Well, after five long months, I am proud to say that I am finally free of my ROOMMATE FROM HELL (RFH).
And, wonderfully, free from all roommates. I’d like to take this opportunity to kick off a series of horrible roommate stories. Do you have one? Please share them in the comments or send to fanmail@jenniferheller.com. Bonus points if you have photos to go with!
To kick it off, here’s a good one…
Bright Idea: Let’s Pee on the Toilet Seat
I had just returned to the house to work on moving our final items. The house, as usual, stank to high heaven of rotted food and cigarettes. That wasn’t the worst of it…no the worst of it was the pee on the toilet seat. It was caked on there, nice and sticky and yellow. This guy didn’t drink much water — so much was apparent.
‘Why would anyone pee on their own toilet seat??’ I wondered to myself as I shook my head in disgust. Thank god I had peed before I left the house. I had long before decided NOT going to clean up after this idiot any more.
And then he’s back. Unfortunately. I recognize that I need to say something, given that I have to return to this apartment that I once loved so much a few more times to get my remaining things. I approached, reluctantly.
“Hey there. ” I mustered up my best friendly voice.
The RFH grunted a greeting…if you could call it that.
My blood boiled. I took a deep breath, and asked him, “Hey, could you refrain from peeing ON the toilet seat? We still need to use the bathroom…”
“Oh jeez.”
This was all I could take. “OH JEEZ???” I wanted to scream, but I kept my voice as calm and still as I could. “‘OH JEEZ’ is your response to my request for common courtesty?!!”
“Oh come on. There’s only a few days left.”
Well, he was right about that. I only had a few days to get in the hundreds of barbs I’d been working on. I took the opportunity. “I hope your new place is as slovenly as you’d hoped this one would be.”
And turned on my heel and walked away.
I had to move out of the house I loved because my roommate decided to move in his girlfriend and her cat. The problem was we already had a cat with 50% litterbox accuracy. My roommate who owned the cat (the same one who decided to move in his gf) decided that instead of cleaning litter boxes more frequently he would just buy more litter boxes. When he did get around to cleaning these boxes he would often leave bags of cat shit sitting in the house. During the summer things really reeked. The thought of having another cat was too much to handle, when I raised my concerns he pointed it out he was the primary lease holder. Dick. Then the girlfriend moves in ,she puts all her shit in the living room, not just suit cases but mannequins and sewing machines. It was particularly creepy when I would go downstairs half asleep to see a bunch of mannequins in the living room. The first few days I didn’t say anything about the piles of shit in the living room. When I finally moved all her shit to one spot in the living room she said “thank you”. Not “thank you I’ll really need to clean this up right?”. After a week I wrote a nice email saying we needed to find a place to store all her shit, offering suggestions and how to get rid of stuff in the common downstairs closet. Her boyfriend and I spent about two hours putting her shit away as she sat there. Then the unholy messes left in the kitchen began. The cats were constantly fighting and hair rolled through the house like so many tumblweeds. Her cat could use a litterbox but would constantly barf. I wrote nice emails, I cleaned up after her, her cat was very sweet and lived in my room. I suggested we buy a roomba. I loved this house and this person wasn’t going to win. The final straw came when the $100 knife I got for Christmas that I hid in the kitchen was left out dirty. I realized I could never have nice things here, that my house would always smell like cat shit, that no matter how many emails sent this girl was incredibly clueless when it came to living with other people. My other roommates and I talked of mutiny but it the end I just decided it would be easier to move out.
I met you at a few of the parties. You’re a crazy, soul destroying, manhood leeching, empty capsule of a human being’s capacity to be rational.
ZING!!