Do You Have a Roommate?
February 21st, 2008Matt Rubanomous
If you live here in NYC or anywhere desirable, you probably do. I recently crossed the threshhold and live by myself for the first time in my entire life. I can hear you snickering and saying ‘well fuuuck you’ to your mac screen right now but you know what, I can honestly say I earned it. I have lived with strangers (and their pets), friends (and their pets), friends who became enemies, couples, a brief stint with a girlfriend (and her pets), returned to moms couch for an unfortunate period, and the random selection of college roommates that drove me to the edge. Not to mention the fact that as a musician you are forced to constantly redefine what ’suitable living conditions’ really are. During my 12 years of touring I have slept on strangers’ floors, in vans, under vans, 8 deep in a hotel room meant for 2, outside, in a friends recording studio, inside my own storage space and some places I dare not speak of. I have been woken up by all manner of things from a french kissing Mastiff, to one host who loved to start the day with Tool’s ‘Aenima’ at top volume with no warning. If you are not familiar with this selection, have a listen just to really understand how unpleasant it would be to wake up to. I do not however recommend the same empathetic research for the Mastiff situation, just trust me, that really sucked.
My newfound independence has made me look back on the worst of times, those being my first (and only) year and a half of college where I went through 3 roomates. That’s right, one a semester, and not even the whole semester each time. The names have been kept the same because these guys deserve no anonimity. The story is as follows. Fall 95. I head up to the Berklee College of music, bass in tow, with my ponytail and my 18 year old version of a goatee. I was a mega-focused jazz student who was eager to practice for hours, learn all about music and meet like minded jazz-nazis from all over the world. I would not find anyone like this inside room 709 of the Mass. Ave. dorms where I would spend the next 18 months.
Roommate number one was Jason, who appeared to be a cross between the melancholy Kurt Cobain and the lovable conscientious objector ‘Smokey’ from The Big Lebowski. Jason was a man of few words and for the most part we got along. We had nothing to do with each other at all other than that we slept and showered in the same place. He was, however, terribly unsettling to be around. He had that powder-keg-ready-to-blow-at-any-second vibe. His regular friday night was taking many Klonopins and drinking numerous PBRs. I think he was a little depressed about something. One day I came back to the room and found his side completely annihilated. The desk - destroyed, clothes everywhere, his chair hanging out of the wall with all four legs piercing through to rm 710. Guitar smashed, everything broken. But nothing so much as a single splinter on my side of the room. It was total rage mixed with complete respect for my side of the room and my things. He came back to the room a few days later and told me he had just found out that his girlfriend (a high school sophomore) was preggers and that he had to leave school. I was sad to see him go but it did leave me with a single for the rest of the semester. Although with my social skills at an all time low and the aforementioned ponytail and goatee, I didnt have much need for that kind of privacy.
I returned to school for my second semester and was informed buy housing that I would have a new roommate. Jeff was a tall caucasian guy who grew up in Singapore and had moved around throughout most of his life. Picture a leather clad, boot wearing hippie who had seen the Doors movie way too many times. He loved Jim. And always referred to him as Jim. It was unclear to me what instrument Jeff played. This was a music school where your principal instrument was more important than your name, blood type and social security number. He had (and sucked something awful) a guitar, an oboe (which I never saw him take out of the case), a violin, and a keyboard. Jeff also had the makings of a full service mini-bar in our
room and drank a lot. He would make these really elaborate drinks and the smell of lemons, horseradish, bitters, and booze started to permeate the room and hallway. He would get hammered and wake me up in the middle of the night with shitty versions of ‘all along the watchtower’. I would ask him not to play after I had gone to sleep and he gave me this long winded explanation that he had to play when the inspiration hit and that I, a jazz musician should understand the importance of the moment. This is true, for improvising, but not for his sad, drunk, late night dylan tribute. This was the least of Jeff’s offenses. I’m sure we can all agree that one code of roommate-dom is informing one another of when you will need the space for sexy-time. This is especially important when you are sharing one room. Jeff had no appreciation for this concept. We had socks and rubber bands for the doorknob, and a dry erase board on the door and Jeff never used any of them. I would often come home to Jeff having mid day-lights on-over the covers-totally naked sex with various girls. This bothered me on a few levels but I think in retrospect I was mostannoyed that girls were actually having sex with Jeff at all. One night I came home and found Jeff passed out on his bed. I went into the bathroom (we had one onside our room) and found a usedcondom draped over my toothbrush in the ceramic toothbrush holder. I went back into the room and found another used condom draped over the open tray of my cd player and more importantly over John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’. The third and most unforgivable post coital goodie bag was draped over my upright bass. I pulled Jeff, still passed out, ankles first, out of his bed and began mercilessly pounding on his face. I began trashing his side of the room and pouring his bottles out on him and his things and he was too out of it to put up any kind of fight. I ran to Dawn the RA’s room and brought her back to show her my unfortunate visit from the condom fairy. Covering her mouth and holding back her own puke, she asked Jeff to come withher. He was kicked out of housing and maybe even expelled. I was left with 709 all to myself, again. My third semester came with a tremendous sense of optimism. I was doing well in school, had improved drastically during my summer in New York City and was sure that I would have a normal roommate this time around.
I was proven wrong in the form of Julio. He seemed nice enough at first, hailing from the bronx and twice as quiet as Jason, Julio came with one suitcase, a boombox, and a keyboard. He was friendly and occasionally funny and loved to talk about girls. Fat girls. Julio’s strangeness came on slow and steady. He would go entire days without saying anything more than the basic greeting and goodnight but in the morning, he would always get up before me and take his boombox into the bathroom with him. This meant I would be treated to a daily rendition of Mista’s ‘Blackberry Molasses’, a sultry R&B jam that Julio performed with a passion that you could not imagine dwelling inside such an introvert. I mean he was really really good. Then he would come out of the bathroom with the boombox like nothing had happened and head out to take on the day. This waswhere things got a little strange. Julio didn’t have a major. Henever practiced. He didn’t seem to have any friends and beyond that, he started spending many hours a day in the lobby of the building we lived in. At first a few hours on a bench here and there until he was the first one down there at 7a.m. and sitting there until midnight. Never speaking to anyone, He would hold the front door of the Mass. ave. building open all day for passing students and hestarted to appear completely docile. Staring into space, sitting there for entire days.
He became infamous amongst the student body as “Lobbyman” and I became known as Lobbyman’s roommate. I had to field tons of questions from my fellow students asking me what he was like and if he held the door to our dorm open for me. 
It was light and funny until one night I came back to my room and Julio wassitting at his desk staring straight ahead. I said hello and he didn’t respond, so I started getting settled after a long day. I started to hear a quiet clinking noise that would start and stop. Ilooked up realized it was Julio’s wristwatch banging against the leg of his chair and saw him start foaming at the mouth. Julio was having a seizure. I immediately ran to Dawn again, this time with amuch more serious situation. Within minutes, paramedics, police and fire rescue workers packed out my dorm room and Julio was carried out ala Hannibal Lecter. I was freaked out and once again the sole inhabitant of room 709. I was curious about what happened to Julio as it was obvious he had some kind of problem. Housing wasn’ttelling me anything. I think they were afraid both of me and for me with the luck I had. On one of the last days of the semester, I was coming back to the dorm and saw Julio standing outside. He was wearing khakis and a windbreaker with a Yankee hat awkwardly placed on his head as if someone else had dressed him. He looked like he had been drinking Thorazine milkshakes and he didn’t respond at all when I said hello to him. I went up to my room and found Dawn helping Julio’s grandmother gather his things as they had been left there since he was carried out nearly 4 months prior. After she left, Dawn told me the whole story. Julio, 29, was living in a mental health facility but his mother checked him out and enrolled him in music school because that’s what Julio always wanted. She was terminally ill and wanted to see Julio out of the treatment facility and doing something normal. She did this unbeknownst to the rest of the family and when he had the seizure the school was unable to reach any family members because the mother had died already and no one else knew he was there. After some time things got sorted out and Julio returned to treatment.
So the next time you find yourself on the toilet with no t.p. at your side and you know you bought the last roll, or you go to pour the remaining three quarters of an ounce of milk onto your cereal, or the sweet sounds of your roommate’s carnal activity disrupts your lonely slumber, think of Jason, Julio and Jeff. Then, get your shit together and get your own place.
