by Stephanie Wu
The next weekend, Jake took me to the range to teach me how to shoot. He told me I needed to learn how to shoot a couple of his guns. As an ex-marine he knew how to handle guns well, and also collected them for fun. He hadn’t been trying to hide the guns; it was something that never came up in everyday conversation. We spent the day at the range, and after that, started hanging out more and more, and eventually started hooking up.
Our relationship was always very casual, and Diane either never knew or never acknowledged it. At night, I went into his room, or he came into mine, to see if the other was up for hanging out. The other person could always say, “not tonight,” and it was fine. We essentially became roommates with benefits and hooked up for eight months. We didn’t hang out much outside of the house, but he did meet my parents when they came to visit once—as a roommate, not a boyfriend. We went to the movies occasionally if neither of us were doing anything. We both knew we had a good thing going and didn’t want to mess it up with a big discussion about our feelings.
We were hooking up exclusively until I started dating another guy, and then we ended things amicably. We both moved out eventually—Jake went to hike the Appalachian Trail, and I left for law school. As for the intruder, he’s serving ten years in prison—after all, it was Texas and he was on private property. He apparently had a long record. Every time he wasn’t in jail, he was breaking into someone else’s house.
—E, 27 (F)
THE PSEUDO-FRAT
I STARTED DATING COLIN in London when we were both studying abroad. After we finished our senior years at our respective colleges, I made plans to move to New York, where he was. We never discussed moving in together, but he was the only person I knew there. He told me not to sign a lease, and that we should live together for a couple of months and see where we were. I had a few friends who I knew were moving to New York later, so I figured I could move in with them at some point.
When I first moved into his apartment, there were five guys living there. Three of us shared a bedroom with bunk beds. My boyfriend and I slept on the top bunk, and a friend of his slept on the bottom. My dresses and shirts were all stored in the kitchen cabinets. I was barely at the apartment, but when I was there, I needed quick access to my clothes. Getting ready quickly for my fashion magazine job and my nighttime bar job was practically impossible. I was always running around the city like a chicken with its head cut off, with no idea where I was, but still trying to look cute and impressive and stylish for my internship. It was a nightmare to try and get readjusted to my new life and come home to five screaming boys playing Battlestar Galactica or blowing up zombies over and over again. And because the boys were moving out of the apartment at the end of the summer, they trashed it.
When the lease ended, Colin and I decided to move in together. It was out of necessity, convenience, and a desire to play house. It felt romantic but was ultimately ill-fated. We found an apartment that was so close to the old one that we walked our things over—the mattress was wheeled a few blocks down on a skateboard. We were living in Alphabet City, in a one-bedroom apartment with a balcony in a freshly redone building. We each paid $1,500 a month, and I was an intern with a part-time bar job. I was really frustrated that his parents helped him out and he didn’t have to support himself financially, and that put a wedge between us. We also got a cat, which was a horrible idea—she hated both of us.
We were in the apartment for nine months when I started feeling really smothered and going a little crazy. I had been working at a full-time job for two months and was finally starting to feel like I was getting a grip on the city. I had my own friends from work, and thought I finally had a life separate from Colin and his friends. I started looking for my own apartment, and thought maybe I’d move out but we’d stay together. One Friday at work, we were chatting online, casually talking about how much distance there was between us. “Maybe we should break up,” I said, because I was resentful and mad. And in a weird twist of fate, he said, “Yeah, you’re totally right.” I backpedaled immediately, said I was sorry and didn’t mean it, but he knew I’d been hinting at it for a while. He didn’t come home all weekend, and I didn’t call him—it didn’t feel real to me. I thought we were playing break up, the way we were playing house when we lived together. But when I saw him again, he told me he was staying in the apartment and I should move out. The next day, he got on a plane home to California, where he stayed for a month until after I was gone.
Since Colin was away, I hunted for a new apartment and moved out on my own. My cousin and his best friend had recently graduated—they were two straight musical theater majors—and were moving to New York. And again, out of convenience, but also the need to be around someone supportive, I agreed to move in with them. We found a three-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, and I spent the whole summer there by myself before they moved in. I got to do whatever I wanted, including walking around naked. It was bliss.
Then the two of them moved in and since I was living with two men, it felt like I was back where I started. They didn’t just watch TV—they sang the commercials. They thought it was hilarious to sing sad songs from Les Misérables while they cut onions. Hailing a cab meant repurposing songs from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Sunday mornings were spent washing dishes to Mandy Patinkin singing “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday in the Park with George. I had no peace at all. It wasn’t as bad as five different guys, but it was like I was living in a musical. They also had video game parties all night and bizarre bongs everywhere. My cousin and I grew up together and are very close, but when we were living together, we weren’t as close because he was always in the middle. I felt like I’d outgrown living with boys—I was living in a frat house when I wanted to be building a life of my own. Some people say men are easy to live with—they’re not emotional, they won’t borrow your clothes, they don’t turn things into drawn-out emotional arguments. But that wasn’t the case at all. They were so emotional and passive-aggressive that I didn’t know how to deal with them.
Two years later, they’ve moved out, and two girls have taken over. We’ve turned it into a lovely lady palace, where everyone is grown-up and independent. We have separate lives, and it’s not that we don’t like one another, we’re just never around at the same time. I’m hoping this is the happy end of my roommate story.
—G, 27 (F)
THE PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE PIG
I FOUND A ROOMMATE ON KIJIJI, the Canadian version of Craigslist, for the extra den that my roommate Tara and I wanted to rent out. Our new roommate, Kate, seemed totally nice during the interview—she was a year older than us and worked in advertising. We specifically didn’t want to rent to students, and since she had a good job, she seemed legit.
We had never rented anything out before, and most of the problems that occurred were because we didn’t have proper documentation. Our rent was due on the first, but Kate never paid us on the day of. We should have asked her for postdated checks, but we always had to remind her, and she always said, okay, remind me tomorrow. With cable bills, she rounded down because it was never an even number. Forty-four dollars became forty dollars, which is not a big deal, but between cable, utilities, and rent, it added up. Every time, Kate said, “I’ll get you later, I don’t have any change right now.” And I never got that money back.
We soon found out that she was incredibly dirty—there’s a difference between messy and dirty, and she was dirty. There were black fingerprints on her white door. Tara and Kate shared a bathroom, and Tara is a total clean freak. Any time anyone comes over and uses the bathroom, she’ll Lysol the entire toilet afterward. On the subway, Tara never holds the handrails. She was wearing a dress once and sat down, and her butt accidentally touched the subway seat. She had a panic attack and actually sprayed Lysol on her butt afterward. So Tara and Kate were complete, complete opposites. But Tara got so fed up that she stopped cleaning. At some point, there was an entire carpet of hair in the bathroom. The kitchen was gross too—all the door handles were
greasy, including the microwave and fridge. And throughout the year, Kate never took out the trash, except for once when her sister was there. I should’ve gotten a security deposit for her room, because we had to steam clean the carpet, which turned from white to black.
Our relationship got worse as we started to realize how incompatible we were. Kate stopped making any effort about six months in. We saw dirty underwear on the floor and dishes in the bed. The dishes piled up in her room—we often looked in the cabinet and realized there were no dishes left, because they were all in her room. Sometimes she put the dishes in the sink, but they were never clean. We washed most of her dishes—it always came down to whoever had the lower tolerance.
When she moved in, we were friendly. We always said, if you ever need milk, borrow it. Though she drank our juice and used our cooking supplies, we were never allowed to use anything of hers. She even told one of my friends she wasn’t allowed to sit on the couch because it belonged to her.
A friend of mine stayed over once, and while we were at work, she decided to bake. She accidentally used Kate’s butter—there wasn’t a lot left and she finished it. I didn’t have time to tell Kate that we’d used up her butter. But Kate dug through the trash and found the wrapper, and stuck it on the fridge door with a Post-it note that said, “This is my butter!!!” I still have a picture of it.
When her lease was up, she refused to move out at first, probably because she was getting a great deal on rent. On her last day, she dragged it out as long as she could. She kept saying she had the right to stay until the last minute. At eleven thirty P.M., I blew up and started moving her stuff into the hallway. Kate and Tara were screaming at each other, because Kate still owed Tara money. I threw the last of her stuff out of the apartment and slammed the door in her face, and that’s how we ended things. We later found out she’d moved downstairs to the fifth floor, because she’d made another friend in the building. Whenever we saw her afterward, we pretended we didn’t know her.
—J, 27 (F)
THE TEENAGE PROTECTOR
I WAS TWENTY-FIVE and just starting my career when my aunt offered me an incredible living situation. She had found a two-story townhouse with three bedrooms, a washer-dryer, a living room, and a dining room. My eighteen-year-old cousin was heading to college in the same city and my aunt didn’t want him to be alone and unsupervised, so she came up with the idea of pairing us up as roommates so that I would be somewhat of a big sister or guardian type. My cousin and I were close when we were young, but I hadn’t spent much time with him in six years. I didn’t know if I was supposed to be babysitting him or allowing him to have alcohol. I told him that if he was drinking, I didn’t want to be anywhere near it—it was an awkward position to be in.
The house was set up so that my cousin and I both had rooms on the second floor, and we used the extra room as an office and gym. He was a sloth who slept all day, and ate nothing but crackers, Cheez Whiz, and maybe a little piece of salami. I was always trying to get him to eat some real food, but he was never interested in going out to dinner.
Our next-door neighbors were a married couple in their late twenties with two kids. One night a few months into living together, I came home and saw the husband hanging out with my cousin and his friends downstairs. I chatted with them briefly before heading upstairs to my room, and suddenly noticed the husband following me up the steps. We were at the top of the stairs when I told him he needed to leave. I saw his eyes darting around to the open door to my cousin’s room, and he started trying to push me in. I was screaming and holding on to the doorframe for dear life, and eventually managed to push him backward with my butt. When he realized he wasn’t going to be able to push me into the room, he went running down the stairs and out the door. I’m pretty sure he was on some kind of drugs at the time—afterward, he claimed he was drunk.
I had run into my room and locked my door when my cousin came knocking to ask if I was okay. I told him what had happened, and he followed the husband home and beat him up—he actually broke his hand on the guy’s face. At the same time my cousin was beating this guy up, the wife came over to ask me what had happened. She was someone I was friendly with, so I told her what had happened, and she was completely incredulous.
I went to my boyfriend’s place that night, and called the police the next day to file a report. I thought I would file a sexual assault report, but they told me I couldn’t because I didn’t actually have any wounds or bruises from the assault. I thought I might have some on my arms because he was trying to bear hug me as he was pushing me into the room, but it was nothing major. “I don’t think you can file charges,” the police said. “That guy’s face is more evidence against your cousin. If you file charges, he might file against your cousin.” The cops weren’t very useful.
My cousin might have been young, but he was a good kid who stood up for me. We both knew the husband wouldn’t bother us after that. When the landlord heard what had happened and saw the guy’s face, she kicked both the neighbors and my cousin out of the building.
After all this, I wanted to hug my cousin. He felt like a brother to me, and I was horrified that he had broken his hand. Afterward, I always felt indebted to him. We don’t live in the same place anymore—that little kid who never wanted to eat real food actually went to culinary school and became a sushi chef. The scars on his hand from beating the guy up are now nothing compared to the scars and burns he has from cooking. The funny thing is, my aunt thought I’d be the one to protect my cousin, but he’s the one who came to my rescue that fateful night.
—K, 33 (F)
THE HEIST
MY BOYFRIEND CHRIS and I had been dating for about a year when we decided to move in together. At that point, I thought we were going to have a future with each other—he had even given me a promise ring. We found a two-level home, with two bedrooms and one and a half bathrooms. It was a nice space, just not in a very good neighborhood. When we moved in, I paid for all the furniture and appliances, because I made more money than he did.
Three or four months in, Chris broke up with me. I decided to move out, and he planned to move in with his best friend, Zach, but Zach took over my room in the apartment instead.
A month after I moved out, I got a phone call from Zach, who told me my ex had been cheating on me the entire time we were together. “He brought her over to my place all the time,” he said. “All those times Chris said he was coming over to hang out with me and drink, he was actually hanging out with her.” When Zach moved into the apartment, their rule was that this girl wouldn’t hang out around the house, because Zach hated her. She was younger and just out of high school, and Chris had dated her briefly before the two of us got together. But Chris broke that rule immediately, and that girl became his new girlfriend. Zach and I hadn’t been close at all—he called because he thought Chris was being a douchebag. Plus, he wanted to get back at him for choosing the girl over their friendship.
When I moved out, I had left all the appliances I’d bought with him—the washer, the dryer, the fridge. Chris was supposed to pay me back over time, plus he owed me money on top of that: down payment on the car, his share of the rent and utility bills for multiple months, vacation expenses, the deposit for the apartment—it was a lot.
Zach and I hatched a plan: we were going to move all my appliances out while Chris wasn’t home. We both knew Chris had no intention of paying me back any of the money he owed me. In order to protect myself from additional financial stress, I decided to take what I could and sell them to get some of my money back. When we got there, his new girlfriend was at the house. She called the cops on us, even though we had every right to be there. It was my property, and Zach had a key to the place. When the cops showed up, the girlfriend told them they were taking her stuff. “Actually,” I said, “it’s all mine.” And the cops took my side. “All we can do is supervise while they move the stuff out,” they said. I was able to get all my stuff back and move the appliances to my new place. I
later went to Chris’s workplace and took my car back too, while he was at work.
After I took the car, Chris came to my apartment because he wanted the things that were still in the car. He called the cops on me, so I had to empty the car of his things. He threatened to sue me to get the car back, but never did. I sold the washer and dryer on Craigslist. As for the fridge, I left it sitting in their backyard. When I went back to get it, Zach said someone had taken it away. Whether or not that’s true, I have no idea. Chris has tried to contact me again since then, but I still won’t speak to him.
—G, 29 (F)
THE MORMON HOUSEHOLD
LIKE MANY PEOPLE, I moved to New York for a job. But unlike most, I found my roommates through a friend, one I had met on the subway eight months prior when I was in New York for an internship. The two of us had kept in touch, and when I was moving back, she sent me an apartment listing from a listserv she was on. I didn’t get a chance to see the place, but I trusted her judgment. I got in touch with a girl named Sarah, whose name was on the lease, who told me I’d be sharing a room with another girl. I lived at home during college, so I’d never shared a room, or even had a roommate, in my life. At twenty-eight, I wasn’t sure if I could share a room with someone, but I knew I had to adapt in order to live in New York.
I arrived at the apartment late at night and met Sarah, who ran me through the apartment guidelines—don’t leave food out, don’t leave things in the common area, and so on—which I was perfectly fine with. Then she started talking about churches and wards, and I gave her a totally blank stare. I knew my friend was Mormon, and I knew the listserv was Mormon-based, but I had no idea that everyone who lived in the apartment was Mormon. And I don’t think they were aware that I wasn’t Mormon. Sarah was going on and on about which ward I should go to when I told her I wasn’t Mormon. “Oh,” she said with a bewildered look. “We won’t worry about that right now.”
