Roommates are a fact of daily life for ONEin3ers. Almost 3/4 of us rent, and a good chunk of that live with other young people.
I’ve had my share of roommates over the years, although none through Craig’s List. It’s been a mostly great ride and I’ve come away with some close friends.
BUT, I also have some epic stories of lost clothes, early morning kitchen noises, late night loudness, slurpy eating and much more.
Tomorrow I’ll be writing about some of the more substantive aspects of renting, but for now I thought I’d tell you a tale of woe from my roommate past.
Leave your tales of woe in the comments.
At a time in the not too distant past, I had a roommate whom I will call Stan. Stan was taller and bigger than me. My clothes did not fit him. But Stan had a problem: he just couldn’t manage to get his clothes to and from the laundromat or dry cleaner.
Stan was always running out of stuff to wear to work. Naturally his solution was to raid my closet or our other roommate’s. I used to come home on a regular basis to find shirts that had been clean earlier in the day hanging in the closet with the sleeves rolled up. I mean, Stan, really?
So one Friday morning in the Spring I had literally one clean shirt left and I double checked it before I took a shower because I was worried about it. “Ok, there’s my white shirt and gray pants combo. I’m good to go.”
I went downstairs, took a shower, ate some breakfast and returned to find that my white shirt and gray pants were gone. I raged. I threw things. I went in my dirty laundry and ironed a dirty shirt and wore it to work. I thought about what I would say all day, ready to pounce the second Stan walked in the door.
But when I walked in the door (out of a driving rain storm), Stan was there looking fresh as a daisy with an outfit entirely owned by him. I thought I was losing my mind. I said nothing.
Months passed and Stan moved out. That fall, we decided it was time to clean out the downstairs closet. Guess what we found!
Deep in the back in a moldy old Whole Foods grocery bag were my gray pants and white shirt. They were hopelessly wrinkled and covered in black mold.
It seems Stan got soaked in that rainstorm and managed to stuff my clothes in the bag all wet before I got home.
There’s my story and believe me, there are more where that came from.
Now let’s hear yours!
I once had a roommate who engaged in horrifically loud sex with her boyfriend. My other roommate and I would close the door to the living room, turn the tv volume up, and still hear her screams. We knew it was over when we would hear her boyfriend let out a guttural “ugghhhhghghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” 15 minutes later, the screams would start up again.
There was also the time they didn’t see each other for a few months, then the boyfriend came to visit. They spent the entire night in the bedroom. My other roommate woke up the following morning and went to use the bathroom, only to find that the door was locked. With both of them moaning in the shower. When he walked by her open bedroom door, he actually gagged from the odor emanating from the room. I believe his description was “it smelled like sex and rotten ketchup.”
Don’t get me started! I had a string of Craigslist roommates in the past (I live alone now). Some awesome, some not-so-awesome. The worst one stopped paying rent for 4 months before I found out about her financial issues (she used to send her check to the management co. directly every month). She also gave me a series of utility checks that bounced. To top it off, she always took off her smelly shoes in the livingroom, never cleaned, left crumbs and food stains all over the place, and took one of my tables when she moved out. You couldn’t see her bedroom floor because it was covered with clothes and dirty dishes.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by ONEin3 Boston and Meg, Meg. Meg said: Methinks @devincole lived with sociopaths What's your awful roommate story? http://ht.ly/3WMq2 #roommates #apartments #boston [...]
I share your pain, Nick M. When I first moved to Boston, I had come from college life in Portland, Maine- where I lived in several apartments with roommies that I got along perfectly with. Venturing to Allston”Rock City”, I called this land of the Harvard Ave strip, 90′s nights at Common Ground, hungover mornings at Bagel Rising and a rat-inhabited brownstone….home. I moved in with two HS friends who were attending grad school at local schools, and our place was their first apartment after four years of dorm life. Moving in, I knew that maybe we were on different wavelengths as far as apartment living, and understood that there would be differences in lifestyle as well- as they were still living like college kids and I was doing this 9-5, suit-wearing grown-up-thing.
That said, I still did NOT appreciate the Tuesday night 2am drunken debacles; complete with smoke wafting through my bedroom door, doorbell-ringing of the Chinese food delivery man, Random Guy passed out on the couch and the clattering of my roommates’ high heels as they forget that they are still wearing them and ALSO forget that the 3rd roommate has a 6:30am wake up time for a 7:30am T-trip to work. (You are all nodding your heads right now because most of you have “been there or done that.”)
So, because of the so called “normalcy” of this made me force myself to endure these conditions on a weekly basis…..before one event threw me over the edge. That was the violation of MY ROOM. My precious bedroom. The one sole space that I could call just my own. My oasis of peace and privacy in all of its blue and green interiors and most favorite watercolor prints. There, I walked in after a coming home from a weekend trip, and there laid my roommate’s college friend, passed out naked with Random Guy that I was sure had understood his assigned spot- the couch or the beanbag in corner of my living room. Spooning under my covers, their underwear tossed at my doorstep, in a comatose state that could only be caused by the makings of the scene in my kitchen- complete with shot glasses, 4 empty liquor bottles and other paraphernalia objects. And worst of all. Clear evidence of what went on in my bed the night before….or maybe even 20 minutes before I came home. Ew….ew…..ew.
This scene caused my blood pressure and bitch-meter to rise to a level never experienced before and to a level that my roommates had never been subject to. I LET IT OUT. 9 am on a Sunday morning and I probably woke up the neighbors and annoyed them way worse than my roommates ever had with their weeknight shenanigans, I screamed, yelled and insulted the roommates, roommates’ friend, and Random Guy. (If you want to me to relay my verbal script in detail, we can talk offline if you’re that enticed…) Words and admissions came out of my mouth that I never thought I’d have the courage to regurgitate beyond complaining phone calls with other friends. I let them have it and had the indignant witness of the utter state of confusion, fear, and humiliation of the two bed-stealing culprits who jumped out, fumbled with their clothes and raced to the door as they continued to hear me cuss and holler.
What was truly puzzling though, and really telling of a difference in values among my roommates and I, was my witness of the wide-eyed,confused, and irritated roommates after they sleepily emerged from their rooms . Roommate #1 said, “We knew you weren’t coming home last night” and “Roommate #2 said, “I don’t see why its a big deal- I wouldnt care if it was in my bed. Used to happen all the time at school. Its really not a big deal.” Like, WHAT??? You have the audacity to turn this around on me and elude that I’m conservative and uptight because I feel that Floozy Friend and Random Guy’s hook-up in my bed is a VIOLATION of my privacy and personal space? Wow. WOW. I guess we live by different rules. In my book, that was never okay in my freshman year bunk bed, and it certainly wasn’t okay then. Needless to say, it wasn’t a pretty ending. But at least I got my Tuesday night sleep back. And new bedding.
-Danielle
My freshman year of college I was supposed to be roomed with a fellow athlete, but got placed with an obsessive-compulsive, anorexic, depressed girl from hong kong who proceeded to accuse me of unplugging her power strip, which of course I didn’t do. That led her to the only other conclusion: I had let a stranger in the room to unplug it-not steal anything, but just unplug her power strip. When I offered a rational solution, perhaps she kicked it out while pulling out her chair, she looked at me like I was crazy. She then began to write an online blog about me, citing things that didn’t happen or were out of my control. Seeing as I was friends with other people on the floor who had access to her blog, I busted her and gently called her out on it. Then she wrote flowery nice things about me.
Even better was a few years ago when one of my 3 roommates (thank you craigslist) locked herself out of our house in her pajamas with no keys and no cell phone. Rather than walking the 4 blocks to where our other roommate worked to borrow his keys, she decided to walk 2 blocks to the Bus Stop Pub where she found a waitress (read stranger) to come break the screen off my window, crawl through it OVER MY BED and through the house to let her in. She then waited 6 hours to call and let me know before I came home. Thanks a bundle!!
About ten years ago I needed to make a quick move. I met this gal in class who seemed quite nice and was in the same situation, so we decided to find a place together. Before moving in together we went out for drinks a couple times-each time she ended the evening by hooking up with a couple of my guy friends. Which was fine … a bit awkward, but fine.
On move-in day she got there before me. By the time I walked in, the apartment had been adorned with her pictures/paintings of naked women and there were a couple rainbow flags hanging in the common areas as well. I was a bit confused. I don’t care if she’s straight or lesbian, but it was surprising based on what I’d seen of her “mating habits” up to that point. It also made me a bit uncomfortable, just because I’m not really into hanging pictures of naked people of either sex around my house for decorative purposes.
A few weeks after we moved in, my boyfriend spent the night. It was 2 or 3 in the morning and we were getting it on. All of a sudden, I noticed that he had suddenly stopped and was looking toward the middle of my room, his eyes wide like a deer stuck in the headlights. Because my roommate had opened my door, walked into the room, and was standing there in the dark, watching us do our thing.
I moved out a few weeks later.