A Brief History of My Roommates

by Rebecca Schoenkopf

Billy & Mariela, 1991. Billy and Mariela were a lovely mid-30s couple in a five-bedroom Santa Barbara house ($400 a room). I don’t remember who had the other three bedrooms, except one was a young, drunk British chef and one was a hysterically funny longhaired Fugazi fan who never came out of his room and worked for the Boy Scouts. I imagine they remember me, if they do, as the slutty one. We all had nice times together.

Then Jamie and Kevin moved into one of the rooms and brought a big happy crack party with them. (Also, a rottweiler that ate stereos and walls.) Once the big happy crack party commenced, our occasional nights of X became nightly nights of X (and crack). Large thugs I didn’t know would knock on my door saying Billy and Mariela had said they could crash with me. Despite being slutty, I was wary of this development. Crack did not agree with Billy and Mariela, and Billy was eventually spotted climbing out a window with a blow-up alligator under his arm.

Dara, 1992. Dara moved into my Santa Barbara studio ($600) with me until we found a two-bedroom ($600 each). Rod, Alex and Ria lived in our living room rent-free so long as they occasionally bought instant coffee. Dara would invite my friends over and smoke all their weed. Then she would make study dates with my exes. It ended badly with Dara and me. Also, our place tended towards scabies.

Wendy/Suparna, 1993-94. The NYU dorms at Third Avenue and 11th Street cost a fortune: $600 each to share a room in a “three-bedroom” apartment for which the university was getting $3600. The kitchen was the size of an airplane galley, and Wendy and I shared 150 square feet. Wendy was a loudmouth redhead from East L.A. who was suspicious of me as a threat to her older-student dominance (we were both at least 20, transfer students, while the other four girls were freshmen from Long Island and such). Then her longtime boyfriend who’d followed her out to New York married someone else, and we got drunk and were friends. Then she married a guy for cash for his green card. Then she married a Muslim guy who didn’t care that she was already married for cash for a green card, because if it wasn’t in the mosque it didn’t wash. (Okay, that sucked, but it was the closest I could come to rhyming.)

When Wendy moved to Park Slope, Suparna moved in. She was a green young thing from Pennsylvania who liked skinny, pale, proto-emo guys. Now she lives in Highland Park and is a rocket scientist. I am very proud of Suparna.

Marnie and Adam, 1995. They were cousins, and were mean, and when our apartment building across from Tompkins Square Park ($1800 for three bedrooms) caught fire one night and I woke them up and got them out of there, Adam wrote a mean little piece for the New York Press about how our building had caught fire and I’d woken them up to get them out, but because I was such a drama queen, they weren’t sure whether to believe me. Fuck you, Marnie and Adam. Also, Marnie would walk in the apartment every evening with neeeever a kind word or smile, unless I had made brownies or brought home a bottle of Hungarian wine from Astor Wines. Then she would smile and be friendly. Fake fucking bitch.

The hustler guy and his meth friend, 2004. For many, many years after I left college, I was grown-up and did not need a roommate. But then my whopping $1600 rent in Santa Ana became too much for me, and I CraigsListed a handsome young men and his girlfriend. She liked to stay up all night cleaning the kitchen, which was fine, and moan to me about how she had discovered he was bi and was hustling on CraigsList. He liked to leave her at my house for many days at a time. She had a child who had been taken away from her. He liked to wear a sarong and no shirt. Before the first month was up, I asked them to move on. They left a super sweet vacuum cleaner, which I never gave back.

Ellen, 2004-05. Ellen was a young friend who didn’t want her parents to know she was living with her boyfriend. Ellen didn’t want to technically lie to her parents. So for something like two years—maybe three—Ellen paid me $600 a month to not live in my house. She did visit it twice though, for parties.

The terrorist, 2006. Do I know he was a terrorist? I do not. He said he was a businessman whose family was in Texas. He had no friends around our house in Anaheim ($2100) and kept to himself. He also would shop for delicious middle eastern and Persian food at that place in Irvine and then insist on bringing my son and me plates as we watched TV in my room. You would think this would be a nice thing to do—and it was! Oh, it was!—except it made me feel like a really bad mother whose son was dishing up cereal for dinner under someone else’s eagle eyes. Sometimes I would like to feed my son cereal for dinner without it being remarked on, thank you. Leave me alone, nice person, I’m in my room!

The drunk, 2006. He stayed in his room a lot when he wasn’t tending bar or floating in the pool, and he stole my Franz Ferdinand CD. Other than that, he was pretty great, though he got mad at me for consistently breaking into his room to borrow cigarettes after I’d quit, which he was totally right about and I super-apologized. Still, I thought him busting me washing the dog in the back yard wearing nothing but Cookie Monster underpants would have kept him around longer, and it didn’t.

Georg, 2006-07. Georg was lovely, a 24-year-old illegal immigrant (from Germany) who worked for a carpet cleaner who exploited him because he was illegal and developing web sites for a company that exploited him because he was illegal. He worked 16 hours a day, and on his day off would often clean the carpets without my ever having asked. He was lovely. Then, in February, two days after I quit my job, he told me he was moving in with his girlfriend Julie, who was sweet and fun and had been staying with us a few months, to a $3600 apartment in Hermosa. How could they afford it? Because they’d been saving money ass-over-fist while they were living with me, the two of them for $650, that’s how! Oooooh, Georg! Don’t gooooo!

Lisi, 2007-? Lisi is my little brother’s ex-girlfriend. She is 36 years old and has been staying with my brother John, my sister Sarah and her husband, Pie, in Indio. Lisi and Johnnycake have an excruciating relationship to which no one should be subjected, and it should be known that he peed in her shoes.

This is not a euphemism. And this is why they can’t have nice things! Right now, Lisi is making lemon chicken. She is going to babysit. She is going to give me cash money, and she is not going to call my brother John.

I like Lisi a lot. I was lonely, and she is fun. And she is not going to call my brother John.

Really, I can’t stress that enough. She is not going to call my brother John.

Comments

No comments.

Comments closed.