The Roommates

by Stephanie Wu

  —S, 43 (F)

  THE GOLDFISH KILLER

  MY SOPHOMORE YEAR, I lived with Mimi, a girl from my hometown. We’d gone to the same high school, but weren’t really friends. We knew a lot of the same people, including Carl—he was my first kiss in middle school, and my serious crush through all of high school. He was a big figure in my life for a very long time, but I lost touch with him after graduation.

  I got home one night and heard my roommate having sex. This happened fairly often, which was fine—I had sex in the room too. I stayed in the common room and let them be for a while. When they came out, there he was—my first kiss and the guy I’d crushed on forever. I didn’t know he was in town. I didn’t even know they’d been hanging out. I hadn’t seen him in years, and they’d clearly had sex. She was wearing a bra and underwear. I never dated Carl, but Mimi knew that I had been obsessed with him from eighth grade to senior year.

  Mimi had also killed my fish over spring break. It wasn’t a fancy fish, it was a goldfish, and all she had to do was feed it. He died while she was taking care of him, and she told me in the form of a Facebook comment on a photo of my fish: “Tommy died. Sorry! RIP.” That was her weird way of telling me. That was her style at that time. It was a very representative moment in our relationship.

  Eventually, I went to bed that night, and they had sex again—while I was there. It was a relatively big room, but it was totally obvious they were having sex. They weren’t trying to be particularly quiet, and in their defense they probably thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t. I’m sure if they knew I was awake they would have been a little bit more subtle. I lay there, in my shitty extra-long twin bed, and I knew if I got up and left it’d be clear I was awake the whole time. It got to the point where it’d been going on for so long I had to keep lying there. And I couldn’t fall asleep—I lay there for what felt like hours but was probably more like ten minutes, because we were in college.

  Once you know someone is having sex in a bed very close to you, it’s the only thing you can concentrate on. It’s not like I could distract myself—this was before I had a smartphone, so I couldn’t text under the covers, and I couldn’t read; the lights were out. There’s nothing I could do except listen to sex noises and try to gauge how far they were. I remember being like, Maybe that was it. Oh, wait. Maybe not. You know when you’re listening to classical music and it gets quiet for a little while, and you think it’s over, but then it comes back even louder? It was like that.

  At some point later, my roommate and I had one awful fight that ended with me throwing my French press at her—well, at the wall near her. I wasn’t trying to hit her, I promise. I was just frustrated. I brought up the fact that she killed my fish, that she slept with a guy I had feelings for without telling me, and a bunch of other stuff. Honestly, it was cathartic for both of us and made our relationship better. I wasn’t hurt by her sleeping with him; I was hurt by the fact that she hadn’t said anything. Actually, I think I was more pissed off that she killed my fish than that she slept with this guy.

  —E, 25 (F)

  THE SWEDISH NEUTRALITY

  I MOVED TO THE UNITED STATES from Sweden for college. I spent the first two years in South Carolina, swimming on a university team there, before I transferred to the University of Missouri. Before moving, I chatted online with my future teammate Yaniv, who was from Israel. As international students abroad, the two of us connected easily, even though Sweden and Israel are vastly different countries. It’s a strange phenomenon that foreign athletes get along very easily. We knew that we were going to become great friends.

  A semester later, Jowan, a friend of Yaniv’s, transferred to Mizzou too. The three of us moved in together, and everyone called our house the foreigners’ house. Yaniv and Jowan had been on the same swim team in Jerusalem and had known each other since they were young. What was interesting was that Yaniv was Jewish, like most Israelis, and was not overly religious but extremely patriotic. Meanwhile, Jowan was a Christian Arab. Nationality-wise, he was affiliated with Palestine and was very patriotic in that respect but also proud of his Arab roots.

  It took a while for me to realize how peculiar the situation was, because back where my roommates were from, people were fighting like cats and dogs. Yaniv’s mom lived in one of the settlements built by Israelis on Palestinian ground, which was a fairly vulnerable spot and where the heart of the controversy was. Their differences became tangible in late September 2011, when President Obama made a statement to the UN’s general council advocating for two states, and vouched for Israel without giving much support to Palestine. That was the only time there was tension in the house. We made a conscious decision in our house not to talk about politics, but it did give me added perspective, because the two of them were on completely opposite sides of the spectrum.

  A few months earlier, Jowan had become an Israeli national champion in the breaststroke, and was the first Arab to ever win a national swimming title in Israel. It was such big news that it spread to the States, particularly because it had never happened before. Jowan loved the spotlight, and I think he addressed it fairly maturely. He said that he believed the two states could live in peace, but that it’s important to remember that we shouldn’t turn sports into politics. I think that’s the incredible thing about college swimming in the United States—it brings together people from the entire world, and they bond through sports. In swimming, there’s no such thing as equipment—everyone is stripped down on the same level, and no matter what nationality you are, what language you speak, or how tall you are, none of that matters once you’re in the water.

  The three of us went everywhere together, from the supermarket to the bar to the gym. I asked my roommates once whether it was weird that people were fighting at home but they lived in a suite together, and they said, “Whatever happens over there doesn’t affect us here,” which they were proud of. Sometimes, the two of them spoke Hebrew to each other, and once in a while, they threw in an English word, like “NCAA” or “Walmart.” I even picked up a bit of Hebrew, because I could gauge what they were talking about based on the situation, so I either cussed at them in Hebrew or told them to speak English. I learned how to say “yes” and “no,” and they always laughed and said I was learning.

  It even became something we joked about at the bar. We often said, we’re a Swede, a Jew, and an Arab living in a suite—where else are you going to find that but in Columbia, Missouri? We said that I was the neutral Swede holding down the fort, making sure that no bombs went off in the living room. It was a flawless icebreaker. I’m still in touch with both Yaniv and Jowan and sometimes spend holidays with them. I saw them a couple of weeks ago when one of our teammates got married in Iowa. Six of us came into the town, and the three Americans shared a hotel room, and Yaniv, Jowan, and I shared a room, like absolutely nothing had changed.

  —A, 25 (M)

  THE FAULTY WIRING

  ONE NIGHT IN COLLEGE, my roommate came home drunk. She came into our bedroom and knew I kept a stash of water bottles under my desk, so she asked me for one. I gave her a bottle, which she immediately began chugging. “It’s okay,” I told her. “You can keep the bottle, you don’t need to chug it.” But she insisted on finishing it, and then went to bed.

  At some point in the night, I woke up because she was fumbling around in the room. I had no idea what she was doing. I looked over and saw her squatting over her desk—which had her laptop on it—and all of a sudden, I heard the unmistakable sound of her peeing. After she finished, she stood up, changed her underwear and pants, and went straight back to bed.

  Let me add that she wasn’t the most hygienic person to begin with—she only washed her sheets twice a year at most, and once I saw her pull something out of her hamper and sniff it to see if she could wear it again. After she finished peeing on her desk, I asked if she needed any help cleaning up. She said, “No, why?” and fell back asleep. I tried to doze off as well, but all I could hear was bzzzzt. Drip. Drip. Bzzzzt.
Drip. Drip—the sound of her laptop short-circuiting.

  The next morning, she woke up and asked me if our electricity was out. “My computer isn’t turning on,” she said. And I had to tell her that she peed on it last night, but she didn’t believe me! So I asked, “Is your computer wet?” She said it was and asked me if it had rained last night. I could only reply with “No, that’s your pee.”

  When I came home later that afternoon, she was drying her laptop with a blow-dryer. She later took it to a computer lab to get it looked at. I feel really bad for the lab technician who had to deal with that.

  —L, 27 (F)

  THE PRINCESS PALACE DREAM

  THE FIRST TIME I MOVED AWAY FROM HOME, I decided to move in with my best friend, Lila. We were super excited about getting an apartment together, and finally found a three-bedroom basement apartment. We needed a third person to fill the last bedroom, and Lila had a friend, Olivia, who volunteered to take the room. We thought this was going to be the perfect scenario, because it meant we could avoid going on Craigslist or Gumtree (a classifieds site in the UK) or any of those routes to get a housemate.

  At this point in our lives, we weren’t jaded yet, we’d never had roommates before, and we were so excited about moving away from home into an apartment and painting the living room a bright neon pink and eating pizza every day. At that time, we thought the apartment was amazing, but I recently went back to visit, and it was the scuzziest place you can imagine. It had bars on all the windows, and it was tiny, damp, and on a horrible block. But because it was ours, we were so proud of it.

  After we moved in, everything was great for about a week. Olivia was nice, but she kept to herself a lot. I put that down to the fact that she moved in with two best friends who were very close, so maybe she felt a bit left out. But in week two, she came out dressed to go on a date—and she had my top on. I was a bit taken aback that she had brazenly walked out wearing something that I knew was mine. It was a recognizable piece, certainly not a standard top from Topshop. I was so shocked that I didn’t say anything until she came home. When she did, I asked her, “Did you borrow my top? It’s fine, but it would have been nice to know in advance.”

  “No,” she said. “This is my top, I’ve had it for two years. My mom bought it for me.” And she waltzed back into her room. This became a recurring pattern. When we weren’t in, she went into our rooms and took things she liked. If we called her out on it, she claimed they were her own. There’s not much you can do when someone says that, because other than stitching a name label on your clothes, how else can you prove it’s yours? Olivia had a great time enhancing her wardrobe while we lost most of our favorite things. She never returned the items, and we were so keen on this dream of living together that we didn’t want to cause any friction or arguments.

  In the two months we lived together, I think she took at least twenty pieces of clothing from us. She had the most intricate stories, like, “Oh, my friend was in Japan and she bought this for me.” She would be really offended if we dared to suggest it was ours.

  That was the first warning sign, but we kind of let it go. We lived in such a shady old apartment that when you were in the shower, if anyone turned on the sink in the kitchen, the shower would go freezing cold. I noticed that every time I took a shower, the heat went on and off. It was almost a joke how bad it was. One time, I left the shower running and crept down the hallway. Olivia was in the kitchen turning the tap on, off, on, off. She wasn’t using the sink or doing the dishes, she was just torturing me while I was in the shower. It was bizarre behavior. It was hard to bring these things up with her because she never seemed guilty or embarrassed. She didn’t seem to think she was doing anything wrong. One time I came home and thought no one was in because the whole apartment was pitch-black. I turned on the hallway light, and Olivia’s bedroom door was open and she was lying on her bed staring at the ceiling. It was about a month of this until we started to get freaked out.

  While we were living there, we noticed that we were going through toilet paper ridiculously quickly. At some point, each of us bought our own toilet paper, because it was such a contentious issue of who was buying it and why it was never stocked up. We went through so many rolls a week—none of us could work out how on earth we could be using so much toilet paper. One day, I was cleaning up and Olivia was out, so I decided to go to her room to collect a few glasses. There was a mug on the floor, and I bent down to pick it up. Under the bed, there must have been a hundred rolls of toilet paper, all different sizes, some nearly used down, some entire rolls. She’d taken them to either torment us or to make us buy more. No one could ever need that much toilet paper.

  Things came to a head two months in. At the time, Lila was working in a record store. One day, this unsavory-looking girl, who didn’t quite look like someone we’d hang out with, walked up to her, and said, “Hi, I’m Christy, and I’m taking Olivia’s room.” She saw the room advertised on Gumtree, had looked at our apartment, had the keys, and said she was moving in that week. This was the first we’d heard of it. Olivia hadn’t told us that she was moving out of her room or that she’d showed it and chosen someone.

  Obviously, this didn’t go down well at all with us. This was a Friday, and Christy was due to move in on Monday. The landlord agreed that if we could find a new replacement by Monday, we could choose who moved in. Lila’s boyfriend was the only person we could trust to move in with two days’ notice. They had only been together for six months, but it was either him or a psycho.

  When Olivia moved out, we didn’t want to be in her way—things ended badly, she didn’t enjoy living with us, and we certainly didn’t enjoyed living with her. The next day, we scouted around and realized she’d stolen random things from the apartment that belonged to us, like a couple of packets of hot chocolate, a packet of needles, a pizza that was in the freezer, and a toothbrush. It was like she was preparing to go to war or something. It felt like she was taking small, strange objects to remind her of the time in the apartment, the way a serial killer takes souvenirs.

  Once Olivia left, Lila’s boyfriend moved in, and that was a whole other nightmare, because then I was living with a couple. My best friend and I had moved in together thinking we were going to live in a princess palace, with pink everything, and watch Powerpuff Girls and have cocktail hour. It was a girly dream. Her boyfriend wasn’t a bad guy, but as soon as I was living with a couple, it was a completely different dynamic. Whenever we wanted to go out, he always had to come.

  Once, we planned a huge night out, and even bought tickets to a club in advance. I was single and wanted to go out and meet people. That night, we had been drinking in the apartment and getting ready, and were completely dressed and at the door. All of a sudden, her boyfriend said, “I don’t want to go. My legs hurt.” It was the most random excuse ever. Lila asked if we could still go, and he said, “No, can you stay home and look after me?” Then I obviously couldn’t go either, and we all sat at home, dressed up, in silence. It went from bad to worse, but at least he didn’t hoard toilet paper or torture me in the shower like Olivia had. It was so awkward whenever the two of us were the only ones in the apartment; we even avoided being in the kitchen at the same time.

  After the year was up, I was so traumatized that I moved back home—luckily, I could still commute to the university. And that living room we painted neon pink? On moving-out day, Lila’s parents had to repaint the whole room back to magnolia. It was such a bright paint that it took them five coats to cover it. They were not happy about that. Lila and I are still best friends, but we never lived together again. The princess palace dream went away.

  —B, 29 (F)

  THE RECOVERED ADDICT

  WHILE FINISHING MY DOCTORATE, I lived in a three-bedroom house with Chad, a buddy from work who I thought was a recovered alcoholic. He was six years older than me, and I’m not sure why he agreed to move in—maybe to help me with bills, or because he thought it would be good for him to live with someone els
e. It wasn’t until I found out he was still drinking that all sorts of weird things started to make sense.

  I woke up one day and he had broken the kitchen table and the window right next to it. He claimed he had come home in the dark and tripped. Granted, the table was cheap, with one of those pressboard tops, so the screws underneath were not great. It had come off its base, and I assumed he had put his elbow through the glass window. But the idea of tripping in the dark was a bit unbelievable—it makes more sense that he was stumbling around drunk.

  Chad was constantly washing all his comforters. He always went to bed with a huge pitcher of water because he got really thirsty, and he claimed that he spilled the pitcher of water on himself at night. He was clearly wetting the bed, and this happened almost once a month.

  I also think he was peeing out his bedroom window at night. I thought I was going crazy, because our bedrooms were on the second floor next to each other, facing the front of the house. I often heard the window open while I was sleeping, and could hear what sounded like peeing on the shingles. At the time I thought, Is he so lazy that he can’t even go to the bathroom to pour out his pitcher of water? That’s how blind I was to the whole thing. I didn’t want to get up out of my bed and look because I didn’t want to know the answer.

  I never saw Chad drink, but I knew he had a past with alcohol. One time, friends of mine from Germany were staying with us and had brought me a bottle of liqueur. We went out overnight, and when we came back, we couldn’t find the bottle. I asked Chad if he’d moved it, but I was so convinced he was recovered that I believed him when he said he knew nothing about it.

  One Saturday morning, I was lying in bed upstairs when I heard my neighbor downstairs yelling, “Hello? Anyone here?” I came running down, and she said, “Your buddy’s on the front porch. I think he fell off the porch swing.” I ran out and saw Chad, almost catatonic, rocking back and forth on the floor. He’d fallen off the swing and his eyes were dilated and glassy. He was so nonresponsive that I called 911, but by the time they arrived he was back in his bedroom. The police went up to his room, which was closed, and asked me if there was any chance he was dangerous. “No,” I said. “He’s a ninety-pound weakling.”