Roommates

When you're a senior in high school and you're thinking about college, you always hope that you don't end up with the story about an insane roommate. We all know somebody who came home the first Christmas and had nightmarish stories about their psychotic roommate. I've been blessed in the roommate department. I've had roommates that will be my friends for the rest of my life. Also, I have been cursed. Twice.

When I moved onto campus as an 18 year old, I had already corresponded with my roommate and was confident that we were going to have a very successful freshman year together. For the sake of self-preservation, we'll say her name is Kayley. Kayley was quirky and funny and we hung out quite a bit in the first few weeks of school. We were both music majors so we had a lot of classes together and everything was going well. As I started to make other friends, I noticed that Kayley didn't like to leave the dorm that often. I didn't have a problem with that because I was definitely enjoying going out and having fun. I was sad the first few times that she chose to be alone over hanging out but I figured that some people just need more "me" time than others. I knew she had made a few other friends but I very rarely saw her with them. It got to the point that I only saw her right before I went to bed at night. She went home for the weekend around midterm and came back with a boyfriend. His name was Jamie and he seemed very nice. He was in the military and he made her light up. I was happy for her. He wasn't around too much because he wasn't from the area. Around this time, Kayley started to wear a lot of black. She died her hair and stopped smiling. It kind of came out of nowhere. She used to be filled with laughter and color and suddenly she had done a complete brain swap. She became really hard to be around and seemed to develop some hostility towards me. Her boyfriend started to come to town more often and they would just spend the entire time in our room. It got to the point of awkward that I would sleep somewhere else whenever he was in town.
Everything came to a boiling point when he came to town unexpectedly. I adapted quickly and said that I'd stay in my friend Michelle's room on a different floor. But I told her I had to work that night and would drop by around 11 to pick up stuff for the night. I showed up, just like I said that I would, and tried to open the door. It was both lock and chained. I unlocked it and opened it as far as I could. I was a little irritated. You shouldn't chain a door when there's somebody else that lives there. They were sleeping so I knocked a few times and then called through the gap in the door to wake them up. Her boyfriend got up and came to the door in his underwear. I asked him to open the door and he swore at me and slammed it in my face. I stood there for a while longer and began knocking like crazy. I was pretty good and angry by this point. I kept knocking and opening the door to the end of the chain and shouting into the room until Kayley finally got up and opened the door. I went in, turned on all of the lights, made as much noise as possible getting my things, and slammed the door on my way out. The very next day I had a few words with my resident assistant and got moved into my friend Michelle's room. I can't remember having a friendly conversation with Kayley after that. She got stranger and stranger and started to alienate a lot more people and I considered myself lucky that I had moved when I did. Needless to say, when I went home for Christmas, I had my nightmare roommate story to tell. What I didn't know then is that by the end of my college experience with roommates, Kayley would end up looking like a cakewalk.

Moving in with Michelle turned out to be a really fantastic experience. We had a wonderful semester together and chose to move in with two other friends the following year. After another year on campus, we decided to get an apartment together. We each got a cat and had a lot of the same friends and had a lot of fun together. After the third year, she graduated and moved on and I decided to transfer to another college in the state. I lived alone with my cat Sam for a year and we were probably the perfect roommates. We never fought, we cleaned the house together and did all that other crazy cat lady stuff together. It was heaven! Living alone also comes along with lots of expenses. It became financially irresponsible to continue living alone. So I began searching for a roommate. I wanted to find someone that I knew but didn't know really well. I just wanted it to be someone clean who would pay on time and share a space well. The place I was living was very large and would easily accommodate another tenant. The bedrooms were on opposite ends of the house from each other so it was really an ideal situation for two people who haven't necessarily known each other very long. Finally I found someone who I thought would work out perfectly. Let's say that her name is Tarah.

Tarah was a girl that I knew from school. She was in my degree program and had been in a few of my classes. We had even hung out before on a few occasions. She didn't seem like the brightest bulb on the planet but she was a different kind of fun than most of my other friends. She was that girl who was at the bars every weekend having a good time and living life up. I thought maybe some of her fun loving nature would rub off on me and really saw no reason why she wouldn't be fine to live with for a year. I knew she kept things pretty clean, I knew that her father would pay if for some reason she couldn't, she had a cute cat named Serena, and I knew she had a job. It all looked good to me. But...every three hundred years, the stars perfectly aline and as a result, I'm wrong.



So Tarah moves in and gets all set up. We'd had a few discussions about regular household stuff. She wanted cable in her room and I told her she'd have to pay the company to come hook it up for her since it was already connected in the living room and my room. She thought I should pay half and I made it very clear that I didn't feel responsible for that. So she didn't get it and we got rid of my HBO to save some money and everything was fine. I had been thinking of getting another cat but we talked about it and decided that I wouldn't and everything was fine. I came home one day to find all the lights on and candles lit but Tarah wasn't home. She didn't come home for a few hours and I was upset because of the electricity bill and fire hazards. We talked it out and it was fine. We had small confrontations that didn't cause tension and were quickly and easily resolved. We trucked along like this for about two months before things started getting tense. Tarah started dating a boy named Casey, as seems to be a re-occurring theme with my bad roommates. Casey didn't live in town so I had only seen him a few times. I always tried to be respectful to her and let her know when there were going to be people staying at the house. I tried to give her really advanced notice and make sure she was comfortable with the situation. She did the same for the most part and it was never a problem. One day I came home from work on my lunch break and Casey was sitting in the living room watching TV. I said hello and went about my business. I was kind of curious as to why he was there and Tarah wasn't but I didn't make a big deal out of it. When I got off of work that evening, my friend and I were going to cook dinner and hang out for a bit. I walked in the house and didn't notice anything was off at first. Then I started hearing noises. I knew my roommate wasn't home so I couldn't figure out where these noises were coming from. My roommates door was cracked open and I went over to peek inside. To my horror, there was a large animal kennel with a dog inside. The place we were living has a very strict pet policy. Cats are okay dogs require an extra deposit. If a pet was on the premises without advanced notice to the landlord, we could get evicted. I instantly panicked because I knew that she hadn't told the landlord it would be there. I like to think that if she had told the landlord, she would have mentioned it to me. I went into the room and moved the kennel and the dog onto the front porch. It was summer so the weather was fine and I made sure he had lots of water and some food. I even sat on the porch and talked to him for a while. I checked on him frequently while I was trying to get Tarah on the phone. She didn't answer for about an hour. When she did pick up the phone she was in a bar and very obviously drunk. She said they'd be home soon and wasn't very coherent. So I made dinner with my friend and waited for her to come home.

I heard her car pull up about an hour later. I look out the window and they have parked lopsided in the driveway, Casey is carrying a half empty case of beer, and they are both very obviously drunk. The door flies open and the dog comes running into the house. I try to push it back out but Casey and Tarah both start yelling at me at once. They are very drunk and belligerent and swearing and just ridiculous. I try to calmly explain that the dog is in violation of our lease and that she should have checked with me before she brought a dog into the house anyway. She flies off the handle and starts screaming about how I was breaking and entering into her room to get the dog out and that I'm violating property laws by touching and animal that isn't mine. I had to stop and stare in awe of how white-trash the whole situation was. At this point I'm starting to lose my temper and I'm really trying not to. Casey is yelling at me about how he's going to sue me for touching the dog and that if I ever lay another hand on the animal he'll kill me and kill my cat. That is where I lost my temper. Tarah recognized this and realized that if the situation continued to escalate she was going to lose so she finally tried to control the situation. Her and I went to my room and tried to talk about it away from her hot-headed, violent boyfriend. She tells me that she's keeping the dog and that there isn't anything I can do about it. She says that her boyfriend is staying on for an extended period of time and that there isn't anything I can do about it. I told her that I was extremely uncomfortable since he just threatened my safety and the safety of my pet. She says that I'm just going to have to live with it. And in that moment, I decide to make the rest of her stay with me as miserable as I possibly could. So I leave the house. The next day, I come back and get my cat and we stay with a friend of mine for a few days. In the meantime, I'm formulating a plan. A very good plan.

I did a lot of research on what my rights were as a tenant. I found out that if she chose to pay the pet deposit, I wouldn't be able to do anything about the dog. But if she wanted her boyfriend to stay, she would have to get written approval from our landlord and he would be added to the lease. In order for that to happen, I would have to sign too. There was no way on this earth that I was going to sign on for that. At the same time, I had also found out that she'd had some problems in other places that she had lived too. Apparently, she never payed the final utility bills for the place she had lived before and she owed rent there too. I also knew some things about her academic history that I was hoping would convince her to move out. I know it's blackmail....but I was getting desperate. I was so desperate that I even looked into getting a restraining order against her boyfriend for threatening me. I never actually followed through with any of it but I wanted to make sure that I had my options open. I went and saw an academic affairs counselor on campus to see if they'd have any ideas on what I should do. I didn't get much out of it. So I was going to try sitting down with Tarah one more time. After that, I was going to start playing dirty. I wanted my solitude back.

Tarah and I met up and it was supposed to be the two of us but she brought a friend so that I wouldn't bully her...because I've clearly been getting my way a lot so far. So as we sat down, I realized that her friend would be doing most of the thinking...I mean talking for Tarah. This friend, let's call her Sallie, was 25, had three kids with a man who constantly cheats on her, and had been planning to bring her kids to live with us while she gets a divorce. She was less than happy when I said she could absolutely not move in with her three kids. That being said, I was less than impressed with Tarah's chosen representative. Sallie went on this rant about how I needed to be more respectful to Tarah, and appreciate that she has needs, and learn to adapt to new situations. I calmly listened and then got up. I turned to Tarah and told her that she should look for a new place to live. I explained that if she stayed with me, I would make sure she regretted every moment of it. She was stubborn about it at first but she moved about two weeks later. I very happily signed off to have her removed from the lease and went back to my life of being fiscally irresponsible. She had lived with me for four months.

I had pretty much decided that I was going to live alone for the rest of my life after that. I got two kittens and settled into life as a crazier cat lady. I was accepted into an opera program in Italy last summer and didn't want to pay for the trip and rent while I was gone. So I took my cats to my parents house and dropped my lease for the summer. When I got back I looked for a new place to live. I was having no luck and realized that I was going to have to find another roommate. This sounded like the worst idea ever but I sucked it up and did it anyway. I asked my best friend Adrian if he wanted to move in with me and he eventually decided that he did. We've been living together for almost five months and things have been great. He loves my cats, he loves me, we don't fight, he pays, he's clean, he's dreadfully good looking. Everything has fallen into place this time around. If I ever do get irritated with something he does, I just think about how much worse things could be.