The monkey made me do it

Prepare for schadenfreude...

Today... roommates!

I truly have atrocious luck when it comes to picking people to live with. The psychological issues are vast and varied, though I have only had to have one arrested (so far). Some people have one roommate-from-hell story, lucky me managed to score five.

Moving from my parents' house in uberrural Southwest Washington to the preppy cultural wilderness of San Antonio, Texas was something that I looked forward to for months. I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into, knew exactly one person in the entire state (and did not know her well or expect to see her often), and had never lived away from home for longer than a couple of weeks. Which is of course the only way to fly! I have a bit of an adventure seeking problem. Currently looking for a support group but they're all busy skydiving into alligator pits blindfolded.

I settled into my room and met the first test of my college career, otherwise known as Candace. She smoked and claimed not to, which was hard to pull off in a room constantly full of a low fragrant haze. She had a horrible boyfriend who made fun of me and was balding in a way that was impossible not to look at (which come to think of it may be why he didn't like me). I'm not a full-head-of-hair snob, but it was unevenly patchy and looked a bit like mange. He would stay the night while I was there, and the ten feet between our twin beds did not assist me in retaining my aural innocence. After a long struggle to overcome my naturally noncombative nature, I quietly asked that he not stay over anymore and that she smoke outside. She yelled and screamed and started spending more and more nights over at his apartment off-campus. It was about a month after this that my mother called me, distraught that I had let my savings account slip into a negative balance. I was surprised at this, and immediately called the bank to see what I had missed. This began a long investigation that resulted in the discovery that Candace had stolen a blank checkbook of mine and she and her boyfriend had been forging checks (my full name is very girlie, how HE passed for me I'll never know) all over town, writing over the amount and accumulating cash that totaled above $3000. I got the campus and city police involved, and she was arrested once we got the final incriminating piece of evidence:

She had written a large check and messed up on the date, and when she scribbled in the correction she used HER initials (on my check, of course) to approve it.

When the police came to let her pick up the rest of her stuff, I stood and watched. She didn't meet my eyes and looked like a shell of her former self (there was no sign of the boyfriend). Her grandmother told me that she thought Candace was trying to support a cocaine habit. Yee-haw, welcome to Texas!

The next college odd one was Sarah. We had a couple of mutual friends and ended up rooming together at the last minute when our other arrangements fell through. She seemed nice at first, but was socially awkward and didn't have many friends. I started to come home to her sitting on her bed, throwing a tennis ball full-force against the wall, letting it bounce back to her, then chucking it again. She did this absent-mindedly in the center of the room and didn't seem to notice when I came in or out. I would have to time my crossings carefully to avoid the tiny yellow sphere o' psychoses. She was also fascinated with forensic detectives and had full series of mystery books. I asked her about them once (they took up almost all of her shelf space) and she said that her heroine was Kay something (one of the characters, I suppose) and that she really really wanted to be a detective. Then I discovered that she had already started training by observing our suitemates. The two rooms shared a bathroom, and she would sit on the bathroom floor next to their cracked-open door and listen in on their conversations. I sabotaged her at every opportunity, being extra-loud and closing doors whenever I could (I was a little hesitant to attempt direct confrontation, as her tennis-ball-expressed anger spurts were getting more violent). The final straw was when a girl I knew down the hall got overwhelmed with schoolwork and attempted suicide. She was another surveillance project of Sarah's, and the look of glee masked with false concern as they carried the girl down the hall in a stretcher made me more frightened than I'd ever been in my life.

Next was Carrie, who I moved in with mid-semester to escape the madness of Sarah. Carrie was a fellow musician and seemed stable, but soon fell into a deep depression (I never knew the cause, but she was a semi-closeted lesbian and I think the strain of it really grew during that time). She started spending day and night in our room, eating. I'd come home and find her cracker crumbs on my bed. I started spending more and more time away, studying in the library when it was open and student lounges when it wasn't. She began to bring strange women over to our room and asked if they could spend the night. We came to a head over that, I stood firm and she started hating me, blaming me for all of her troubles and grumbling under her breath. I heard most of her complaints (none true) from our mutual friends in the orchestra and gave up entirely on getting along. The kicker with her was that immediately after I fled the state for the summer, she took the boxes that I had designated for storage (that a friend of mine was going to bring downstairs for me and store) and gave them to Goodwill. All of my rather large CD collection, my clothing, my bedding... When I got back in the fall and discovered what she had done, I cursed loudly in public for the first time in my young life. Full out, screamed "FUCK" in the middle of the packed mail room. May have also been the first time I had used that particular word. Excellent start for an enduring cursing career (of course, now I prefer "fuck-ass" for its greater descriptive qualities).

I don't remember the name of my last roommate in college, she spent the two weeks we lived together lying on her bed, wrapped in extra clothing and blankets despite the heat, wearing big earphones and listening to her radio. Then her parents took her away and put her in a mental hospital. Which was too bad, I kind of liked her...

Since then the luck has improved, though this last round left me with a roommate that almost beats them all. She came in as a friend-of-a-friend, joining my friend Kate and I (and our dog and cat) in a 3-bedroom house. Immediately and without asking, she brought all of her personal decorations into the living room and displayed them prominently. These included a copper candle spiral that was vaguely '80's and geometric, a giant smoky candle that read "Gingerbread" but smelled more like "Evil", and (I still shudder typing this) a cartoony stuffed animal armadillo. I have been studying interior design for a long time, and while I am not a perfectionist, that house looked pretty good in its semi-modernist, funky style. Not "funky" as in "hey, let's add a stuffed cartoon armadillo funky" though. (The funny thing is, if it was a real, taxidermied armadillo I might have been okay with it.) I put up with the copper monstrosity, but I very politely put the armadillo back in her bedroom. Under things, where she couldn't find it for a while. She initiated a nightly tradition of sitting in our common living room and eating really loud. If I tried to use the television for a night and watch a movie, she would join me and talk to me about non-movie-related things. And if I had friends over to make dinner or hang out, she would join us without asking and jump into the conversation no matter what we were discussing. My friends stopped wanting to come over. I spent most of my time in my room. She stayed up late and woke up early, and managed to drive both my friend and I out of the house and into individual apartments.

But now my roommate is wonderful and hairy and as long as I have a vaccuum that works, we get along just fine. I'm trying to work out a way to get her to help me with chores, but she shows no interest in the washer and dryer (except when the dryer makes strange noises and she hides from it) and the dishes are a little high up. Plus she likes the taste of the soap and chews on sponges that I happen to drop. She does excellent work as a spare pillow, though, so I suppose I'll keep her.

posted by LadyJay @ 7:34 AM