Richard Powski

For a short period of time I had a Hot Couch Guy not only as my Landlord but my roommate too. The result? A horrendously infuriating experience, and a ton of material for some entertaining stories. Here is my experience: First off, I have a permanent residence in Tennessee, and have been in Texas for the last couple of months on a temporary basis. That being said, when I came here I needed an arrangement for more than one month but less than one year. So like many other Americans, I went on the Craigslist and I found myself a room to rent. "What could possibly go wrong?" I figured.  Ahem. Quite a bit apparently. It was me, one other tenant, and the landlord. I made the decision to move there quite hastily, as there were time restraints and I needed something to pan out quickly. The layout of the house is a kitchen/living room combination in one small open space, the landlord's master bedroom and then the two other bedrooms to the left of it. That's the whole house, i...

The fear of death is inhabited me for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are riddled with fear of my own mortality. My younger experiences with it consisted of week-long spurts of terror that the afterlife was not real and that when you die you go absolutely nowhere. I would cry and look for affirmation from my mother that this was not true, and I remember her reassurances were extremely unconvincing and I continued to live in that fear.  I was merely six years old when these conversations took place; I am now 27. I would live in that fear, sometimes in sheer terror, crippling anxiety, literally afraid to move at some points and that was how bad it got. Living in constant awareness of my inevitable mortality, so scared that my heart felt as though it was beating out of my chest. So scared that many times I felt as though my fear would send me into a cardiac arrest that would lead to my death, further exacerbating my fear. This would go on for any ti...