Roommate Chronicles 1: The Ghoul

My first roommate was a weirdo. She was actually a good roommate though, probably the only one of the many roommates I’ve had over the years that I actually fucks with. We shared a double in the least expensive residence hall during the first semester of our freshman year of college. The room was so small, if we were each laying on our beds (which were on opposite sides of the room) and outstretched our arms, we could’ve held hands. However, somehow we managed to not be tripping over each other.

She was white so “cultural difference” were definitely a concern of mine at first, like hygiene and ya know...general white aggression, but she actually bathed regularly and never said or did anything even remotely racist. So that was refreshing. I think we got along pretty well because we were both pretty chill; neither of us had many friends, we didn’t talk much or go out on the weekends (unlike the rest of the girls on our floor), and we respected each other's space.

I say she was a weirdo because she would randomly paint her face like a skeleton or zombie. Like, she did it constantly. I remember the first time I saw her all made up. I was waking up from a midday nap and, imagine my horror, opening my eyes only to find a skeleton faced white girl walking around the room. And it wasn’t even like she had the whole emo/goth aesthetic going on. She was just a regular degular basic white girl from the neck down with her face painted like a ghoul.

My roommate was a cult classic movie buff, particularly fond of shitty old horror flicks so I guess she was practicing her horror movie makeup skills. She had enough DVDs to open her own rental store and would watch The Evil Dead over and over again. I watched it with her one night and it wasn’t really my cup of tea. This was also the only roommate I’ve ever had that almost walked in on me having sex. I played it super smooth by hiding under the covers for the rest of the night while she and my boyfriend at the time talked like civilized human beings. I guess I was a weirdo too.

Unfortunately, my roommate hated being at this school. She would be crying about as frequently as she was turning her face into a monster. Which was super awkward for an emotionally inept person like myself who doesn’t know how to deal with other people’s emotions. She transferred to a different school after that first semester and my roommate situations went drastically downhill from there. In comparison to the nightmares I lived with after her, living with the ghoul was a walk in the park. It’s true, you never know what you’ve got until it’s gone...