The Boys’ Club
At 18, I moved into a shared house with my boyfriend and four other guys. Living with all of those guys was a challenge on its own–it quickly turned into a brofest–but there was one dude in particular that sucked.
T was a proud misogynist. In his view, there were two types of women: bitches and pussy. Pussy were women who’d have sex with him, bitches were ones who weren’t. Needless to say, he knew a lot of bitches. I tired of his constant “Women are stupid and useless” mantra, but none of my roommates–or my boyfriend–would back me up against him. Turned out they were all a bit sexist themselves, and were more than willing to listen to T’s crap. When I complained, I was told to stop being so sensitive. Also, my roommates collectively decided that all the housework was my problem. Even when a sinkful of dishes was demonstrably not mine, they would complain and yell until I finally gave in and cleaned it up for them.
The sexism was but a minor quibble compared to the other stuff. For one thing, T loved to eat. And he didn’t like to spend money on food. On several occasions, I came home from work starving only to find he had eaten the food I had bought, and I didn’t have enough money to buy more. Soon I had to buy nonperishables and keep them in my room. He only targeted my food for eating.
Another thing he liked to do was to destroy stuff and then say, “I took care of that.” Like the boat my boyfriend got from his uncle: T shot it up and then informed us he’d “taken care of it.” Another time he burned down the storage shed in our backyard, in which the other roomies liked to hang out in during the summer. It also was full of boxes of my books and my boyfriend’s drumset. When I confronted him angrily about the damage (unbelievably, my other roommates weren’t angry about the fact that the fire he set destroyed our shed AND almost burned to the house) he laughed, told me to untwist my panties, and tossed me a twenty.
The best thing of all came later, though. T was working at a computer superstore, and all the roommates (except me) were enjoying his employee discount by purchasing computers and other equipment. One night I came home to find all the doors wide open and my house crawling with cops. His “employee discount” was really a five-fingered one. All the stuff in the house was hot, and I ended up getting questioned by the suspicious cops. I was freaked out because I couldn’t find my cats, but fortunately they had been scared and hid under the bed. That was the last straw. While T was in jail overnight, I called a meeting with the roommates, to talk about kicking him out. I was outvoted four to one–the other roommates insisted that he wasn’t a bad guy, and we shouldn’t abandon him in his hour of need. Enough was enough, and I grew a spine and moved out.
I am so sorry you had to deal with that. Ugh!
Active misogyny drives me crazy. I recently spent three weeks backpacking with a number of male friends. Guess who did all the cooking (because otherwise food was burnt, frozen, spoiled, or otherwise ruined) and then cleaned up after cleaning up because their standards were so low? Most of these people live on their own, I shudder to think what their kitchens look like. I lost a lot of respect for my friends on that holiday.
I sincerely hope you broke up with your boyfriend after this!
Ladies, if you are the only person doing the cleaning up, just STOP DOING THE CLEANING UP. This isn’t rocket surgery. You’re only a doormat if you allow people to use you as one. If they insist you should be doing it, laugh in their face and walk away.
That’s horrible. I really wish you sued that guy for all the damages. And broke up with the boyfriend who never stood up for you!
That is absolutely awful. I’m glad you moved out! I have trouble comprehending how your other roommates and /boyfriend/ supported him, especially after that shed incident. Drum sets aren’t cheap!
Like Annie, active misogyny drives me nuts too. I deal with it by avoiding those people whenever possible, and when forced to interact, I make it very clear that we are equals and never give in to their sexist demands. I would’ve given each of them a swift kick to the nuts on my way out.
I hope you dumped mr. sorry boyfriend.
That does suck. I thought living with guys would be easier, but not if they don’t have a spine! Suing would be the thing to do, if there was insurance. He was alot of trouble. And probably used to getting his way. I’m surprised you didn’t do the self defense moves they teach you in classes…eye! groin! crotch! have him doubled over in pain….that would be a nice image I think. keep him quite. Imagine…a misogynist who gets his ass kicked by a girl. complete shame…..
wow! Your roommates were asshole personification, made you do dishes, enjoyed your discount and destroyed your possessions and nobody said nothing! I can’t believe it. I am glad finally you took a stand. It sounds like T was antisocial, misogynist and a pyromaniac. ugh! stying with who have only of those trait would be hell and that guy had all of them.
I don’t understand this sentence. what does she mean by that? “His “employee discount” was really a five-fingered one. All the stuff in the house was hot” Did he steal stuff? then why the stuff in the house was hot?
My worst roommate ever was a guy and I lived with 3 other women at one point which was heaven in comparison. Guys bring a set issues as much as girls do. I hope you broke up with the spineless sack of a bf you had for not having the balls to back you up from time to time.
As for the lame-ass boyfriend, seems to me like when he decided to live with her he was expecting a ’50s housewife. I bet she had no idea he was like that until they lived together, that’s what happened to me when I lived with my (now former) boyfriend. I broke up with him when I moved out, so, echoing what others have said here, I hope she did the same.
Also, @oi: Yes, “five-fingered discount” is a euphemism for shoplifting. And when goods are stolen, they’re considered “hot.”
wow.. I would have called the cops on him after burning the shed.
And like everyone else… i hope you did break up with your punk ass boyfriend.
This is one of those posts that probably deserves it’s own chapter in a book. And probably deserves a gold star on this site to boot. There is so much more about the situation that I would want to know that obviously can’t get boiled down in one 500 word post.
Such as: Was everyone your age? 18 year old boys are amazingly stupid creatures and most are lucky to be alive. That’s coming from a former 18 year old boy. But T’s shooting up the boat (am I correct here that it was a physical shooting, BANG BANG, kind of thing? If so, why? If so, how? I mean honestly….I like guns and all, but holy crap) has to be one of the strangest things I’ve read.
And, whose house was it? Did a landlord bring the wrath of baby jesus down upon the guy for burning the shed? For having stolen property? Good god.
And, the boy friend. Did he have balls at all? He’s the real misogynist here – picking his d-bag little criminal friends over his girlfriend.
Glad you got out. And it was a fun, cringe-worthy post to read
Wow, what a loser, and so were the rest of the roommates for sticking up for him. What if they had drugs or some other illegal items in their room and the cops HE brought there found it? I swear to God I don’t understand how some people actually make it through life without drowning in a toilet or mistaking Drano for Kool Aid.
Hi, this was my story. A little more info, as requested: the house belonged to my boyfriend’s parents. Turns out they were taking a loss on renting to us, but considered it worth it as it got my boyfriend out of *their* house. And so he became my problem. I don’t think they knew about the bust, and my bf made up some plausible lies to cover up the fire and some other things.
Yes, T actually shot up the boat with a gun. Nothing was said about it by the neighbors, mostly I think because they had been beaten into submission by the two houses across the street. One of those houses was occupied by a rednecks who were drunk, loud, and violent, and the other was occupied by a rednecks who were high on meth, loud, and violent. Occasionally one of their denizens would run around outside shooting randomly. Note: these houses were right next door to a Catholic grade school. The meth house got busted a year into my time there, and it turned out it was the biggest meth lab in the Bay Area. No, I did not know any of this when I moved in. I was so totally naive I thought the meth house people just had a lot of friends. Who liked to come over at 3 am.
I did break up with the boyfriend…a couple of months later. He was very controlling and abusive, and it was difficult to end things entirely, even though I physically left. It wasn’t until he punched me in the face that I finally woke up and broke it off entirely. I had to threaten him with restraining orders and public shame, but he finally left me alone.
It sucked, it was epic, but I’m glad I had the experience in a way…when I moved in, I had absolutely no spine or self-esteem at all, and I left realizing that I had to take better care of myself. My life has just steadily improved since then.
Wow, that’s just horrible, guys like that make me ashamed to be a man. Glad you finally got the hell out of there and got rid of your asshole boyfriend. Also glad to hear your life has improved steadily since leaving the House of Testosterone.
You poor poor girl. I would have put dirty dishes in their beds when I left. And wiped my butt with their pillows and hid shrimp in the x box….Maybe rancid meat juice on the toothbrushes, I really am a revengeful bitch I guess. I just hate seeing people try to take advantage of others that are to nice to be mean. I take it as license to be mean to said person for lack they are receiving, and deserve.
Oh man, few stories make me flex my fingers with such a strong desire to claw and strangle. Those people were just obscene.
no story on here has ever made me so ridiculously angry like this one. you poor, poor girl. i had the pleasure of living with one misogynist in a house of women [he didn't do too well]. but five against one? that’s just horrible. glad you kept your sanity and took away some important lessons from this awful experience!
disgusting! this guy sounds like a sociopath or psychopath and the boyfriend! the funny thing is all those guys were the real ‘pussies’ since they all were just yes-men. I hope you have changed your life and associate with better guys now.
@KPH
Thanks for the info – horrible story, but great tale to tell
er…horrible situation = great story = great tale to tell
i would be so passive aggressive… more aggressive than passive but there would be shrimp on the x-box… there would be shrimp rotting everywhere!
seriously… i would “take care” of everything “T” owned. I’m bursting with “evil mastermind” ideas now, the kind that aren’t punishable by law, (maybe property law but misdemeanors only).
TMS, don’t ever be ashamed to be a man. A man knows how to treat others with respect. These low-lifes were none of the sort. KPH, kudos on getting out of that relationship. As a woman who’s been there, done that, I know how hard it is. Hat’s off to you, girl!
Thanks Bridgete.
Great piece, it reminded me of one of those lifetime movies where the woman keeps taking all this abuse and you just want to reach out and shake her and yell at her, “stop letting people do this to you!” I’m glad you were able to leave. Some posters have been making comments such as, “guy roommates have issues just like girl roommates”. As a guy, I’ve always felt that living with another guy is pretty intolerable. I’d like to think in the future I could get female roomates. What sort of problems do female roommates exclusively bring with them? They generally tend to be less sexist, don’t have as much of a problem keeping neat, in my experience have clearly defined boundaries and keep out of others space.
What I mean is that, a lot of the times when females are bad roommates, they’re bad roommates in ways that a man could also be a bad roommate. But when males are bad roommates, they seem to do things that would be inconceivable to most females, i.e. shooting up a boat, burning down a shed, and above all acting like that was normal.
Female roommates can also be more petty and catty, they play more mind games with a lot more passive aggressive bs and drama, especially if they’re on the less mature side of things. Small things suddenly become HUGE issues. Bunked with a whole dorm of 30 odd teenage girls for summer camp once, crap and drama is bound to happen.
But obviously thats not all females and there are plenty of down to earth, drama free females out there that make great roomates.
@KPH – Wow. Well done on getting out when you did then. Hope you’re in a better place now.