Men's Power Stick Musk

Whoa, gang.

It's 3:19 am here in the central time zone. After my 17 hour nap and my blogging, I used JW's Blazer (still in my driveway) to go pick up some steel. I bought 40' of 2x2" x 1/8" angle iron and some casters. I came back home and worked in the garage until 1pm, building a new work bench/cartamajigger. I made the mistake of relying on the concrete floor of the garage to be reasonably square. And it is, for the most part, but it was off enough that one of my casters sits a bit higher than the others. The floor is just uneven enough that it will pick up a wheel and wobble a bit if you turn it the wrong direction in the garage. I was a bit disgusted in myself and pretty tired, so I knocked off and showered up, before retiring for some shut eye.

I woke up at 5pm, and should have got up. But, I was somewhat disoriented, though I was pretty sure it was pm, since Peat was making some noise somewhere. I went back to sleep. I woke up again at 9pm and maybe 11pm, and, again, should have got up. As it was, though, I didn't get out of bed until 2:25. Which leaves me foggy and idle with nothing I can really do. Except maybe give you a bonus story.

This, of course, will contain no cab content, since I haven't driven since my last update. It will, however, chronicle my relationship with a former crazy roommate I have mentioned in passing in earlier posts.

The year was 2002. It was mid-December. I had 'finished' law school in May, and gone to bar review courses from mid-June through mid-July. Then I was unemployed until September, when I took the shittiest job in the world, at Metal Culverts, Inc., in Columbia. What's a culvert you ask? It's one of those corrugated metal tubes that run under roads to direct water and run-off. It was a horrible, dilapidated factory with no safety equipment and tons of crank-heads. Under "reason for leaving" on the next employment application I filled out I put "wanted to keep all ten of my fingers."

I was spending all of my idle time drinking and engaging in shenanigans with my neighbors at the time. They were undergrads, and I had become good friends with them, and had got to know several of their friends, by extension. One night we walked to a party in an adjoining neighborhood, at some extended friends' house. It was there, drunk, after 1 or so in the morning, that this chick Brooke came up and said she wanted to introduce me to her friend. All right, Brooke.

The chick was petite, with straight, dark brunette hair. She was 21, and wore way too much makeup. You could imagine that with a little work she would look like a tiny Sandra Bullock, if you slapped Sandra Bullock around until her eyes were puffy and gave her a chin cleft. All in all, very serviceable, though.

"This is my friend, 'Ambrosia.'"

"Ambrosia?" trying not to laugh, "the nectar of the gods?"

"Yes, its what the gods ate."

"I told Ambrosia you were looking for a roommate. She's transferring here from SMSU (Springfield, 3 hours south)." And with that, Brooke disappeared. My old roommate of 3+ years, John, had married in October and moved. I could barely afford the place by myself, but preferred being broke to being saddled with a crazy roommate. It took two seconds to discern that Ambrosia was as dim as a bulb could be and still be considered lit. And what 21 year old sorority girl would want to live with a 25 year old culvert laborer?

In my favor, though, she was stupid, completely crazy, and, arguably, hot. We were drinking, it was late, and I thought I'd humor her, since one look at my bachelor pad would quickly change her mind. We had about a two minute conversation on the topic. She was still living in Springfield and just visiting for the weekend. I went home that night and forgot about it.

The next Saturday I went with some friends to D. Rowe's for dinner/drinks. Ambrosia was there again. She sat by me and the bunch of us (8 or so) chatted through dinner. Afterwards, we went out to Skip's Place. She set in again about the roommate thing. She told me she wanted to come and check the place out, and that she was very interested. By the end of the night she said she was ready to move in, sight unseen. I told her to reserve judgment, and to at least come by and check the place out. I hadn't bothered cleaning. She said she'd come by the next day, on Sunday.

She didn't. I didn't hear any more from her. I was a bit relieved, because, as much as I like crazy bitches, this one was a certified whack-job. I again put it behind me, and went on about my business.

The next Saturday I came home and found a message waiting on my answering machine. It was from Ambrosia and announced that she would be arriving the next day, Sunday, at noon with her grandparents and a truck load of shit. It was 11 or so at night.

I got up Sunday and cleaned feverishly. Noon came and went. My neighbors were excited, perched anxiously on my couch, drinking beers. We all joked about how crazy the set-up was, and what we might expect. Brandon was determined he was going to nail her. I said I didn't care what went down as long as I got my rent money. People would ask me if I thought I would nail her, but I didn't expect to, and didn't want a stupid-live-in girlfriend so much as someone who paid me money. I didn't plan on telling the landlord or putting her on the lease, so that I could boot her at any time shit went south.

She finally showed up that night, about 9pm, with grammy and gramps and, literally, a truck load of shit. A full-sized pickup with stock racks, full. Her car, full. Luckily, the neighbors were there and eager to impress, so they all jumped in unloading furniture. As we carried stuff upstairs to her new bedroom, I was careful to put things to one side so that there would be room to assemble her queen-sized bed. Not everyone understood this, and just piled her floor full. She had, among other stuff: QS bed, large real-wood entertainment center, 27" TV, stereo system, computer, two large hexagonal end tables, large coffee table, large hexagonal dining table, 4 chairs, full implement of kitchen appliances and utensils, dishware, pans, bathroom shelves, hampers, tons of fake plants and Pier 1 shit, and ass-loads of clothes. We ended up leaving a couch, some chairs, and other shit on the truck.

Her friend Brooke came over and helped her get situated a bit. My neighbors were lined up on the couch, wide-eyed and giggly. When the excitement had died down shit was everywhere. It was December 30. She spent that night sleeping on the couch, with the TV on. This made sense, since her room was full of boxes and the mattresses were leaned against the wall.

The next day she went back to Springfield with her friend to get more shit. She got back again at about 6 or so. She unloaded a bunch of shit and left to go back to the Liberty area, where she was from, for New Year's. I didn't see her again until the 8th or 9th, which was fine, since she was on Christmas break. I wasn't too worried about the rent money since I had already paid it, not anticipating her to move in. She had mentioned she was going to write me a check on the 30th, but she had plenty of distractions. I didn't worry.

When she showed up again she was trying to get some financial aid and admissions stuff squared away, via the phone. My neighbor Brandon was over. It was only then that I realized she had moved to Columbia without actually applying to school. Her grades weren't good enough to get into MU or Columbia College, so she ended up enrolling in classes at Moberly Area Community College, a 1/2 hour away. Brandon and I were there when she was having a row with someone on the phone. They needed some tax forms from her parents. She told the person that her grandparents had been her legal guardians for years. Then she got really mad and started yelling, that she couldn't get the forms because her mom was in a mental institution somewhere and she had no idea where her dad might be.

She was settling in, but she still slept on the couch. When I went to brush my teeth I noticed that the cap was flipped up on my Mentodent. I checked the utility closet by the bathroom, and, yes, there was her partially used tube of toothpaste, that she had brought with her. Odd. And, even though there were ten different bottles of shampoo and conditioner and body wash and girly shit in the closet, none of it had found its way into the shower. Just my lonely bottle of Pantene Pro-V 2-in-1. Likewise, just my single bar of Lever soap.

I went to work at 6am that winter, and would creep down the stairs every morning, in the dark, waiting to eat shit and break my ankle. She would always be asleep on the couch. She had her bed all set-up now, with her room neatly arranged, her bed dressed with nice linens and comforters and pillows. She had a TV in there, though there was no cable jack. Yet, every night, she would sleep on the downstairs couch with the TV on. I'd creep down the stairs and the sound would be muted or it would be on the weather radar map channel. If I came home late I couldn't watch the TV, since she would be sacked out asleep on the couch.

And she was still using my toothpaste, soap, and shampoo. I wasn't too concerned about the expense, but it was still odd. Especially since she had all of her own shit in the closet. And she was a girly-girl, and we had incredibly hard water. She would use my bar soap and complain about having dry skin. I had always looked at roommates as business partners, first and foremost. If you liked each other and were friends, bully. I had never been the share-and-share-alike roomie.

The first night she was there she was looking at the contents of my fridge. There had been a lot of 6 month old stuff that I had thrown away when she showed up. There was a big jar of Vlassic zesty dill pickles, one of my few name-brand splurge purchases. "Are these any good?" she asked. I had been telling everyone who would listen how great they were for days.

"Good? They're fucking great!"

"No, I meant are they good, like are they really old or something?"

"No they're fresh, help yourself." And she did. She was a pickle vacuum. She quickly finished off the near full jar over the next couple of days.

My thoughts on roommate food has always been this: you can sneak a few out of the middle, but you never want to break the seal or finish them off. No first or last. And if you do, replace them immediately with an identical product. Ambrosia apparently did not subscribe to this rule. After annihilating the first jar, I bought a new jar and left it, unopened, in the fridge. To test her will. Apparently it wasn't much of a test, because she opened them right away. I refrained from having any pickles, to see how she would moderate her intake of them. She deftly scrounged all of the pickles, without ever once asking. She ate them all down to the last one, a piddling little malformed stump of a pickle, and left it suspended all alone in the giant pickle jar, like a piddling unflushed turd awash in the vast expanse of a tidy bowl. It would float there for another couple of weeks, by itself, until she finally gave in and ate it, too. Needless to say, she never bought any pickles.

One of the first nights she settled in she was busying herself, decorating everything that had sat unadorned by my sparse bachelor appointments. Brandon was on the couch. The neighbors were always there when she was, for the first several weeks. She was giddy, dragging crap out of boxes and down the stairs, asking me if it didn't just look fabulous or something. At one point she came up with a framed 5x7" picture, holding it like a child asking permission to do something, where all of their hopes hung in the balance of doing that one thing.

"Would it be a big deal if I were to put this on the mantle? I mean, just until we get some pictures of us together?" It was a pic of her and another anonymous sorority girl.

"Sure."

Later she came down, excited, with an envelope of pictures. "You guys want to look at some pictures from my trip to Las Vegas?"

"Sure." She sat on one end of the couch, next to Brandon. I was on the other end. I was drinking beer and trying to watch TV. She would hand a photo to Brandon, describe it, then Brandon would pass it to me as she told him about the next one. With the delay, and the distractions, I mostly quit listening. I heard her describing a picture:

"That's my girlfriend I went with, and that's our other friend that took us." When the photo reached my hands it was of the two 20 year old sorority girls and a creepy pedophile-looking bald guy with a combover.

"How did you become friends with a creepy pedophile-looking bald guy with a combover, and why did you go to Las Vegas with him?" She started to explain that it was her friend's friend, and he had volunteered to pay for the trip. One of the next photos I got was of the second girl, standing on a bed, holding her short dress up to show her panties and bare A-cup breasts, which were a bit disproportionate to her frame. But they were bare breasts. "Whoa! What's this all about?"

"Yeah, I was mad that she took that, on my camera." So you kept it? "I didn't know, but she was fooling around with the old guy. She agreed to have sex with him if he would pay for the trip." Shocker. "I didn't know about that until later, though."

Everyday was a new surprise, as my house turned into a Pier 1 Imports. I didn't give a shit, as long as she paid the rent. Some shelves went up in the bathroom, and my 3 toiletry products (hair gel, deodorant, shaving cream) were relocated to a glass shelf beneath a fake plant. No problem. Now there was a green fuzzy mat to soak up all of that errant piss near the toilet. There was make-up and shit everywhere. Didn't care, as long as she paid the rent.

And about that rent? Now it's the third week of January, no mention of it. I brought it up, and she apologized for being so late with it, she had just forgot to get the check from Grandma. She said she would just get a check for two months' rent, if that was okay. I said sure, and she paid me for January and February on time, on the last day of January.

And she was still sleeping on the couch. That came up once, too. She apologized, and said it was because she "liked to fall asleep to the sound of the TV." She had a TV in her room (okay, no cable feed), as well as a VCR and a stereo. And the TV was always muted when I came down the stairs in the mornings. And she was still using my soap, toothpaste, and shampoo.

I would come home and find her in my room, on my computer, a few times in the first couple of weeks. She was typing letters for school stuff. That's cool, even though she had her own computer. I figured she wasn't smart enough to plug it in. Jerod put it together in 2 minutes when I mentioned it to him. But Brandon said that every time he left his side of the duplex he would hear something, and turn to look at my window just as a gap in the blinds snapped together. Hmm.

She had talked about getting a job as a server at Big 12 on Nifong (now Legends). I didn't particularly care for the place (meaning I hated it), but they had $3 pitchers and $1 22ounce draws on weeknights. I would go there some with the neighbors. The novelty was beginning to wear off and I was looking for ways to get out of the house. Brandon came over and asked if I wanted to go get some beer. BroYo overheard (I renamed her BroYo because I couldn't call anyone 'Ambrosia') and wanted to come along. Criminy.

We went to the Big 12. The drink specials had been becoming less special, and I started bitching about what a generic, mediocre bar it was. Brandon defended his choice, on the grounds that it was the only bar close to where we lived.

"The Beanery is only a couple of blocks further away."

"I've never been there,"

"Okay, lets go." So we went o the Beanery. It was Monday night. We were already a few beers deep. BroYo had driven her car. When we hit the Beanery there was all kinds of activity going on. It was an MU men's basketball home game, and the local news station, KOMU 8, was preparing to broadcast the post-game wrap-up live from the bar. It was also karaoke night, to follow. I ordered a bourbon and water.

"Doubles are on special, only $1 more."

"Make it a double, then."

BroYo was getting pretty drunk and squirrelly. We tried to call the broadcast and get on the air from my cell phone. I had something awesome I was going to say, like "sweet box nubbins" or something, but we had to get past the screener. I came up with a legitimate question, but BroYo was too drunk to read it off of the paper I had written it on. The broadcast wrapped up and they started tearing down the equipment and setting up for karaoke.

I told BroYo she should get Chris Gervino to sing a karaoke duet with her.

"Who's Chris Gervino?"

"You don't know who Chris Gervino is?" I made out like he was some huge celebrity. She was star struck. He walked by our table and she rambled some high pitched drunk squeal at him. He looked a bit aghast, as I guess his significant other was there and he didn't want to get caught fraternizing with any young drunk college girls. He passed us up without saying anything.

We turned her attention to Tony Harvey. He had been sitting at a table with four bombed white hos. They did the most agonizing karaoke slaughter I have ever witnessed, some 5+ bumbling minutes through Nelly's Air Force Ones. It was so bad that the karaoke MC even apologized, saying "there's five minutes of your life you'll never get back." As Tony Harvey walked past us en route to the bar BroYo made her pitch. He, too, ignored us.

Well, I kept drinking doubles. I did my George Jones tune, He Stopped Loving Her Today. I took the mic (cordless) and worked the room. I knew the song well enough, and they had the karaoke screen on all of the TVs throughout the bar (sports bar). I did my best Las Vegas lounge act, working my throughout the crowded bar while singing. I would go up to groups of people, drunk, oblivious to the goings-on, put my arm around them, and serenade them. It was pretty classy.

After a spell, the four hos T. Harvey was with left. He came over to our booth and had a seat. He was on one side with a drunk BroYo, Brandon and I sat opposite them. He may have bought us drinks, I know he bought BroYo a vodka and Red Bull. I was wasted. BroYo was tiny compared to T. Harve, in his pimp suit. She was leaning against him, giggling loudly at everything he said, caressing his shaved head with her fingers. At one point she was leaning across his lap, her arms reaching around his head and back on top of it. It was pretty bizarre. I had trouble not laughing overtly at them.

At one point, T. Harve got up to go get more drinks. BroYo was normal for half a second. She said, "I don't know guys, what do you think about Tony?"

I laughed my ass off. "Well, you seem to like him well enough."

"Yeah, I don't know. I don't really like black people." I shit you not.

T. Harve came back with more booze. She resumed coddling him, cooing in his ear. I tried to talk basketball and recruiting with the Harvester, but my ignorance and drunkitude got the better of me. I couldn't keep from laughing any longer, so I had to recuse myself. I started making random friends in the bar. After a while I looked up to see Brandon dangling a set of car keys. Then he pointed to BroYo, walking arm-in-arm with Tony Harvey, out of the bar. Holy sheep shit.

BroYo had presented herself as a chaste, naive little girl. Whether or not that was true, I didn't know if she understood that she would be the Tuesday girl in Tony Harvey's stable, and that she would likely be farmed out to basketball players, a recruiting perk. Hell, she'd probably like the attention anyway.

Brandon and I drank more and found our way home. I was so hungover the next day I could barely function. I called in sick at my job. BroYo had not returned. We had her car. At about 2pm Brandon and I went out to pick up a DVD player. When we returned, BroYo was there, in the bathroom at the top of the stairs. The door was open, and she was wearing a towel, primping in the mirror. I stepped to the side of the staircase, to avoid looking. Brandon stood and stared full-on, up the stairwell.

I had imagined that BroYo was drugged out of her mind, on a bus somewhere in Ohio. I was going to sell all of her shit on E-bay. The only persnickety bit was how I would explain it to her grandparents. Now, standing in my living room, violently hungover, I couldn't think of a good way to ease into the subject, "say how did that anal rape go? You feelin' okay, sweetie? Want some herbal tea? Heat pad for your 'giner?" Luckily Brandon always knows what to say.

"Did you bone Tony Harvey last night, or what?"

"Oh, no, no, no, nothing like that. He just drove me around Columbia, he showed me where the players lived. We sat up and talked. He showed me pictures of his daughter and his family. He's 37, and has a 7 year old daughter, in Detroit. We just talked." This is all with her still standing at the top of the stairs, in a towel, in the mirror.

"So are you guys, like, dating now?"

"No. I told him about my grandparents, that I didn't like black people, and that I couldn't date them." I fell on the floor. No, really. My equilibrium was pretty much fucked, anyway. I wanted to preserve the ludicrousness of the situation in my memory. It is now firmly rooted with the olfactory sensation of dirty carpet.

I guess she 'saw' Tony Harvey on-and-off. I know once he was supposed to reserve tickets for her for a home game. Brooke went with her. Brooke said that the girl in the ticket booth had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing. Apparently T. Harvey did this quite a bit, with lots of ladies. The tickets weren't there.

I always hoped he would kill her, and that I could blackmail the MU basketball program. He came over to my house one night. I was sitting next door, at the neighbors', avoiding BroYo. I was drinking beer, my back to the door. It was a Sunday night, we were watching Aqua Teen. The dudes were doing homework. The door swung open, behind me. I didn't turn to look. I watched the neighbors look up from their papers, at the door behind me.

"Meh, huh, she, fugh, mi, shi fu..." Unintelligible frustrated BroYo talk. She was upset about something, about to cry. The neighbors stared in abject horror.

Still without looking, I broke the awkward silence, saying "you're gonna have to give us a little more to go on."

"Why can't boys...just listen...when...I just got off the phone with Tony, and he wanted to come over, and I said not to. But he is anyway. He's on his way right now. What should I do?" You should provoke him into killing you, but not before you leave me a rent check from gramma.

No one had said anything in response when headlights swung into the driveway. She said "That's him now. Will someone come over, in like 5 minutes, and save me?" No one said anything. She closed the door. I heard mine open and close. Then a large, shadowy figure passed the window, and went inside my house.

We all looked at each other and laughed. Tony Harvey was in my living room. I listened for the sound of BroYo's head going through my drywall. After a few minutes, curiosity was killing Jondle's cat. And, there was beer in my fridge. He decided he would go over. Jondle weighed a buck.25. No joke. We all waited. He came back in a couple of minutes, with a stein of beer. He said T. Harve was in my broken ghetto chair, giving a heart-to-heart to BroYo. No sooner had Jondle relayed this than the door opened again. It was BroYo. "Don't lock the door, I'm going with Tony and I lost my keys."

Things continued to get worse with BroYo. She slept on the couch for a full six weeks. One Saturday I went and rented some DVDs so I could enjoy my new DVD player (gratuitous purchase with my new, 'extra' money). My buddy Jeff was with me. We went to my house, at about 2:30 on a Saturday. BroYo was sacked out on the couch, with the remote in her hand.

Jeff knew her as well as the rest of us. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Oh, I was just kind of tired, so I thought I'd take a nap."

"On the couch?"

Bitch-switch flipped. "Yeah, you gotta problem with that?" Cunt. I went to Wal-Mart and bought 50' of coax and some splices. Then I went in my neighbors' side and climbed into the attic. I crawled around in the insulation and poked holes in my bedroom ceiling and her's. I ran the coax through the attic and dropped it into her room. I entered long enough to screw the coax into her television and turn it on. She finally started using her own room to sleep.

One day I ran out of deodorant. I worked with stinky, sweaty men in dirt and grease all day, so I didn't fret much. It took 2 or 3 days before I went to the store and bought some more. I usually buy 2 or 3 sticks at a time, for convenience. It's the same cheap $.97 a stick stuff I've used since high school, men's Power Stick Musk.

I got out of the shower one afternoon and went to grab my deodorant, off of the 9 square inch allotment of space I had on the shelf in the bathroom. It wasn't there. I looked up and it was on the next shelf. No biggie, it must have gotten bumped and fallen off, then misplaced. I took off the cap and went to apply said deodorant.

Now, I'll admit that I have my fair share of anal-retentive and borderline OCD behaviors. I can be particular about certain things. When I took off the cap it was readily apparent that someone had used my deodorant.

As I said, I had been using the same brand for some 8 years at that point. I always turn it up about 1/8" above the opening, and it leaves a relatively square profile. This stick (not 2 days old) was cranked up a good 3/8" in the center, and had a completely rounded profile. I looked at it and there were stubble marks where the deodorant had stopped against a shaved armpit.

Still giving her the benefit of the doubt, I took the other new stick of deodorant I had and made a test pattern on my armpit, comparing the two. The one on my armpit left different markings, from the bushy underarm hair. Still giving her every possible benefit of the doubt, I went next door to collect some more male deodorant samples.

I walked up to their bathroom. Jondle and Jerod were in their respective rooms. I went straight to their bathroom, but there was no deodorant in it. Stinky bastards. I walked into Jerod's room. I saw deodorant on his dresser, and picked it up to compare.

"What are you doing?"

"Well, you're going to think I'm crazy, but I think that bitch has been using my deodorant."

"You know, I wouldn't think you're crazy. You know why?"

"Why?"

"Well, 2 or 3 days ago she came over here and asked me if I had any deodorant. I told her I didn't, because I had run out (must be going around), Then she left without saying anything. I heard her in the bathroom, and then she just left." About this time, Jondle popped in Jerod's room.

"Are you guys talking about deodorant?"

"Yeah."

"That's weird, because I just bought a brand new thing of Degree, and now its gone." That crazy bitch had stolen his deodorant, out of his own house. Sure enough, a couple of days later, she left her overnight bag unzipped on the bathroom counter,. There was a new container of Degree. I had Jondle positively identify it. He didn't want it back. I screwed the contents (it was the gel variety) out into the toilet and flushed it. Then I put the empty container back in her bag. I began putting my own deodorant in my room.

It was never about "ooh-stinky-gross-armpits," it was a bout a crazy person in your house using your stuff obsessively and for no good reason. And, again, I repeat, she was real femmy, and this was all cheap mens' stuff.

My utility bills had been climbing. BroYo had a tendency to crank up the heat. I was growing annoyed. Getting money out of her was proving difficult. She would often disappear 2 or 3 nights a week. I never cared where she was at, but it was hard to run into her sometimes to ask for my money. Grandma sent 3 or 4 blank checks a month, and all she had to do was write in the amount. But, she would go to Pier 1 on the 25th and use her last check on useless shit. Then, when I politely asked about bills she would get defensive and mad. I never knew when I was going to get paid, and that was the whole point of the arrangement. I was also afraid to spend my money on stuff I needed (I was busy putting a new motor in my Bronco), because I was afraid I'd need it for rent if/when she flaked out.

One Saturday night the neighbors and my friend Jeff were over, drinking beer. Everyone was sitting around bullshitting. I went upstairs to use the bathroom. BroYo shed like a shetland pony. Her hair was everywhere. She never cleaned it up. It was clogging the drain. She would comb her hair and let it fall on the bathroom floor. I would do my laundry at the laundromat, and my clothes would come out of the dryer with long black hairs on them. Once I took a shower, toweled off, put on some boxers, and sat at my computer. I scratched my nuts and pulled out a foot long hair.

I had refused to clean up someone else's hair, and had done my best to ignore it. But, it was plain that she wasn't going to do it herself. I figured the best bet would be to pick it up off of the bathmat and shit with masking tape. But, if I was going to clean up someone else's hair, I was going to have fun with it. I fashioned a crude cardboard doll, about a foot tall. I wrapped it up, like a mummy, in masking tape, sticky side-out. I was laughing my ass off, alone in my bathroom, drinking a Leinenkugel, picking up hair with a hair doll. Priceless.

I was still laughing when I descended the stairs, where my company sat, drinking beer. "Here you go," I said casually, and tossed the nasty lint-covered hairdoll in my friend's lap. Good fun.

Somehow the evening coincidentally--and innocently--turned to knife-throwing. Jeff had bought a package of like 100+ knives off of QVC, since they were cheap and pretty much disposable, and perfect for laying tile. He had quit the tile biz and gone back to school. He brought over all of the knives, and the neighbors went apeshit, throwing knives at a piece of plywood in the front yard.

Well, once it got cold enough, they moved inside. Now they were throwing knives at a piece of plywood in front of my fireplace. I didn't care to participate, and the noise was driving me nuts. I kicked them out around 12 and went to sleep.

I woke up at 4am to yelling right outside me door. It was BroYo, yelling at two dude I wasn't familiar with. I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but they were very loud and right outside my door. I was trapped. The gist of the conversation was that they had gone to a bar together, she had disappeared, and ended up freaked out at a strange party somewhere. She said they had abandoned her, they said they were gone 5 minutes to get drinks at the bar. She had left with strangers. Somehow a police car was involved. She ended up at a party, which was basically across the street from here, though she didn't realize it. She freaked out, and apparently hid in the closet under the stairs, where she didn't have very good phone reception.

They left to get some food, and I came out of my room, to every light in the house and the TV on. There was the new utility bill, which she had opened. It had doubled. I was pissed. Her keys were laying there. The door was unlocked. I almost locked the door behind her, but was mature enough not to. I went back to bed.

The next day I was sitting on the couch, with my back to the door, when she came back in. I didn't turn to look. I was still pissed off about her waking me up the night before. The door slammed and I heard her say "what the fuck is that supposed to be?"

I was confused for a second, but looked up to see the hairdoll pinned to the plywood with knives all around it. "Oh, that? That's a hair doll." Go ahead, ask me what a hair doll is, you filthy bitch.

"Is that supposed to be some kind of fucking voodoo doll or something?" I had forgotten just how crazy she was. She stormed back out and closed the door without me ever looking at her. I left the hairdoll in place, at least in part to annoy her.

I went out the next day and came back to find the hairdoll missing. I was a little put out, since I had put some craftmanship into it, but, what was I going to do with it, anyway?

There had also been an issue with the trash, too. BroYo didn't understand, though I explained it to her, that you could only out the trash out on Wednesday night or Thursday morning, and it had to be bagged. I came home one day and she had drug a trash can from the back yard to the curb in front. I let it sit there all week until trash day. They didn't take, and stuck a giant orange sticker on it, saying that they didn't pick up cans. Well, she had done the same thing, again, so I went out to move the trash and put the trash can up. There, pressed against the clear plastic bag, was a hairdoll. It look like it was gasping for air, being smothered by a Dominos pizza box.

I laughed, and ripped a hole in the bag, freeing it. It was in a bag with all cardboard, so it wasn't as if it stunk or anything. I wasn't going to pester her with it, but, instead, I went straight into my neighbor's house, to their refrigerator. I bent down and pushed their gallon milk jug far back into the fridge. Then I stood the hairdoll in front of it. That way, they'd have to bend down to look for their surprise.

For the next few days I opened cabinets very cautiously, expecting retribution. It never came. I thought it was either going to be very good, or they were just too lazy to strike back. That Friday we were drinking beer, on the couch, as usual. I remembered the hair doll. Two of the neighbors were there, the third was working. One had got up to get more beer next door. I asked Jerod, "so, what, uh, what did you think of your little surprise I left for you?"

"Huh?"

"That little surprise I left you? In your refrigerator?" He didn't know what I was talking about. Typically, if one neighbor would have found it, he would have left it for the others to discover in turn. Brandon came back and I asked him. He didn't know anything about it, either. Something smelled fishy. I called Jondle at work. He hadn't seen it, either.

She had gone into their house without them knowing, and raided their fridge. Waiting for her was the hair doll. Now she was convinced I was trying to kill her.

At some point I realized she was still going into my room every day, and using my deodorant. I had resorted to hiding it in my underwear drawer. She still used my soap, toothpaste, and shampoo every day.

She also insisted on overriding my answering machine with her own, which was kept in her room. Mine was in the kitchen. I didn't realize it for a long time, but her machine cut mine off and I never saw the messages. People were not leaving messages because they thought they had the wrong number.

Then I realized she was still going into my room and rifling through my underwear drawer to use my Power Stick. I got so fed up, I decided to leave her a note, since I never saw her and I couldn't really look at her without getting mad. I drafted a neutral note, handwritten, that made the following reasonable requests.

1) don't go into my room without asking

2) buy your own deodorant, soap, toothpaste, shampoo, and food

There was also mention of the thermostat wars, the answering machine, and cleaning up her own hair. It was polite and dispassionate. Still, after writing it, I couldn't stand the idea of leaving a chickenshit note. I was still debating, when I though of the perfect solution--put it under my underwear, next to my deodorant. Then, when she reads it, she can't complain, because she will be caught in the act of violating the first four items.

Things kept getting worse. It was nearing the end of February. The first was on Saturday. I caught her on Friday about the rent. She got mad and said the checks hadn't come from grandma, like that was my fault. They had come, and she had spent them on other stuff. She still owed me from the last month's utilities. Shit was adding up. I didn't have the money to cover her half, and had to bullshit the landlord and be late with it. I went to visit my parents that weekend.

I came back and found a type-written, 4 page letter, telling me about all of my shortcomings as a roommate, and not addressing any of my previously stated grievances. According to her, the utilities bill doubled because I left the porch light on. She was indignant that I had gone into her room and hooked up cable up as a means of getting her ass off of the couch. She also felt put out because she was doing all of the dishes. That was because she dirtied all of the dishes. I cooked three times the whole time she was there. The note called for a reconciliation.

I was superfly-pissed. And this all coincided with her being late with the rent. I found the note on Sunday. I had Monday off. I decided it was time for her to go. But, I knew I had to get my money out of her first, or I would never see it. She owed me about $425, for rent and utilities. Monday afternoon the checks came from granny. I decided she had until 4pm to get back, or I was going to open the envelope, write in the amount, and go pay rent (due by 5, already 2 days late). Hell, I might not see her for another month, anyway.

4pm came and she wasn't there. I left a detailed note, the check number, the amount, and an itemized list of the utilities. Then I headed for the bank. I saw her on the way out of the bank. I was paying the landlord when my cell phone beeped. I had just got a new one, and they messed up the activation code. It wouldn't ring in, but it would beep when someone left a message. I could guess who it was, but I couldn't listen to the message. It beeped once more while I was talking to the landlord, and a third time when I was driving to the cell phone store.

I went home. She wasn't there. It was almost dark. I was talking to the neighbors. One of the messages mentioned that she knew I had my phone and that I'd better pick up (she knew because she was in my room where I always left it). She called the neighbors to see if I was home. She said she was coming over. It was pretty exciting here at 2009.

I made myself a drink--Jim Beam and water--and took a seat in a plastic chair in the yard. The neighbors opened the upstairs window and piped out "Eye of the Tiger." They hid in the shadows of the roof to watch. My plan was to be a super-cool smartass, and incite her to screaming and making an ass out of herself for the cul de sac to watch. She wheeled in in her Ford Tempo and slammed the door shut. I counted down as she stalked across the yard, passing me, headed towards the door.

"We need to have a talk."

"Okay, lets go."

"What? Here. Okay--" and then fireworks. As soon as she opened her mouth my plan crumbled and I fucking lost it. I screamed at her in the yard until she went in, slamming the door. I stood there fuming for 4 or 5 seconds, then went in and continued yelling. I yelled at her ass all of the way out of the front door. Then I followed her outside and yelled her to her car. Her big comeback had been "you're weird" as she passed me, heading out.

Yeah, so I got paid and she had a month to move out. She didn't. She probably stayed there a total of 5 or 6 nights over that month. She would crank the thermostat to 80, after she came in and I was asleep. Once she left and had turned it down to 50 on her way out. I took the cover off and rigged it so it wouldn't go past 72. She broke it. By the end of March she had taken a few springy tank tops. I changed the locks April 1. In the second week of May she showed up, unannounced, with her new boyfriend and a U-Haul truck. It was early Sunday evening, and I was accompanied with my new girl friend, who had only heard the tales of BroYo.

She came in and loaded up her bed, TV, computer, stereo, Foreman grill, and some clothes. I sat on the couch with my new girlfriend, not looking at BroYo. She stopped on the stairs and said "are you going to be here later tonight?" I was pissed off she would show up unannounced and that I would have to accommodate her all night, but I wanted rid of her. I said 'I guess,' gruffly.

She mouthed something as she closed the door to leave. "Get fucked you stupid Cunt!" I screamed behind her.

There was no more action on the BroYo front for another 5 or 6 weeks. I had a new roommate wanting to move in, so I sent word that all of BroYo's shit was going bye-bye if she didn't come and get it. She showed up with grammy and took a carload of shit.

She showed up unannounced, a year later, looking to get some crap. My last words to her had been "Get fucked you stupid Cunt!" but she acted like we were best friends, and asked me how everything had been going. She showed up again a couple of months later looking for a toaster. And then, most recently, I saw her storming out of Arby's, where she was working.

I am retiring this story. I have told it too many times. Perhaps I'll have it printed into a pamphlet that I can hand out rather than retelling it. It's better than it used to be, though. It used to leave me exhausted and angry, because my blood pressure would skyrocket while telling it.

I used to exchange "no, I had the worst roommate" stories with people. But, I met a girl once who had gone to NYU. She was paired up with a stranger for a roommate. She came home one day and the police were at her apartment, roping it off with police scene/evidence tape. Apparently her roomie had had a baby (no one knew she was pregnant--she was obese). Either the baby was stillborn, or she killed it. She wrapped it in a plastic bag and put it in her backpack, which was sitting for 6 weeks at the base of this girl's bed, unbeknownst to her. Apparently the girl used a lot of air freshener. So, that topped me.