someone a bad roommate, depending on what kind of person you are. However, there are a few universal traits that make a bad roommate, and unfortunately for yours truly, I encountered a roommate with every single one of these traits. The sadly ironic, and comedic, part of this entire story is that before coming to school, my roommate and I were good friends, and had been for several years.The annoying traits that ended up ripping apart our friendship are the very traits that I had learned to ignore as we were just friends not living together before attending college. So, without further ado, a case study in what to be afraid of when you meet your roommate.

First and foremost, you need to know if your roommate is a social person. A social roommate can be a blessing in college, especially if they join a fraternity or sorority. This will ensure that they are rarely in the room, and hence you will have the ability to hang out in your room and study, or bring back a member of the opposite sex for some alone time on the futon that you will inevitably have, as it is a staple of the dorm room. In my case, however, I was jinxed with someone who turned out to be the exact opposite of a social person. In fact, socially awkward doesn’t even begin to describe him. Rather, socially inept seems more appropriate. As soon as we arrived at school, he decided that he must never leave the safety of the room, and that the door must never be opened, lest the people outside see in and judge him inferior before even speaking with him. First of all, let me assure anyone reading this that no one in college is judging you. Okay, so they are judging you, but you need to understand that their opinion means approximately nothing, given that there are very few campuses around that house less than four thousand students. So, strike one against my roommate was him being socially inept, and hence physically unable to speak to anyone unless forced into a situation against his will. This is the kind of roommate that will never leave the room. Forget any sort of alone time you had planned with any hook up. When you get this roommate, you had better hope that any person you wish to hook up with has a roommate that is in the earlier group and is a bit more social. Not only will they not be in the room, but when they are in the room they will understand the code of the hook up and give you your alone time, whilst finding something else to do. It won’t matter to them, they are naturally social beings!

The second strike for the bad roommate is their taste in music. At first, I didn’t think this would be that big of an issue, either, but when coupled with the first strike this can be a deadly one-two blow to the crucial roommate relationship. The first time you arrive home from work at eight o’clock to find your roommate sitting in the dark listening to Pink Floyd and crying because they can’t seem to get any friends, despite their total lack of an effort to find any friends, you will understand what I mean. When this same person doesn’t like that you’ve turned on the lights in a vain attempt to change from dirty work clothes to clean, non-crap smelling clothes and he decides that the best place to vent his frustrations with the world and its unsociable inhabitants is in his own closet, you will realize that you’ve truly crossed into a new threshold never tread by other mortals… well, except me. When that closet door closes, and you realize that your unsocial roommate has locked himself inside, while still listening to his Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon album that you’ve heard non-stop since the first day he moved in, consider this strike two. As of now, you can officially say that you have the roommate from hell.

However, neither of these strikes can be considered something that will result in a complete breakdown of the roommate relationship. In fact, bad taste in music can be countered with a good set of headphones, and the unsocial qualities of a roommate can be dealt with by having someone from the hall run interference on the lug by inviting him to basic activities that will keep him out of the room. In my case, I convinced a friend from down the hall to bring my roommate weight lifting with him. This resulted in a good two hours alone in the room for me and my potential hook up.

The third strike came soon thereafter, though. You see, there is one key rule that goes into any roommate relationship, and if broken, this rule can and will always completely destroy said relationship. That rule is simple, and is applicable to both men and women. That rule, in its entirety, is like the eleventh commandment. “Thou shalt not date your roommate’s ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends.” This goes all the way back to a brief time when Moses and his wife broke up, and Moses’ friend asked if he could move in. Needless to say, Moses’ friend wound up with a stone tablet broken over his head, while Moses and his wife reconciled.

Yes, the third strike is when your roommate, inevitably, becomes attracted to your former significant other. In my case, this strike was taken to such an extreme that most people find it unbelievable that my roommate was still breathing when all was said and done.

You see, when you combine the first two strikes with this third one, you realize exactly why I hit rock bottom when it comes to the worst roommates of all time. As a socially inept person, the only two females he ever came in contact with during his tenure in the dorms were girls that I brought home. One was a high school flame, whom I had dated for three years before coming down to school with her. The other, a hook-up turned semi-serious after she caught feelings. Regardless, my roommate decided that, seeing as these were the only two females that he had seen outside of class in months, that they were both interested in him. His first attempt was for the high school flame. The night that we broke up, the roommate was on the horn with her almost immediately, and soon thereafter he “went on a walk” with her until approximately three in the morning. For him, this wasn’t such a huge step, because he had been friends with her before, and no doubt he had found her attractive. Though they insist nothing happened, I still remain skeptical, as I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a straight story from either of them regarding their little fling, I mean walk.

So, naturally, I was pissed off that my ex would so quickly run into the arms of my douche bag of a roommate, and I immediately began looking for a hook up. Enter cute but psychotic boss at work, whom had a crush on me since my first day. Seeing an easy, sure thing, I naturally grabbed a hold of her and roped her in, and within two weeks we had hooked up in my room (on the very same night I sent my roommate weightlifting, coincidentally), and all of a sudden she was in love. I suppose that can be my fault. During sex, I accidentally blurted out: “I love you.”

Tip to the ladies, and I know this will sound harsh, but as the writer Chuck Palahnuik said, “If a guy says ‘I love you’ during sex, ten times out of ten it means ‘I love this.’”

Well, now I realize I have dug myself into a hole I don’t want to be in. My ex-girlfriend is cuddling up with my roommate, causing even more extreme awkwardness between the two of us, while I’ve accidentally let the three big words slip out to a girl that I had only intended to be a dating scenario, and nothing more serious than that.

Finally, the explosion. I tell my ex-girlfriend point blank that I no longer want anything to do with her, and that I hate her for ever having thought of trying to date my roommate/former best friend. I was only slightly pissed, but I was still hurt. Granted, I slept with someone else, but it certainly wasn’t her best friend.

Meanwhile, the girl I am dating is now becoming a clingy sociopath, afraid to let me out of her sight for a minute for fear of losing me forever. While it is nice to feel so wanted, it is also a bit on the scary side. Although, I was getting laid. Never underestimate the power of sex to hold a relationship together.

Soon thereafter, my roommate leaves, and stays the night with my ex-girlfriend. While they think that I am stupid and don’t know what has happened (or what had been happening for three weeks up to that point) I knew that they had slept together, and immediately I was pissed off. That was it. My roommate had strike three against him… he broke the final rule. He hooked up with an ex-girlfriend.

Roommate code at this point becomes unclear. Some told me that I should use subtle forms of mental sabotage. Mess with his homework to ensure that he fails out, or perhaps rub my genitals on the inside of his drink bottles and on all of his silverware. One even suggested that I plant marijuana in his drawer, then report him because of our zero tolerance policy on drugs and weapons. Because I was the one that reported him, surely I wouldn’t be kicked out of the university. A second option was to skip all the subtle bullcrap and go right to beating him senseless with the nearest blunt object.

Fortunately for my roommate, cooler heads prevailed, and I quickly came to realize that I had two problems and one way to fix both problems with very little actual effort, and thusly my plan was set into motion.

First, I needed to woo back my old girlfriend. I knew she still had feelings for me, and, despite the fact that she hooked up with someone I can only consider to be one of the biggest and most worthless piles of excrement on the planet, I still had feelings for her. In phase one, I simply told her of my feelings, and she was ready to come running back to me faster than a nerd runs to play EverQuest. Phase two was to tell her to break it off with my roommate, and be sure to mention that she is doing so to get back together with me.

Naturally, my roommate, who had his first hook up that wasn’t with a fat chick on the bathroom floor of a McDonalds (another story that I could go into extreme depth over), was super pissed that I was now cock blocking him. So what does he do? He returns the favor, and tells my new “girlfriend” (quoted because she was the one who declared herself my girlfriend, it was never my declaration) that I am getting back with my ex-girlfriend.

Now, all hell breaks loose. The hook up now flips off her handle and goes nuts, while my roommate consoles her. Meanwhile, I’m back hooking up with my ex-girlfriend. It seems that all is right with the world once again. I have a girlfriend, he is a douche bag and considered so by all, and despite my own self admitted dick-headedness, I still manage to come out on top.

Well, that wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted revenge. When it comes to a roommate from hell, revenge is the only thing that can get us through the year. My revenge would be slow, steady, psychological torture, and the beautiful thing was that I wouldn’t have to lift a finger to make any of it happen.

Whilst consoling the psycho hook up, my roommate naturally developed feelings for her. Remember, this is only the second girl he has had any physical contact with in months, and hence he is bound to be attracted to her. All I had to do was plant the seeds in her head for her “revenge” on me for leaving her for my ex-girlfriend. That was actually done for me by my friend down the hall, who mentioned that it looked like my roommate had feelings for her.

BAM!

Next thing I know, my roommate and the psycho bitch are together, and my slow and steady psychological torture begins, through her.

Over the course of the next nine months that they are together, they are virtually inseparable. She treats him like he is worse than the crap she scrapes off her shoe. She constantly demands things of him, and even calls him at two in the morning to yell at him for three consecutive hours. Slowly, but surely, over the course of the remainder of the school year, she whittles his sense of self-worth down to nothing, and the only thing that seems to be keeping him from suicide is the fact that he is getting laid on a regular basis.

Remember, never underestimate the power of getting laid on a regular basis.

I simply let the year pass, and let things progress naturally, and my revenge turned out to be much better than even I had dreamed.

No more than a month after the school year ended, the roommate and psycho broke up, and she made it abundantly clear that she never liked him and she was merely dating him to get back at me. A blow of this kind to someone’s already fragile ego can leave a man even more crippled socially than he already was, and by all accounts, he remains a shell of a man. She trained him so well that at this point in his life, he is physically incapable of making decisions on his own. He, literally, cannot leave a room unless someone says goodbye to him first. He cannot go to a party unless someone tells him it is okay to go to said party. Over nine months, he became totally and completely dependent on another person, and that person left him high and dry and told him she never even liked him.

Meanwhile, my girlfriend and I are still together to this day, although I still think that there is a lot she is hiding from me, because she thinks I would get angry. Truth be told, I couldn’t get angry if I wanted too. While to my friends I come out looking like a saint for not having killed him, the reality is much, much darker.

I found my own way to deal with the roommate from hell; through slow, subtle psychological torture. It is a method that I highly suggest, because in the end… the thought that everything that is wrong in his life right now is my doing is enough to allow me to sleep at night. I suppose, in the end, I was the roommate from hell.