Worst. Roommate. Ever.

Rich D says:

My worst roommate ever ironically was the kid who moved into my apartment over the summer after my most interesting roommate moved out. The interesting roommate was a 7' 1'' Brazilian basketball player from Sao Paulo. He was a cool guy. And even though he wasn't the biggest or the fastest on the team, I never made fun of him. And that was only partially due to the fact that he could have palmed my head and torn it into tiny, Brazil-nut sized chunks. I miss that crazy, huge, skinny guy . . .

But the worst roommate was also crazy, and also skinny, but he was teeny. And when I say crazy I mean it in a pretty literal way. I'll call him Estevan. I had the normal complaints about Estevan that I imagine are bubbling up in your brains right now as you comtemplate your worst roommates. Estevan treated the apartment dishes in much the same way that you or I might treat a paper towel from the bathroom, or perhaps that smart but quiet guy who sits behind you in class and helps you with group answer questions: very convenient, even essencial when it's there for you to use. But after you use them, they make absolutely no impression on your life whatsoever. It is as if those dishes, that paper towell and Eric(?)(Jon? Dave?) never existed at all. It stands to reason that Estevan also wouldn't care about clean clothing or bedding (he slept right on the mattress and pulled his one sheet over him . . . ). After not too long (probably, oh, about a day), my other roommate Mike and I began to see that the battle against the rising, unhygenic practices of Estevan were a lost cause. Mike slept at the apartment still, at least occasionally, but he suddenly discovered how much he loved to eat out and be with other people. People who didn't create unholy smells in places where some of us were known to live.

Those are the basics, and probably I could stop there. But what pushes Estevan into the number one spot were the general eccentricities, the quirks, the peculiarities, the overall feeling of "creepy" that Estevan had running out of his ears and pooling around him. Before moving in with Mike and I, Estevan had spent six months living in Japan in a student exchange program. Somehow near the end of his stay in Japan, Estevan, an ultra-skinny Caucasian with protruding features and a heavy eyebrow (singular, although there were occasionally two, but only in the right light), became aware that modeling agencies in Japan were interested in the aforementioned skinny Caucasian-type with said features. (Their feelings on eyebrows and the plurality thereof are as yet unknown). I do not doubt that this is true. However, this became not just a curious factoid about Japanese culture for Estevan but an actual occupational choice. I also am confident that Estevan could do all right living the lifestyle of a model (heck, even I wanted to throw up when I was around him!). Here are some things that were witnessed, probably daily in my apartment:

- Estevan, waking up (10ish?) and eating his breakfast of banana and flavored water.
- Estevan, shirtless, watching hours of Japanese school-kid dramas (?) and/or comedies.
- Estevan, still shirtless, polishes off a yogurt and a bowl of something that is mostly bran using what I suspect are the bowl and spoon that were wedged between the couch cushions. I know they aren't the bowl and spoon I washed that morning, because I have started keeping a set of my own dishes in my desk drawer and letting the kitchen and sink go to whereever it is going. In a handbasket.
- Estevan, doing sets of pushups, still shirtless, with TV still on something produced in the land of the rising sun. Occasionally these are girl-style (on the knees pushups). There's nothing wrong with that (in principle)(but it does help paint the picture, doesn't it?)
- Estevan, on the phone talking about his modeling prospects with persons unknown (Did he actually ever model? Make money modeling?! This is unknown).
- Estevan (need I say shirtless?) checking his muscle definition in the mirror and making more room for the scads of manscaping products that continued to overflow the sink and countertop.

It occurs to me that none of these things on their own really sound all that bad. Added up however, and you get a skinny, fairly smelly, little Gollum of a Caucasian, Japanese model.