A Textual Relationship

A girl – me – lays in bed relaxing and reading a book one evening. Kushka the Mystery Cat, stinky and cruel as per usual, crawls over the girl and hisses spiteful things at her while she tries to read.

On the nightstand her phone chimes indicating an incoming text message. She puts her book down and looks at her phone.

Madame X: Are you having internet signal?

The girl (me) replies: Uh… yes I don’t think there is a problem with it.

The back and forth continues…..

Madame X: You have box in room, yes?

the box she is referring to is this:

The girl (me): Yes

Madame X: I need eight number number on bottom of box. My internets are not working.

The girl (me): Wait – are you here at the apartment?

Madame X: Yes

The girl (me): Why don’t you come in my room and get it? I don’t mind.

Madame X: I am entertaining guest. Just give me eight number number.

End scene.

**********************************************************

Cliffs Notes to this text conversation:

1. My roommate is fucking crazy. She is in the room right next to me and refuses to meet me face to face. Hi. I have been living with you since the first of November. Fucking hello. Do you have any idea what I look like? Do you care? Oh, that’s right. No you fucking don’t.

2. I am crazier than she is. Not only am I putting up with a roommate who refuses to have face to face contact with me even a single time, I am living with a rude cat and picking up after it and crawling under my bed to get the eight number number off the wireless router for my rude roommate when I would rather be reading my book. The characters in the story are more real and familiar to me than the person I share a fucking toilet with.

3. Hey… Madame X… it’s eight DIGIT number. Not eight number number. Like, really?

4. How long can this possibly go on? I am seriously considering moving.

It has been suggested I do this:

I have considered it. But honestly I think Madame X would come home and walk right over me to get into her room so it wouldn’t do any good. Not sure what the next step is to take here. I don’t think I can legally install a camera in my apartment.

The Chi-Lites version not the MC Hammer version

I was going to do an entry about the cabinet filled with rolls of toilet paper that my invisible roommate keeps but then she did something so bizarre that we will just have to save that topic for another time. Don’t worry – I have pictures.

Here’s what happened: I was standing at the kitchen sink washing my dishes. The way the kitchen is set up, your back is to the doorway so you can’t see what is happening behind you. A don would not like this. I do not like this. Especially because this guy travels in stealth mode and can turn you to stone like Medusa if you look him directly in the face:

I have dropped entire plates of food when turning away from the counter and being shocked by his sudden presence. Woof. Anyway….

So I am washing the dishes, humming a song that doesn’t exist, when I hear feet moving rapidly in the hallway behind me and then suddenly the front door slams shut.

I turned to make sure what I thought I heard had actually happened.

“Yep. She gone,” Kushka hissed from the windowsill in the livingroom.

If you aren’t following the story that my ears and mystery cat have told here, allow me to break it down for you:

The water was running as I was washing the dishes. Also I was humming. These two sounds are a clear indication that there is a person in the kitchen. Also there is no door to the kitchen, only a doorway. As far as I know, Madame X is not blind or deaf so she had to of heard me and seen me as she went past to go out to where ever it was that she was going to. So she heard me, saw me and chose to run to the door and GTFO instead of saying “Hi, are you my roommate? My name is _______.” like any normal person would do if they are living with someone for almost three months and have yet to meet them. We share a CRAPPER, Madame X. Get with it.

WHY IS MY ROOMMATE HIDING FROM ME???

I am a very nice person, Madame X. I am a good roommate. I scrub the toilet. I take care of the cat that lives with us that doesn’t belong to either of us. I clean up after myself. I am making this living space as positive for us as I can.

Why are you avoiding me?

I would like to quote song lyrics now that make me think of Madame X. Please to enjoy and if you know the tune, please sing along:

“I see her face everywhere I go – on the street and even at the picture show. Have you seen her? Tell me have you seen her?

Oh I hear her voice as the cold winds blow – in the sweet music on my radio. Have you seen her? Tell me have you seen her?

Why… oh why did she leave and go away? Ooooh. I’ve been used to having someone to lean on and I’m lost. Baby I’m lost.

Have you seen her? Tell me have you seen her?”

Earlier I likened Kushka the mystery cat to Medusa. Now I am starting to think maybe Madame X is Medusa. Maybe she is protecting me by not letting us have face to face contact. Maybe her last roommate saw her face, turned to stone and that’s why she needed a new roommate. We don’t have a bug problem in our apartment like a lot of city apartments do. Maybe her snakes are keeping the creatures out.

Actually, I think it would be pretty fucking badass to have Medusa as a roommate. All those snakes would be a wonderful way of keeping out prowlers. And if someone asks me to describe my roommate it would be super fun to be able to say “She’s a real New York freak show. Head full of snakes, man. She’s something else!” Of course I would have to actually meet her to confirm if she is, indeed, Medusa.

There’s two of us playing hide and seek and only one of us wants to and it isn’t me. It is Friday the 13th. We are well into our third month of living together. 73 days. 73 days of “try and find me”.

This is fucking insane.

Every Day Is A Gift. That’s Why They Call It The Present.

I had been out late on a particular night this week. When I returned to my apartment that I share [with a roommate that I have never seen for going on 61 days now whom I refer to as Madame X] I was accosted by Kushka [the cat that neither of us owns that lives in the apartment].

Now before I go on, I have to make it clear: this blog is TRUE. I have been asked recently by some twitter followers if this is for real or not. It is. It is completely real. Every entry has been accurate to what has happened, from the hiding to the hammering to the rotten bananas, in real-time up to and including this date.

The only things that may be slightly off are the conversations I have with Kushka. One can really never prove that animals can speak but I can hear this cat when I am in his presence and he is clearly gangsta. I mean look at this face:

You ever wake up and have that laying on you? When you haven’t been drinking? Exactly. It that even a cat? What the fuck is that? It’s like a bat face with a 70′s shag carpet for a body. That smells like cat food gravy. He is asleep in my room on my fluffy bed resting on my boobie without permission and is STILL frowning. So I think we can all agree that when he addresses me he is not being polite. I can only interpret what I *believe* he is saying to me. And I believe when he talks to me he is being a Grade A Prick. Make sense? Okay, on with what happened.

So I get home late, Madame X is not there. I know this because every single light is on in the apartment. I have added this issue to the list of things we must have at our first roommate meeting which is currently scheduled for the date of NEVER. Kushka is at the end of the hallway glaring at me like the twins from The Shining and ordering, “Come see this crazy shit happening outside your door, bitch!”

“Kushka, seriously. You need to stop calling me a bitch,” I said while turning off a total of four lights burning for no reason whatsoever for who knows how long costing god knows what at these bullshit Con-Ed prices. “I am the only one around here who gives you any attention and I don’t even own you or know you and I still clean up behind you after you shit. I am the opposite of bitch to you. You need to be nicer to me.”

“Fuck off!” he snarled, “and follow me!” He raced around the corner.

I followed Kushka and when I got to my door I stopped in my tracks. Frozen like a deer caught in headlights. Shocked. Much like this kid:

No. I did not discover that Darth Vader was my father. What I came upon was much more shocking. Madame X had left a present outside my door!!

The card read: “Merry Christmas! For you!!” and inside the bag was a Starbucks coffee set consisting of a mug and a packet of grounds.

“Is this for me?” I asked Kushka.

“Well it ain’t mine, bitch! That shit gives me the runs!” and he ran off to go lick his crotch somewhere in the darkness.

Friends, this gift gives me many new clues about my roommate that hides from me.

1. She is not Jewish.

2. She does not know my name.

3. She is thoughtful. And I am not. Because I didn’t buy her a thing.

It is now the final day of the year. If I can get through to tomorrow I will have made it through three major holidays living with someone who I have never seen. January may keep her indoors more as it gets very cold here and there aren’t any major holidays keeping her on the scene. Perhaps I will meet her in the next few days. At this point I almost don’t want to because this is so insane it is actually fun but it’s clear that it isn’t that she dislikes me so much as she just wants privacy so I don’t fear her or feel uncomfortable anymore.

Her act of kindness makes me think maybe she is like a angel or some kind of fairy….. is she maybe…. possibly… the tooth fairy and I am not allowed to see her???

Anyone got a toof loose? We could set up a camera in my room and put it under my pillow.

An Anthology Of Roommates

As a New Yorker…. wait… not even… as a HUMAN BEING…. this lifetime has caused me to have my share of a roommate or two, or three, or four…. or more. Let’s look back in time.

• I had a roommate named Patti YEARS ago. We were co-bartenders at this shit hole of a dive where the bar opened at 10am and the regulars were there waiting before we unlocked the doors. We shared the apartment over the bar. It was exceptionally convenient but also exceptionally insane. Living 6 feet and a doorway away from your job can cause problems. You can never call in sick. And when someone else does and the boss man calls you he will know if you are available since he can hear you walking around upstairs. Also when you are not at work you still feel like you are. Patti was a bit of a hell raiser. She drank on the job (as many bartenders do) but she was an angry drunk. I had to stop many a bar fight between Patti and the patrons. She would then carry this anger into our living situation at our apartment upstairs. It was a tough ride with Patti. It didn’t last long… 6 months maybe. And then I had to GTFO of that situation. And, lucky for me, this was pre-facebook/cell phone/pager. Once I was gone, I was gone. I never heard from her again.
• My roommate, Jennifer, when I was in my early twenties was actually a lot of fun. We weren’t just roommates – we were friends. Interesting we went to the same high school but never talked to each other then. We became friends after the fact and had a sweet little condo apartment in a complex with a lot of young up and comers. We bought our furniture at yard sales and made the space shabby-chic before that was even a term. We cooked everything with Sazón and did a lot of clubbing. On New Years Eve we went out dancing in fabulous red dresses and made friends with some cute guys who owned a pizzeria in the same plaza as the club. After we rang in the new year Jennifer, the boys and I went to the pizza place and they made us pizza while we picked out songs on the jukebox free of charge. We danced to great music and had one of the best nights of our lives. I kissed this beautiful pizza-boy on the counter for the better part of two hours and to this day I remember the magic. Jennifer and I split ways after I moved to Florida for a few years for school and work but we still stay in touch after all this time. She’s a mother now. And I still really love pizza.
• I had two roommates for two years on the Upper West Side. One was a retired actress, the other a rich widow. Both were in their 70′s and had a passionate love affair with Bombay. These two old broads LOVED to drink. And they were into hide-and-seek, I think, because they would stash bottles of Bombay everywhere there was a nook or cranny in the apartment. They would hide bottles of it all over the apartment: in couch cushions, under the bathroom sink, behind the bookshelf, in closets. It was fun having roommates that were so much older than me because they had tremendous life experience and were wonderful storytellers. One of the ladies in particular, Carol the actress, was just a firecracker. She was incredibly exciting to be around because she was from the days of the Ziegfeld Girls and completely full of life. But the living situation went sour when the other roommates granddaughter was using the apartment (when the three of us were out-of-town) to bring home random guys and have sex with them all over the apartment. When that was discovered it was time to pack my bags and go. I can’t be living in a place where someone is trying to get their funk on in my bed when I am not a part of it.
• I had a roommate situation that lasted 30 days. She moved in on the 1st and by the 2nd day I was like “Oh HELL no!”. It was a drunken, violent, filthy, lie-filled, emotionally abusive situation. She made camp in the living room because she didn’t own a bed, lost her house keys twice causing me twice to have to replace the locks and then one night, after a drunken escapade, left her house key STILL in the keyhole after coming home and passing out on the couch. She would write threatening notes and shove them under my bedroom door on some nights and on others she would slam the hallway door repeatedly and scream profanities and challenge me to fist fights. I actually ended up having to go to the police about it when she sent me texts saying she was going to kill me and had to have a report filed against her. On the 30th of the month she was packing her things and gone. Where is she now? I have no idea but thankfully she is out of my life.
• I started living with someone who I found thru a sublet situation on a Craigslist ad. The rent was a steal for the location. When I went to see the apartment, and saw the size of the room and how much light came in through the windows, I wrote a check for the security deposit right there on the spot. The sub-letter told me I would have a roommate. It has been 53 days and I have yet to meet her. She hides from me when she hears me entering the apartment or coming out of my room. There is also a cat living in the apartment now and it belongs to neither myself or said roommate [who I now refer to as Madame X because I do not even know her name]. My roommate survives on orange soda and the occasional rotten banana. She is really into hair products but seems to have no other passions besides avoiding me and not feeding the cat that lives in the apartment. I am still living with this particular roommate. I know I should probably leave because it is creepy but in New York City it’s all about location and at this price I simply have to ride it out like the crimson wave. Plus she has never threatened to kill me and as far as I know she has not made funky times with anyone in my room.

Which situation do YOU think is most fascinating?

I Find Tinsel Distracting

It was so cute when I thought it would be difficult to make it until Thanksgiving without ever meeting my roommate. Remember that? So many weeks ago. It was all so new and strange.

It is almost Christmas now. It is also almost Hanukkah. Kwanzaa is on its way, too. And I have gotten so accustomed to the fact that my roommate does not want any interaction with me that I would be willing to bet you 8 candles and a lump of coal that I won’t meet Madame X before all of the December celebrations are through. We got through the Virgin of Guadalupe celebration without face-to-face contact so I don’t see why Boxing Day should be any different.

Which brings up this interesting fact: I have no idea if Madame X has any religious beliefs.

There have been no halls decked on her part for this festive time of year. I don’t know if she’s Christian, Jewish, Shinto or Scientologist. She leaves no signs to indicate any practice. There is nothing on any of her belongings that she leaves about our common areas in our apartment that would indicate a belief in anything of another realm – her key chain bears no cross and there are no dumb placards in the kitchen that say “Bless this Mess”. For this I am thankful.

For my part, I have clearly made my blended religious positions known. Siddhartha is represented in multiple ways both in my room and over the doors leading to it. My library of books would leave no question to the fact that I am interested in ancient practices of Paganism and tree-worship. I light incense during times of meditation. No stockings hung or dreidles spun but I get my spiritual groove on.

Who is this person I am living with? What does she stand for or believe in? Is she one of those people who lives in this world just going day-to-day, working and sleeping, without having a passion for something or a stance on something one way or another? She leaves no footprint of opinion on anything.

You know how you can tell a lot about a person by the possessions they keep? Well in this situation, the only things I know about Madame X is that she wears expensive shoes, has a thing for orange soda and avoids me like I am the devil trying to steal her soul.

Happy festivus, Madame X. Maybe I will meet you before the new year.

Avoid (verb) refrain or stay away from, prevent

The other day I awoke from slumber and heard Madame X in the living room on her cell phone chatting about something in a language I did not understand. I smiled to myself.

She has friends.

I am so happy for her, I am thinking. I am so glad that she communicates with other people outside of herself. Her mysterious ways had me worried that she might be a recluse, or a Unabomber, or maybe one of the Jacksons.

Anyway, upon waking I felt a tingle in my nose and then, suddenly, out of nowhere and without warning, I sneezed.

Well… it wasn’t as dramatic as all that. I mean that lady up there is really going for it. Agreed? The sneeze I snoozed was lighter, more delicate. It was a dainty sneeze. It was a non-confrontrational sneeze.

Now get this – right after I sneezed Madame X ran to her room. 

Let’s review:

Madame X was happily chatting on her cell phone in the living room.

I woke up in my bedroom.

I sneezed.

Madame X took off like panties on prom night. Quick and dirty. 

It is clear to me now that she is purposefully avoiding me. My roommate – who I have never met and given no reason to make avoidance of – is avoiding me. How’s that?

Why would you live with someone and not want to know who they are???

Who was that shape in the shadows?

Whose is the face in the mask?

We are well into our second month here in the House of Strange. I have been co-habitating with a complete stranger (that I found through a Craigslist ad) and a strange cat (that I found sitting on my bed after taking a shower one day). Communication with Madame X (the roommate) has been minimal. Communication with Kushka (the cat that I have named thus) has been progressing.

Let us begin with Kushka. He loves me very much. He also hates me but I think this is just part of what cats do. That’s really all there is to say about that relationship.

Things with Madame X are not so black and white. She is much more confounding to me. She is a mystery. An enigma. She is actually here right now – this morning she was listening to music and when I opened my doors to go into the kitchen, her radio turned off and she began rustling around. Currently, she is hammering something either into the wall or burying something under the floorboards. I can’t be sure.

The domicile we co-rent is an interesting layout. It’s main feature is its incredible location… truly it’s the reason I am staying in such an uncomfortable living situation. I cannot beat the location for the price. But the apartment itself is kind of mysterious. It has long dark hallways and is very cavernous thanks to her odd placement of several wardrobes throughout the space. Many features are outdated but the ceilings are vaulted and it creates a wonderful sound for listening to music.

My room is magical. Once you get through the labyrinth of darkened alleys you arrive at my french doors which are curtained, much like a stage. When you enter the space, it is filled with jeweled trinkets, beaded pillows and various candles. I always have music playing because I love to sing. Because I do not have a closet, my clothing is displayed on a costume rack on one side of the room but it actually looks very nice thanks to my OCD – the clothing is color coordinated and it almost looks like a prop.

Actually as I sit here looking around my room, singing to some music and listening to her banging through the wall, I am reminded of a suggestion given to me the other day about who my roommate might be. Let’s list the facts:

A roommate who is constantly hiding from me as if she does not want me to see her face.

Darkened, cavernous hallways filled with wardrobe closets and high vaulted ceilings with wonderful acoustics like a theaterhouse.

French doors with curtains like a stage leading to my personal quarters.

Candles lit everywhere with a rack of costumes to one side of my space.

My constant feeling of entrapment and aloneness which I help to ease the pain of through vocalization.

Yes… it is very possible that THIS is my roommate:

It is completely possible that I am living with The Phantom of the Opera. Sing to me, I think we may have figured it out! She is always out late, seeing theater in box five perhaps? She is always hiding behind closed doors and often banging around in the darkness. She exudes a feeling of sadness and despair.

Holy shit. It’s true. I am living with the Angel of fucking Music.

I do have an odd sense of calm at night. I sleep well. There is an edge to this situation yet I do not feel fear. Yes. I am Christine Daae and I am living with Erik the Opera-Ghost.

Awesome.

38 days. We have lived together for 38 days and have never seen each other. Is this even possible? Can this be a record? Should I call the folks at Guiness? Damn.

Three-Oh

I’ve now lived with my roommate for 30 days without ever meeting her. Madame X and I are separated by a single wall and door and have somehow managed to not see one another for 720 hours straight.

It’s clear there is a need for distance with Madame X and the person she is living with. This, to me, is totally understandable. I’ve had some crazy roommate situations and so I understand the need for space. The only thing is I wish there was a way to always know if she is actually in the apartment or not sometimes. There are certain activities I prefer to participate in when I am completely alone in our apartment, rather than semi-alone with someone lurking and hiding in the shadows.

I really enjoy cooking but when I make something in the kitchen I like to have my music on and make it an experience. I do not want to disturb Madame X with this behavior so I try to only cook my big meals (which I only do a couple of times a week) when she is not there.

Sometimes a person needs to… ahem… you know… in the loo. I require serious privacy for this. Like even the damn cat cannot be in the room even though he always tries following me everywhere. That is a no-zone. I don’t want to watch him drop a deuce and I seriously have no need for him to supervise me. And I don’t like anyone in the vicinity. It would be nice to know she is absolutely not at home when these horrible experiences have to take place.

Occasionally I do this hand stand thing. I re-charge my brain by turning myself upside down and leaning against the wall for several minutes. It helps me think. It gets my blood flowing at a better pace. It’s like the opposite of a nap with the same effect. My room isn’t designed well for these hand stands. One wall is full of windows, the other is full of doors, and then the other walls just don’t have the space I need to execute these hand stands so I do them in the living room. Yes, Kushka the cat watches. I really don’t want her to meet me while I am upside down so I really don’t want her home while I am doing these hand stands. After we meet, if we meet, then it’s fine but…. there are a few scenarios where I DON’T want to meet her for the first time. Hand standing is one of them.

Masturbating would be another. I really would like to not meet her for the first time while either one of us is doing that. Awkward. So I try to only do that when I am sure I am alone. It’s the 10′s… you’d think technology would come up with a quieter device for such things but, alas, no.

Maybe I will leave a note for Madame X discussing how we will know if the other is there so that we can each do our weird things that we need to do as people only when we are absolutely sure we are alone. Maybe we can get some kind of “Doctor is In!/Doctor is Out!” kind of thing that we can flip up or down when we leave or arrive.

We need a system. As my system has needs.

Questions for Madame X and The Mystery Cat

Here are a series of questions and conversations I would ask and have with my roommate, Madame X, if I ever had the chance to meet her:

1. Why do you hide from me?

2. What is your deal with orange soda? Do you quench your thirst with anything besides carbonated beverages? I once had a blockage in my bile duct that had to be corrected with a tiny incision using a microscopic blade that was sent down my throat. This blockage was caused by drinking too many Slurpees, specifically from the over-consumption of carbonated beverages. It was a frightening experience and a painful recovery. The moral here: slow down on the fucking soda.

3. Are you using my razor in the shower? Sometimes I feel it has moved. Should I hide it in my room to prevent you from using it the way I already hide my toothbrush from you? The way you already hide from me?

4. Do you blog about me, too?

5. Are you this person?:

Here are a series of questions and conversations I have with Mystery Cat who lives with Madame X and I:

1. How come you think you have a right to everything I eat? You’re like the Bizarro World version of Madame X: she eats nothing and you want it all. Also, you are always wet around the face. Talk to your owner, whoever she is, and tell her to stop feeding you gravy-based food. You have too much fur around your face to be face down in a bowl full of gravy. You have more hair coming out of your ears than my 87-year-old grandfather. You need dry kibble. DRY. Also, you smell like pee-pee. I am trying to like you but you really stink.

2. Stop eating my plants.

3. I think it is cute that you are now answering to the name Kushka. I have officially trained you to learn a new name. I know it isn’t so much my doing as it is the fact that since your owner is never around you are never addressed by your actual name but I am still proud of myself. Your name is Kushka. You know it and I know it.

4. I do like you. And I am grateful you are around. We are both very alone right now and it’s good that we have each other. Do you have any idea what the roommate looks like? Yeah, neither do I.

Spy vs. Spy

I have audible confirmation that my roommate is hiding from me. She is HIDING from me. My ears have sent messages to my brain verifying this information.

We are now roughly 20 days in on a shared living space. And I have not seen the girl who shares my domicile. Not now, not never.

The day before yesterday I was going out to meet a friend for lunch. I took a shower and got ready for my afternoon, all the while with my roommate (with a social issue, apparently) in her bedroom. When I went outside I realized it was raining so I turned around to go back in my apartment to get my umbrella. I put my key in the door and when I opened it, I heard the sound of frantic feet running down the hall and then the slam of a door.

If you have not figured it out by now, that was my roommate. She was RUNNING AWAY FROM ME.

Why? Why would a person run and hide from another person they are living with? Isn’t she curious to know what I look like? Isn’t she wondering who I am? Do I really give off an energy that would make a person run away from me and hide? And if I do, which I’d like to think I don’t, how would she even know this since we have never met??

Yesterday I was walked home by a friend after brunch. While we were outside saying our goodbyes, a lovely young lady walked up the stoop steps carrying bags of laundry. I turned to my friend and said “Oh! Maybe that’s my roommate!” We were both kind of excited at the prospect. She seemed very nice. And she was very cute. My friend and I sped up our “adios, amigos” so I could investigate further.

When I went up to my apartment I found that Cute Laundry Girl was not my roommate because she was going up several more flights of stairs than my apartment. Also as confirmation that Cute Laundry Girl was not my roommate, when I entered my apartment there was no one running away. The only one there was the bitter, bi-polar cat that has taken residence in my shared living space with Madame X. I use the term shared loosely, of course. “Sharing” is when two people kindly maintain something together for use. I am “sharing”. My roommate is “living in a common space with fear”.

Does she have social anxiety? I want to tell her that it’s okay because I do, too. Is she deformed and shy about it? I want to show her my left hand where I chopped off two fingertips and had to have them re-attached to show her I am also maimed, if that is the case. Is she a Thoraco-omphalopagus? Is she on the run from the law because she is a thief? Is she this person?:

Am I living with Carmen Sandiego? Because holy fucking shit and stop the presses: it is quite possible that I have found her. Where in the world is she may be a question that need not be asked anymore because Carmen Sandiego may very well be living in my apartment with me and a bitchy cat.

It looks like I will achieve my goal of making it to Thanksgiving without meeting my roommate. Part of me thinks it’s fun and the other part is sad. Fun because it is completely bizarre that I am living with someone I have never seen. And sad because if it IS Carmen Sandiego that I am living with, Jennifer Lopez will have no reason to make the Carmen Sandiego movie and we all will get stuck with a movie Gigli II, Electric Boogaloo or some other wackass shit from J-Lo.

Sorry, everyone.