The Story of Crazy - Roomates, Round One

Me and Mickey. This was during the happy times J and I lived together

I don’t think I’ve met anyone who hasn’t had at least one crazy roommate. I may not have had very many, but I am certainly no stranger to the crazy.

In 1993, I moved out for the first time. I had started a new job at Disneyland, and since a friend of mine needed someone to live with, we moved into a little apartment together near the park. He was one of my best friends at the time, and I was acting like a little mother – because that’s what I did. I was also extremely naïve. I was barely 20, and had lived a fairly sheltered life. I trusted WAY too easily. J was a lady's man. He loved the ladies and he did anything he could to get in their pants. He was also a con artist. I still truly believe that we were very good friends and that for a time, he considered me family. But at some point, our relationship became something else entirely. We weren’t dating. We weren’t even sleeping in the same room. But I had a crush on him that made me cry on a regular basis. I would write lists of things that we “needed” to talk about, and usually the last thing on the list was about “us.” I think it all started out with me being the crazy one.

At first we had so much fun, being out on our own for the first time. We watched TV, had his family over to use the pool (which we got kicked out of because there were too many people), went to Disneyland, and had our mutual friends over. All the craziness that happened at our apartment would make another story entirely.

As time quickly wore on, J had a very hard time holding down his job. I had bought him a car so he could get out and do this. It was some sort of door-to-door salesperson job. He was free to decide on his schedule and then make his own appointments. Pretty soon, he would disappear for entire afternoons. He told me he got paid once a month, but only when he made a sale. I only saw one, very small, paycheck. So, I was supporting us. I thought he was leaving every day to go to work. I was wrong. We played, we ran up my credit cards (which up until then, I had been marvelous at keeping track of and paying on time), and did whatever we wanted to… well he did. He pretty much told me what I could and couldn’t do and who I could have over and who I couldn’t have over. I tried to win his favor by buying him everything he wanted. This included an amazing car stereo, a gold necklace, and a tattoo or two. But then I began to notice strange and large amounts of money missing from my accounts.

About two months into this mess, he stopped going to work. I didn’t really realize this, as I was at work myself. He came by a couple of times to see me at work, for which I was always glad. One time, he ran into one of my coworkers while looking for me. He told me she would be his. They went out later that week. She moved in with us the next day. Suddenly, there was a mattress in our living room. We had two TV’s there and they were both on 24/7. She would eat, but she would wouldn’t clean because of her “sensitive skin.” When she wasn’t at work, they were laying around sleeping or having sex, in the LIVING ROOM.

It was about this time that the money ran out. When I went to buy a personal safe. I felt in my gut that things of mine may be in danger of disappearing. I should have listened to my gut feeling. That's when my last card was declined, I went home and took two boxes of diet pills. This did nothing but make me sick for three days. Neither J nor his girlfriend cared. Things got really weird at this point.

I was happy that one of our friends who was a Marine had set me up with one of his buddies, and I saw him a couple of times. Unfortunately, I also “got” something from him. Meanwhile J had been freaking out on us. He took his girlfriend’s car to Northern California to visit some old friends of his. Apparently, he ran her manual transmission into the ground and also found some girls up there, too. When he came back, he and his very large knife took a nice rip out of my favorite Mickey Mouse poster which I had on the door to my room. At the same time, I looked so thin and unhealthy every time I visited my parents that they started giving me food which I hoarded in my closet with my bedroom door locked.

One night I came home from work, and found that my bedroom had been broken into, my food taken, and a few things ransacked. A contract that J and I had signed was gone. It had been written before we moved in together and stated that he would pay me back the $800 that I lent him to buy his car. Because of this, we ended up getting into an argument and he hit me over the head with a beer bottle. The beer, I assume, he got from my closet where I had been saving it for the weekend. I found out later that once he had gotten into my room, he coerced a friend into telling him where the contract was hidden. Once he found it, he burned it.

A few days later I needed to go see my Mom about a delicate situation which involved the aforementioned Marine. It was a Monday night which I remember because we had to wait for the football game to end and Dad to go to bed before we could talk. Dad asked me how things were going and I talked to him about how J had hit me with that beer bottle. We didn't really talk about anything that was important after that. Mom helped me out with my issue and I went on my way. We no longer had a phone, because we couldn’t afford to pay the bill, but I did still have a pager. It went off wildly the following day. It was my dad. He told me that I would need to be ready to get my stuff and get out on Saturday morning.

Friday night, I cleaned everything up and began packing. Luckily, J and his girlfriend were out until about 2 in the morning. They didn’t even really notice that something weird was going on. I packed up as much as I could before passing out because I was so tired. The next morning, Dad's page came bright and early. He was on his way with the son of one of his customers and a friend of his. They had both been released from prison recently and were raring to go. They brought a couple of huge vans and all three stalked into the apartment. One of the guys went over and opened the curtains in the living room near where J and his girlfriend were sleeping and yelled “rise and shine!” J was furious until he was told to sit down and shut up which scared the crap out of him.

Dad and his friends tried to take everything they could of mine, but I’m sure there were some things left behind. I just didn’t have a chance to pack everything up. I moved back into my parents’ house, but I was still terrified of J. The next time I saw him was on a Friday night, when I got paid. He waited at the top of the tunnel that led to the parking lot until I got off work. He said something to my co-workers to make them go away, and when they did he demanded my paycheck. He felt that since I'd run out on them I owed them my check for the rent money. I told him no, and ran to my car in the parking lot. He yelled out a bunch of threats! I drove around the corner to call my parents to let them know. They slept through the call.

J didn’t come around any more after that His girlfriend had not spoken to me since I had moved out, but after a while started showing up at small get-togethers with our mutual friends. I learned that after the whole fiasco, they left the apartment in the middle of the night, losing a few things in the rush – such as his floor length leather coat. Then she met a Marine from the same squadron as our friend. She came to work one day married to the marine and then she abruptly disappeared. J also disappeared. I ran into him a while later, after I had gone through bankruptcy to pay for all the credit card bills we ran up.

When he had been out on his “job,” he was tempted by a customer to use speed. That was all it took. He ended up going to this guy’s house every day and doing drugs. A lot of my money went toward paying for that. This explained a lot of things that hadn’t really phased me before, such as why the TVs were constantly on, why J was awake all night watching them, why he had such a bad smell, why he never ate, stuff like that. When he explained these things to me, he also apologized profusely to me for getting me involved in this and taking advantage of me. After that night, it would be almost ten years before I’d see him again. And at that time, that was alright with me.

Moving

Pacific NW Sunset with clouds and the corner of my porch and balcony.

My husband and I may be moving at the beginning of next month. I am so happy. I have wanted to leave here for about the past year. There are several reasons for this. And here they are:

1. This complex and area were fairly nice and somewhat cheap when I moved in here three years ago. It was a nice, family oriented neighborhood. We had block parties and watched each other's kids. Many of these people moved out, slowly. So slowly, I didn't even notice it. Suddenly, the cops were here about once a month. Including, once, even a paddy wagon/swat team like van. The street was told to stay in their houses and out of the windows. At 4 am. In the middle of the week. After shots were fired out into the street. We are pretty sure that meth dealers had moved in across the street.

2. People drive up and down the street at over 50 mph. They don't care that little kids and dogs play in the street. No matter what the family oriented people say or do, they still do it.

3. We have a neighbor across our courtyard who gets picked up by an ambulance every few days.

4. Our next door neighbor parks on the curb, and beats up his girlfriend on a regular basis, and the cops get called every time. And it's always early in the morning, like between 3-5 am. Since the last time, they have been pretty nasty to us.

5. The volume of the stereos! Across the street, our neighbors turn on the radio starting at about 6 pm and it echoes down the cul-de-sac. They have people over every night, and get drunker and drunker to the point that they are yelling at each other and cursing so loudly, that we can hear it above our TV in the house. Not to mention that our bedroom window faces their house. This usually doesn't stop until 11 pm on weekdays, and all hours on weekends. They have two boys that are not quite in their teens, yet. I have no idea how these kids sleep through that. Plus the dad over there likes to run his power washer 24-7.

6. Down the street a little way, are some people. I think they share the duplex. One house has about a three year old that we frequently see walking down the middle of the street yelling. By himself. And then dad comes out and yells at him to get back to the yard. The kids yells and yells until his little voice is screeching that he is coming back. Or that mom said it was ok. Why? Why would you let a small child do that? Would you not go down the street and grab the kid? I just don't get it. Next to them, is the Bass house. Starting at about noon each day and into the night, they play a stereo. I don't know if it is in the garage, house or car, and I can never actually hear the music, but the bass is so loud, it makes things move in my house. Why must bass ever be that loud? Why is that even necessary?

7. Our landlords. When I first moved in here, there was a fabulous, but fairly cheap, management company that ran this place. Rent was cheap, the office people were fabulous, and our maintenance guy was quick and thorough. And on time with notices. This last summer, management switched hands. While they painted, and paved our alley ways, they did it with horrid diarrhea and vomit browns, and the pavement was ground up within weeks, because they waited until the rainy season to start doing it (the week of our wedding). It is impossible to get help or find anything out without the management talking to you condescendingly. And even then, your chance of help is pretty slim. We were waiting to look for an apartment at the end of our last lease because we wanted to see what our rent was going to be. When they finally let us know, it was 2 weeks before our lease was due to change and they said we had to give 30 days notice before we could move out. This was at Christmas, so we decided to stay for 6 months. They raised our rent so much, we can't afford to live here. Our rent has already been latte twice this year.

8. Around January or February of this year, we started seeing things happen out the corner of our eyes – in our house. We slowly noticed we had mice. We complained to management. We were told to get a cat. We thought she was joking. We told her that my husband is deathly allergic, and she told us that we were out of luck then. We tried every method to get rid of them, and it took us three more months before poisoning finally took effect. This sucked quite bad, because everything had been touched in some way by the mice. I had to throw away so much food. Food that we could barely afford anyway (but had to buy because of my strict low carb diet). And they did nothing. It was really upsetting. I found out that most of the surrounding apartments had the same problem. Even the ones that weren't connected to us.

9. Our car got broken into. They stole our car stereo. We don't have a lot. But we commute to work almost an hour each way. The stereo isn't worth calling the insurance company about. Until we could save the money, which took us several months, we had to ride around with a shower radio in our car that only one station came in. I reported it to our management, just to let them know that other people's cars may get broken into and people should be aware. There is almost no lighting where our cars are (or really, anywhere in our complex). We complain all the time about it. Management just sighed and said she guesses that she should send out a memo to everyone telling them to keep their porch lights on at night. (Our patios/porches are nowhere near the cars). The memo never went out. I don't know if anyone else's car got broken into, but I was pretty pissed.

10. I have a young (early 20's) neighbor, who thinks I want to hear about her woes. And always wants something. She comes over to my house every single day. At least 5 times. It doesn't matter what I am doing or what kind of a mood I'm in, she just won't shut up. I have stopped answering the door and tend to hide when I take the dog outside or check the mail. She always wants Something, and covers it up by making small talk with me. And I don't trust her friends. They look nasty and they won't look me in the eye. I just have an overall bad feeling about them. I'm afraid if I tel her to go away, these friends of hers will rob my house or something. They are always around.

11. Dog poop. Yes, I have a dog. I CLEAN up after my dog. At least my dog poops where I can see it. I can not tell you how many times – mostly because of bad lighting – I have stepped in poop that was not cleaned up by the owners. Big poops. Usually on the SIDEWALK. My next door neighbor, has her dogs pee and poop on the patio next to mine. In the summer, let me tell you – it SMELLS awful.

12. The distance from work and our friends. We don't get visitors very often. No one wants to drive all the way to our house. We live 30 miles away from our closest friends. They are all pretty close to each other, close to where we work. Since gas just went up over $4.20 here, we can barely afford to get to work. We carpool, or did, until I was laid off. Even though I get excellent gas mileage, this will save a ton in gas.

13. And Last – this will be the first home that we pick out together. We just got married at the end of the September, and we currently live in an apartment that I picked out before we met.

Sorry for the vent. I was just thinking about all the reasons I wanted to move. I can't wait to get out of here. It'll be so much better for us. With the amount of money (and sanity) that we will save, we may eventually be able to buy a house.