ROOMMATE INSANITY

I have decided that having roommates just makes one insane, regardless. Under normal circumstances, keeping a secret stash of toilet tissue in your room would not seem, well, normal. However, since Peter keeps finding reasons not to buy toilet tissue himself, I have decided to stop using the stuff in the bathroom, and if he runs out on his own, I don't see how this will concern me.

I have finally had a major argument with him. I guess I should outline a few of the things he's done.

I think I've mentioned the thing about the bathtub. He fills it sometime prior to 9 am on the weekends, and then doesn't get into it until almost noon, which means that I'm waiting around unable to get ready myself. He'll apologize every half-hour or so, which is meaningless if you don't actually get the heck into the tub. Finally, about two weekends ago, I asked him not to fill the tub more than 30 minutes prior to getting into it.

I don't think I've really mentioned the noise. Every night, he stays downstairs until after midnight, listening to the television full-volume, or playing the Hammond organ without headphones. Then, sometime after midnight, he walks upstairs, where his bedroom is next to both mine and the neighbors', and he turns on his radio/CD player, at a sort of normal (ie not quiet) volume. He then has three loud alarms go off in intervals between 6:45 and 7:00 am. As I mentioned, on the days of my job interviews, I ended up getting less than 5 hours of sleep each night because of this, and went to my interviews with dark circles under my eyes.

Mind you, this is the guy who has asked me to use headphones if I'm going to watch television after he goes to bed, and complained about me going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

I haven't said anything to him, for a number of reasons. For one thing, I definitely see this living arrangement as something temporary. I want to find a job, and then get the heck out of Dodge. Until then, well, the guy doesn't steal stuff or anything like that.

Things had gotten much worse with him and the whole touchy-feely thing. He makes a *lot* of innuendoes, which I just put down to general Britishness and ignore. But he's started pausing when he walks past me, resting his hand on my lower back, and saying things like, "It's like having a wife." THIS CREEPS ME OUT. Obviously.

Last time I was here, there was this night when we went to a pub together, and he'd had a little alcohol, and when we got back to the house, he tried to kiss me. Ever since then, I've maintained a strict distance and tried not to be too friendly or do anything that so much as hints at intimacy. So I don't leave my bedroom until I am fully dressed and bathed--that's why I wait for him to get out of the bathroom. It seems too intimate if I make it seem like "we" have a bathroom routine in the morning. When he gets out of the bathroom, I go in quietly, then quietly go back to my bedroom, and he never sees me unless I am in full armor.

I don't hang around with him in the living room or anything like that. When I am home, I will go into the kitchen long enough to make my meals, which I carry up to my bedroom and eat when he isn't looking.

So what he's started doing is doing all of this stuff while I'm cooking. I'll be at the sink, rinsing something, and the next thing I know, he's standing behind me and putting his hand on my back. I stiffen and try to step away.

My original plan was to make Christmas cookies for everyone, including him. I couldn't really afford gifts for anyone, and this seemed like a good solution. But every time I was baking and he was in the room, he started in with the touching and intimate stuff, and so I decided the smartest move would be to not give him a Christmas present at all. And I don't really contribute a lot to the household chores, because that seems too much like "domestic bliss." Maybe that makes me a crappy roommate, but it doesn't make me as crappy a roommate as touching someone who has clearly made her disinterest known.

I don't feel guilty about not helping with the chores. I really hope he feels like I'm a crappy roommate and gets a bit irritated with me. That would stop the touching, I'm sure.

Mind you, when I say that I don't help with the chores, I mean I just don't take out the garbage or mop the floors. I do all of my own dishes, I don't leave things out. My toiletries have a place in a basket on a shelf, and they are there whenever I am not actually in the tub. I clean the bathtub before and after I use it. I just don't mop, rake the yard, or vacuum the living room I don't use.

So all of this stuff has just put me in a basically cranky mood. Then, I started having raging PMS a few days before Christmas, and it lasted until the evening of Christmas Day. My tolerance goes waaaay down.

So, Saturday night, the neighbors a couple of doors down had a Christmas party. They are generally completely silent--this is a once-yearly thing. They stayed up until 2 am, playing music pretty loudly.

My reaction: It's once a year, it's Christmas, and it's a Saturday night. You can't really get much more considerate than that. Everyone is allowed to have a loud party once a year--that's totally reasonable. And if it's a Saturday night, that indicates that they're being considerate enough not to have it during the week. Bully for them. I hope they have a great time. And, you know, next time I do something stupid, they'll probably be considerate.

Peter's reaction: get up in the morning and do nothing but complain to everyone you can find. I saw him for a few minutes the next morning, and he said he was going to leave at 2 pm. I was relieved, thinking, good, the house to myself for five glorious days, and all I have to do is wait until after 2 pm.

So I stayed out until 4-ish, and then got home. He was still there. In my PMS-addled brain, this was almost inexcusable. He had *lied* to me! He had *promised* he'd be gone at 2! To be honest, when I had left in the morning, he made these little motions like he wanted to give me a "goodbye" hug and kiss (ended up blowing me a kiss) and I'd sort of managed to dance out of the way. I wondered if he would stick around deliberately to try something later. So when he was still there, I thought, crap, I'm going to have to go through that again.

I had purchased a couple of things that needed to go in the kitchen, where he was, so I couldn't just go directly upstairs. When I got into the kitchen, he started going on and on about the neighbors again. My patience was gone. I said, "Look, Peter. It's Christmas. They have *one* party a year. Leave it alone." He continued to go on and on, saying that it was completely inconsiderate, and he had gone to one of the other neighbors to complain, and they'd agreed. I said, "Peter, you are the most selfish person I've ever met. It's bloody Christmas, it's once a year, everyone has a right to have one party a year. It's not all about you." His voice went up about an octave, and he started protesting in a half-hysterical voice.

Eventually, I said to him in a very authoritarian type of voice, "Look, if you want to complain about the neighbors having ONE party a year, then I EXPECT you in the future to wear your headphones if you play your organ after midnight, and furthermore, I expect you to make an effort to be quiet in the mornings from now on."

He said, "FINE," and that's the last time I saw him, as he left for five days.

So he's getting back sometime today. I'm going out with friends, and don't know when I'll see him. We'll see how things go.

I guess my sisters left me a message on his answering machine, incidentally, and he listened to it remotely and then deleted it without telling me. I can see why he would get upset about other people being inconsiderate.