C'mon RM! If the butter-slipper didn't have the common decency to NOT slam the freaking doors at 6 am (can you tell I'm not a morning person?), he deserves to eat his **** in butter.
My freshman year college roommate, randomly picked, actually went to kindergarten with me in Chicago. I only lived in that city for two years, and we both were going to college in Missouri, so it was weird. We moved in August, and he hung up his towel on the towel rack. He showered once, sometimes twice (if he joined us for basketball) a day. In May, he took the towel off the towel rack, packed it, and went home. He didn't wash that towel all year long. Not once. He fancied himself an AND1 guy, and it kind of got to him that I was better at basketball than him, partially because I'm a white dweeb, and he's African-American. But I would give in and play games to 11 with him, and almost always shut him out. A lefty, he also had issues with his right eye. So I would, quite literally, turn completely sideways (facing left) at the top of the key when I checked him the ball, and just play his left hand. Didn't even shade to that hand, just turned my back to his right side of the court. And, of course, he'd dribble left, always go for a lay-up, and either have it blocked, or miss. I'd usually just beat him to the spot and he'd have to fall away to shoot a jumper. Some nights he would take my ball to the common room at 1am and practice crossover moves, and we'd hear the same (dribble, dribble, ball bounces and gets away from him, hits something, him going "daaamn!") pattern. It was hilarious. The first night after we moved in, we got back from some semi-party thrown by the school for freshman, and I asked him, "do you want to get a pizza?" He thought that was a great idea. The pizza came, I told him it was 11 bucks, "so just give me seven and we'll give the deliver guy three bucks," and he hadn't really thought that part of it out. He didn't have any money. At all. He had a meal card and a bank account for books and books alone, but no money. He just thought I wanted to buy him a pizza, nice guy that I am. All year long he would pilfer the change jar on my desk that I had spent the last two years of high school building up for laundry money (alone) to buy bottles of Sprite, because that's what Kobe and Grant Hill drank. I didn't drink pop back then, so that was a little infuriating. He brought p*rn. He often watched it. He tried to hide it. It didn't work. In the first week of the year I flipped on a Conan that had Don Rickles guesting, and Triumph the Insult Comic dog asking Rickles to "poop on meeee" as a joke. My roommate had previously been unaware of this Conan, Don Rickles, and this funny dog. All year long, in the most inappropriate moments, he would go "poop on meeeeee" and laugh out loud. "Man, that's funny." A few weeks later I walked in the room when he was flipping past a channel that had "Scent of a Woman" on it, so I let out an unfunny (but it felt right) "Whoo-ah!" My roommate had never heard of this, and peppered his conversations with that particular phrase (in myriad forms) a year long. He thought I was gay because I had a Steve Nash photo (this was August of 1998) by my computer, because I thought Steve Nash was a badass who needed more minutes. Then I started having lots of sex. The roommate was unaware of the "sock on the door handle" notion, or, at least, pretended to be. At least he got to see some boobies, fo real. He was born in Chicago, grew up in the suburbs, and was now living in Missouri. Why he had a "Dave Brown" (with the first and last name spelled out) Arizona Cardinals jersey is beyond me. I never asked. The day Walter Payton died, I was feeling pretty low. Really crappy. Not good. Weepy and angry. Melancholy and reflective. The roommate lightened the mood by entering the room and talking about "ole Wally" passing away. I've never heard anyone call Walter Payton "ole Wally" before, or since. That felt good.
My first roommate was a born again Christian with a full ride scholarship. It was my fault somewhat that I ended up with him, we were both extremely active in Young Life as high schoolers and I put in on my application. Its just that I used YL to troll for slutty girls that felt they needed forgiveness, while he took it extremely seriously. He took 8am classes every day and prayed loudly before he went to class. As the semester proceeded, he started to pray for me. However, I really liked him and I think he's a doctor now. He tutored me in calculus which I really appreciated. My second year of college, I had 9.5 roommates: Two drunken buddies of mine from high school. Very cool dudes, and since we all liked pretty much the same music we held music veto power over the other 7 guys. Too many stories to tell about them, but all good. The rush chairman of our fraternity, who borrowed $1000 from me with a promise of getting 120% back in 30 days, but then informed me 30 days later that he got ripped off on a drug deal and was unable to pay me or his other 4 creditors until possibly after xmas. I knew I was screwed (this would be the last time I lent any friend any significant money), but he did manage to get a job and give me about $500 over the course of the year. Before he could pay me back, he ended up arrested the night before our spring formal. He was trying to sell X to the Feds. He wore a wire or something and got out of it. A cool guy from Galveston who shared my passion for all Houston sports teams. No complaints whatsoever, I still talk to him regularly. He was secretly trying to **** every redhead at Vanderbilt. He did a pretty good job. A theater major who screwed every girl who walked in the door. It was maddening because he was such a slut/dog, it would impossible to find a girl he hadnt hooked up with. I'd take girls home with me and in the morning, we'd be walking through the living room and he'd go "oh hey Sara" and I'd be so effin pissed. He loved showtunes but his stereo sucked so whenever he'd throw in some Cats me and the other 2 Houston boys would turn on some Jane's Addiction and blast his music away. On his 21st birthday he was in Houston so a bunch of us took Drama Mama out and got so drunk we were actually thrown out of this bar called The Pig (and I mean the fat guy chucked me out of the door). The cops got involved due to some drunken shenanigans but we all got away somehow and back to this DM's house. We decided to reconvene at an after hours bar at 2am (Club Some) but I ended up running into the same cops an hour later and he warned me that if he saw any of us on the roads of Bellaire he'd throw us in jail. Since this was pre-cellphone days I left a message on DM's personal phone # to warn him but little did I know his grandparents were in town and staying in his room. The grandfather had some sort of panic attack when he heard my message saying "The cops are still looking for us so stay home tonight" and so when we got back to campus after that long weekend he didnt talk to me for the rest of the semester. A huge rugby playing New Yorker who, when hammered, would throw the coke dealer INTO and THRU the walls of our crappily built house. (I think he also lent him money) He also liked to play that "OOOOOOH YEAH" song from Ferris Bueler's Day Off whenever he was ****ing his girlfriend. This guy got kicked out of school but illegally lived in his old dorm room for the final 3 months of the semester while line-cooking at Applebees. Now he's the CEO of some major manufacturing company. Hey, the cream always rises. He also had a dog named Bogie who ate all our furniture, he's the .5 This albino guy named Stork who looked just like his namesake from Animal House. Followed the rugby player around everywhere. He was really into Robert Johnson and played his guitar often. He knocked up some freshman girl and she told everyone which made the Stork nickname even funnier. Well, not so funny for Stork. This kid from San Fran who was a great dude but a complete woman. He dated this crazy b**** that literally drove him to tears. He kept having nervous breakdowns and would scream randomly in the night when writing papers. He ended up marrying one of the redheads that the Galvestonian dated. He was the first guy I knew to use the Internet. We were emailing friends in Saudi during the first Gulf War. When Vanderbilt came after us for all the wall damages from the rugby guy's antics, the kid from SF panicked and had his Dad pay for the whole thing. Nice of him, but I have no idea why he did it. The 10th person in the dorm was called Sneaky Pete. I dont even know Pete's real last name. He was filler because we needed 10 people to get this certain type of housing in the lottery. Anyway, you know that episode of Seinfeld where that dude would sidle up to Elaine so she gave him mints? This dude was like that. You'd be having a conversation and suddenly you'd notice he was right there. You'd be making out with a girl on the couch and he'd be looking over from the upstairs balcony. However, we needed him. My third year roommate was a complete drug addict and an alcoholic who stole my CDs, my booze, my carefully hidden stash, and once shaved his girlfriend's p***y with my beard trimmer. He loved to screw his girlfriend in my bed when I was out. I spent a large part of the first semester at my girlfriend's apartment...then the Gods intervened and HE got a new girlfriend who lived in a swanky place so he vanished. He also got genital warts and herpes in the span of 3 months so I felt somewhat obligated to be nice to him when he came around. My senior year I had my own room. It was bliss.
Yikes. I used to play Robert Johnson songs on my acoustic freshman year, slide and all, and people thought that Ha-Ha Kelly was making another joke. I wasn't. They thought I was goofing, like that David Alan Grier bluesman from In Living Color.
