Another One Bites the Dust (another roommate that is)

I don't think I've ever made a smart choice of roommates.

Of course, the very idea of having a roommate in the first place is one that reeks of desperation to begin with. Sharing a room is something that's FORCED upon you in childhood when your parents pop out too many kids for the space they have. It's bad enought when 2 kids are fighting for space - i can't even IMAGINE the overcrowded-prison conditions suffered by the children of Octomom, Jon & Kate or worst of all, the human breeeding farm run by the Duggars, who just announced the impending arrival of their 19TH spawn!

Really?! Are they living in pre-18th century conditions, when you had to fear the CROPS wouldn't get picked in time ahead of th. e big tornado? Are you having to have 19 kids because 15 of them are gonna get scurvy? My sister has 5 kids under 14 and most people think SHE"S crazy. I just want to have ONE kid so i drive in the carpool lane for the next 18 years.

So here I am as an adult, and you'd think if i hated sharing rooms with my brothers so much, I'd certainly steer clear of living with a STRANGER. But no, not only have i done so, but I've picked some of the worst human beings imaginable.

First i lived wiht Jack, a 55 year old guy who looked and talked like late-era, bloated Dan Aykroyd. he shared a house with his mother, which I should have realized was disquietingly like the film "Psycho" since she supposedly lived in the attic and yet i never actually SAW her.

I, meanwhile, rented a room in his basement that i should have realized was disquietingly like ANOTHER movie, "Alien," - because in a basement, just like in space, no one can har you scream.

And so for the sickening allure of cheap rent - $340 a month to be exact - I moved in and stayed in Jack's house for a year, even after I stumbled across his bizarre porn collection -which he offered to let me keep when i was in actuality hoping he would MOVE it. Who wants to know what gets their creepy old landlord off?

He also let me know that if his dog ever got a little TOO old and weak, he'd be dragging it down just outside my room and shooting it there since, and I quote! - "no one could hear the gun go off in here." Before assuring me, of course, that he'd only commit the hideous act while i was at work and that he wouldn't ask me to help clean up - that is, unless I wanted to work a little off the rent next month.

Let's just say I never prayed so hard for a dog's health in my life. I managed to make it out ahead of the dog, but the friends who helped me move back out said they were surprised i was leaving in the pickup instead of the back an ambulance or a hearse.

And so since then, I've spent a year accidentally living in the gayest neighborhood in Chicago - I was from Arkansas, so how was I to know that Boy's Town wasn't another branch of the famed Catholic boys' orphanage?

I've also lived with a friend named Pedro who was kind of a fundamentalist Christian. He frequently picked random moments to whip out his Bible and rail against homsexuality, even as my GIRLFRIEND was sitting on my LAP. Yet I can't count the number of times I came home early to find him watching a sweaty Russell Crowe or Mel gibson grappling with OTHER sweaty guys in shorts, sandals and skirts in "Gladiator" and "Braveheart." Let's just say that when I moved on, Pedro wound up finding a new male roommate - his workout partner from his favorite gym - Bally's in Boys Town. They've been "roomies" for 7 years now and have a couple of poodles they like to dress in cute outfits. I'm not sure if Pedro's still whipping out his Bible as often.

And here in LA, I've harbored an illegal-alien Brit who wound up deported, and a 26 year old Long Island guy named Bobby who looked and acted like Joey from "Friends," complete with a different girl every weekend. And then of cours, there was the guy named Bill who I knew as a "regular" from the Barnes & Noble I worked at and needed a place to stay for a day, then two days, then a week while awaitng assignment to a new halfway house and who revealed on his 4th night that he'd killed a man once. It was just manslaughter - hell, involuntary even! And he'd done all his time, so don't worry!


Most people would have stopped by then, but I'm a weekly newspaper reporter and a standup comic, so I'm always too broke to be discriminating. But this time I've finally learned my lesson. I walked in my apartment earlier than usual one night six weeks ago to hear a whacking noise that sounded like something David Carradine would be involved with. I kept hearing this the next three nights out of the dark and out of my rooommate Sal's closed room. Sal was another fundamentalist - a friend told me he was "cool" and that was the extent of my reference check -
so I kept telling myself he COULDN"T be a perv - completely ignoring the fact that often the biggest weirdos are the biggest judgers. Jimmy Swaggart or Ted Haggard, anyone?

So finally I had a chance to see what happened on that Saturdy morning, when his door drifted open. I tiptoed into the kitchen through the corner of his room, only to find him...clothed, thankfully, but furiously, rapidly whacking his shaved head with the open palm of his hand!

I snuck back out and it kept going: WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! And on the one hand I thought, what do I DO?! And on the other remembered he didn't ever officially sign onto the lease. I had just turned 38 and decided if I wanted to live to 39, or ever convince a girl to come upstairs to my place again, it was time for him to go and for me to live on my own.

So I hid all hte knives, sharp objects, meat mallets, hammers and other tools in the place and asked him to move. And amazingly, he did. Sure it sucks to be paying another $300 a month until my lease runs out, but as Mastercard commercials like to say, Some things - like privacy and peace of mind - are priceless.