I enjoy letters, but not when one is read to me by a soon-to-be ex-roommate. Apparently, my roommate couldn’t deal with simply engaging in a conversation with a person who had been her friend for nearly nine months. Instead, she wrote a letter, which she recited to me as we stood in our one-bedroom apartment as I held two Oreo cookies in my hand.
The point of the letter was twofold. First she established restrictions on guests. No guests past 11 p.m. on weeknights and absolutely no overnight guests. I half-listened, focused instead on carefully twisting off one chocolate Oreo side, preserving the vanilla center perfectly. I licked, and she read. I asked her to pause so I could grab another Oreo from the kitchen and then she resumed, looking up at my face to address the second point, which she had memorized. She suggested I find a new place to live. Naturally, I scoffed.
“Yeah right,” I said. “You move.” Two weeks later she did.
We had come together as roommates as undergrads at another university. She was the coworker of a friend I thought I could trust, and after chatting over coffee, we decided to take the plunge. Several craigslist postings and apartment visits later, we shoved our two twin size beds into the one-bedroom apartment we called home. Things were good. We lived next to an Ethiopian woman who cooked delicious-smelling food. We lived above a woman who always wore a muumuu and yelled at us often. My roommate prepared dinner and I washed dishes. We watched our favorite WB television shows weekly. She joined me for co-op parties, and I didn’t even have to beg her. I thought the honeymoon phase would last forever. My roommate thought otherwise.
I’ll call the roommate in question “Marf” because, well, that’s how I’ve always referred to her in the four years since we parted ways. Name-calling, actually, was the breaking point in our relationship. But what Marf thought of as name-calling, I viewed as an affectionate nickname. I hate when that happens.
Marf and I had one of those seemingly great friendships where we kidded each other nonstop, giggling at our inside jokes. I thought we had reached the point where I could call her by a nickname, morphing Maria to Mar, and post-fight to Marf (when I’m especially bitter, I call her Barf). She didn’t seem to be bothered by this level of closeness until one afternoon when she unleashed hell on me as we crossed a busy intersection near campus. As I carried a casserole in my arms – we were on our way to a potluck at her work – she yelled at me. She said the nickname was rude, condescending and she accused me of laughing at her. I was like, are you kidding me?
“My feelings are valid,” she whined, frenetically throwing her hands in the air, to which I predictably responded, “No, your feelings are not valid Mar. It’s just a nickname.” I saw Marf’s feelings for what they were – insecurities and resentment stuffed into the package of a spoiled girl tired of sharing.
She continued her tirade for three blocks. I looked around at the heads turned in our direction and confirmed that yes indeed, we were making a scene.
She moved out, and a month and a half later, I’d blown through my bimonthly paychecks and savings, covering the $1,300 monthly rent. During that time, I experienced the fear of being a young female living alone in an apartment that opened to the outside with a door lock that never quite latched right. I also used those two months to redecorate the apartment. I replaced her white, shoddily-assembled Ikea furniture with shoddily-assembled Ikea furniture in light browns and tans. Two months after Marf’s departure, one of my best friends moved in.
I believe every experience provides a valuable life lesson and I have been determined to extract one from the Marf incident. I learned about renter’s rights. I learned that it’s difficult to find a replacement roommate in the middle of a semester. I learned that taping fliers with those pull-off tabs at the bottom to the inside of bathroom stalls is not an effective advertising method. I learned that having only six television stations does not make a desirable living situation. I learned the meaning of awkward silence: When the person you live with refuses to talk to you for two weeks after a fight and before she moves out. I also learned that while Marf may have been the aberration removed from the norm in my life, I’m not alone on the crazy roommate bandwagon.
By the time most college students graduate, we have a stockpile of crazy roommate stories. My friend Yen was living in a five-bedroom house in Washington, DC, when a housemate didn’t return home one night or for 25 after that. He had suffered a mental breakdown and moved in with a friend, only to unlock the front door one evening as if nothing had happened. Another friend lived with a guy who stole his things and then denied it vehemently. Another friend moved out of the dorms because her roommate operated a mini-business out of their room – up to 10 women regularly packed into the space to get their hair cut and styled.
I’ve seen Marf twice since she moved out. One time we walked right past each other on campus, both of us preferring to ignore one another rather than blatantly alter our course. I put on my best whateva’ face and walked on by, shushing my friend. Yes, Laurie I see her, now be quiet.
Whenever I talk to my old friends, I ask if they’ve seen her. What’d you talk about? How’d she look? Where’s she working? Tell me everything, I inquire. Although I make disgusted sounds when hearing about her, I realize now that my anger is really hurt. I miss Marf and often wonder how we’d react if we saw each other now. I honestly think I’d laugh. Not at her, as she once accused me, but in the conspiratorial can-you-believe-how-ridiculous-we-were way. I get the feeling she wouldn’t laugh back.
I now live alone. I still eat Oreos and I still prefer a messily-written letter to a recited one. I no longer, however, call a person by anything besides her birth name. Or else, I ask permission first.
Sena Christian is a graduate student at the University.