It was 3:30am, Saturday morning. I had a lady friend over, we were both sleeping. Well, I was in and out until I heard the front door fly open. My former roommate, Jack was supposed to be sleeping over at his latest conquest's apartment…it was his birthday. He approaches my room with silence, right before he knocks. I couldn’t believe it, or…I could believe. This is a normal occurrence for me. He keeps knocking until I answer the door.

“I need to talk to you.” Jack says.

I just laugh and walk to his room, he closes the door behind me.

“I don’t know what to do and I know this sounds crazy,” Jack says while fidgeting, and pacing a bit.

“ Dude, just say it. What’s up?” I say back.

“I need you to go, can’t you and Amanda sleep at her place tonight?” He asks.

I bend over laughing. “Are you serious? I think my laughing answers that question,” I say.

After another five minutes of explaining to me that the girl he is trying to hook up will not sleep with him if another person is in the apartment…the apartment! Not in the same room, not in the next room, but the same apartment. He tells me it’s okay and to go back to sleep. On the way out he bribes me again, and laughs after while telling me that he’s just kidding.

“No you’re not,” I laugh and say back.

“I know,” he says.

I’ve become friends with Jack, and maybe that’s a problem with roommates. Andrew Monaco, a 20 year old student, living and working in Santa Monica agrees. “My roommate was a friend of mine since the 4th grade…so this is what roommates really do to each other,” Andrew says. The adjustment is hard when converting a friend into a roommate. “Within the first couple of days, all the compromise, agreements are out the door. And everything you hate about that person comes out in a couple of days, and it just builds.”

Being a roommate in the end, is a business transaction. It is completely based on money whether people would like to admit it. When that person stops paying, they have to leave, and vice versa. So a big problem is that when roommates become friendly, and then friends, they stop being firm with each other.

It’s the same reason why most jobs do not recommend that employees date or become close friends…especially managers. “At one point, I thought that the fact that we were friends made him take advantage of me,” Andrew says. My roommate, Jack will say things like, “you’re good at that kind of stuff,” when he wants me to wash the dishes or clean…anything. He’ll also openly admit that he doesn’t know how to do anything crafty, you know, like put a new shower head on, toast bread, or straighten up the closet, or fold a blanket. He thinks this is an excuse so that I’ll volunteer to do everything…and it kind of works. “He never cleaned up shit, we knew we couldn’t have people over late at night and he did it anyway. It just seemed he did things out of spite, to see my reaction and to piss me off,” Andrew says. “We even got robbed because of him having people in and out all the time.”

It’s not easy to yell at someone all the time, because it is tiring and it just gets old. A lot of times I’ll clean something up, or do something because I don’t have the energy to ask Jack. “You’re in a situation where you can’t just say ‘fuck off bro, I’m going home.’ You can’t get away from them and let things cool down, you see them all the time,” Andrew says. So instead of yelling at them, resentment grows and it eventually fills up till explosion point. “It just got to the point where we were fed up with each other and no matter how much we tried, it was just done,” Andrew says.

Wow, it sounds like a relationship. Isn’t that what being a roommate is to some degree. Instead of an intimate partner that you live with, it’s someone you pay money to live with. Love…Money. Love…Money. Those two are equally important on many peoples list.

Jack does a lot of positive things, but the negative points always seem to overshadow them. It’s just a fact of life…turn on the news, for every positive story, there are 3 negatives ones. Yes he does do good things, he gives me rides, he’s entertaining, he tries giving me stuff all the time. But it’s hard to remember such things when he stops next to every girl on the road for their name, marital status and then they’re number before they’re done answering the marital status question.

Or the time where two days after I anonymously cooked him and his conquest dinner, and not just dinner. Orange scallops over baby spinach, with red skinned potatoes, he tries calling me out for it being my turn to take the garbage out.

Every time I have to use the restroom, he’ll stop what he’s doing and usually motion for the door as well. I’m in no mood to argue over the bathroom every time so I patiently give it to him. He then wants to argue over why he thinks he deserves to use it first. I have to stop him from arguing, just to get him to use the bathroom so I can eventually use it.

Let’s not forget that Jack and I met because a girl friend of mine wanted me to come along to be her buffer because she didn’t completely trust Jack. We eventually became roommates…funny how things work out.

Jack and I are currently on pretty good terms. We have more of a brotherly relationship, which is a good and bad thing when it comes to living with someone. He’s like the lazy younger brother who doesn’t do anything positive for the place, and I’m like the older brother that tells him, “do something positive for the place…anything Jack, please.”

Andrews stint with his friend as a roommate didn’t pan out so well. “We kept picking at each other and he just didn’t pay rent one month. He moved back east and I had to cover his share for a month,” Andrew says.

Having a horrible roommate has a huge positive though, and that’s because it makes you a fantastic roommate yourself. “Now, with my new roommate, I keep the place spotless,” Andrew says. “I call my new roommate out in a second to prevent that shit from happening again.”

It’s interesting because I bet if you ask Andrew's roommate his side of the story he may tell you something completely different. He might tell you that Andrew was a disaster and impossible to live with. Yet again, Andrew has a successful living situation with his current roommate. Just like if Jack and I went our separate ways, after reading these complaints, you’d ask Jack how I was as a roommate and he’ll probably tell you that I slept with a girl that he was seeing, and he’s probably right…who the hell am I to talk?