by Stephanie Wu
On the show, the whole crew lived together in a house in Chicago with a great kitchen, big living room, pool table, and Jacuzzi. It was spacious, but we spent very little time actually sleeping, because we were doing a show. There were six people to a room, all on bunk beds—I shared a bunk with Andrew D’Ambrosi, a tall and burly redhead, and we all shared a bathroom. I felt kind of like a child again. It was interesting being thrown back into a situation where you’re falling asleep among others, and once in a while there’s a snorer or people making sleeping noises. I think the show does that for a couple reasons, partially because they want you on edge a little bit.
I was used to bunk beds because I grew up with one in my room, and I slept in them throughout high school. But I’d forgotten what it was like to live among strangers, with no personal space. As the weeks passed, people started disappearing because they got eliminated from the show. I was there all the way to the end, so I developed relationships and bonded with the others. I was sad to see people leave, especially my bunkmate, Andy, but when contestants left, we took over their rooms and bunk beds. It made sense if a bed was available.
It took some time to adjust to the cameras and the strangers, but I eventually did make friends, though everyone’s mind was on the competition quite a bit. I lived in the house for about two months. I enjoyed myself on the show—definitely more than others who took it very seriously. Not much of the living situation gets aired on television, but it really is what it looks like. It was complete chaos, and there was never much downtime.
I later returned to the show for Top Chef All-Stars, where I lived with a bunch of guys—Dale Talde, Angelo Sosa, Richard Blais, Mike Isabella, and Fabio Viviani. That was such a fun experience because everyone was returning. We lived in a penthouse in New York that overlooked the skyline. There was a rooftop, and we all played drinking games and had tons of fun. Mike Isabella in particular snored so loudly. I didn’t get much sleep to begin with, but it was especially bad when he was in the room. Mike and I both live in the D.C. area, and before he went on the show for the first time, he came to talk to me about Top Chef. He was at a crossroads, and I encouraged him to do it. “It’ll change your life, you need to go,” I said. I didn’t know about his snoring then, or I might have been less encouraging.
I was later on The Next Iron Chef, which was totally different. It’s a really classy show, and they put you up in a big hotel. I had a room of my own and lived like a king. It was a completely opposite situation.
I’ve lived alone for years now because I can afford to, and because I had so many roommates growing up. Between Top Chef, camp, military school, culinary school, and my years in New York, I must have had at least a hundred.
—SPIKE MENDELSOHN, 33 (M), CHEF AND OWNER OF D.C.’S GOOD STUFF EATERY; WE, THE PIZZA; AND BEARNAISE
THE NEWBORN BABY
I WAS SICK OF THE ROOMMATE REVOLVING DOOR and living with irresponsible twenty-one-year-olds when I decided to look for an apartment in Brooklyn—I wanted a clean slate and thought it would be a nice change from Manhattan. I met Emma and Aaron, an engaged couple who had an extra room in their apartment, through Craigslist. They were a little older than I, more mature, and very friendly and nice. People warned me about moving in with a couple, but I figured they were already engaged and had a wedding date set, so they were probably not going to break up. Plus, they’d mentioned that they might eventually move out, so I figured I could score a great apartment and have two friends move in with me later. It had three bedrooms and a great patio that was almost like a second living room when it was warm out.
The three of us got along incredibly well. They were a bit more settled down than I was. When I came home from a book reading or whatever, they often had leftovers, and we all sat around and watched TV. When Emma and Aaron got married as planned at the end of the summer, I wasn’t thinking about their next step. I figured kids were far off in the future, and that they’d move into their own place at that point.
Then one day in January, they sat me down and told me they were pregnant. They were freaked out, like any other new parents. I thought I had some time to figure out what I wanted to do as far as the roommate situation. None of my friends in New York had kids, so I didn’t know anything about babies or children beyond my basic babysitting knowledge.
As the months passed, I thought that they might move out first. I didn’t want them to go, but I figured they’d want to start a family in their own space. I didn’t move out immediately because I liked the apartment and the neighborhood, and I loved going out and having my home be a calm oasis. The deciding factor was my dad, who I go to for a lot of practical advice. I wrote him an e-mail detailing the pros (I liked Emma and Aaron as roommates; it’d be great to stay in the neighborhood; I can afford it) and cons (what if the baby cries all night and I have to go to work sleep-deprived?—I was a bit dramatic). And my dad said, “Babies are not like that.” I’m the oldest of four, and he demystified it for me a bit. It wasn’t as if I would have to take care of the baby all night—the parents were going to be doing that.
At some point I decided, let’s see where it goes. I do like children in general, and Emma and Aaron were okay with me staying in the apartment. It might be weird to have a stranger in the house, but on the other hand, it would have been harder for them to find a replacement roommate. They told me they wouldn’t leave the baby in the living room, where she’d be very loud, and said they’d try to disrupt my life as little as possible. I think none of us knew what to expect, which is a normal state for new parents. It was a bit awkward to explain to my long-distance boyfriend that I was going to be living with a baby. But thankfully, he understood and respected that I had made up my mind.
In the meantime, I learned about all these pregnancy things—there’s a listserv in Park Slope, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, where parents swap their ridiculous designer baby gear. People came by all the time to drop off clothes, and we oohed and ahhed over the tiny clothes, like a Ralph Lauren shirt for the baby. We had a baby shower for Emma in Prospect Park, and it was a beautiful day out and we were so happy—it was one of those milestone moments where you forget there’s going to be an actual child to take care of soon.
When the baby was born, my life stayed more or less the same, but my roommates were transformed. I got to see the new-parent experience firsthand, and for the first six weeks, they were like zombies. They were definitely struggling a bit with taking care of the kid. They were doing a great job, but sometimes I came home and there were random dishes left out. Aaron and Emma were super-clean people, so as soon as they started being a little bit dirty—which was still clean by normal standards—I knew they must have been exhausted.
The first time I held the baby was when she was a few days old, and most people don’t get that opportunity. One thing I learned was that in the first couple of months, babies are not super reactive because their eyesight isn’t well developed and it’s hard for them to see faces. After a while, she started to recognize faces and voices, and that became the fun part. After a stressful day at work, I could come home and play with the baby. It was easy for me, because as soon as she started to fuss or wanted to go to sleep, the parents took over and did the hard part, and I went to the movies.
It was the first month after the baby was born when Hurricane Sandy hit. Luckily, we were on high ground, so all we had was a lot of rain. I remember working from home with my laptop and the baby sleeping next to me, and thinking, “This isn’t so bad.” I didn’t have to do anything except watch her so they could take a nap.
I never felt like the de facto babysitter in the house. I might have changed a diaper once, but they were very careful not to disrupt my life. They only asked me to babysit once, because Aaron had produced a documentary that was being shown at a film festival. The baby was two months old at the time, and I was happy to do it. But at the last minute, Emma decided not to go.
I do remember one day when Aaron was up with the baby on a Saturday morn
ing. I was wandering in and out of the living room, getting cereal and making coffee. Though I’d been chatting with him two minutes before, when I walked in again, Aaron was dead asleep. And the baby was sitting up in her high chair, with a look on her face that said, “Hey! Who’s going to play with me? Why are the adults asleep?” I dragged the chair into my room so we could hang out quietly, and that’s the closest I came to doing any babysitting. When the parents woke up, they were so embarrassed and kept apologizing, but I knew how sleep-deprived they were.
For a roommate who doesn’t pay rent and doesn’t clean up after herself, she was pretty great. Her crying only woke me up once or twice, and pretty much any roommate in New York will do that to you.
Eventually, Aaron and Emma decided to move to Boston, where his parents were. I got a job in Chicago, where my boyfriend was. I was sad to give up the apartment and say good-bye to my roommates and their baby. I’ve been to visit them once so far, and got to see her walking a little and saying a few syllables.
In some ways, I felt like living with them was training for when I have kids. I got to see how crazy it gets in those first couple of months, when you’re trying to hold it all together and make sure the baby is fed and sleeping. I browsed a lot of mommy blogs at the time, but it’s not the same as seeing it unfold in the flesh. It brought home how overwhelming it is to prepare for a baby; there’s so much to read, buy, and do. When I have my own children, I’ll have to take primary responsibility for them, and that will be a different ball game. I won’t be able to hand them off when they’re cranky.
—E, 30 (F)
THE POTHEADS
I GREW UP IN BRITISH COLUMBIA, which is known as a pot-smoking province. What most people call “good pot” comes from BC. My friends and I didn’t smoke, but we were the rare exception. My first incident living with mass amounts of marijuana happened when I shared a house with five guys. Four of them worked at a bus company, and figured out that a lot of the buses were being used for shipping marijuana. They started intercepting small packages, and discovered that anything that smelled like coffee was probably pot. They brought the pot home, and one day I saw the guys sitting around the kitchen table with a gigantic, fishbowl-size mound of marijuana. I took one look at it and said, “If the cops ask, I don’t live here. I live downstairs.”
They all laughed at me, but it only took about two weeks for the cops to show up. They’d been in the middle of a sting, trying to intercept pot as it was being transferred between cities in Canada, and had been waiting for this large shipment that never made it to its destination. The cops had checked footage from bus stations and saw my roommates taking it, and told them they needed it back. One of the guys, Nick, had already sold most of it and spent some of the money on a new guitar, so he had to sell his guitar back and try to track down the weed he’d sold. The cops took the package, drove a bus over it to make it look like it hadn’t arrived at its destination because it was run over, and sent it on its way. I don’t know if Nick got charged with anything or only got a slap on the wrist, but it was crazy.
About three years later, I was living in a ski resort and working as an instructor. I’d moved there with my boyfriend, but we’d broken up, so I found myself looking for a roommate. I was also working retail and in a fine dining restaurant at night, so I got to know a lot of people in the mountains. One of the people I worked with at the restaurant was a guy named Liam, who was about eight years older than me and very snooty—he thought he knew everything about working on the line.
Liam happened to have a room in his place and was looking for a roommate. The rent was decent, but within the first month of living with him, I realized I might not have made the best decision. He was a nice enough guy, but he was odd. He insisted on roasting his own coffee—he roasted the beans in the oven and then ground them up before making any cup of coffee. My friend came over to visit once and spent the night on our couch, and the next morning, Liam, knowing he was on the couch, decided to start loudly roasting his coffee beans and crash pans around the kitchen. And there were several incidents where I came out of my bedroom and found him in front of the refrigerator stark naked.
When the summer came, we all had a lot more free time because they cut our hours on the slopes and at the restaurant. Liam told me that he was going to go work for a buddy over the summer, and while he was gone, his room started to reek. It stank so bad that I couldn’t handle it—I wanted to respect his privacy, but something had to be done. So I went into his room, and as I was opening the door, I noticed that there was soil on the floor. And as I stepped in, I started seeing dirty dishes piled up on the floor and realized that the food was flowering, which was where the stench was coming from. When I walked in to get the dishes, there were pot plants everywhere. I’m five foot two, and some of the plants were about my height, and others were at my waist. They were huge and took up a large part of his room. I thought I was being punked—could I really be living in a house where this guy was running his own little grow-op? All of a sudden, the dopey sides of his personality started to make sense to me. I guess he liked pot so much he had to grow it himself. When he returned at the end of the summer, he showed me the five thousand dollars he had made working on a friend’s marijuana farm. Needless to say, I didn’t stay much longer. It’s too bad I’m not a pot smoker and couldn’t take advantage of living with these guys.
—P, 36 (F)
THE GERIATRIC RETIREMENT HOTEL
I ARRIVED IN SAN FRANCISCO WITH NO JOB, no home, and no friends. When I got there, I stayed in a hostel for three days and e-mailed everyone I knew who had been to San Francisco before. I lived with an acquaintance for two weeks, but her roommate didn’t like having a stranger in the house—she got drunk and punched me my first night there. Three weeks in, as I was job hunting, I realized I needed an actual address for my résumé. In my search for a job teaching English, I saw a posting advertising a hotel for foreign students that was cheap and could be rented for nine hundred dollars a month, which included three meals a day in the dining room.
The hotel itself was in an area of San Francisco known for crack dealers and prostitutes, but I wanted to check it out for myself. As soon as I walked in, it smelled like old people. I asked the manager if rooms were available, and he said, “Why? You know everyone here is over seventy years old, right? Are you okay with living with old people?” I told him I didn’t have a problem with it. “Okay,” the manager said. “We can’t discriminate against your age”—I was twenty-seven at the time—“so if you want it, I have a room I can put you in, but at any time, I might need to fill the other bed with a roommate.”
My room was two little hotel beds, a window, and a sink that smelled like pee all the time. I think the previous tenant either thought the sink was a toilet or couldn’t get down the hallway ten feet to the toilet. I stayed away from that sink while I lived there.
The building also had its own library, with books that were so crappy that no one would steal them. The books weren’t even worth the nickel you might get at a donation place for them. But it had wireless Internet, so I hung out there during the day to job hunt. I fell asleep on the lumpy couch once, and woke up to find an old woman hovering over me. She was about to poke me, and when I woke up, she said, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re not dead. Sometimes, in this place, I have to check.”
Later that night, when I was eating dinner in the dining hall, the same woman came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder as she passed. “I’m so glad you’re not dead,” she said, and sat down. Another lady sat down later, and the two started mumbling at each other. The waiter came up to me afterward, and said, “Do you know what happened with those two ladies?” I had no idea. “The second lady is jealous of the first because you’re the new meat at the hotel,” the waiter continued. “She wants to be your girlfriend and was talking shit about the first one.”
I eventually made friends with the next-youngest guy in the building, who was fifty-five years old and was staying ther
e while recovering from a heart attack. He told me the waiter was in on it too. “All the waitstaff here are gay,” he said. “They want the new me. They don’t know if you’re here for the old ladies, the old men, or the young men.” Later, when the guy was no longer living there but still hanging out once in a while, in a moment of drunkenness he asked me if I wanted to date him. So I guess he was in on it as well.
Within the first week, I met Roger, who shuffled into the library one day and shyly looked at me. I knew right away that if I nodded in his direction he’d come over, so I did. He sat next to me and told me all about his life—he had been in movies with Elvis and Ann-Margaret because he was in the right place at the right time. He’d also been a professional ballet dancer, but lived in the hotel alone because he had a kidney stone and didn’t have family to support him. The next night in the library, he came over and was telling me more stories. As we said good night, his penis fell out of his pants. I didn’t think anything of it, because he was so old, and I thought he didn’t know how to keep his pants up. It took a day or two for me to realize that it wasn’t an accident—just his way of hitting on me. I went to the movies with a staff member once, and afterward, he asked if I wanted to go back to his room with him, which I politely declined.
It felt like the hotel was the kind of place where people go to die. Almost everyone was on Social Security, and a few had regular nurse visits. An ambulance came around once a month for something serious or if someone had passed away. It was great for the people who needed it. If you couldn’t get up for your meal, they’d pack it for you and leave it outside your door. They held happy hours on Friday nights from five to six, where you got a watered-down drink, stale crackers, and old cheese, but everyone fought over it like wild dogs. One Filipino guy sang karaoke songs on a little piano. They didn’t call it a nursing home, but it was very similar, only cheaper.
