A Dwarf, a Lonely Boy, and a Schizophrenic Walk Into My Apartment...

Of all the roommates I've ever had, only three sucked ass.

The first one had characteristics of a dwarf. This is not what made her suck. What made her suck is that she enrolled in our college simply because someone who was on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (David Boreanaz) went there and separately she was horribly inconvenienced by 9/11 because it interrupted her "phone time". The second one sucked because he had a tendency to display behavior I commonly saw portrayed on Law and Order SVU. The third roommate was deemed "schizophrenic" by police and taken out of the house. Other than that, I've been pretty lucky. All my other former roommates I consider friends. In fact, on a few occasions I cried when separating from some particular roommates. However, with the three that sucked ass, I'm only glad I experienced them for future roommate topic fodder.

The first roommate that sucked ass was my first roommate of all time. My freshman year I opted to live in the "drug and alcohol free" dorm. Why I thought that was a good idea was beyond me. My floor mostly consisted of high strung Long Island girls with IBS and society rejects who watched a lot of CW. Like my roommate. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that everything about my new roommate freaked me out. Her greasy hair, her penchant for wearing over-sized Hanes t-shirts with images of various characters from Veggie Tales on it, her love for contemporary Christian pop, and her 6'5" 350-pound boyfriend who had a scar running down the back of his head which, I believe, related to a story about him being dropped on his head as a baby. I'd like to also point out that she was from West Virginia but out of fear of alienating any of my West Virginian followers, I will leave this out. Hey, don't worry. Where I'm from in Central New York, we celebrate being the incest capital of the state so I can't really make fun of anyplace.

"Ms. Bodily Abbreviated", let's call her, was very opinionated and easily annoyed. Nobody stood up to her Dawson Creek standards and she bitched about everyone. I tried to stay clear of her, but when you live in a 7 X 12 foot hamster pen, it's kind of difficult. That year I mostly drove home on the weekends just so I didn't have to deal with her. Unfortunately she was the first person to break the news of 9/11 to me after I returned from class, but it came in the form of, "Ummm....your Mom just called and said something about a plane hitting a building, I don't know, I'm on the phone." I tried asking her more questions but she just silently shooed me away from her. I quickly called my mother on my cell who informed me that a second plane had just hit the World Trade Center. I tried relaying this news to my roommate who was talking to her Baby Huey of a boyfriend but she could care less. I ran off to the dorm television room where I sat glued watching the events unfold. It wasn't until a good hour later that my roommate became concerned about what was happened because she thought it would somehow effect her boyfriend who lived in Pennsylvania. Then she became frantic that he was going to die.

Abbrevy went on to transfer to a school back in West Virginia and I have no idea what ever happened to her. Aaaaaand I certainly don't care.

The second roommate that sucked ass was 35-year-old wannabe director who got confused about our living arrangements. I had a beautiful two bedroom apartment in West Hollywood and needed a roommate. My boss mentioned that his old NYU roommate was moving to LA to take his shot at directing- 15 years later- and I thought, "Hey, this guy has gotta be cool!" If cool is totally hanging out in the doorway of the bathroom while you pluck your eyebrows asking if he can kiss you while drunk on one glass of champagne. Or if cool is shutting off the TV while you're eating dinner explaining that he's concerned about your entertainment viewing choices, that you should really take the time to watch Kurosawa's Ran while you eat dinner and you should probably stop drinking Diet Coke too. Or if cool is going to Ikea with you two weeks into living together and saying things like, "Our house will now be a home, Lauren!" or "This is what it's like to be married!"

Shortly into our living together, I realized that second roommate, or "Future Bring a Gun Into A Public Area Guy" as I liked to call him, had a few screws loose. Once I finally yelled at him about his leach-like behavior, and made him cry, he finally backed off. And by backing off he holed himself up into his room, surrounded himself with used tissues, and obsessed over a conspiracy theorist script that was going to be his "GREAT MASTERPIECE!" I moved out after a year and Crazy Pants decided to stay in the apartment. Occasionally our paths would cross but to this day he won't talk to me due to a misunderstanding where he thought I was going to jump in the sack with him simply because he was being nice to me.

The third roommate that sucked ass was schizophrenic, so I probably don't have to go into much detail on why she sucked ass. I go into greater detail about the story here, but in short this woman frightened the living shit out of me. I was new to Austin and decided to rent a room in a large house in the fancier part of town. The owner rented out his five rooms to various people which obviously include mentally rabid individuals. The woman, a wild-eyed, gray-haired lady who had her child taken away from her, began believing that the owner of the house was taking her things and hiding them. She became so convinced that she tried to enlist my partnership in teaming up against him. I'd avoid her calls for allegiance, but it became progressively difficult to avoid her when she would sit at the kitchen table in the dark, waiting up all night for me to come home. She also enjoyed standing on the staircase staring down at me while I ate dinner. The worst scenario occured when she barged into my room at 3AM while I was sleeping, screaming, "He stole my figs! And my spoon!".

It came as no surprise the next day when the owner of the house called me to say that, Gary Busey, as I liked to call her, was being escorted out of the house by police. She had called them because she believed the owner of the house was going to shoot her. The police later told me that she had been coming down to the police station for the past two weeks and telling the police chief that she was "in love with him". Busey tried calling me a few times after that, leaving messages where she apologized for her behavior but that she had to act that way for safety reasons.

As much as I enjoy relaying these stories, I HOPE TO GOD I NEVER HAVE A CRAZY ROOMMATE EVER AGAIN!

Do you have any crazy roommate stories that you would like to share? 

*title suggested by awesome friend Chris!