Two years ago, Hans, Adam and Tom were roomates. Everyone else in town quickly established that it took far too much of our valuable time to say "Hans and Adam and Tom's place" again and again and again. I think Wej was the first one to think of the acronym, but it quickly became common usage around everyone who went there. At some point, Adam moved out, and Azzurra moved in. That was cool, because we could still call it the HAT.

Even though the HAT was usually disturbingly messy, it was the central Taunie hangout. Every single night, if you hung around long enough, everyone would at least put in an appearance.

You have to understand, Tom is a computer building maniac. He and Azzurra have four working machines between them, and Hans has a computer of his own too. There are (were) usually one or two guest computers visiting, too. Oh, and one more with just the guts stapled to the wall, acting as the server.

The entire living room is literally nothing but desks and computers as far as the eye can see. Everywhere where there is not a computer, there is a stack of old pizza boxes, a pyramid of Dew cans, an overflowing ashtray, or some combination thereof. It's every gamer's wettest dream come true. Sometimes, the ladies even go topless. (OK, that only happened once.)

So, there's a lot of multiplayer gaming going on, more or less 24/7. And there's almost always someone not in the game du jour, but just surfing the net, and sharing random funkiness. I think the most surreal night for me was when I stopped by after Hans' Champs game, and saw five different monitors showing the LARP message board.

There comes a point when you simply have to say, "Wow. My friends are all dorks." And then you see there's still a computer open, and you join the insanity too.

Or, if for whatever reason you don't feel like gaming, there's always the back room. That's where all the real furniture is, and still more empty soda cans and full ashtrays. There's a box full of old comic books (and cigarette butts, and soda sludge and god knows what else) and usually a few interesting looking books lying around. So, you sit in there until the gamers decide it's time for a break.

Because it takes a certain kind of mentality to even hang out at a place like the HAT, the back room conversations tend to get very strange, very quickly. I have laughed until my sides hurt in that back room more times than I can even count. "Naughty Vampire Gods." "The Joy Of Smoking: An Instructional Manual For Today's Youth." "Why D's Newest Champs Character is Not In Fact, The Work of a Crack Monkey" "Hi, my name is William, and I am not JT's puppet."

Well, maybe you had to be there.

But now, Tom and Azzurra are moving out, in search of a grownup life, or something. Logan is moving in, so at least the apartment won't go away entirely. I had visions of all of us showing up there at 2am every night even if Hans moved.

("Aw, please, lady! Let us hang out in your back room, just for an hour or so!"

"Who are you people? Why are you on my front lawn every night?")

But, Hans is not moving. But it still won't be the same. Logan is allergic to almost everything, so the place is going to have to be kept super clean. There will only be two computers. And get this. Apparently, Hans wants to lock the door when neither of the actual people living there are around. That's just not right.

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