When I was young, I shared a house with a few friends. Our worst roommate was a drifter named Todd. He was bone thin and had hair like Jesus. He carried all of his belongings in a bulky backpack. Except for his bongo drums, which he kept tied around his neck with a leather thong. Because he didn’t have a job, he had nothing better to do than get stoned, put on a Yes album, and invite other drifters over for a drum circle. They played the stereo at full volume so they could hear it over the drums. The windows shuddered, the floor vibrated and the room stank of a dozen homeless men. They had drug-induced stamina and could play all night.

Todd was obsessed with the zodiac and mentioned it as often as possible. It was the lens through which he viewed every social interaction, from meeting a woman at a bar to purchasing a soda at Kwik Mart, to having a conversation about paying a little rent once in awhile. The first time he met me, he asked my birthday. When I answered, he sneered, “I hate Libras.” From that moment forward, he viewed me with eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Todd enjoyed dropping acid in the morning. When everyone else was getting ready for work or enjoying a cup of coffee, he’d sit on the living room floor, listlessly petting his bongo drum with his mouth hanging open. During one such trip, my roommate and I made the mistake of trying to speak to him about a housekeeping matter (late bill). He cried that we were sending off bad vibes and insisted that he could see our black, nasty auras swirling all around the room. He pulled frantically at his Jesus hair and said, “Uh oh. Now you’ve done it. I am having a bad trip.” He backed away from us, his dilated eyes shining with terror. “Get away from me, Libra!” He diverted all conversations about rent and utilities in this manner.

Todd was always gone, in one way or another, when conversations about money were afoot. But when a meal was prepared, he could sense it from miles away. He would skulk around the sidelines of the kitchen, rubbing his stomach and discussing his acute case of munchies. If I didn’t offer him a plate, he sulked and complained that Libras were bastards.

Todd also had plenty of homeless, damaged friends that he invited to live in the house. There was a leering, thick-necked giant with a bald head and a foot long beard. He thought I was cute and told me with stories that were geared to impress. For example, he told me that he had acquired some rohypnol (aka the date rape drug) and had gone downtown to the bars. After a few hours of drinking, he got bored and tried to get high off of the rohypnol. He dosed himself, blacked out immediately, and woke up the next morning in a municipal flowerbed. I could only be thankful that he was too dull-witted to follow through with his horrible plan. Because I couldn’t really get away from him, I told him he was a jackass and went upstairs to bed. Later, he scared the crap out of me by breaking into my room and trying to cuddle with my unconscious body.

There was also a young hippie who had a wolf for a pet. Of course he named her Luna. Luna was not a domesticated animal. She was lanky, she was clever, and she had a set of razor sharp fangs set in a jawbone as long as my forearm. She put up with being walked on a hemp leash and tied to a park bench, but Luna was only biding her time. The wolf and her owner started squatting at our house on invitation from Todd. “Why do you have this animal?” I asked. “You don’t even have a home! How are you going to take care of her? Can’t you tell she thinks you’re an asshole and wants to eat you?” Todd rose up, his eyes dilated, his hair swishing around, his skinny finger poking in my face. “How dare you talk to one of my friends like that,” he screamed. “You are so close-minded!” A few days later, he banned Luna from the house himself because she had taken a nice acrid wolf piss on his backpack.

Another awful Todd friend was a popular downtown begger. He could always be found sitting on a bench downtown, strumming random chords and taking handouts. He had a rough mane of red hair, a bushy beard, and a heavy leather jacket. Todd invited him to the house, and he soon became a regular. This one also thought I was cute and would not accept no for an answer. After a particularly frightening encounter with him, I fled the house. For days, I either slept in a booth at the restaurant where I worked or at my boyfriend’s place because I was scared to go home.

At last, I was able to talk to my other roommates. We voted to ban the creep from our house. Todd thought this was highly unfair. He discredited me, saying that I had probably given his friend mixed signals since that was a classic Libra trait. It was all I could do not to strangle him and smash his bongo drums over his head. It was not long after this incident that we jettisoned Todd. He had never paid rent or utilities, and his bongos wore on everybody’s nerves. Nobody cared for his choice of company. I saw him a few summers ago. It had been a decade since we lived together. I was rummaging through a bin of nails in front of a hardware store when he approached me. His Jesus hair was shorter, but his face was unmistakable. He looked at me hard, but he didn’t remember me. “You have great legs,” he said. “I’m a Libra,” I replied.

In first year university, I was paired up with three other girls.
While two were decent, if not a little messy, Mel was a disaster. She
never seemed to have any class or work, and spent most her time
tanning, drinking, partying loudly, watching “Bewitched” on her computer
in the common room, shopping for discount Juicy Couture, eating
McDonalds, playing Britney Spear’s “Womanizer” ad nauseum, and being a
general laze-about.

She never did the dishes, but instead would stash
her dirty cutlery in her room, depriving the other housemates of
dishes and glasses. Her blankets, shoes, hair accesories, hair balls
etc would be left scattered around the common room. Her own bedroom was an
utter disaster, and she would often bring over loud, drunken friends
at odd hours.

She left, mid-semester, to go on a trip to Florida and
returned with a Chihuahua puppy. Our apartment had a strict no pets
policy, and the other roommates were a little appalled she would bring
home a pet without telling anyone. The dog was untrained, scared
stupid by loud noises and she would use our dishes to feed it kibble,
not washing the smell of oily dog food off before dumping them off in
the sink for us to clean.

When we confronted her about the dog and the
lack of responsibilities on her part, she had a fit and said we didn’t
get her, that her dogs were the only creatures who truly loved and
understood her, and her awful childhood left her with such a void in
her life only a bug-eyed Chihuahua could fill it. Also, she wanted to
leave the school so the dog was a ploy to get kicked out of residence
without having to break her contract and pay a fine, although she (and
by she, I mean her parents) would have to pay a fee for having the dog
in the first place. Luckily by second semester she was gone and a nice
french girl had replaced her.

My Very Worst Roommate has since been dubbed the Rabbit Killer. A year after graduating from college, I moved into a two-bedroom apartment with a girl who had been one of my best friends in middle-school and high school. We hadn’t seen much of each other during college because we were on opposite ends of the country, but when we both ended up in the same town, it seemed like a perfect arrangement. After a few months of living with her, I discovered that she had never quite grown up. She didn’t have a high paying job but as soon as a new video game system, video game or DVD box set would come out she would instantly buy it. Then when the first of the month rolled around and I asked for her half of the rent and utilities, she would act like I was the biggest creep and would go into sob stories about how she didn’t even have enough money for food.

On top of that, she was insanely dirty. I’m not the neatest person myself, but I try to be sanitary if not tidy. She would do the strangest things, like leave a completely untouched Jamba Juice in the middle of the living room floor until it molded over. Why would you buy a smoothie and not even drink any? Building management even had to come into her room once to fix a leak and wrote her up because she was so messy that they deemed the space dangerous.

It all came to a head when she decided she wanted to get a pet rabbit. I put my foot down and said no to pets because I knew that she wouldn’t be able to take care of it. She already was incredibly messy and I knew that it would just make the apartment even grosser. She argued that she could keep it outside on the balcony, but I told her that it would be too cold for something to live out there. A few months later, I walked out onto our shared balcony and discovered a pet rabbit. She told me that she knew I had said no, but that she knew that if I saw the rabbit, it would win me over. I was angry but decided to drop it. Fast forward to a particularly frosty Thanksgiving weekend, and my roommate came into my room crying and asking for a box with a lid. I asked why, and lo and behold, the rabbit had frozen to death. She insisted that she didn’t know how it died because she knew everything about rabbits and they are fine in the cold. I decided to not make matters worse by telling her “I told you so” and gave her a box and a hug.

Fast forward a month later when I had friends visiting over the Christmas holidays. I hadn’t been on the balcony in a while but the friends were smokers and so we went out there to have a smoke. Then I hear, “Hey, what’s in this box?” I look, and it’s the same box I had given the roommate for the bunny, with bunny still inside! I was completely mortified that a dead rabbit had been on our balcony for a month. When I brought it up with my roommate later and asked her to get rid of it, she started crying and said I was heartless and that it had to have a proper burial and there was no place to bury it where we live. I finally convinced her to take it with her when she went home for the holidays and bury it there.

The final straw came a few months later when I went back out on the balcony and discovered a new pet rabbit living there. I decided to move. A little while after moving out, I heard from some mutual friends that the new rabbit had killed itself by jumping off the balcony. Even it couldn’t stand to live with her anymore.

I lived in a townhouse with Aaron (the owner). Aaron informed me that his abusive ex Joe was staying with us for a week. Joe didn’t have any money to leave. Aaron told me Joe would only be there as long as it took for him to get a job. So Joe moved into the spare room across from mine with his hyperactive dog. Aaron informed me that he was being transferred to another location. Joe would also move into Aaron’s old bedroom. Ken, an acquaintance, would be living upstairs too. Ken brilliantly decided to put his gerbil in the dining room…ewww.

We got along for about a week before the police knocked on our door. The police were questioning him about recklessly driving down our busiest
street, as well as ramming his car into another person. Joe yelled and  swore at the police officers. They gave him a ticket. If I had a friend over, Joe and Ken would yell something inappropriate so I stayed in my room or not at home at all. Joe let his dog shit all over the carpet and decided to tell our mutual friends lies about me. I stopped talking to them and was ready to finish the semester so I could move.

After talking to a friend of ours, I found out that Ken and Joe decided to change the wireless password almost causing me to fail a final. Out of the blue I received a text message from Joe telling me that I had a week to get out before I was evicted. I was surprised, so I went up to talk to him. He said that Aaron was behind him 100%. Joe wanted to beat me up and shouted racial slurs but Ken stopped him. I finished moving out, and received many death threats in the process. I’ve heard that Joe and Ken are now homeless!

My MVWR and landlord J was in her 80s and seemed a little eccentric to say the least. I moved in when I was desperate. I was on the verge of collapse, going through a nervous breakdown and alone in a new city where rents were high. I didn’t feel like I had a lot of options and this was a granny flat attached to a residence, fully furnished for cheap rent. I’m not perfect, but throughout this whole stay I paid rent on time every fortnight, kept the place spotless and clean and was quiet. J was over the top nice to begin with and I found the fridge stocked with soft drink and bread and fruit basket with a card saying “Welcome to the Gingerbread House,” which was the nickname for the granny flat.  She started bringing over pots and pans and just enormous amounts of things from op shops she had brought me. I didn’t really know what to do because it felt a bit weird, but she often talked about other “awful” people who were ungrateful when they didn’t want the things she brought them so I accepted them and then gave them to op shops.

J often asked me in for a cup of tea and I was happy to come in for awhile, but she would constantly talk about how awful everyone was, how she hated men, awful past renters, even she would refuse to recycle because of the awful top cats at the recycling plants who wanted to just get rich. I started avoiding her after awhile because she had no concept of social cues and I would be stuck there for hours while she ranted about how awful everyone was and I started to realize that accepting her “gifts” meant that she felt owed to my time so every time she got me a gift I got her one back so we were even, which felt pretty ridiculous. I knew she was pretty insane by this stage.  Once I got a call at 5am in the morning, J bright and cheery telling me she was sending a man out the back. No man every came but it really scared me because she just didn’t seem to have any awareness of the time of what was going on.

J also had chickens in the yard and I know she really loved them but she wouldn’t feed them for days and I would hear their whining all morning and afternoon and I noticed that the water dishes were filthy and they would stay that way for weeks. Most of them had diarrhea and one of them nearly died but I started cleaning their water dishes and buying food to give to them and the chicken that nearly died miraculously recovered. I tried to mention it to her a couple of times but she was in complete denial and she told me some pretty strange stories about how she gave them diarrhea on purpose so that they would lay better eggs.

Things had already taken a turn for the worse before the chicken incident and she had started being really moody and emotionally abusive toward me but whenever I tried to talk to her like an adult where I’d tell her if she was angry at me to talk to me about it instead of making comments on the snide she’d just go into denial mode again about how calm and placid she always was and that I was crazy.  I started to see that she wasn’t so nice at all. She had a son who she was emotionally abusive to and completely co-dependent with and one time I heard her pissed off and screaming about the chickens after I had talked to her really loudly. I tried to smooth things over and talk like adults with her but she was in complete denial and would just always say that she was always calm and placid and never yelled and that she thought I was insane.

Things really blew up after I wrote her a heartfelt letter just telling her how I felt about the situation and that I knew we could get along because we did at the beginning and when I spoke to her she laughed at me and told me how crazy I was and said she had shown the letter to her son who had also laughed at me.  I then wrote her another letter (because she just wouldn’t answer her door anymore even though her car was obviously there) saying I was going to move out and I asked for two months so I could get a savings together and she said I had used her and she had done everything for me and she wanted me out in two weeks.

I told her I would repair a couple of things that were broken and get the carpets cleaned and everything but that I would like my bond back and she completely denied me ever giving her a bond and wrote me a letter giving me a long explanation about how I’d gotten the rent day wrong for a year so I was behind in rent (which was an outright lie) so she was doing the nice thing and that I didn’t have to owe HER money that I owed her!  It was actually insane.  I ended up losing a lot of money and having to take out an expensive loan so I could move in time but I will never live in a granny flat again because I have realized granny flats come with grannies!

B was an acceptable house guest during his five week stay, it was only after he left that I came to I think of him as maybe MVWR. I use “maybe” because the evidence is entirely circumstantial. He was my husband’s longtime best friend who’d just moved back to town, having landed a great job in publishing. The job was high in prestige, but low in pay; we agreed to let him sleep on our sofa for as long as it took him to find an affordable apartment. Since B was a world-class party animal, renowned for incorrigible drinking and drugging, we sometimes didn’t see him for days at a time—typically he’d let himself in at 2:00am, fall asleep on the sofa, then leave for work early the next day.

If it weren’t for the occasional empty beer bottle that I’d find on the coffee table in the morning — which hadn’t been there when we went to bed — I might not have even known he was staying with us. Sometimes I’d wake up to use the bathroom at 3:00am, find a beer bottle and no B, dispose of  the beer bottle, go back to bed, then find yet another beer bottle, and no B again at 8:00am when I woke up. This meant he’d come in, gone out, come in, then gone out again, all between midnight and morning.

One day, a few of weeks into B’s stay, I was petting my cat, R. I was shocked to discover a gaping 1.5 inch cut on the upper part of his hind leg. The wound was no longer bleeding, but because of its location on the curve of his thigh, I knew it’d never heal properly without stitches. I later explained to the veterinarian my theory as to how R might have received the injury—citing his habit of climbing down behind our refrigerator in pursuit of mice, making god-awful noises of claw-against-metal as he struggled to climb up again. Perhaps he got cut on a sharp bit of metal while doing so? The vet looked at me dubiously as we both stared at the wound, which looked as clean as if a knife had cut it. I half-expected a team of TV’s Animal Detectives to be waiting to apprehend me as I exited through the waiting room, such were the veterinarian’s suspicious looks. How the hell did R get cut, I wondered for days, examining the back of the refrigerator while trying to make sense of it.

It wasn’t until after B had moved out that my husband mentioned that B had complained that our “vicious little fucker” cat had continually chomped on his feet as he slept on the sofa. This sounded all too plausible, for although I love my cat, there’s no denying he’s a vicious little fucker who takes great joy in completely unprovoked attacks on humans, sinking his teeth and claws deep into one’s hands, arms, legs, or feet until tasting blood. The vet secretly thinks that I stabbed my cat. I now secretly think that B stabbed my cat. Only R knows for sure.

A friend and I decided to move in with another friend for school. M was the second roommate, and E was who we were moving into a house with. E’s apartment should have sent up a red signal. This girl never cleaned anything. She would spill rice, glitter, anything on the floor, carpet, countertops, and just leave it. She never threw anything away. Trash littered the floor, tables, even her bed. Well, we figured the two of us could make her clean her own messes, so we decided it was no big deal; she’d been living on her own.

E moved in first. It was a few months before M and I could move in for good. No surprise, E barely unpacked anything. She was fine turning the house into another version of her apartment. She got a cat, and insisted on feeding it canned food although it gave it the most terrible diarrhea. She cleaned the litter box rarely, and got angry when we suggested she clean it. She left open cans of cat food everywhere, letting it spill and not cleaning it. I can’t even tell you the mess she was making out of this house because it won’t be submitted!

One day, E and I said, “Get up. We’re cleaning this house.” She threw a huge fit and started to cry, saying she needed things the way they were and that if she had to clean them, she wouldn’t have any use for them, and blah blah blah. She had to go on vacation with her family, and we told her flat out, “While you’re gone, we’re cleaning. We won’t throw anything of yours away, we’ll stack it up in your room.” She reluctantly agreed. E and I had a week to clean, and routinely gagged cleaning the kitchen.

I should mention we had a roach problem. Roaches had been living and laying eggs on E’s plates and in her food because she didn’t bother putting anything away. We filled up seven trash bags of just trash, and from the kitchen alone. Her cat had been having diarrhea that was stuck on the walls behind the litter box (she took the cat with her). As I said, I can’t mention every little thing we cleaned. But we threw away upwards of 25 trash bags in total, all filled with just trash. The house wasn’t spotless when we were done, but now at least you wouldn’t get sick just walking into it. E came back, and was surprisingly calm.

The house isn’t as clean as we left it now, but it’s better. M, who has a backbone, flat out told E she was either getting rid of the cat, or keeping the box and food in her room, because the rest of us can’t live with the smell. E was also very angry that we shoved all her crap in her room. We told her she can bring it back down, but she has to keep it tidy and can’t leave it on the floor. She hasn’t brought anything back down. I now have to clean up her computer desk everyday because she flat out throws a fit whenever I try to get her to. M and I clean everything in the house besides E’s room. E doesn’t clean a damn thing. It’s like raising a pissy messy toddler. Roaches are still around, but there are a lot less of them now.

Again, I can’t say how much we hate living here and how disgusting she keeps the house. If not for M and I spending an hour cleaning every day, I’m sure the health department would kick us out and burn the place down within a week. We signed a 2-year lease. We’re 25% done! We’ll still be friends with E when this is over, but we’ll never live with her again! Pray for us!

I was practically homeless, so when I ran into a friend from high school, R, who needed a roomie, I moved in the next day. It was a one bedroom, open-concept loft apartment, so I got the room and R slept on the futon in the living room. A few weeks in I realized he had a crush on me. Not a normal one, where a little “I don’t feel that way” talk solves everything. A big, nasty, creepy “I watch you while you sleep” crush. I would wake up to him masturbating loudly in the other room saying my name and he had hookers over several times while I was trying to sleep. I would just lay there in bed and cover my ears and try not to freak out. A couple months in, I gave him my $300 for rent, and then left for the weekend with two new friends (Becca and Jess). I got back Sunday night and there was an eviction notice on the door. I freaked out and stormed in to talk to him and everything was gone — including the groceries I had just bought. He wouldn’t answer my calls and since I wasn’t on the lease I had no choice but to move. I found out a few weeks later that he had used my rent money to buy a gun and had killed himself. This may sound coldhearted, but he could at least have left my groceries.

Becca, Jess, and I decided to get a really nice apartment together. Because Jess and I didn’t have checking accounts, we gave our share of the first months rent and the deposit to Becca — about $450 each. It looked like this arrangement was going to work for us. The only problem at first was Becca’s dog. It pooped everywhere and she would refuse to clean it up. Everything smelled like poop, no matter how much scrubbing I did or how much air freshener I used. I didn’t see her take the dog out once while we lived there. Becca had a great job with an environmentally friendly electricity company. We all left for work at 8:30am and she’d come back around 6pm. She made enough money to furnish the entire apartment and get a new TV. But then she painted the apartment while we were gone and painted our names with acrylic paint all over the dining room wall, with butterfly stencils on every other surface of the apartment. Jess and I got really mad and she promised she’d paint it back, which she never did.

A few days later, Becca came home with a new car. We get a phone call from her later that day because she’s in jail and wants us to bail her out, which we refused to do. Now Becca was a clothing thief and even though she was two sizes bigger than me, she would steal my clothes. So I’m digging through her closet trying to find one of my outfits when I find an eviction notice from three days prior. Jess and I went to the office to find out what was going on. Ends up Becca never paid the rent or deposit that we had given her money for! And she had taken her name off the lease. She went down and signed herself off, then used my ID the next day to authorize it under my name. We tore apart her belongings, and found multiple IDs, checkbooks and fradulent receipts for major purchases (like the furniture and TV) which we returned. Ends up Becca was picked up on multiple counts of identity theft and auto theft. We later found out that she never even had a job. When she left for “work” she would park a couple blocks away until we were gone, then return home. Around 5pm she would drive to the other side of the complex and then watch for us to get home before pulling back around and coming in.

I still owe the complex over $4000 to pay for the rent, damage from her dog and that stupid paint job. After that I moved in to one of Jess’s parents rental homes with her. Long story short, she slept with seven different guys at the same time. They left their empty beer cans everywhere and when her mother came over the next day, Jess blamed me for the beer and I was kicked out.

I was once a Very Worst Roommate, although they guys I lived with were cool and I’m sure we’d all get along fine these days. I was an 18 year-old student in Dunedin. Dunedin is notorious for having shoddy flats for students and ours was a typical case. There were six of us guys living a large house, with a basement we used as a lounge. All except one of us smoked weed. I had just got into being a hippy/anarchist/feral and I was quite loose. I had a pet rat, but (of course) I didn’t have a cage for it, so it just lived on my clothing when I went out or on my floor when I was in my room. I would just vacuum up its shit every now and then. I decided to grow weed in my closet and my flatmates were cool with it, so long as I paid some extra on the powerbill. I cut a corner out of the closet door to put the extraction fan in. I was getting into graffiti and I spray painted my walls.

As was typical for Dunedin, we had a 12 month lease, which meant we were obligated to keep paying rent for three months after the study year had finished. I saw this as unfair to squeeze extra money from students. So my plan was just to leave early and let them keep my bond. So I wasn’t concerned about the damage coming out of my bond. I was quite open this and I encouraged my flatmates to do the same. My flatmates didn’t freak at all when they’d seen that I’d painted the walls etc, but it did register as more of a concern later in the year. Also, the house was being sold and every now and then we’d have people coming through the house, including my room (I’d move my plants out before hand). Nothing was ever said about the walls or the door. At the end of the year I was about to move out and I packed up all my stuff and went partying with some friends for a couple of days before we left. When I came back to collect my stuff my plants were gone. Oh well.

MVWR was also my boss, E. I’d just moved for the job, and she “adopted” me as her own, which was fine when I was first getting my feet, not so much when she was acting like I was her BFF after having met her a month before. She lived with her parents, who she hated, and when I was looking for a flat she guilt tripped and suggested so much that eventually I let her strong arm me into looking for one together. Her mother instantly hated me and started telling all sorts of lies about me around town (stories that were easily fact checked to be untrue). I’d often get calls from E, demanding to know if I’d said such and such that her mother was claiming I had. E was also incredibly bipolar, but would often forget to take her meds. When we moved in together, she had one cat. I’m allergic, but figured I’d be ok with just one. One multipled into three over the course of eight months, without ever asking me about it. But the real breaking point was her drinking. E was the girl at the party who’d drink to much, say horrible things to people, dance on the coffee table topless, then puke on the rug. And somehow, because I lived with her, I was her keeper.

The breaking point came when she helped herself to a goody bag at the end of a friends party: several bottles of liquor, a case of beer, bottles of wine — she made a carrier bag and walked out with it. I discovered it the next day (as she had gotten so drunk we’d stayed at the host’s house that night, and she’d gotten up in the morning and left without me, claiming to be too hungover to come get me when I called her), and confronted her about it. After that, she stopped talking to me (at work and at home) and started making trouble for me professionally. One night, talking about what to do about this situation with a mutual friend on the phone, she barged into my room frothing at the mouth, screaming, having evesdropped. It got to the point I would walk down the block to call my mom. She eventually kicked me out of our shared apartment over Facebook while she was sitting across the office. I wasn’t sorry to go.