Live with it

I talked to an old college chum tonight. Thus I feel nostalgic, so I shall give you a rundown of the various roommates I experienced during college. In some instances, the names have been changed. And in some cases, I want that person's name smeared through all kinds of mud.

Freshman year

1. Adam Clabaugh: Mizzou's residency application asked one pertinent question with which to pair roommates: "Do you prefer a non-smoking room?" Apparently out of all the thousands of freshmen, they decided that, despite my request for non-smoking, I would be best suited to a chain-smoking white trash gangster thug...all 4'11" of him. He and I were paired in a non-smoking room, yet he smoked all the time. So technically he shoud have been forced to move out. But oh no. That stupid bitch in residential life had the people skills of a deaf great grandmother. She'd smile and shove peppermints at me. Anyway, Adam would prank call me from other dorm rooms. He'd steal. And he did God knows what on my Ralph Lauren sheets. So I moved to the floor below him. And he'd drop bowling balls on the floor at three in the morning. Years later I was in a Poli Sci class with him. He'd shaved the sides of his head and allowed the top to grow into a vicious ponytail. That sounds about right.
2. Suvir (pronounced "severe." As in "severe mood swings."): After I moved out of Adam's crib, I moved in with Suvir. Real World Paris fans, think C.T. And then think C.T. moping around the room at 3 in the morning, playing "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" and "I Would Die Without You" over. And over. And over. And over. And before I could pronounce his name correctly, I was asking him to turn down the fucking stereo. On his calmer nights, he'd sit for hours and stare at his blank computer screen. Not to compose a paper. Not to check his e-mail. Just because he could "relate to the screen." Fuck me gently.
3. Alone at last: I told Suvir that my request for a single room had "finally come through" after "months" of processing. This all happened after he went ape shit and threw his microwave against the wall...two feet away from my sleeping head. So for three glorious months, I had a double room all to myself. Two beds. Two desks. Two closets. No roomates.

Sophomore year

Two words mark the beginning of the demise of my Mizzou experience: College Park. For nine trying months, I lived with Scott, my friend from the dorm experience. That was fine. It was our other two roommates, Dumb and Dumber, who drove me to insanity. You see, Dumb was extremely obese, and I had the pleasure of sharing a bathroom with him. I'd hardly call myself a matchstick man, but I am relatively clean. So imagine my horror upon discovering a black (BLACK) stain around half of our shower basin. To this day I don't know what it was. I just know that I showered elsewhere. And then there were his eating habits. After consuming half a bucket of KFC, he'd leave the remnants on the kitchen counter. At first I'd clean up after him. Then I started leaving the chicken containers under piles of dirty clothes in his room. To retaliate, his redneck friend broke into my locked room and stole the Valentine's chocolate my mother had sent me. In nine months, I never saw Dumb use the laundry room (yet I saw him wear the same Def Leppard T-shirt everyday). I'm sure he's dead by now, lying in a gelatinous pile of his own vile filthiness.

And then there was Dumber. He had a mullet. I had better conversations with the black stain on the shower floor. He had a mullet. Need I say more?

Junior/Senior year

This is where things get complicated. I lived in a glorious one-story, four-bedroom apartment in an huge old house on the west part of campus. Large window sills. Wooden floors. Huge closets. Nothing but charm. And then there were my roommates. At the beginng of the year, it was Sarah (who remained with me through the end), Melissa (who left midway through the year for the corny comfort of Nebraska) and Tim (a former co-worker from Shakespeare's). Once Melissa left us high and dry (which was thankful because Sarah and I had grown to despise her and her hypochondria), Alex moved in. Alex was a lot like Dumb in that he was dirty and ate incessantly (and when I say "ate," picture not vegetables and grilled chicken, but fried bologna and Ding Dongs). What made Alex so disparate from my other roomates was his inability to speak English. Alex was from Russia and brought all of the language barriers and none of the vodka. When he eventually moved out, I did a jig.

When Alex returned to the motherland for a summer, he sublet to another Alex. This Alex was also from Russia, but he spoke satisfactory English. He also bought me a bottle of wine for my birthday. Then, Alex disappeared. And the debt collectors called. And weird men in black jackets showed up asking about him. Apparently he wasn't quite a legal citizen. So the first Alex moved back in. I broke my arm during that summer. And the morning after I'd spent the night in the hospital, Alex came up to me (clad in huge cast) and said, "You...uhm...eat....my, uhm...frozen...pizza. You, uhm...bestow....me...$2.00." Shut the fuck up, you Communist cow.

To backtrack, when Tim graduated, Eric moved in. Eric had three loves: cooking, his jailbait Stephens girlfriend, and anime. With absolutely nothing in common among the four of us, Sarah and I spent our time hating him. However, he did manage to clean up after Alex. All was good until I woke up one morning to hear (and I quote eternally), "Where the heck is my fondue pot?" Eric asked if his lease could run through the year (instead of just summer). Sarah and I lied and told him we'd already found another roommate. Luckily, we did, and third only to me and Sarah, he proved to be the most sane and enjoyable of the lot.

His name was Kane, and he was a proud frat boy. We'd drink. He'd entertain us with stories of casual sex and blowing up things. He'd indulge our need to stay on the couch and avoid classes via the television. We even got him to attend a Ragtag film (With a Friend Like Harry), but he left as soon as he saw the subtitles.

Alex also moved out. He was replaced by John. In all four years of college, John proved to be the most difficult (and threatening) roommate I'd encounter. To this day I wish nothing but ill will on him. We'll get to that in just a second.

Kane graduated and was replaced by Joe, a freshman who'd been kicked out of the dorms. Because he was 1) an English speaker and 2) not into anime or fondue, we welcomed him. Thus my senior year roommates were Sarah, Joe and John.

We never questioned why John was so adamant about not signing the lease when he moved in. We figured our time was almost finished at Mizzou and that it wouldn't matter. Big mistake. Monumentally catastrophic mistake. Let's say I decided to move into an apartment without being on the lease. I sure as shit wouldn't call the landlord and complain about parking. But John? John lived to call the landlord and give her an earful. So she responded by threatening to evict him because he refused to sign the lease (his mom told him not to). Fine with me. John had what you'd call a temper. And by temper, I mean huge gaping holes in the wall caused by his fist. I mean loud fights at 3 in the morning. I mean bipolar and pissed.

Ah, but John was smarter than he looked. He knew that because he had been paying Sarah and me for rent, he was legally entitled to live there regardless of whether or not he was on a lease. That meant the burden of evicting him fell on me. Let's see. I'm two months shy of graduating. I have no clue what to do with my life. I'd love the added responsibility of throwing some loser out on his ass, especially when I consider his OJ-esque traits.

So Sarah and I made up some story about how John had "appeared" physically threatening to her (after all, he did). She turned it over the cops via some abused women's organization, and John was escorted off the property for good by the cops. We changed the locks. We celebrated. We feared for our lives because of his wrath.

The year came to a close with Sarah, Joe and me living in contentment. Now, after a year and a half of living contentedly (albeit socially frustrated) with my parents, I am scared to ever have another roommate. I've lived with males. I've lived with females. I've lived with hypochondriacs, pathological liars, alcoholics, sexaholics, drug abusers, gangsters, scum, white trash, Russians, terrorists, fugitives from justice, dorm rejects, frat boys and momma's boys.

And people wonder why my Columbia years were marked by a black cloud. Go live with any one of those losers and you'd rule the day you ever moved out of your parent's house, too.