Rage

The poet whis­pers it qui­etly, and the care­less ear misses it, hid­ing there in the back­ground… “Anger is a Gift.”

Last Friday night, my room­mate began to cook some fish fil­lets. You know the ones, the breaded cod you buy by the bag­ful. The ones which take 15 min­utes, go fine with tar­tar sauce, but are kinda dry. They fin­ished cook­ing, but he was too drunk to remem­ber them. The next morn­ing I woke up cough­ing, and dis­cov­ered the two lit­tle lumps of coal in the skil­let in the oven, which had been left on all night. My room­mate snor­ing loudly in his room, bliss­fully unaware of what I only caught on my way out the door to work.

The oven door’s hinges were bent out by a pre­vi­ous occu­pant, so it never comes within a half-inch of actu­ally clos­ing. This means it will fill the apart­ment with smokey steam even while tended. It’s also why I have not used it. Something to look for when apart­ment hunt­ing, since no land­lord ever fixes any­thing the first time. It’s also worth not­ing that my room­mate is not on any lease, and I’m let­ting him stay there for free. That also means I’m respon­si­ble for any dam­ages that exist, which I was start­ing to worry about given my roommate’s propen­sity to pretty much set dirty food refuse down wher­ever he was sitting.

Fast for­ward to last night (a Wednesday), and my room­mate is get­ting drunk again. I inter­rupt his YouTube time wastage to setup Xgl and com­piz on the Ubuntu par­ti­tion I had cre­ated for him, and he starts to put fish in the same skil­let, and into the stove. I remind him of his last drunken fish escapade, and he swears that it will not hap­pen again. I note that he is drunk out of his mind, and what hap­pened the last time. I fin­ish the Xgl con­fig­u­ra­tion and install the BZFlag 2.0.8 LTS pack­age I had lay­ing around, and then slump off to bed.

Around an hour later, fail­ing to sleep, and give in and go to check if the oven is still on. If it is, that’s OK, though it would be extremely unset­tling to dis­cover that your room­mate is in the process of nearly burn­ing the house down in the exact the same way he did a week ago. If only.

I round the cor­ner into the Kitchen — hop­ing to check on the oven just on the other side — and dis­cover my room­mate stand­ing over the sink, piss­ing all over the counter. Quite lit­er­ally, all over the counter. Up onto the wall. On the dirty dishes. Everywhere. I can­not pos­si­bly describe my rage other than to note it began with “WHAT THE FUCK!?” and con­tin­ued on to “CIVILIZED HUMAN BEING;” the clos­est thing he offered to an expla­na­tion is “I’m fucked up.” I told him I wanted him out. It was true, at that moment I did want him to leave.

I wake up this morn­ing, and some­thing is off. I go to the bath­room and dis­cover black streaks on the white shirt I slept in. There’s a weird smell, but I’m still try­ing to fig­ure out what hap­pened to my clothes, which I just washed yes­ter­day. Immediately I’m think­ing “pen in the laun­dry.” But I can’t find any­thing else noti­ci­bly off about my clothes. The next thing I notice is some­thing black on the back of my fan. After that, it’s notic­ing that the air con­di­tioner seems black. Then its notic­ing the mass of soot on the front of the oven, above the door. Like the etched shadow of a nuclear vic­tim, it records for pos­ter­ity exactly where the now vapor­ized skil­let han­dle and fish fil­lets floated by.

My room­mate promises solumnly that it will be “spot­less” by the time I get home from work.

11 hours later, I return from work, and it’s been gone over with a wet paper towel. The sur­face crap is gone, leav­ing the “stuck-on” burn marks on the oven, a fine dust­ing of soot cov­er­ing every­thing, and the smeared soot marks on the tiles behind and to the side of the oven. There is a note explain­ing that he went to Wal-Mart to get clean­ing sup­plies. I cal­cu­late the time I was out of the apart­ment. I’m explod­ing. I decide that he will be out of the apart­ment by the end of the week­end. I con­sider four days more than fair at this point.

And so I decide to check a for­mer fuckup of his: Media (CDs, DVDs, etc.) that had ended up on his closet shelf, hav­ing migrated from a box in the front room. I fig­ured it was his girl­friend that put them there, so I just informed him that I had found my stuff in his closet, and I’d appre­ci­ate it if he could treat my stuff with a lit­tle more respect. Come to find today, there are plenty of my DVDs and CDs lay­ing among the food garbage and cig­a­rette butts on his car­pet. I begin to pick them up, and come across a picture.

The pic­ture is of me and my ex-girlfriend, and on the back is writ­ten a very per­sonal note to myself: a cat­a­logue of the lessons I learned, and mis­takes I would never make again. I had stuck this pic­ture in my CD book so I wouldn’t loose it, and it wouldn’t get ruined. It’s the only pic­ture I have of us together, and on the back is the clos­est thing to a “per­sonal diary” I have ever kept. He had found and read it ear­lier, and came in talk­ing some locker-room “yeah, right on, dude” bull­shit. I yelled at him then, and coldly instructed him to put the photo in my room. He kept it and it has appar­ently been float­ing around his bed­room ever since.

So I yelled louder than I have ever yelled before, and promptly began throw­ing his stuff out into the hall. Speakers, com­puter (not thrown, set down) fur­ni­ture, air-mattress, food, clothes, garbage, every­thing. Nearing the end, I call him up and inform him to return. He returns ten min­utes later with a three-pack of paper tow­els and some wire sponges. I reit­er­ate why exactly I am

I know I should feel like a heel for doing this. Hell, this whole entry is my own lit­tle self-justification (either that or a way to push all this venom onto you, gen­tle reader).

But I don’t feel sorry. I don’t even really feel guilty for throw­ing him into the street less than 24 hours after jok­ing around with him. The cigarette-ash-and-moldy-tv-dinner ambiance which he extended over not only his own room but the front room. The dirty clothes scat­tered about the entire apart­ment. The spilt ravi­oli sauce on his bed­room floor, still not cleaned up. The requir­ing the door remain unlocked so he can avoid set­tling his debt with the land­lord (and thus sign­ing onto the lease). That’s the back­story. If you think I’ve a mind to deal with that stuff and the events of the last 24 hours, on top of my work sched­ule of 9 hours a day of tech sup­port, oth­ers’ incom­petance, and worth­less meet­ings pre­clud­ing the attain­ment of Programming Zen, you are sadly, sadly mistaken.