HOUSTON — Local punk Colin “Colonic” Birch continues to refer to his parents’ guest house, a two-bedroom A-frame with pool access where he has lived for the last 11 months rent-free, as his squat, according to multiple sources.
“It’s kind of a shithole,” said Birch while retrieving the Whole Foods grocery delivery his mother had scheduled for him. “Like, there are a bunch of rodents that live in the trees around the yard, and it doesn’t even have central air. The second bedroom doesn’t even have a wall-mounted TV, like the master bedroom I use, and if I want to get beer, I have to walk all the way to the other end of the property where my fucking parents live and take it from the garage fridge. It’s especially shitty when Aunt Gayle and her latest boyfriend are visiting and I have to go stay in my old room in the main house.”
Birch’s friend and occasional bandmate Ray Douglass was tolerant of his friend’s claim to be squatting in the building where they would frequently have childhood sleepovers.
“Yeah, it’s literally 500 yards from where his mom and dad sleep,” said Douglass. “Whenever someone tries to push back on it being a ‘squat’ he goes off on the ‘technical’ definition of what it is to be a squatter. I don’t think he gets how gross an actual squat is. My girlfriend’s studio apartment has mold in the bathroom and roaches everywhere, and she still pays like $1200 a month. Colonic’s place is way, way nicer than any of our other friend’s places, so it’s just easier to go along with it and then take turns crashing there.”
“If pretending he’s not a fucking poser is the price to pay for access to an infinity pool,” Douglass added. “I can deal.”
Eddie Marquez, a 31-year-old veteran of the Houston punk scene, was less charitable.
“These fucking kids don’t know what it’s like to actually spend a night in a dank squat that’s owned by your uncle, and he’s getting on your fucking case that you need to at least do some chores around the house to stay there,” said Marquez. “I remember, my first squat, you couldn’t even light cigarettes in there because there were fucking leaks everywhere. Well, it was more that it was really humid and my uncle said no smoking in the house, but you know what I mean. Fucker couldn’t even spring for a dehumidifier.”
As of press time, Birch was describing the bank account his parents fund monthly as his “beer money stash.”