OK, my roomie. There’s just so much not to love.
The kid is, basically, an idiot. I mean stupid. Not in a nice way, not necessarily in a mean way, but the guy is dumb. And his parents are loaded and seem like nice, intelligent people, which somehow makes it all the more irritating. He’s ADD (ritalin and all) so I can excuse a lot (I have a little cousin who’s ADHD, so I’m relatively well prepared for it) but some stuff is just above and beyond being explained away by ADD.
First week: he loses his keys. Not on campus, where they might get found, but somewhere in Georgetown (the section of DC, not the school). They want $50 to change the locks. So he pays for that. Fine. The next week, he loses his ID card ($15 replacement). Now he can’t go to meals, do laundry, etc. Not my problem, just illustrates what I’m talking about. A week goes by, nothing else turns up missing. Last week, his wallet’s gone. Again, somewhere in Georgetown. Now he’s really broke, no ID at all, no nothing. So the weekend he’s supposed to go home, he can’t. Bummer for me.
OK, so i mentioned he’s rich. He lives in the Hamptons, and used all the money he made working over the summer to buy his $1000 Bose stereo. Then he decides to save all our soda cans for the nickels, because he’s broke. It doesn’t occur to him to save some cash by not buying the damn soda in the first place. Another example, same principle. The first week, and he’s bitching about how he doesn’t have enough clothes. Like, really pissed off, literally yelling about how he’s gotta call his parents and demand money for more clothes, or for them to send him some, etc., etc. Then he shows me the three CDs he bought that day. 3 CDs x $17 = $54 = a whole shitload of t-shirts. Am I right? I dunno, I wear lots of fruit-of-the-loom, hanes, whatever, and they seem to work fine. He has no concept of money whatsoever. He loses his wallet, and his dad gives him at least $300, just for survival. He burns through it in about 4 days. Shitloads of CDs, eating out, everything. Not too mention the night he went out with like $120 in his pocket, got very drunk (per usual) and somehow lost it all. So now he’s broke again. It’s amazing to me. I haven’t gone through $300 in the 5 weeks I’ve been here, and I’ve been grocery shopping for food in the room and stuff (OK, I spend too much on alcohol, but bottles in the dorm go really fast, usually at $20 a bottle, and drinks at clubs are insane…when I saw jimmie’s chicken shack I paid $4 for a screwdriver!).
He has a brand spankin new, extremely expensive computer, which he treats like shit. All he uses it for is to play stupid games (not even good games that I could possibly respect him for). And since he’s always broke, he hasn’t had the cash to buy a network card for his computer yet. Which means he needs to use mine to check his email. Not a real big deal, but still annoying. I’m glad I thought to put a screensaver password on the machine when I set it up, or he’d be using it every time I left out of the room. Not that he would know how to install the damn network card when he gets it. I just know it’s gonna be me crawling around under his desk with a screwdriver trying to plug it in.
OK, the smell. Like 2 weeks ago I started to notice this weird smell. Almost like oregano or something. At first I thought somebody passed him oregano as bud, and didn’t say anything, but it got worse and worse as time went on. After like 5 days nobody else would come into the room, it was terrible. I figured he had a pizza box (or possibly pizza slice) stashed somewhere in the warzone that covered his side of the room (that’s another thing…I’m not neat, but I throw my clothes in the hamper, i pretty much stack up my books, you can walk on my side of the room. He’s a goddam slob; I have to kick a path to the door in the morning to get out to the shower. Pisses me off.) but he swore there wa no pizza, he’d looked, even under his bed (he was taking a nap and the fire alarm went off, so he decided to hide under the bed when the RA came around to look rather than walk down six flights of stairs). One day, he goes, “I figured it out! It’s my laundry!” like that’s good news. So he did his laudry and the smell dissappeared, but as of yesterday it’s starting to come back. We’ll see.
Other, more random stuff that bothers me. The tape thing, which you so elegantly described in your last mail. The fact that he doesn’t come back to the room at night on weekends is fine, except that his parents call almost every fucking morning. I refuse to pick up the phone before noon. I’m sick of them. They mean well, they’re always bailing him out of whatever he screwed up on lately, but still, they’re waking me up and no, I don’t know where he is, how should I? The last time I saw him he was stumbling around on the quad, slurring invitations to any girl who walked by. He never stops fucking talking to me, even when I’m clearly busy: headphones plugged in, typing a paper, books and notebooks spread out all around me, and he’s gotta, right now, at this very minute, show me the picture of next year’s cadillac in the popular mechanics mag he just bought. Hate that. I know it’s the ADD, but still, he’s eighteen years old, you’d think he’d remember to take his dam ritalin. Oh, another thing, the headphones/speakers situation is pretty much like you described it in your room, so I know where you’re coming from.
I realize now I forgot some stuff, notably the “moving out” saga. Gregg decides to move in with his buddy Zack downstairs. Wonderful. But it turns out there’s a “problem” with Zack’s roommate. So it’s postponed. They say they’re gonna “lean on him.” Then it’s on again. Then there’s another problem. But Gregg says, I shit you not, “It’s cool, we’re gonna get the Godfather to help us out.” I started laughing. Then he says, “No, the Godfathers this kid on campus who takes care of things like this.” I literally fell down I was laughing so hard. But he still lves here, so it’s not that funny anymore.
Forgot a couple other little thngs that piss me off. He smacks his lips. Not like once after having a shot, like four or five times after every sip of iced tea. And as if it weren’t bad enough as is, he does it in his sleep. I could kill him. And then, there’s just the highlighting of how much money he throws around. Bitching about how much drycleaning costs, because he only has two pairs of pants to wear because his tailor fucked up on the couple pairs he was gonna bring down. I don’t spend more than $20 on a pair of sunglasses, cuz I don’t trust myself not to lose them or crush them or something. He’s bitches cuz he can’t find his “other Oakleys.” I know it’s petty of me, but still.
Well there’s the whole cigar thing, i don’t think I told you. First off, my dad smokes them, i have on occasion, so I don’t think it’s all that big a deal. 80% of campus smokes cigarettes, and it sux, a lot of times half the party moves outside en masse to have a smoke, etc. So I thought, what the hell. Ed (lives next door) got a couple and we smoked those, then when I was home I bummed a couple off my dad. Upon my return, Gregg wants to buy them from me. He claims to be addicted to cigars now. I dunno, the point of a cigar is to smoke it at the end of the day, kick back, talk, kill a half an hour. He friggin chain-smokes them all day, with people or by himself, out on the quad. Kills me. Oh wait, get this: guess what Wonderboy bought today.
First, a whole shitload of cheap, 5-for-$1 cigars. Fine.
Second, a $50 lighter, with a cutter in the end. Pushin it, but I guess that’s ok, I can sorta see that.
Finally, a 5-pack of good cigars, which cost, before tax,
$184.40
I couldn’t believe it. Why? Makes no sense at all. I can’t justify spending more than 3 on a single cigar, I don't care how good it is, and even then to save it for a really special occasion. The .50 ones are much more my speed.
And he still uses my computer because he claims he’s too broke to go
