Oh Shorty!

The non-ironically self-nicknamed Shorty continues to mess up my house and he doesn't seem to be in any hurry to leave. I have been dropping hints that our other roommate is an angry and vengeful person and that when she returns she may have a problem with him. She's actually very kind and tolerant but I'm willing to sacrifice her reputation for this cause. I want that greasy troll packing his bags.

A grimy film appears on every surface he touches. A while back I did a thorough cleaning of the kitchen and when I was done I wrote on our whiteboard: "Kathleen, thanks for cleaning the kitchen. It looks great! I'll try not to mess it up." Not only do I get to pretend someone appreciates me, but Shorty will think someone appreciates me, and with the amount of marijuana he smokes he may think he wrote it himself. It's a win-win.

So far he has stolen crackers, toilet paper, and my mini fridge. I had hidden the crackers on a really high shelf, out of Shorty's reach but I was stupid to think I could keep munchies off a pothead's radar. He better watch himself though; he doesn't know about my subtle system of kitchen crime and punishment. It goes something like this:

He borrows flour or sugar - I mutter to myself, stomp on the stairs, and slam doors. He borrows chips or crackers - I give him a stern verbal warning to stay away from my food. He borrows Nutella or brownies - I smother him in his sleep.

To take my fridge, he would have had to remove the sign I had taped to it which said "Kathleen's Stuff". Everything I know about conflict resolution told me that I should not act on my first instincts which, in this case, were to scream "Never touch my stuff, you toxic elf!" and then threaten to call the police. But I'm not really sure how to get my point across. You can't reason with hippies. They're illogical and infuriating. He probably thinks we're sharing. He would probably think a fair trade would be my fridge for some revelation about the meaning of life he made during a drug-induced hallucination. Well, no thanks.

As far as I can tell, he doesn't have a (legal) job and spends most of his time in his room. But what could he be doing in there all day with just a radio, a futon mattress and, presumably, my mini fridge?

The phone rings constantly with the urgency of someone in need of a fix. Conversations with his woman often contain phrases like "Even if I'm in jail and you're in jail, we'll always be together" and "What did your parole officer say?". There have been other conversations with his "associates" that consist mostly of a string of obscenities, with the gist of the message being "I don't have the money."

I have moved "being robbed in my own room" back to the top of my list of fears for the first time since 2004 when I was staying in a particularly sketchy hostel in the King's Cross area of London.

Oh, and he has a skateboard. He uses it to get around even though he also stole our other roommate's bike. Can I really stay mad at a 41-year-old man who travels by skateboard?

Adventures with Shorty

For the last two months, there has been a subletter in the house. Although she was a quiet grad student, her inability to follow simple recycling instructions made me angry. I was also unimpresed with her poor dish washing skills. I'm not sure what she did to them that made her think she'd cleaned them. If I had to guess, I'd say she always used either soap or water, but never both. I just don't know how you can be so bad at something so simple. I was relieved when she moved out. Having recently met her replacement, I would give anything to have her back.

Last Saturday at 1'o'clock in the morning, Shorty moved in. I heard a commotion and went into the hall to find a dirty little pothead with a skullet moving into the room across the hall from mine, the room that smells strongly of gas and which I was planning to seal off with towels and duct tape at the next possible opportunity. In his early 40's, Shorty arrived by bike from the bad part of Dartmouth and I quickly realized my stories of mice and gas leaks were not going to discourage a man who can probably sleep through gunfire. He has a pregnant girlfriend who, by the sounds of it, is not at all happy to have been impregnated, especially by him. He can't live with her because she's "crazy, real crazy". I have identified all possible escape routes from the house in case she shows up with a shotgun and hormonal rage.

With me visiting home this week, Shorty will be all alone in the house unsupervised for five days. I didn't have time to train him before taking off. As best I could, I tried to Shorty-proof the house before I left. I locked my door, checked the smoke detectors, and put a sign on my brownies in the fridge: These brownies are not "special". Still, I shudder to think what I will arrive home to on Tuesday.