What did I get myself into? That’s what I keep asking myself. Is this the worst mistake I have ever made? No. It sometimes feels about like it is in the top 10 but it is also an incredible learning experience in that I can see what I may have been becoming, to a really extreme extent. Of course, it isn’t just the introspection I am finding in the process itself that is matched. It goes so much further. A raging, literally, alcoholic. Totally unreasonable when challenged on his behavior – he can never be wrong. Constant self-loathing, out-loud. General lack of awareness as to what boundaries he should cross. What began as me doing my best to help, assist and try to take care of Steve McClung became a living, breathing nightmare that sent my blood pressure through the roof, killed me with headaches from stress and disrupted my entire life.

The idea began when he and I would speak in down time from our podcasts. He would mention how miserable he was, living with “Riz” or Richard. He never would go into the issues except to say that it was Richard’s fault. He had discredited Richard with me early in our discussions as someone who didn’t really say or contribute much.

Finally, one night, he uploads a video of him slurring every word, speaking half as fast as he normally did, and he says my name in it. It isn’t the first time he has slipped (during a time I wasn’t saying my actual name). I didn’t see it at first, when I woke up, but I notice a message from a stranger that tells me that “Steve is in jail, call me asap.” I get a call from him telling me that he’s in jail and that I need to talk to “Connie,” who was some lady he was having romantic phone conversations with, through his site (a running trend).

Connie calls me and puts on a strange act. I never quite know who I am talking to with her, as she will at times bash Steve and at times praise him. She informs me that he was arrested for a DUI but that he wasn’t actually driving. She defends him. This will be one of several different positions she takes over the next few months that made me question everything I heard from her and trust her as much as I would a tape recorder. Several months pass with Steve needing money for Ibuprofen. Connie ended up giving him $200 over the entire time and I gave him $50. Finally, when his court date happens, he is not guilty. He sat in jail the entire time on a not guilty case, refusing our offers to bail him out.

However, Tammy – Steve’s sister that bought him a bus ticket here – says that Steve is a great guy just down on his luck. She describes him as a perfect gentleman and I would categorize her words, in retrospect to my first-hand knowledge, as a complete lie. She seems nice but she clearly wanted to pawn him off on someone else.

He calls me when he gets out and tells me he basically has no options. A hotel room or come here. I told him he could come here for a short while and we could get him a job, a vehicle and get him back on his feet. It was so clear that it was temporary, I even told him we could see how things worked out down the road and when he got to where he could, we might consider letting him rent a room out. Big MIGHT.

He shows up and within a week, has a total meltdown. It is at the behest of me asking him if he could not spit on me when he’s talking. He goes completely off because I have made these requests during the first week,
“Close your mouth when coughing.” (He argued with me during that time that nothing was really wrong with coughing with your mouth open, it was just superstition)
“Clean the kitchen floor.” (The floor, white tile, looked more filthy than it has in the history of me living in this house. It had foot prints, spills and marks all over it. He hesitated, seemingly offended, but did it.)
“Try not to spit on me when talking.” (He had just unloaded a chunk of spit on me because, when he is telling a story (most of the time he is present and speaking), he gets so excited and animated that he flings his arms around wildly, in others spaces, and talks extremely loudly and without stopping. Not even to swallow food or spit.

This third request sent him into the most, at the time, insane tangent I had ever seen another human go on. (Currently, it is the second worst tangent, has he topped this one. More on this later). First, he began screaming as LOUDLY AS HE COULD that “I only got mah front teeth ma’uhn (his way of saying man)”. That evolved into “What else do you want from me?” He was wailing, top of his lungs, every sentence. I kept trying to calm him down, which had never been an issue for me with anyone before, but he seemed determine to make this explosion occur. He began accusing me of having no respect for him. He then began a dialogue that I was bullying him. At this point, he lifts his chair and turns it to face me and says “I can make you bleed.” and I told him that this wasn’t going to happen because we weren’t going to get into it. Steve clearly was ready to begin fighting and I had to speak in a voice of pure reason and confidence that this was total nonsense. He then ran out of the garage, where we had this entire discussion, and into a wooded area across the road. I will never know what his frantic intentions were at this point but when he returned, his eye was blood-red because he had charged his face into an outstretched branch. This would be visible in several of his videos. The night ended but the meltdown didn’t seem to.

Steve would literally sleep for the next 4 or so days, non-stop, waking up only every few hours to get another beer and go back to bed. I had purchased him some because it “helped him.” and without it, he would complain of being “sick” and “shaking” and virtually every other reason you could imagine a full-blooded alcoholic to come up with. Any hesitation on my part was met with immediate confrontation and arguing. It would threaten our relationship that, at the time, I had hoped to keep peaceful. But he would get up for that and cigarettes and then go back to sleep. Finally, I came up with the solution to check him into an E.R. – as without a home, because he was only my guest – and to leave him there so he could check into St. Bernards Behavioral Health, an inpatient center for the mentally sick. It is the closest thing to an institution this town has – and Steve had spent days ranting on wanting to be institutionalized and “in the state’s hands.”

When dropping him off, he began telling me that if I would take him back in, he would “Kill for me. I’ll be that loyal.” and I’m fairly sure he meant it in that moment, but Steve speaks from emotional highs and lows and never retains his intentions with the passing of a little time. He begged me not to kick him out during all of this and I told him, with good intentions at the time, that I would not. I still innocently assumed that he had gone through a meltdown because of lack of medication.

I visited Steve or called him daily, while he was in the facility. I also told him that there were a few conditions that he had to agree to if he was going to ever come back into my home: 1) I could never feel threatened from him again. 2) He had to get a job and I could not continue buying him beer and cigarettes. He happily agreed to both, no issues. We continued on like there was nothing to it but I may as well have never brought it up because the worst was yet to come.

Steve gets out, telling me he has health insurance, and we discover at the pharmacy two things: Steve does not have health insurance and Steve is completely fucking unorganized. He had nothing on him, could not find virtually every vital item he had at some point and it became a pretty regular routine to need to return to the house in order for him to get something he forgot. He, on several occasions, has argued with me that he did not need a certain item or document for a visit to a place where he did, indeed, need it. It would require a second trip and this happened several times within a week and again every week. He would rack up a debt to me of nearly $850 total in the time he was here – with $250 coming off because his sister sent me a check for him. Steve never felt bad about asking for another carton of cigarettes, but when his first paycheck later came in, Steve told me that I was “making him tell his wife Fuck you” by needing $150 from him instead of only getting $50. He would spend $100 on alcohol and liquor for that week. Reality was, I was broke.

So Steve actually goes without the alcohol for the month that he job searched – although he would make daily references to it, wanting it, or needing it. He also would brag in his first week of employment/first week drinking again that he was different now and totally in control of his drinking.

On top of that, he added videos to his channel boasting about how he was being brought in under huge fanfare and was going to get some big raises and promotions the following week. I told him before the video that I probably wouldn’t discuss that stuff, since all new jobs hype people in the first week. He didn’t listen to me and did it anyway. A few weeks later, no raise, no promotion and he failed his welding test “because they tested him wrong.” It is never Steve’s fault. Always someone else’s! He said “I weld to nuclear standards! I am not used to cosmetic welding, bla bla bla.” Just proof that he could take no responsibility. In fact, on his first few nights working there, he told me how he was giving everyone advice on how to improve the place. I thought to myself how annoying that must have been, but I remembered how he did it to me, when he first got here.

He shows up at my house, homeless and slob-like, tracking dirt all over the floors with his nasty shoes. I have to ask him to mop and he partially blames the floor on me. I have lived here my whole life and never gotten my floor dirty like that, but a week of him had it a shade darker. Yet, he argued with me when I brought it up. Narcissist. I told him that I didn’t want him bringing a bunch of women in and out of here, making this a shag-pad for him. He said I was forcing him to be unnatural and was being too controlling. I told him his Romanian Internet girlfriend couldn’t move in after he brought it up a week after meeting her online. He looked pissed.

One day, following drinking half of a half-gallon of whiskey the night before, Steve complained of an awful headache. I asked him if it might be what he drink and he went off for the next two hours. Literally, two hours of ranting. He began by clinching his fists, in my office, and saying he “wasn’t afraid to go to jail.” He then said I WAS BULLYING HIM. Don’t believe me? I started recording him after the fist-clinching and he immediately began playing victim. Here it is – and I am in my office, during the entire video he approaches me.

Finally, the last two weeks came to a head when I tested for high blood pressure at the doctor’s office. Dealing with this maniac on a daily-basis had cause health problems for me, even after I had lost a belt size over the summer. I told him he must find a new place immediately and that the spending on alcohol and tobacco had to stop (more than 2/3rds of his paycheck was going for that, or paying back loans for that). Aside from being violent while drinking, Steve was not making any progress to getting out on his own. He threw a minor fit but by the time I had come to this point, I was ready to physically throw him out and to deal with all the consequences of a physical removal.

About a week later, I wake up one day and his things are gone. He left me no notes or texts so I send him one asking and he replies that he found a room. My dreams seemed to come true! He was officially, finally gone and it seemed to happen quicker than I could have even dreamed for.

So how long did it take before he began sending me threatening texts and communications? About half a day.

The following day, I received over 20 messages saying he wanted to fight me and make me pay for “screwing him over.” Eventually, I blocked him after he refused to stop. I actually thought this would be the end of the chapter…but that just wasn’t the case!

I get a visit the next day from a family member that, coincidentally, knew the person that Steve had found a room with. The same NIGHT that he was threatening me, Steve got his ass kicked by his NEW roommate! The guy he worked with beat Steve’s ass because the moron who calls himself Hellbroke Lucy couldn’t keep from hitting on the new charitable-person’s wife. Once the husband learned of that, he confronted Steve and the story I was told was Steve pulled a KNIFE! I’ve seen Steve do this and he carries them everywhere, so that fits the description pretty well. But the story was that Mr. Husband beat the shit out of Mr. Steve.

Serves him right. He was looking for a fight with one guy who had helped him and ended up in another with someone who helped him.

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Now, Steve says he is going to kill me. After trying to get me to take him BACK in following all that you have just read (because his new cohabitant beat him up), he wanted to return. I recorded the conversations.

Phone Call #1

Phone Call # 2

Phone Call # 3