What have your roommate experiences been like?

[fujiyama]

I'm thinking of moving in somewhere in Portland OR, and to save money, I thought of getting a roommate.

I never experienced the "typical college life" and never stayed in a dorm. I made the mistake of commuting from home. Maybe in a way I want to make up for it, but I think moving in with interesting folks in a cool city like this, that may actually know this area better than I do would also be good. I just want to gain an experience while young. I had the chance of coming here...

BTW, any awkward situations in co-sex living experiences? Personally it doesn't matter to me whether the roommate(s) is/are male or female. Just wondering if you have stories...

My buddies have had good and bad stories. Some had nightmares like coming back to a dorm to find his roommate drunk, passed out, masturbating on the bed. Not good.

Hopefully mine wouldn't have the mentality of an immature frat boy.

[raccoon]

1. First thing, try to get somebody who'll pay their share of the rent.

And I don't know how you could tell that, other than a credit check.

I haven't had a roommate since college, and that was in the dorm.

[Chan790]

2. That's all part of the experience of growing up.

Only one of mine has been horrible...although:

*Two of my roommates fell in love and got married, displacing me from my home because they wanted to live all by their lonesome so they could...um...on every level surface. I'm okay with that, I was glad for the demand of "move out!" rather than the awkwardness of walking in on them.

*I had a female roommate I couldn't stand and still can't who is still hanging around with my circle of friends and who I have to run into frequently because her best friend is one of the married lovebirds above.

*I had a male dorm-mate who played piano obsessively, was dating a vampire LARPer who never broke character (I have nothing against LARP but that was strange and off-putting), and was keeping a real antique blunderbuss under his bed. He was actually pretty cool once you got past that stuff. He was straight-edge, Russian, and drew web-comics.

*and the one...I'll call him Lee. never left his desk chair, never bathed, peed in a jar, lived on delivery food, was a chronic furious "self-lover", played Final Fantasy Tactics 24 hours a day until he passed-out, would wake up and do it again. All of his homework was on the internet so his professors could check his work, so he never had to leave his desk. I didn't choose Lee, he was assigned to me by the university...when I asked for a new roommate I was told "No" because nobody else was willing to live with him. I'd lost some great cosmic game of musical chairs. As long as you meet your roommates in advance to make sure you can get along, there is no way you can end up living with a Lee; in any case if you get a Lee, you can move out.

Um...I'm thinking/hoping you will have separate bedrooms. It won't matter if your roomie gets drunk and passes out while greasing the pole thusly. You won't have to see it. The worst you'll ever have to deal with on that front is loud sex and finding their strange bedfellows or bedlasses half-naked drinking your OJ from the bottle in the kitchen when you get out of the shower.

[tonkatoy57]

3. Pretty damn good

I count my ex-roommates as some of my closest and dearest friends.

I liked one so much I married her.

[PassingFair]

4. I had a room-mate who slept with all of my friends....

AND my brother AND my boss! I was seriously afraid to
bring my FATHER around her!

I actually found it kind of funny, and an EDUCATION
in "what boys like"....

They like a willing accomplice!

[Inchworm]

5. I want to kill my "roommate"

but he is family.

x(

[Tommy_Carcetti]

6. If you include college roommates....

....I've had a few doozies.

But the worst was the one who after he found out I didn't want to rearrange the room to his liking (after he moved into my room), sought to blackmail me by fabricating a nasty story about my breakup with former girlfriend. This was the same guy who when we went to his house to pick up his furniture, he would have his sister go out and get him his crystal meth.

I called Residential Life on the loser and had them kick him out of the room.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

13. Oh, and did I tell you he once bragged about being a distant relative of George W. Bush?

I think that about said it all.

The guy came from a pretty rich, WASPy family but was as disfunctional as they came. Truly an example of Rich White Trash.

[Coyote_Bandit]

7. Ehhhh, highly variable

Dorm roomate #1: East coast private schhol grad who thought herself superior because of that and had the nerve to say so. Other than that easy to live with and get along with.

Dorm roomate #2: An accomplished vocalist with some odd quirks. We got along well and still keep in touch.

Dorm roomate #3: Brief tenure of one week. This one would get up early to work out and maintained a very strict diet. This one thought I too should arise at 5 am - and she actually awakened me a few times. No, not happening. And I'm certainly not going to go out running at 5 am.

Dorm roomate #4: This one wanted to be a missionary. Nice. Not much personality. But very supportive and willing to help with most anything.

Dorm roomate #5: Another short termer. This one thought Johnny Appleseed lived in the closet and that it was normal to want to jump out of upper story windows. I suspect there were some accompanying sexual orientation issues.

Apartment mate #1 (separate bedrooms): Preacher's kid who loved to party with the boys. We didn't have much in common. After awile I felt uncomfortable there because there were ALWAYS guys around. And it was not uncommon for them to be men I had never seen before and sometimes never saw again.

Apartment mate #2 (separate bedrooms): Best roomate ever. We didn't have much in common but we made an effort to get to know each other and to do things together regularly. Living together and maintaining the apartment was a cooperative endeavor. We weren't best buds and we each had our own lives. But there was a mutual effort to include each other and to share more than the bills and the common living areas in the apartment.

Apartment mate #3 (separate bedrooms): The roommate from hell. Apartment mate #2 had financial problems and was forced to move leaving me to find somebody to share living expenses mid sememster. I ended up with an older woman (40's?) who said she worked at a Tulsa hospital. Turned out she was an Oral Roberts City of Faith Prayer Partner. She clearly did not approve of me or my friends or the music I listened to or .... just about anything. This one moved out one evening while I was in class without saying anything - without paying her share of the bills and leaving a sizeable long distance bill behind. Had to track her down to collect.

Housemates #1 and #2: Two furry four legged creatures. They leave hair everywhere. Sometimes they don't do their business in the appropriate place. One repeatedly throws up on the carpet. One sneezes and snorts all over the glass in the door. They expect meals to be served regularly on their schedule. They also expect regular hours and demand lots of attention. They get what they want and all is forgiven. Perfect housemates

[mreilly]

8. I answered a "roommate needed" personal ad and got a Nazi

I don't want to scare you off the roommate scene so I'll say right up front I have lived with three unknown roommates in my life (e.g. roommates I did not know beforehand - 2 while in college and one afterwards) and only one out of those three experiences turned out bad. But it was pretty bad.

A long time ago I just needed a room for 3 months; was getting prepared to move in with a girlfriend. Someplace to keep my stuff, sleep and have my cat live in. I didn't expect to be there too much.

Because I just needed four walls and a ceiling and was moving in from another state, I answered an anonymous "roommate needed" online ad and took the room (one bedroom in a two-bedroom apartment) after speaking to the roommate in question on the phone. When I got there I quickly found out I had moved in with a 40+ year old guy who turned out to be a Nazi. A genuine, bona-fide Nazi. He had books on his shelf by Goebbels and Hitler; listened to Hitler speeches, talked incessantly about the Jews, etc. It was pretty scary. I think the scariest part was he had absolutely no shame or hesitation about broadcasting his views, like there was nothing wrong or inappropriate about it. I'll never forget how he launched right into a discussion against "fags and feminists."

Of course he was a Republican - a Buchanan supporter. Of course. That's the thing the Republicans will never, ever admit: people with racist/anti-semitic/fascist leanings ALWAYS go Republican. Republicans can talk their little sanctimonious talk about how they marched with MLK or some such bullshit (when in reality they were screaming about that uppity troublemaker), but it's all nonsense. Their party attracts, supports and nurtures hate.

I wound up only sticking around 8-10 days, if you could call it that: I was never there. I always stayed at my girlfriend's but that was not such a hot arrangement since she had a roommate who was not thrilled by my presence. I basically only kept some boxes, clothes and the cat in the Nazi's apartment. Leaving my cat there was hard but I had no choice; my girlfriend's roommate was allergic.

I quickly found a room in a shoddy boarding house for $100 more a month, but it was Nazi free. I ate the cost of more than a half-month's rent to the Nazi without complaint. I remember how hurriedly I packed my stuff, grabbed the cat and got the hell out, expecting a nasty confrontation. Never saw the guy on my way out, and never heard from him again.

I did get curious later, though, and searched some online roommate sites for his name. I was stunned to find he had posted separate "roommate wanted" ads dozens of times. It became apparent from the pattern that people moved in and moved out very rapidly. And this idiot didn't seem to be capable of figuring out why. Gee, maybe the affinity for Nazism had something to do with it?

The moral of the story here is check out anyone you are considering living with. Google them incessantly. Find out how compatible they may be with you and vice versa. If you have any doubts about them don't move in. Best of luck!

[applegrove]

9. When I've moved in with old friends it hasn't gone well. When I've moved in

with stragers or people I've just gotten to know it has gone well. I'm just quiet.

[Deep13]

10. It's a good thing our 12th floor window only opened 6 inches...

...because I would have thrown him out of it otherwise.

[SteppingRazor]

11. I think it really helps if your roommate is a friend of yours before you move in...

you'll have more respect for each other that way.

That said, my last roommate in college was a friend of a friend, and that worked out beautifully -- I got the top floor, he got the bottom floor, and we basically stayed out of each others' way. He majored in trumpet in college, so the constant practicing of scales was a little annoying, but I got used to it ... well, more accurately, I got headphones. :P

[IronLionZion]

12. sexual harassment

most of my roommates have been pretty chill people: clean enough, respect my space, quiet at night, etc. I've had 3 people (including me) share one dorm room (yes ONE room) and let me tell you that was an exercise in patience. We made it work though. I've also shared an apartment with women and I strongly recommend having separate male and female bathrooms in those situations. Also those women used our one phone line way too often. It would be smart to set limits on phone time or whatever.

And I had one complete asshole who sexually harassed me and made my life miserable while I was living with him. Fortunately I'm open-minded enough to not judge all gay black men by that one piece of shit bully. God I hated that guy. I'll spare you the details but I hope that was one isolated case. Try to get to know the person as much as you can before agreeing to anything.

[Xithras]

14. Until I married, I never had a roommate that I didn't seriously contemplate strangling.

There was the grand masturbater (I once walked out and caught him wanking while he ate BREAKFAST at the TABLE...apparently he found the talk show hostess on TV hot...he also left a crunchy carpet in his room when he finally moved out), the guy who had no problem with 19 of his closest friends dropping by at 3AM, the guy I caught stealing my crap, and the two who never paid the rent. The thief guy also turned out to be a peeping tom, and had drilled a hole in the wall to peer into my room for some reason. I didn't find it until after I booted him, but I hate to think about what he'd been doing with that hole.

One of the non-rentpayers moved in, paid the first month, and then refused to pay anything else. I ended up having to pursue a formal eviction, and in the meantime he lived there bill-free for three months. I had to pay MY friends to stay in the house while I was gone to make sure he wasn't going to steal anything. That guy actually had me searching for good places to dump bodies when I went jogging every morning.

Never again.

[KSinTX]

15. My first roommate was a freak!

Found the place in the newspaper that seemed quiet enough, very close to work and the price was right. Roommate was a recent divorcee, pushing 250-lbs and not very attractive so I figured there wouldn't be a lot of traffic around since I worked nights. Wrong!

She was a CB freak (ex-husband was a trucker) with a beautiful voice who went by "Naughty Nurse" and she'd spend her nights (while I was at work) hailing truckers off the highway for "a ton of fun." After coming home at 8 a.m. for about 3 weeks to trucker dudes I didn't know sitting around waiting their turn, I decided it wasn't such a cool arrangement. Moved to a little trailer park in a whole other town.

Outside of the Army, never have had roommates since!

[fizzgig]

16. i've had both good and bad

but i've known all my roommates prior to moving in with them. i've lived with six different people and only one of them was a woman and she turned out to be the biggest disaster of them all.

make sure they're going to hold up not only their part of the deal financially, but also as far as chores and housework go.

i'd love to move to portland some day, it's such a fantastic place :) good luck