There can be only one
Memoirs of a recovering ex-roommate conclusion
Four years ago, I made a highly inadvisable lifestyle decision: I moved in with a perfect stranger. Little did I know that I was about to embark on a share-house rendition of The Divine Comedy, with each cohabitation a stint in a different circle of torment.
Like Dante, I have emerged from my harrowing tours of hell and purgatory to find myself standing, soul-shaken, on the threshold of paradise—but before I step forward into the light, there are a few things I’d like to say.
In the past four years I experienced avarice, gluttony, envy, sloth, lust, wrath, and pride in quantities so vast, it tested my prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, faith, hope and charity to their limits. I’ve seen enough mental illness to fuel a dozen PhD theses in abnormal psychology, and I’ve been on the receiving end of so much shit—both literal and figurative—that I could open literal and figurative shit shops.
Yea, I have withstood pregnancy hoaxes, rip-offs and rent scams. I’ve suffered racist insults and knife attacks, witnessed dysfunctional relationships of the worst kind, and endured close encounters with venereal warts and venal Walts.
I’ve been evicted, I’ve had my belongings literally pissed on, and at one point, even God himself stepped in and denied me a piece of furniture. Yes, I’ve been through all this and more, and I lived to tell the tale.
I know I might sound like an emotionally traumatized war veteran, and in a sense it’s true. I’ve tried to communicate the soul-crushing horror of my experiences in this series of light, comic essays, but no series of light, comic essays could ever convey the dismay of actually living with those people.
Dear reader, you truly have no idea what I’ve been through, or what I’ve survived. That is exactly who I am, I am a survivor, and I will win in the end....
Good god, folks, when you start talking like your bipolar ex-roommate, it’s time to rethink your lifestyle.
In retrospect, I can say only one thing to recommend the ‘blind-date roommate’ scene—you meet people you would never have believed existed if you hadn’t lived with them yourself. When I think of my bad roommates—the paranoid Cree, the bratty exchange student, the bipolar nympho, the Shih Tsu shithead and the pretty-boy bigot—I realize that I have lived with a series of people who, if I’d presented them as fictional characters, would be considered implausible or even offensive.
What kind of a reality are we living in when said reality is considered less realistic than unreality?
Despised ex-roommates, you’ve immeasurably widened my horizons, not only as a writer-misanthrope, but as a human being. And for that, I thank you.
But all of this leads inexorably to my big question. Since so many of my ‘blind-date’ roommates turned out to be so ghastly, I feel it necessary to inquire about the mental status quo in this country. The way I see it, there are only two possibilities: either the majority of us are sane and decent—and I’ve just been very unlucky to get saddled with the few bona fide fucknuts—or the general population is much more screwed up than I ever imagined.
I don’t know if anyone is keeping statistics on this. What percentage of Canadians over the age of nineteen are fucknuts? All I know is that now, when I look out over this beautiful city and see a million twinkling lights on a million twinkling buildings, I wonder how many of those buildings are full of assholes.
Roommates might lie, but numbers don’t. In the past four years I had nine roommates: seven strangers and two I’d known previously. Of the seven strangers, five turned out to be complete scoundrels and/or lunatics: a success rate of only 28.6 per cent. As for the two I’d known previously, both turned out great: a 100 per cent success rate.
I know this sample is too small to be statistically valid, but nonetheless I feel I can draw one compelling conclusion: live with people you know, or live alone. There is no other path.
People of Earth, I hereby notify you that I have made a new inadvisable lifestyle decision. As of this writing, I am casting off the chains of roommate oppression and moving into a bachelor suite I can’t afford.
The long night is over. I am alone.
Memoirs of a recovering ex-roommate is dedicated to Craig, Dave, Carey and Cindy, who were lovely roommates and therefore received little or no coverage in this series. •
Originally published in The Peak, April 6 1999.
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Epilogue
I was a bit surprised to see Walton walk into the Peak office that peaceful summer afternoon. He wasn’t a student at the university, and it had been over two months since I’d moved out of his apartment.
But I had a pretty good idea why he’d come.
“Hey, Walt.”
“Hey.”
There was a long pause. He looked uncomfortable, and wouldn’t meet my gaze.
“So—what can I do for you?” I asked.
“Um, well, I just came in to, y’know, just look through some old issues.”
“Okay,” I said. “Anything in particular you’re looking for?”
“Uh, no, not really—I’d just like to look through them.”
I smiled. The spineless twit had obviously got wind that I’d written about him in The Peak, but he didn’t have the balls to ask me for the articles directly. So I popped into our archive room, emerging a minute later with a huge pile of old issues—but of course, I was careful to ensure that the papers he was looking for were absent from the pile.
Alas, there are times in this short life when immaturity is not only fun, it’s damn near compulsory.
So Walt sat in the lounge and looked through the pile. And looked. And looked. After about twenty minutes, he’d looked through them all. Then he started to look through them again.
I took pity. I emerged from the production room and handed him the papers he was looking for.
“I think you’ll like these ones,” I said. “You’re in them.”
I sat and casually ate my lunch as Walton read the columns I wrote about him and Brad. When he finished, he looked up at me with an odd blankness in his eyes.
“You know, I think you’re right about Brad,” he said. “He really seems to live in his own little world.”
“Thanks,” I replied.
“Well, bye,” Walton said. With that, he walked out of The Peak, and my life.
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