in college I rented a room in an apartment with two girls I didn't know. After a few months, they told me they had to raise my rent. When I pressed her she said it was because she needed 'abortion money.' Since I'm a girl and never slept with her, I refused.. She threatned to take it out from my security deposit. Then one day I found my security deposit check and tore it up. She prolly should have cashed it, not kept it ib a drawer. I stuck out the semestwer and never spoke to either of my roommates. It wasn't really so bad. She never had the baby but I don't know who paid for that.

The first apartment I rented after college was the top floor of a three story building. When the landlord was showing the apartment, we asked about safety and she mentioned that recently the police had chased someone through the backyard, but implied that it was unusual and insignificant.

After we moved in we talked to some of the downstairs neighbors and they told a slightly more colorful version of the story. The police had indeed chased someone into the backyard, at which they shot and killed them just below our balcony. They were then kind enough to point out that, if you looked really hard, you could still see the blood stains on the concrete.

Dunno if this counts as a "roommate" story, but, here goes. I once lived in an apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side where the walls were so thin, after the woman next door finished having (very noisy) sex, _I_ wanted to smoke a cigarette.

And since I never heard anyone else with her, I was often tempted to go knock on her door and ask if she wanted any company.

There was that time I married the guy my roommate was dating...

And the time I threw a going away party for another roommate. It was a big party. About a dozen people were jailed, and four people from three apartments were evicted. I don't remember much about it.

Miss C -- That settles it. You are throwing the inaugural YesBut retreat.

I went to a large state university in the late 1980s. My freshman roommate literally cried himself to sleep every night. Not just sniffles, either. All out wailing. He said he was upset about global warming -- admirable, maybe, but pretty insane too. When this began i don't think i'd ever heard of global warming. Maybe he was on to something. Either way, all the crying was a bit dramatic.

He lasted about four weeks before dropping out.

I rent out rooms in my house. most people are fairly decent and i rarely see or talk to them. perfect. but about four years ago i advertised the room and got a guy named Eric. decent guy. down to earth and had a good job. he had recently moved here from Oregon or some such place. Me and one of my roommates smoke pot. so one day we're outside on the side of the house where we had a couple couches. we were getting stoned and Eric comes out and sits down with us. He then tells us how he hasnt smoked pot for something like seven years. since high school. so we invite him to smoke. and smoke he does. about three minutes later hes curled up on the couch laughing like a lil school girl. we think "no big deal. its been awhile." well, to make a long story stupid. the following month when i went to collect rent. he was nowhere to be found. so i waited two weeks and finally went into his room. apparently after just the one joint he started doing speed and crack. he'd torn up the rug in his room and shit in the corner. there was no less than four speed pipes broken on the floor. used rubbers were scattered about and porn, porn, porn. everywhere. the floor. walls. even the ceiling. weird. anyway, it was my duty to clean it all out. and clean i did. new carpet, new paint. i even cleaned the stucco off the ceiling and painted it. I've had some weird roommates. but he was the worst. after just that one joint we never saw him again. we heard him once or twice in his room but never saw him. He never came back for his stuff either.

I shared a cute attic apartment for a short time with my best friend in college. Over the summer break I spent a month over seas visiting my family. When I returned, I found the apartment in almost comic disarray-- there were shredded aluminum foil and random pills all over the floor. There was a loaf of bread gnawed into the shape of a pyramid sitting on the couch. Food containers were everywhere. There was a layer of mouse turds covering the dishes in the kitchen and our the water in our fish's bowl had evaporated to the point where the fish was only up to his eyebrows in water with his belly on the rocks. (Jumbles, the incredible living fish, survived this ordeal only to commit suicide and be devoured by ants several months later). My roommate had been evicted-- she took my dog and all of my DVD's and moved into a trailer park. The DVD's were stolen and the dog was taken to the pound, where she was adopted before I could come back and rescue her.

So-- our friendship was strained after that. Then she faked her own death and disappeared for a couple years and now we don't talk much.

After being incredibly quiet all day, one roommate would begin to sing opera in the middle of the night. She also appeared to have thrown up all over the bathroom one morning, but insisted it was a protein shake.

Another roommate let her makeup grow algae in the bathroom.

And yet another roommate, a 20 year old female, decided to date a man who was approximately 60 years old. The noises coming from the bedroom literally all day long were from him alone. I felt disgusted but sort of bad for her at the same time...

my frosh year roommate came home every night the first week of school acting really drunk and stupid. then one day he REALLY came home drunk, and admitted that all the other times he was faking it. i did not care for him.

I'll start with the hook of my roommate story: $2,200 bill for phone sex.

THE REST: My normal roommate got engaged, so I advertised for another. He was a male nurse. He worked nights. He piled dirty clothes high in his room, and when he opened the door at 9pm to leave for work, the stench wafted down the stairs.

He rang up a $2,200 bill calling 1-900 sex lines. Phone was in my name. Took quite an effort to shift the costs to his name. The he started leaving guns on his bedroom floor. I needed to get out, but if I didn't find a replacement for me I'd violate the lease. I found a woman. I was torn between telling her about his habits, or fleeing. I did not do the manly thing.

I'll start with the hook of my roommate story: $2,200 bill for phone sex.

THE REST: My normal roommate got engaged, so I advertised for another. He was a male nurse. He worked nights. He piled dirty clothes high in his room, and when he opened the door at 9pm to leave for work, the stench wafted down the stairs.

He rang up a $2,200 bill calling 1-900 sex lines. Phone was in my name. Took quite an effort to shift the costs to his name. The he started leaving guns on his bedroom floor. I needed to get out, but if I didn't find a replacement for me I'd violate the lease. I found a woman. I was torn between telling her about his habits, or fleeing. I did not do the manly thing.

I'll start with the hook of my roommate story: $2,200 bill for phone sex.

THE REST: My normal roommate got engaged, so I advertised for another. He was a male nurse. He worked nights. He piled dirty clothes high in his room, and when he opened the door at 9pm to leave for work, the stench wafted down the stairs.

He rang up a $2,200 bill calling 1-900 sex lines. Phone was in my name. Took quite an effort to shift the costs to his name. The he started leaving guns on his bedroom floor. I needed to get out, but if I didn't find a replacement for me I'd violate the lease. I found a woman. I was torn between telling her about his habits, or fleeing. I did not do the manly thing.

In my first year at University I lived with a girl who began as a very conservative Catholic. She wouldn't drink or even come to parties and she kept trying to convince me that if I just kissed my gay friends they would miraculously become straight. About half way through the year she must have had some sort of backwards epiphany and began to drink and do drugs heavily. She would come back to our room at all hours of the night and throw up everywhere. The culminating point of this drunken behaviour was the night a stranger found her passed out in the mud outside of our residence building. He/She took her back to our room, opened the door and let her inside and then stole my laptop. We didn't talk much after that night.

I had a roomate that was this nice guy, but a bit of a tweaker. He would sit up all night making chainmail for his SCA costumes, or fucking his midget girlfriend (he: 6' 5", 250 pounds, she: 5' nothin' and 80 pounds.) 'til his bed broke. Anyway, he would always eat in his room, and not bring the the dishes out, so, eventually, ALL the dishes and silverware were gone, and he was gone on some tweaker bender for days, so I decided to go into his room and get a plate so I could eat. First off, the smell was an abomination - like, a combo of feet, ass and rotting food. The was mold in EVERY plate and dish. I thought I would try to just grab one dish set, so that I could have a plate/cup/spoon to just hide from him, but then, a lizard appeared and HISSED at me. I'm not just some pussy girl, either, but that was a little too much. I had him move out. Oh, and then there's the one about the junkies (who were supposedly clean) I livedwith, that would leave balloons in the toilet, and shoot bloody syringes all over the bathroom. At least they went to jail quickly.
Good times, good times....

In college I had a housemate who was into firearms. One day while cleaning a rifle, it went off and the bullet went thru the window and hit a passing car. Next thing you know the cops came and arrested him and found 17 other pieces of firearm of different sizes and capabilities in his room.

He was arrested but posted bail. His friends threw a party for him and he got quite drunk. While driving home, he was stopped and was charged with DUI. The cop also found a handgun in the glove compartment.

He was re-arrested and was charged with 22 different crimes/misdemeanors. He was sent to a prison somewhere in Colorado. After serving about 6 months, he was deported back to his country of origin. Funnily, he got off free eventhough his country has a death sentence for firearm possesion. Lastly, I heard he became quite a succesful pimp.

I have sooo many roommate and house stories (like the time I was exposed to TB) that it is hard to pick just 1, but the best is as follows:

My housemates encountered a big problem, forcing us all to move suddenly, so I was forced to find housing, and quick. I tried many places, including one with a completely bald lady (wearing a bad wig sideways) and her husband who drove a 1/4 scale model train around the neighborhood, but finally decided on a place with people about my age, whom I already knew that seemed nice. It wasn't.

After moving in, I discovered that their waterheater leaked constantly into their living room, causing a large crop of mushrooms to grow in the corner, behind the couch. The dog peed everywhere, and no one ever cleaned it up. Two of the roommates would get drunk at all hours and dance loudly like monkeys. The other roommate kept her STD medications on the bathroom counter, and yet still would constantly hint at the possibility of us sleeping together. The last straw was when she came out of the shower naked and walked into my room, "by accident" of course.

Apologies for the multiple posts.
The story wasn't THAT good.

Don't sell yourself short, CJ. "I did not do the manly thing" was worth reading multiple times.

Everybody – these are fantastic. We'll probably highlight some in a wrap-up post in the near future.

Like about 75 percent of the population, the roommate that I was randomly assigned my freshman year of college didn't end up a life-long friend. Here's why:

She hated college. To compensate, she holed up in our small jail-cell room microwaving frozen home-cooked meals her mom would FedEx to her overnight. Her extreme depression and constant presence eventually drove a wedge between us, especially because she resented how much I was enjoying college life. Still, we co-existed somewhat peacefully until about a week before the school year ended.

It was then that she decided I had been purposely hanging up on her mother whenever she called. (A charge I vehemently deny to this day. At least the "purposely" part.) This led her to do annoying things like play her stereo at its loudest volume whenever I put on the TV, or vice versa. Stupid roommate crap.

So, though I don't remember this precise moment, I do concede it's possible that I was overheard at some point saying, "Sometimes I just want to kill her." She decided that I truly meant this overused expression of anger, and went to our RA about it. I subsequently found myself being questioned by the RA as to whether I truly meant said roommate bodily harm.

So I moved into a friend's room down the hall for the last few days of the school year. At that point, I wouldn't have put it past her to kill herself and frame me just out of spite.

During college my roommate, Kevin, had a job as a waiter at a local chain restaurant. He was an idiot, I and my other roommate suspected he had a coke problem. He'd get home around 2am and fix something to eat and fall asleep watching tv.

One night I woke up smelling his cooking, mmmm, that smells good, rolled over. Woke up later, holy sh*t, that smells BAD, flickering lights illuminating my door, FIRE. I felt the door, it was cool. Opened the door, a large saucepan on the stove, flames coming out the top about a foot. Kevin was deep frying onion rings, but fell asleep watching tv.

I screamed, "Hey a**hole!!" Kevin came in and threw the pot in the sink.

"DON'T"

Kevin turned the water on. A large fireball engulfed the kitchen. Kevin was on fire. I dumped a large box of baking soda on the fire and it went out. Kevin had burns on his arm.

My other roommate comes in and says, "what are you a**holes doing?!"

I just had to laugh and went to bed.

I once shared an apartment with someone who had put out a want ad. He was really nice, but very private and strange. Judging by what I saw in his side of the fridge and cabinets, he had one of the poorest, nutrient-deprived diets imaginable (Wonder Bread, baloney, Miracle Whip, sodas, Drakes cakes and other sweets, the whole nine). He was super-thin, and I got the impression that he may have suffered from an illness.

His former apartment-mate, who may or may not have been his lover at one point, was a weird guy as well. One morning, my girlfriend at the time was sleeping in my room (I'd already gone to work). I had his old room, and this guy swung by and came into the room where she was sleeping (I'd already left for work), to get a lamp or something that he'd left in the room. She freaked out, of course.

Also, my mom told me that his phone manner was very brusque, to the point of rudeness. Whenever she called, he always picked up the phone and sounded exasperated.

The capper, though, was this one evening, when he came out of his bedroom (where he spent the majority of his time, watching TV). He was on the phone with his brother or a friend or something and freaking out. He had some sort of I.V. tube-contraption hooked up to himself, which I don't think I'd known about previously. He gave some sort of explanation as to what the problem was that required this device, but I can't remember what it was. He was panicking because one of the wires had gotten unhooked, and the person on the other line was trying to talk him down and help him out. Apparently this person on the other line advised him to solicit my help. At this point, I was a bit freaked out myself, and I tried to help him out, but I wasn't very successful. I seem to recall advising him to call 911 or his doctor.

The upside was that I basically had the run of the place, but it was sort of a dump, with fleas and some cockroaches, very little natural light, and at one point a raccoon made it's way from under the house and into the cabinet under the kitchen sink (the apartment was on a creek, and the moisture had rotted away everything around the pipes).

That was the first and last time I lived with a complete stranger.