Tell me about the most horrible, absurd, or surreal living arrangement

you've ever survived. This is a spin-off from another thread. It just seems to me that there must be other people with really interesting living arrangments.

I lived in one house with

My ex boyfriend
His ex boyfriend
His current girlfriend
His ex boyfriend's current boyfriend
My ex girlfriend
Her current boyfriend
And a 'friend' of ours who totally thrived on manipulation

By the time I moved out of that house I would never speak to any of those people ever again.

was when I lived with my current boyfriend and an ex. That was cozy. :)

we were a strange bunch. :D

Hey ThomCat,

Did you visit Maverick Farms in NC this summer? There was a ThomCat from NYC who did...

Whether you did or not, I would nominate their living situation absurd & surreal (as any young, cooperative group farming venture is bound to be...) but fortunately not at all grim.
:)

I know this isn't much of a response, but it will kick your thread while I dredge the depths of my memory for grim-ness.

-app

So it wasn't me. :shrug:

I did a google search for my name a while back and found another ThomCat who posts very prominantly on other forums. He seems like a cool guy so I don't mind sharing. :P

Anyway, I've been lucky to avoid any chart-topping grim-roomie stories in my own life, but there have been a few absurd/grim times.

I'm a pretty quiet, reserved guy. My first roommate in college was the exact opposite. He would talk for literally a half-hour without any need for input. I got to the point where I would deliberately stop all vocalizations at least an hour before I planned to go to sleep, so that he could use the time to unwind and get-out all that verbiage. We were inevitably a mis-matched pair of roomies, and it was evident from the moving-in day, when he hung some Partnership for a Drug-Free America poster on his side, and I hung an NYC 5th Ave. Pot Parade flyer on mine.

-app

I lived in a house with a friend of mine, she was great, there was another guy who was a complete
zero living there, she moved away leaving me there with the nifnod, so we got in a fight
and I moved out, so when I left I put tons of limburger cheese and tuna fish with oil
in the heating vents........:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :hi:

That was too funny

Remind me to never, ever piss you off. :P

There is absolutely no way to have a home that is more disfunctional than an adult living with a parent.

He had gotten another girl pregnant, hence the ex part, and I was just starting to date my husband.

That was fun. :eyes:

:(

I hope you weren't there long.

I moved home in August and by October I was moved in with Zodiak, even though we weren't married yet. ;)

One extremely lazy roommate who does nothing but eat, one with OCD, who is in the habit of going to ME automatically when there is a mess in the kitchen ( I haven't cooked ANYTHING in weeks )....and the third one really doesn't bother me...I like him, actually. He's very reserved and spends a lot of time in his room.

One more year of dealing with these jackasses

:shrug:

It's amazing the situations we'll live in when we're in school.

:hi:

can get a place with fewer roommates sometime soon. (If the economy helps at some point.)

:hi:

but I never attended college ( never really found a subject that caught my interest ) You are quite right in that I need to find a place with fewer people around. The ideal situation would be to go back living by myself, but then I would have to find an apartment within walking distance of my job ( not an easy task ) since I don't drive. I miss my privacy, more than anything else.

Other than that the time my ex-boyfriend was living at my parent's house downstairs and I was upstairs. They wouldn't throw him out, so I moved out.

:(

If he had absolutely noplace else to go then I guess they were being very charitable. But that is definitely an... odd choice for parents to make.

and my two cats. :P


Can't top your story Thom and wouldn't even try!

:hug:

Except that we weren't all friends. At least, not for very long. :scared:

I am sure that some people can top my story, but I don't envy them if they can.

almost every night. His girlfriend would get really annoyed with this and come-a-knocking on my door when she wanted a little "meat and two veg". This went on for over a year, and our secret was never divulged. It was a weird situation, and quite stressful at times. He almost killed everyone in the place one winter when he decided, (in a drunken stupor) to heat the apartment with the gas oven. That's when I decided to move out, and so did the girlfriend.

like that...

Maybe she really liked staying with you. :shrug:

Regardless, I'm glad you escaped.

my boss
My separated wife
her boyfriend
ex-wife's sister
her husband
their 3 kids
my daughter
a drinkin buddy

Sure there has been worse. All I can think of atm.

:hi:

is if you had a current girlfriend in the mix, and it was your boss's daughter. :P

I barely remember that year :P

My father- and mother-in-law
My brother-in-law
My husband and myself
Our two kids, ages 1 and 2
4 dogs
11 cats
A rabbit

That one was interesting.

Then there was the time I lived in an 11x60 foot, 2 bedroom trailer with -

My husband and myself
A male friend of ours
Our three kids, ages 3, 9 and 10
An unneutered male Great Dane
An unneutered male Boxer
A female Rottweiler/Lab mix
A female Boxer
7 Boxer puppies
A cat
2 cockatiels

My strange living situations weren't so much about friction between the people (though there was some of that, too, particularly with the in-law) - they were mostly about lack of space.

go to another room and close the door. :(

after separating from my ex-wife and she and my kids had moved.

Didn't you have the entire house to yourself at that point?

Or were you keeping it empty to show it for sale?

partly ghosts

partly having been injured in a serious car accident an unwilling/unable to move all my stuff.

I started sleeping down there while we all still lived in the house.

on Hollywood Blvd. for a while in early 80s. Surreal? Yes indeed. Horrible? Not really; I had access to office kitchenette, shower, and free movie rentals. Absurd? Hellsyeah!!! Didn't get laid once in 5-6 weeks.

and you had to sleep on the floor? :wow:

I can't say I'm surprised about not getting laid. They're in it for the money. I would imagine there isn't a whole lot of casual sex going around. :)

not so much where they were filmed.

:hi:

Her dad (K) has advanced MS and needs a caretaker. Enter J, the nurse from Georgia. No, not Atlanta...the Georgia in the former USSR.

J's work visa was about to run out, so K agreed to marry her so that she could stay in the US.

Then she brought her boyfriend, T, over from Georgia.

He lives with K and J, along with J&T's daughter, who was conceived after K and J got married.

:crazy:

I can understand the idea of "whatever works." :)

it works very well for them.

However, it does sound like a messed up little soap opera..."so then my dad and Russian stepmom were hanging out with her boyfriend and their kid...who by the way, live in the same house..."

and all three of us drank like fish every day, night, whenever, we all smoked pot, and we all dipped skoal.

The worst part of it all was the skoal.

We would be so wasted and we'd be dipping skoal and we'd have these HUGH!!!111 spit cups that we were too stoned to empty I guess :P

Well you guessed it :puke: they'd get kicked over etc.

We also trashed the house in such a way as to be embarrassing as well.

I don't guess I thought it was so terrible at the time, but shortly after living there I realized how totally insane it was.

Oh not to mention my roomie thought he would grow some weed in the closet so he got grow lights and did so, and he'd leave his blinds open and the closet open and the grow lights would come on at night and one could drive by and see the little plants growing in the closet :eyes:

Many times I'd come home and find that and race in and close the closet door.

or suffered any other consequences. It's kind of surprising that nothing serious happened with a roommate like that.

many other things too

:eyes:

:hi:

I was living in a house with my boyfriend, who was just discovering he was bi and was experimenting behind my back. We moved in with my best girl friend and her boyfriend. Also her best gay friend, who was a Republican and anti-choice.
This was the top of the house. On the bottom lived a gay couple and a single bixsexual woman.
Later on I found out that our gay friend was having sex with my best friend's boyfriend, almost forcibly(?); and my boyfriend was having sex with one of the men downstairs when I was away. Then they all wanted to have sex in variations on this theme, and when I tried to participate I was frozen out.
Lovely time was also had by all when I got pregnant unexpectedly at 21 and decided not to keep it. Gay friend (upstairs) called me a murderer, etc. etc.
The guys downstairs derided me because they thought I was stupid and naieve.

It was an all-around fuck with my head, and I am glad I came out of it with my head on relatively straight. But I am left with the lingering impression that gay guys don't like me. I hope I am wrong. :cry:

head. :(

I haven't met you in person but I haven't seen anything that would make me think you're anything other than pretty cool.

We've been on the oposite side of once or two discussions, and I still think you're pretty cool. :P

My husband assures me that it is just the fact that I haven't run into the right group of people yet. Since you used to live here and have moved, I think you know what I mean...I do love this state, but sometimes we are a tad unenlightened. It happens.
Also, I WAS a bit naeive. Hell, I was 20-21. I've matured (but not mellowed!) of course, and learned to stand up for myself.

Thanks...I think you're pretty cool too.

I hope to get the chance to have friends as cool as you and some of the other great guys I've met here. :hug:

My other roommate tried to warn me. She didn't like her (the Sorority Girl's) provocative clothing, make-up, or most of all the way she commented how our dinning room table looked sturdy enough to dance on. I told her she was discriminating and didn't get the joke. Well, we found out by the second week something was not right with that young woman. She really did bring home a different guy every night of the week. There were rumors going around the college campus about the sorority she belonged to raising money by... well... how should I say this tactfully.... prostitution (?).

Anyway, the last straw was when my father and step mother visited and they decided to stay in the living room on the fold out sofa bed for one night (last time they EVER did that, btw!). I begged my new roommate to be discrete for just that one night. Well, as my step-mother described it, the Sorority Girl girl had the "morals of an alley cat"! lol! Not only did she leave with one guy, to go to a party, and come home with a different one... but, she made very loud noises ALL NIGHT LONG (and it wasn't even the weekend).

It got so bad that the other roommate and I started worrying for our safety (with strange men staying the night on a regular basis) that we finally told her we were all moving out and the lease was up. It wasn't true, but she got another place to live. *whew*

Moral of the story: If someone comments about dancing on your dinning room table, it might not be a joke! lol!

p.s., I hope I didn't offend anybody who belonged/belongs to a sorority. My college didn't have them and this was my only experience of having one as a roommate. I'm sure they're not all like that... I hope! :hi:

keep things reasonable. :)

Of course, you never know from talking to someone what they're like to live with. I lived with one guy who was paranoid/schizophrenic, controlled with medication. I had known him through others, so I said, "okay, what the hell."

He had regular conversations with God, with God apparently carrying his half of the conversations. He often talked to the ghost of a brother who was never born (miscarriage, I think). And he turned out to be an excellent housemate. Go figure.
:shrug:

Or was it a season of "Friends"?:-)

that convoluted and still make it work. :P

:wow: You're right. That would be hell.

Are there any such animals? :P

No shit, and no kidding. Thank gawd it only lasted a few weeks.


Then again, what I moved into was a close second. I went from homeless to living with my pregnant girlfriend, her mom, her little brother, her moms semi-lesbian friend, the friends daughter, the friends granddaughter, the friends daughters best friend, the best friends husband and three kids, this guy the best friends husband knew, HIS girlfriend, and a 14 year old runaway that was a friend of the semi-lesbian friends granddaughter, who kept wanted to have sex with my girlfriend. She eventually succeeded. I could have written a fucking book on the semi-entertaining nonstop piles of bullshit that oozed from that 900 square foot three bedroom house. We were all poor as fuck, but we all got along...aside from the never-ending drama.

And some people wonder why I NEVER let people stay in my house nowadays. Not even overnight. I lived in that mess for three years, and a few of them still try to guilt me for moving out and "abandoning" them.

I was homeless, but only for a short while right after I became disabled.

I have had the oposite reaction. I'll never turn a friend away who needs a place to stay. There's a lot of potential to be taken advantage of, but I can't say no.

I literally hyperventilate when I get too many people around me. I'm fine in an empty elevator, but put me in a full one and I'll freak out. It's ten times worse when people are actually inside my home. I was never this way before I lived in that house.

It's funny how selective it is too. I can sit in front of a lecture hall with 50 students and not have a single problem, but five relatives drop by my home for the holidays and you'll find me out back chopping wood or turning the mulch pile...anything to get out of the "crowded" house.

So no, I don't let people stay over. I've actually bought hotel rooms for people because they needed a place to live, and just last year just outright gave a guy $2,200 to move him and his six kids into a new rental to get them off the street. I do very well financially nowadays and I don't hesitate to help people out when they find themselves in that situation. Homelessness sucks in a way that can only be understood by those who have experienced it, and I always help out whenever I can. I just can't let them stay in my house.

the guy she was still married to, whom she had left for me 2 yrs before.

That took some getting used to, but he and i just did our things without bothering each other, and even eventually got along, and ended up working at the same place.

Right after we got married, we lived with his sister, (who is nuts) and my godson, whom I raised.

Fortunately, he went off to college and she returned to the attic at her parents' home where she resides today.

very suddenly to shack up with his girlfriend; so I had to rush to get a new roommate before the next month's rent was due. (I lived in really awful poverty at the time, making slave wages in a retail gulag.) The roommate I got was the proverbial nightmare: huge, smelly, hostile, messy, egotistical, sneaky, bad-tempered and full of himself. I lasted a couple of months before moving out at last. I was sort of forced to move, because I found out later he had convinced the apartment manager to let him sign a fraudulent lease, putting the lease in his name, not mine. I found out later that that was illegal, but by then I was moved out and away from the creep, so I let sleeping dogs lie.