Living Well with Others

HAVING JUST ESCAPED an apartment in San Francisco where the front door was off its hinges and my roommate Danny was so stupid he tried to bake acid into animal crackers as a business enterprise, I was cautious upon my arrival in New York. I lived in an 8-by-10 room in International House, claiming to represent the Nation of Hollywood in their annual costume exhibit. Then my bag-ladyish British grandmother kicked the bucket, and her fixed-income housing between Aves. C and D was mine. It was a one-bedroom with an open living room, to which I proudly added a couch.

The long succession of people I called my couch creatures began with my old friend A. I had known her since she was 14. Her mother had sold their family house in order to go on a trip to China with Warner Erhard, leader of a cult formerly known as EST, now called the Forum. A's mother had, disastrously, put A in Teen EST, and she stole my heart when she stayed at my San Francisco apartment and murmured, "Warner loves me, Warner loves me!" in her sleep.

A was disgusted at my sloppy habits. She also needed a lot of attention. One night I was lying in bed, exhausted, while she tried to tell me about going to Uncle Charlie's Bar. "I am trying to tell you about what happened at Uncle Charleeee's!" she screamed, furious, adding that the television didn't work right. I went to the living room and hoisted the tv high up into the air and smashed it down on the ground. I am weak, but adrenaline was on my side.

This wasn't quite the end, but it was close. We had big parties in the huge anonymous building, forgetting to invite any other women. We both loved men, and this was the final source of conflict. Also, I would sometimes try to trick her about how much money she owed, but she would always catch me.

When A moved in with an anal yoga girl around the corner, K came into my life. He was an underground film director and speedfreak who had lived with my sister for a while. She told me he'd had people killed, and might do the same to her, but I really needed the cash, so he moved in. K lit the apartment like a middlebrow Chinese restaurant—with purple neon tubing that ran behind the couch, giving us that horror-movie effect. In my room, he installed soft pink bulbs, making it impossible for me to read. He had a large collection of reruns of shows like the Untouchables and the Beverly Hillbillies, which he originally recorded in Georgia somewhere, and would sit on his couch, speeding and reciting the dialogue word for word, cackling happily.

Before it became too much, it was really something. K had to go, though, maybe when he realized we would never have that affair. I was so happy to use regular light bulbs again that to this day, I have three 100-watt bulbs burning at once in my small bedroom.

Of course, I needed a roommate again. (You might say that poverty has defined a large period of my life.) For a minute or two, S lived with me. He was trying to force his untalented family into becoming a family act. (He had one song that he sang quite well.) When he asked if he could bring his children to the apartment on the weekends, I put my foot down. Children? Absolutely not. I cannot be responsible for children, which I have plainly demonstrated by not giving birth to even a single one.

He left willingly, which was not always the case.

Either I was a remarkably poor judge of character, or I saw that these couch creatures were insane and felt it might be fun. No sooner would they get safely inside my door than they would begin to unravel. P, who worked as a composer for dated avant-garde plays, lived on my couch for a few months, and was a terrible drunk. I'd find him passed out on the terrace, head on the deck furniture, with my slide collection spread out around him. I was writing for porn magazines at the time, and these too would end up on the floor, which made me furious. "These are my clippings!" I shouted. I guess he went somewhere; I'm fuzzy on that.

One middle-aged woman moved in and completely stopped going out—she just picked the lint from her sweaters and ironed obsessively. We wouldn't talk much, so she wrote me long letters. Soon, I was watching the elevator doors close on her and all her stuff—the final exit. She's dead now.

Then there was M, a blonde bombshell straight out of Alabama—and straight out of All About Eve. To exorcise the demons of previous tenants (the Thomas family, with the unhappy Mrs. Thomas, the abused and probably molested little Thomas girl and the violent and drunk Mr. Thomas, who couldn't help but have an occasional fire in the apartment; you'd be surprised how many people can't maintain without the odd apartment fire), she ran around at all hours burning sage. She would lean in extra-close to my boyfriend when I wasn't right there (being a Southern hustler himself, he didn't go for it). She went through all my contacts, and quickly, like a spider, got in touch with them and trashed me.

It was my first experience with a full-on Eve. I'd had ideas stolen but nothing like this whole progression. The last time I saw her was at a third-party's apartment where she gave me the money owed on the phone bill, and I returned her plastic trashcan.

(For my part, I once went through her journal and used bits of it for a prose piece written in her voice, which I read at the Nuyorican. She went on a daytime talk show about "Roommates from Hell" and complained that I was writing about her life. I was booked on The Montel Show soon after, as an erotic performance artist, and thought it would be great to retaliate, somehow working M into my erotic performance. But I got bumped for the L.A. riots. As Quentin Crisp says, true style begets style, and M was quite good at her pointless machinations. I did admire her skill with cosmetics.)

More followed, even after I moved from my grandmother's apartment to 2nd St. There was the cab-driving musician, the rich rock 'n' roll boy, the friend who was brimming with anger. Even my beautiful friend N moved in. I was pretty depressed at the time, and lay on my bed like Edith Massey—"Get me a treat!"—and he'd fetch ice cream and water. Then his internet boyfriend moved in, and the place was just too small. For a month the World Famous *BOB* lived with N in his room, and, yes, she wears pink all the time—even at home.

After just a couple decades, I finally realized I'd been going about this roommate thing all wrong: I had met them socially.

Now I have Kara, whom I got from Craigslist. (I can use her real name because I'm not going to say anything bad.) She's 21, studying engineering at Cooper Union and sharp as a tack. She laughs at my jokes and cleans the kitchen. She does not hate her life yet, perhaps never will, because she knows that her 10-by-12 room is not her fate.

When Kara graduates in two years, it's possible that I will not have any more roommates. What will I complain about then? o