New Mexico. There were plans to build something some sort of nuclear facility not far from Tularosa and he wanted to go protest that because of the concern he had for his younger siblings. I happened to be going home to Artesia for Thanksgiving that year and I offered to drive him home. It was this road trip that helped us become actual friends.
A few months after I'd gotten fired, I tried calling Abed in Tularosa. However, his mom said he had moved back to San Diego and was living with his father. She gave me his phone number. I called him and we met up. He had just recently returned. (I guess he couldn't put up with living with his mom anymore.) He said he had gone over to the Hillcrest Cinemas and talked to Anz. Before he could even ask if she was hiring, she asked him if he wanted to work there again. I guess she really needed someone right there and then. He had also recently gotten romantically involved with a female friend of his father's. She was ten years older than him. He was also attempting to get into the local music scene as a singer/songwriter. We wound up collaborating on a few musical projects over the next several years.
During this course of this time, he became romantically involved with several different women. This was an interesting aspect about Abed: Many women found themselves sexually attracted to him. I always found this perplexing. I mean, I can see why women would be attracted to men like Brad Pitt and George Clooney, but I sure didn't see that same quality in Abed. One of my female friends, who had a preference for women, even wanted to have sex with him. However, she would add, "But I wouldn't want to be his girlfriend." This was an issue Abed frequently came across: Women wanted to sleep with him, but didn't want to stick around for the long run. He wanted someone to share his life and interests with. They only wanted to get laid.
For about a year, he moved up to Los Angeles and did some musical stuff up there. During this time, he recorded a song for a compilation CD in San Diego and invited me to perform piano and vocals on the track. Very soon after that, he moved back to San Diego and we decided to become roommates. This would make him Real Life Roommate #4. I was living in a cottage at the time, but we would soon be moving into a two-bedroom apartment.
A few months later, his father had been fighting a number of health issues and was admitted to hospice. I remember the phone rang in the middle of the night and I was kind of mad because I thought it was a woman he had recently hooked up with just calling "to hear his voice." It was actually his sister calling to give him the bad news that their father had passed away.
All of the women Abed dated during the time we were roommates all turned out to be temporary, until Qued came along. Qued had been in love with Abed since she was 16 years old and had an ongoing goal of marrying him. The one thing that kept Abed from pursuing a relationship with her was that she was the cousin of the 30-year-old woman he had previously been involved with. The two of them started hanging out more. In November of 1999, I went home for Thanksgiving and when I returned, he told me that he and Qued were an item. I thought he had reconciled the issue involving her cousin. It turned out he hadn't. Qued frequently spent the night at our apartment. So frequently in fact, that a couple of months later, Abed told me she was officially living with us. I got kind of mad about this because they didn't seek my approval for this. I couldn't get too mad because I know it just happened that way. This would make Qued Real Life Roommate #5.
A few months later, my girlfriend at the time, Jolz, told me she overheard Qued saying something to the effect that she and Abed were getting married. I told her no, that Qued's mother was getting married and that was what she was talking about. Jolz swore it was Qued and Abed. A couple of days later, I was looking at the calendar we had on the wall. I noticed there was a day on an upcoming month that was circled and the words "Our Wedding" was written in. WHAT? I live with these people. You'd think they would have mentioned GIGANTIC NEWS like this to me.
When they came home later that day, I told them I found out about the wedding. "Oh, we were going to tell you, but..." I said it was okay, but I was going to need to move out. Qued said, "No! You don't have to move out!" I told them that with a young couple starting out, they didn't need this third wheel hanging around. Qued was concerned about them paying more rent, but a few days later, Abed agreed that it would be a good idea for me to move so they could have their own space. I wound up moving into an apartment just two doors down. It was nice to be able to go to the bathroom anytime I wanted.
They got married in a public ceremony in Old Town and held their reception across the street. This turned out to be the only wedding I'd ever attended in which the newlyweds smashed wedding cake into each others' faces.
A little more than a year after I moved out, I had to move back in with them because I'd been laid off from my job. We both needed to save money on the rent. This arrangement lasted for three months. They found their own one-bedroom apartment and I found my own studio. This would turn out to be the last apartment in San Diego where I would live.
Since we were no longer living in such close quarters, I wasn't aware of any problems going on between them until a mutual friend told me they were having issues. Since they had proven a tendency to not clue me in to anything, I couldn't really say anything surprised me at that point. Later, Abel told me that Qued was starting to become curious about having sexual relationships with women. She felt like she had missed out on exploring this because she had gone from living to her mother to living with us to marrying Abed without getting a chance to be on her own. The desire to experience this lifestyle became so overwhelming and was the cause of so many fights that they decided to get a divorce over it.
Abed decided to move up to San Francisco in the aftermath. He had been working for Neiman Marcus and was able to get a transfer from San Diego. It was around this time that I had started a long-distance relationship with a woman in San Jose and I knew it wouldn't be long before I would be moving to the Bay Area as well. During a couple of my trips to San Jose, I got to visit him while I was in the area. After I had officially made the move in 2003, I only got to see him twice. I went up the night before my 39th birthday and we drove around San Francisco for awhile. Two days later, he called me and said he needed my help moving out of his apartment. He was moving to Louisville, KY. Weeks prior, he had gotten fired from Neiman Marcus after a big brouhaha that resulted him filing a wrongful termination lawsuit. (He eventually settled for $5,000.) His car had gotten repossessed a month earlier because he stopped paying for it after losing his job. He got mad when he figured out that he should have just left town a month earlier before they repossessed the car. I needed to help him load up his stuff and take him to the bus station.
The next time I saw him was 04/27/07. He and his girlfriend Keld came out for my wedding. Along with my brother Loyd, they constituted my bachelor party. After the wedding, I didn't see him again until 2011. He had moved back to California and was living in Orange County. We got to hang out for a couple of days. He later moved to San Diego and then back to New Mexico. After living with his mom again, he was able to move out on his own to Alamogordo. When I came to New Mexico last year, we had made plans to see each other, but I wasn't going to be as near to Alamogordo as I had hoped and he didn't have access to a dependable car that would make the two-hour journey through the mountains to Artesia. We both felt bad about that because it would have marked the first occasion for him to meet my son.
In the last few years, he had started an on-line relationship with a woman from Tunisia named Nesd. After a couple of years, he finally got the money together to go out to see her. After a couple of trips, he was able to bring her back to the United States and get married to her. His journey for true love has been a long one and after everything they've been through, this should be the one that's meant to last.
Abed will be making numerous appearances throughout this blog. I have a lot of gaps to fill in.
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