This spring, when housing for next fall becomes a hot topic debated among friends, the lack of care and flexibility my friends have with their housing situations baffles me. This year my housing situation has cost me a good friend, $3000 of stolen personal items and a hassle with State Farm Insurance, a car crashing through the front of my house with my drunken roommate at the wheel, and a revelation that you cannot trust anyone except yourself.
I should have known not to live with four boys, but we were getting desperate to sign a lease, and I felt as if I had little or no choice except to succumb to a grossly unhygienic bathroom. The first couple months of school, life at home was not particularly unbearable. Aside from the fact that our falsely advertised “five” bedroom actually meant four bedrooms with a room attached to mine the size of a spacious laundry room. To get to this room, it requires either walking through my room – essentially stripping me of my relished privacy – or entering an outside door from the backyard, which is annoying and usually inconvenient. The roommate in the fifth bedroom had the impression my room was the gateway to his.
I got along well with him, so this posed little conflict. Until the night that abruptly ended our house’s dynamic. It was around 2 a.m. Sunday, November 13. A small group had been drinking through the night, and about 10 friends were still mingling.
Suddenly, I heard a loud crash followed with broken glass, car brakes and screams.
The fifth-bedroom roommate had driven to get more beer at 7-Eleven (at that point his total drink intake for the night could have exceeded 20), drove on the lawn to park, but the tires slipped on the wet lawn, and his friend’s Explorer barreled through the front of the house. Fortunately, no one was hurt. But I was furious. We could not even lock the front door, and the hole in the wall gave small animals an accessible entry.
For the next two weeks, now-ex-roommate should have been collaborating with our property manager and landlord and devising a way to pay for the $4,000 worth of damage. His dad’s advice was to use the car insurance of our friend who owned the Explorer, and basically told him he would not loan him a dime. So, he sat on the couch for the remainder of the day, getting stoned to avoid the terrible reality he had created for himself and his roommates.
Thanksgiving break came, and I stupidly trusted ex-roommate. He claimed that propping a chair and various pieces of furniture behind the door would properly secure the house during the 4 days of the holiday. I assumed since he was the one who damaged the door, he would take this responsibility upon himself. Wrong. Dead wrong.
We returned to Eugene for a pleasant surprise: Our house had been burglarized – devastatingly. One car, computers, DVDs, snowboards and snow gear, skateboards, guitars, clothes, even jars of pennies were stolen from our house.
It was not entirely ex-roommate’s fault. We somewhat asked for it, forgetting to keep lights on, leaving windows unlocked in 2 bedrooms and of course not securing the front door. Our house’s outward inactivity and darkness beckoned intruders. I had never before experienced such utter violation and disrespect.
Over the next two weeks, our house was a war zone, and I was the tyrant. I constantly harassed my ex-roommate, demanding he fix the wall or at least get a job to start saving. I accused him of spending all his money on beer and marijuana. He attacked me for my bitchiness and refused to listen. Days went by, and the wall just sat there. It had become this gloom so mentally pervasive it consumed my life. I would cry up to five times a day, wallowing in my unhappiness. Why was my friend inflicting me with so much pain?
Winter break came. Eugene’s temperature dipped, but we could not use heat; it would escape through the poorly sealed hole in the wall. Ex-roommate assured us the wall be fixed by the time we returned to Eugene on Jan. 4, even if it meant he take a term off to work and then pay his dad back the $4,000 IOU. I actually felt bad. Either way, we were getting the wall fixed.
I still had yet to tell my parents about the ordeal, which was my biggest mistake. While in California, I snuck away whenever a roommate called with an update on the wall’s progress. My other roommate, Nick, called me a couple days after Christmas and told me ex-roommate’s father was forcing him to move out. Only then would he give ex-roommate the money to fix the wall as a temporary loan.
I immediately freaked, knowing ex-roommate’s deceitful intentions, and begged my roommate who was home with him to use persuasion and make him stay. I called ex-roommate, pacing back and forth in my bedroom, and asking how he could this to his friends. He promised me he would never do something so evil; he was our best friend.
But what could I do? I was in California, and my roommate believed every word of the ploy, so he agreed to help ex-roommate move his belongings to University Commons, releasing him from all responsibility and affiliation with our house. Property managers do not listen to sob stories, and they certainly will not track down someone for money – that is your job. When we returned from California, ex-roommate was gone, out of the house and free from financial obligation to fix the wall.
We called him and called him and called him. We banged on his new apartment, yelling his name and threatening legal action. But he never answered. We sat in disbelief. I felt betrayed, humiliated for investing in such a spoiled friendship. I dwelled on his inhumanity. My boyfriend finally called ex-roommate’s father to hear his perspective and inform him of the price. He spat back, “Hey, life isn’t fair.”
And then it ended. Property management decided to fix the wall and relentlessly pursue the insurance company of the car ex-roommate drove. I still have never civilly talked to ex-roommate. I hardly see him on campus. But I will never forget what he did. And I am almost thankful, because I learned to never trust anyone except myself.
Lindsay Funston is a sophomore at the University.