I truly doubt anyone will remember this post http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=331927
but I decided to write a follow up since I have time in abudance.
Basically, I moved in an apartment with two gay men, one who became a prostitute, and the other a cocaine user. My august post has more details. Everyone that replied told me to get out out of the lease anyway I can. But I am close to finishing my lease and leaving for my parents place soon since I’ve subleted my room for most of the summer.
Now ‘Tom’, the prostitute, is in New Jersey and he pays for his room here, while living there. Apparently he can afford it.
Dave’s new boyfriend pratically lives here with him. He’s cut back on hard drugs for the spring semester but I have a feeling he’s going to turn to it again this summer since school was his usual motivation not to do cocaine or strong anti-pain medications. Thankfully I won’t be here for it. My subleter is a freshman and I hope they don’t teach him anything bad.
Living with these kids for a year has been an experience. Fortunately it hasn’t effected my school work though it has put my relationship with my girlfriend at a bit of a strain at times.
When I first signed the lease with them, I had pretty liberal views toward issues regarding homosexuality, drugs and prostitution, but living with all three in my house (though the prostitution was technically in New York…) has made me deeply rethink my views. If my gripes against my roommates were concerning just those issues, I would be happy. But my roommates and their friends are also some of the most inconsiderate and incompetent people I know. They didn’t have any direction and often was in complete denial of the fact that their life was going nowhere. They were usually as irresponsible in their relationships with friends and/or SOs as they were with jobs or school work. Sadly they often did come from troubled homes where their homosexuality sometimes wasn’t fully accepted. In the end, living with gay prostitute and a drug abuser and meeting their friends has deeply shaken some of my liberal views on the world. And I’m glad to get away from all that grime since I found relatively normal roommates for fall semester.
You’re sub-letting to some young kid without explaining the situation?
Aside from the fact that you have risked your school year by hanging out with a user (who is probably scoring enough, from time to time, to get busted on an “intent to sell” charge–with you as an accessory), you are now going to potentially wreck someone else’s life just to avoid making any hard decisions?
Whoa whoa, I don’t think two months with these guys will wreck anyone’s life and how the hell am I avoiding "making any hard decisions’? I made it without violating or having to renegotiate my lease and without running home to my parents and potentially wasting a semester’s worth of tuition and a year in time as some suggested. I have performed well academically, which is in the end what I’m here to do. And I know these guys are going nowhere so I changed roommates.
Also, the subleter knows them. My roommate is the one that set it up. He knows (or should know) what he’s getting into. So calm down.
Ya know…sometimes roommates are a major pain in the ass. You are not the first to discover this.
And as a Gay man, I question your “liberal” view and sudden turn due to the antics and the experience with two guys who don’t sound all that sane regardless of their sexual orientation…or do you not see that?
In college I had a hetero roommate who had a different girl to the place every night, he would get drunk out of his mind, destroyed my guitar when his equally drunk girlfriend of the day sat on it, and he was a slob and left his dirty clothes throughout the place.
Despite that, I never once said living with heteros “shook my liberal view of the world”.
DMark
You’re right in saying that’s somewhat unfair. But going into the experience having the media image of the clean and hardworking gay man, I feel it’s left me a bit disillusioned.
I never knew people like this really existed. One of Dave’s friends is a convincted felon with a heroin addiction and last I heard had an infection on his arm from abuse. He’s on welfare. Another friend, also on welfare, is addicted to painkillers he gets from quack doctors. The latter is also a pathological liar. It’s incredible to listen to some of the stories he makes up. I don’t know how he expects anyone to believe them and if he believes them himself. Complete with delusions of grandeur. Not to mention he’s a complete parasite that has been in the living room of this house for around 3 weeks last fall. For a few days he invited his boyfriend to live here with him on the couch too.
Another thing that surprised me is that Tom, other than being the most thoughtless and inconsiderate person I’ve known, doesn’t need to be a hooker to survive. He can live with his parents and work if he needed to.
But on a rational level I realize I shouldn’t hold against gays because of these guys. It just happened that some of the first gay people I’ve met are some of the worst people I’ve met.
Doesn’t make an iota of difference if they were Jewish, Muslim, Canadians, Germans, Blacks, Hispanics, Gay or Sraight…you get what I am saying.
I lived in West Hollywood, the Gay Capital of the world…met nice guys, met jerks…just like anywhere. You met the jerks. Too bad you didn’t have my friend Stephan as a roommate…he would have redecorated the house, landscaped the yard, taught cooking classes in the kitchen and designed your website…all in one weekend.
If the kid gets caught in a drug bust for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, that would go a long way toward messing up his life. That should have been pretty clear from my post.
If he is walking into it with full knowlwdge, I suppose that mitigates the situation, but you did not mention that in the OP.