New Roommates

A few weeks ago, two of my roommates knocked on my door to tell me they had found a new apartment and were moving out.  I was neither surprised nor upset by this news.  When they leave they’ll be taking those fucking cats with them.  Considering one of them PEED ON MY BED last night I will not be sorry to see them go.  I didn’t see this go down but my pillows were wetted with about the expected volume of animal pee and you know what?  I don’t know a lot of things.  I can’t speak Russian.  I don’t know anything about partial differentiation.  I can’t even be trusted to do my own taxes.  But I do know what ANIMAL URINE SMELLS LIKE.

So my roommate K, immortalized in the photograph below

immediately put an ad up on craigslist without running it by me.  I naturally had to re-write the thing to put my own stink on it.  His was far too vanilla.  The emails we received that sounded promising we invited over last week to meet us and see the two rooms.  I was anticipating this process to be as much of a nightmare as it was on the other side.  It wasn’t.  Being the decider is way easier.  It came down to four people we really adored equally.  It was a little eeenie-meenie-miney-moe at the end.

There was one unique character that I would like to tell you about.  Edward.  Oh, Edward.  I have a feeling I have not seen the last of you, you scoundrel. 

When I responded to emails, I left my cell phone number under my name in the event someone got lost trying to find the place.  I was surprised to get a voicemail from a potential roommate applicant the night before our big open house.  I screened the unknown number and immediately listened to the voice-mail.  I have tried to somehow record this so I could upload it to my blog, but I don’t have the skills or the patience so I’m going to transcribe.  It’s that important you that get the full scope of the crazy.  Keep in mind this is all from ONE SINGLE CONTINUOUS voice message to me, a total stranger from craigslist in his eyes.  I hate to see how much information he gives out to his friends. 

Voice-Mail Transcript:

“Hey Leslie, this is Edward I e-mailed you earlier today about the, um, rooms you’re showing.  I’m the guy who likes Sarah Vaughan and Brazilian jazz and um lived with a couple of cats before.  I just moved back to San Francisco after a few years away.  I would like to see the place tomorrow, unfortunately I am going to be busy for part of the time you guys are showing it and…um…um because of where I’m going to be it will be difficult for me to get back by foot, public transit or even if I had jetpacks to get where I’m going to be in San Francisco to this part of town.  I live right near you guys right now at 123 Anystreet [he gives me the actual address] this is my friends phone so I have no idea what she has set up on it whether it’s voicemail through Pacific Bell or if she has nothing at all so, um, please don’t call back because I have no idea where this message will go whether she will forward it to her cell phone, she’s out skiing right now.  So um, I will, uh give you, I mean respond to you by email and give you a call in the morning after I walk Misha’s dog, that’s who I’m uh, it’s a long story I’ll tell you in person.  I would like to come by and meet you guys and see the place if possible before the 12:30 window or afterwards or even on Monday or some other day but I am interested and would like to see the place and have you guys meet me and check me out.  Again this is Edward, I will send you an email from my Yahoo account and hopefully we can figure something out.  Bye.”

Total Time: 1 min. 58 seconds

So when my roommate K got home from work I insisted we smoke a bowl and listen to this together.  I don’t know if it translates in text but we had tears running down our faces laughing.  Not necessarily at him but just at the absurdity of the message and even the human condition of having to go through these auditions for places to live.  I wrote that just to sound less bitchy.  We were totally laughing at him.

So this stranger we’ve never met at this point…we know the following intimate details:

-He has a friend named Misha
-Misha has a dog that Edward is currently walking
-We know Edwards address
-We know his eclectic taste in music
-Misha likes to go skiing
-Misha may or may not have Pacific Bell forward her calls to her cell phone
-Edward has been away from SF for several years
-Edward is hopeful about jetpacks becoming a mainstream mode of transportation, OR he made a little joke.

The next time I sign into my email, I have a message from Edward saying to ignore the entire message.  IMPOSSIBLE but I’ll try. 

The next day Edward shows up.  He’s about 45 years old of middle eastern descent (not that there is anything wrong with that) and balding. 

K and I show Edward through the apartment being as polite as possible although Edward’s fate as a potential roommate was decided long ago.  As Edward is going through a detailed verbal list of the massive amount of installation art he possesses I am trying to zone out, not listen, and stare at the wall.  I could feel inappropriate church giggles bubbling at the top of my stomach like alka seltzer.  Edward is still going on and on using flamboyant hand gestures to show K the approximate size of one of his more impressive pieces of visual art.  Kris is nodding his head respectfully punctuating the conversation.  I am not even pretending to be listening.  I am off to the side forcing myself to think about the time my cat Sparkie ran away in second grade so I don’t start laughing.   God bless Sparkie and his journey, but I couldn’t shake the giggles.

I swallow my immaturity down for a second to show Edward the kitchen and the back yard.  As long as I’m talking about the apartment specs I’m good to go.  Here’s the washer dryer….hot water heater….

“I really like the size of the shower.  Where I am right now the shower is only big enough for literally one person to get in”

“So, um, this is the kitchen.  We all share dishes and cookware, etc…”

K enters the kitchen and takes over.  I’m now thinking about the time I ordered Hotel Rwanda On Demand.  It’s not working and I hear,

“yeah the bathroom at my current place is really unacceptable.  The shower is not big enough to get in there with another person.”

The giggle bubbles are now in my throat.  If K so much as looks at me, it’s all over.  My head is repeating images of run-away cats, genocide, the first exam I failed in college…  but in the way that only a delightful gay boy can, K catches my eye and gives me a flirty wink and I have to take off running down the hallway.  I fall onto my bed and laugh hysterically with my face in my pillow.  I couldn’t take it anymore. 

After I collected myself K and Edward are in the hallway.  K is clearly trying to shuffle Edward towards the front door.  Edward begins to tell us about how he has 45 thousand dollars in his bank account and he saves that much money by being thrifty. 

“I haven’t bought a new pair of jeans in 15 years and no one can tell.  These came from the thrift store. “

I can see K’s judgmental eyes graze over the flanks of Edward’s high-waisted tapered denim and I can see there is a role reversal.  K is clearly getting tickled and asks to be excused to his room for a moment.   I finish the tour. 

Once we got the windbag out of the house, I knew it wasn’t over.  It’s never over. I’ve since seen Edward two more times.  Once walking down the street in Lower Haight and again when he showed up here looking for his lost umbrella.  Time can only tell what the next chapter is in this strange saga.

Comments

[J]

That story was hilarious. And yet, all I keep thinking is "she smoked a bowl, how did I never catch that before on her blog?".

[alicia]

Oh JEEZ. stifling laughter at work. Up until you said he was 45 and middle eastern I was imagining he was Dick from High Fidelity. All slow talking and such.

[Button]

Oh christ, I have not laughed this hard at a blog entry in a really really long time. i am literally wiping tears!