Prior to coming to college, I’d never had to share a room with anyone in my life. Maybe that makes me spoiled and pampered. Despite my many epic inadequacies created by my privileged West Boca upbringing, I like to think that I’m not a particularly bad roommate. None of my stuff smells bad. I keep my part of the room generally tidy. I listen to music with headphones. I’m accommodating about when my roommates would like to go to sleep. All of these things come very naturally to me.

So why the fuck is one of my roommates so thoroughly incapable of having the common decency to take up even a few of these practices? I get that he probably had his overbearing mother wiping his ass every step of his life up until now, but that’s no excuse for the following offenses to what I’ll hereby dub The Guidelines for Ethical Roommate Behavior:

  • Sheets and pillowcases apparently don’t need to be washed more than once per semester. This, given you sweat a lot in your sleep, is completely disgusting.
  • Similarly disgusting is the laundry basket full of dirty clothes in his closet that seemingly never empties itself. My desk, unfortunately, is right next to the side of the room with the closets, so the aroma of his unwashed clothes ever so pleasantly wafts towards my desk 24 hours a day.
  • I like to think that, after almost a year of living together, I’ve reached a point with my two roommates where we can change clothes in the room. It’s not awkward. But what is awkward is when one of my roommate’s socially retarded friends comes into the room wearing nothing but his baggy boxers and lounges around. NOT FUCKING OKAY. And he proceeded to sass me when I asked him if he wouldn’t mind putting on some goddamn pants.
  • Guild Wars, it turns out, has some annoying sound effects. In all fairness, and despite playing with game sounds turned off, I’m sure World of Warcraft does, too. My roommate wouldn’t know that, though, because I always use headphones when I’m at my computer. This concept, however, seems to have evaded his understanding, given I have to hear explosions, whirrs, dings, swooshes, and (worst of all) the banter of his Guild Wars guildmates at all hours of the day blaring out of his computer’s speakers.
  • When your roommates are asleep and you have to leave the room, it seems totally logical to close the fucking door behind you, so the hallway noises don’t wake them up. APPARENTLY NOT IN THE SCREWED UP UNIVERSE IN WHICH MY ROOMMATE RESIDES. My class-free mornings are spent in an agitated half-sleep, with strands of the Tyra Banks Show (which the maintenance people watch all day in the lounge adjacent to my room) weaving in and out of my dreams. Disturbing.
  • What cell phone developer thought it would be a good idea to have key presses trigger musical tones and cymbal crashes? Apparently the one that made my roommate’s infernal phone. In addition to having the most agonizing techno ringtone, every time he types a text message, I’m subjected to an illogically loud electronic symphony.
  • There’s a bathroom right across the hall from my room. I can sit at my desk for hours, get up for 30 seconds to pee, and come back to find that my roommate left while I was emptying my bladder and locked me out. This isn’t such a big deal. But what IS a big deal is being locked out when going to shower. IF I LEAVE THE ROOM NAKED WITH A TOWEL, ODDS ARE I’M GOING TO FUCKING COME BACK SOON AND YOU SHOULDN’T LOCK ME OUT. TWICE.
  • Mario Party at three in the morning? False. Just… false.
  • Talking incessantly about sex is generally an indicator that you’re not having any. Asking me to bring you back handfuls of glow in the dark condoms from a party is just gross, not to mention wasteful. Save the neon prophylactics for people who are actually going to use them.

Have I tried to discuss some of these things with him, in the hopes of resolving them? Yes. Is posting about them on LiveJournal passive-aggressive and bitchy? Yes. But it’s better than my alternate plan of action, which would probably involve taking a shit on his keyboard. Which, needless to say, he guiltlessly (and loudly) types on at obscene hours of the morning.