Bike Handsome: I lived with a male model

What's it like to live with a male model? It's effing awesome!

I met Mike Thomas when I was living in a converted warehouse turned gallery turned Burning Man artistic implosion. I had moved back to California after living away for about ten years and I didn't really know anyone in town, so moving into a freaky party house seemed like a good idea back then.

One of my new roomies was this incredibly talented photographer named Hal Bergman. Of course he knew tons of models.

Hal made good money selling stock photos. "Ethnic people looking at technology," he told me once, describing his best sellers. But his real passion was taking pictures of imposing industrial landscapes like chemical plants and oil refineries.

Mike and Hal had known each other in LA and become really close when they both moved to San Francisco. Their relationship was adorable to watch. They would bicker like an old married couple, but you could tell from the twinkle in Mike's eye that they still had a lot of affection for each other.

One day I realized that Mike had carved out a space in the gallery for himself and moved in. He'd worked out a deal with our crazy house manager. It was nice to have a handsome man around to tell me that I looked nice.

Almost every weekend afternoon, I would wake up to the smell of hash browns and sautéed onions. In addition to modeling, Mike was studying to become an EMT. A particularly gruesome lesson led him to a vegetarian diet. Gradually, over the course of many months with us, Mike was finally able to eat bacon again.

Eventually I had to leave the nut farm communal living experiment and find a place with a roommate to bathroom ration lower than 7:1. Mike's modeling career really started to take off and he landed gigs at local companies like Betabrand and Huckleberry Bicycles.

However, Fate intervened and he had one last encounter with blood & gore:

A few months ago as most of you heard my fingers were amputated after an accident as a result I faced many monetary challenges...check out the nubs', hear the story and...help support! All proceeds will go to helping the cost of losing digits.

Make donations to The Chopped & Screwed Fund here.