Got dildoes in your bathtub? Read this.

One of the motives as to why I started my blog (www.drystan.com), apart from recording my dives, was to document some of the events that happened in my life.  I started to realize that after a couple of years I slowly start to forget many of the details of my experiences so I started writing them down.  One example of documenting an even that occurred in my life was my article “Three years since my major Weight Loss”.  However, the main raison d'être as to why I created my blog was to document this experience I had three years ago.  My experience is not as crazy as Thompson’s novel “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream”, nor am I trying to say this is the craziest story that I know of, but nevertheless it’s a personal experience that I would like to share because even though it’s bizarre and creepy it is also entertaining and it highlights a small period in my life that had a effect on me personally even though most might not relate to my story.  So here it goes.

Part I: Finding a flatmate to move in with.

It was November 2006 and I was 25 years old and a few months back my long term relationship that started back in 2000 at Washington College ended.  I was not in a happy place at the time.  My ex-girlfriend moved out of our flat/apartment and back with her mother and I was left with a $4,000 King size temperpudic bed along with the loan that she and I were supposed to pay together, two cats, a futon and other stuff.  I’m not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, I’m a just stating the expensiveness of the bed, the cats, the futon since they are part of my story.   My ex-girlfriend and I broke up September 2006, but she was nice enough to keep paying her half of the rent until November while the lease ended and I found a flatmate to move in with.   From October to the end of November I was looking everywhere for a flatmate I could move in with in December, but I found it very difficult to find a flatmate when you are a male with two cats.  I met with potential flatmates near and far from where I worked and they were interested, but without more ado lost interest the moment I mentioned that I had cats.  I looked at roommates.com and craigslist.com, but I had no success.  I was starting to get very frantic and desperate because November was about to end and my lease about to expire, and I had no idea where I was going to live and I did not know what to do with the cats.  I considered living in a hostel and giving the cats to the animal shelter, but I wanted to leave plan B as a last resort especially knowing what happens to unwanted animals in animal shelters.

It was the last days of November and I was about to executing plan B when somebody on Roommates.com sent me an email stating that they were looking for a flatmate and that he had a cat so it was ok if I brought my two cats.  The house was in Alexandria, VA so it was a long commute to work with the traffic (approximate. 1 hour there and 1 hour back).  Anyhow, at this point I didn’t have too many choices so I went to talk to the chap and he seemed decent enough, the cat that he had was a friendly kitten, the place looked cleaned and well taken care of, the rent price was stupendous since it was $500 a month with all utilities included, it is near impossible to beat that price in the Washington DC area.   We agreed on the spot that we’ll be flatmates and I started to move my stuff in shortly after he gave me a copy of the key, just in a nick of time since I had to move out of my old flat.  I have been saved!!!  I looked at this chap as a savior.  Fair enough, I did find it weird when he showed me his swords and military grade rifles with a downgraded barrel to make them legal in the civilian world, but he was in the military and I have seen worse.  Nevertheless, if I only knew how the next months were going to play out probably Plan B would have been a better idea.

Part II:  Getting to know the new flatmate.

The day I moved in I gave him $1,000 dollars on the spot, $500 for the deposit and $500 for the month of December.   It is a lot of money to give to a stranger you just met, but I saw it fair since I was also a stranger to him and he didn’t know who he just allowed to live in his abode so I thought to myself that I would have also done the same if I was in his situation plus considering that this was not a legal deal since sub-leasing was not allowed where he lived so I did not complain.  At the time I did not think much of what he did with the money I gave him, nevertheless it was a suspicious and yet curious when the day after I gave him $1,000 a big 52 or 54 inch flat panel television arrived.   I didn’t think much of it since it’s his money now and he can do whatever he wants with the money I give him plus he told me that the U.S. Army was paying for the flat and also the utilities.   After having a chat flatmate to flatmate, it turns out that the reason why he was illegally sub-leasing me an empty room in a two bedroom flat was because he just recently got divorced (he was 21 or 22 years old at the time), his wife took their one year old child away, and he was left with a big bill from the divorce process.  I don’t know much of the divorce, but it looked like his ex-wife screwed him over pretty bad financially so he needed the extra cash to help pay some of those bills.  Fair enough.  Anyhow, I had to feel a bit sorry for the lad considering his financial state, his botched marriage, him being as sharp as a beach ball, and as mature as two rednecks fighting over a chair.

Part III:  Comparing to previous flatmates.

Christmas 2006 was approaching and it has been about 3 weeks since I moved in with this new bloke and I started to notice that he is not very clean, has bad eating habits (too much fast food), his little kitten has fleas and now my two cats have fleas (took me weeks to get rid of them all), he does not wash his dishes (even after I mentioned it to him), he does not help feed the cats nor change the litter box, has weird working hours with the army so he’ll make noise at 6 in the morning when he got back from work.   Also, if one did not understand his work schedule one would find it disturbing seeing a person starting to drink at 6am in the morning in the front lawn.  I didn’t care since technically he is just getting back from work plus he never got very drunk, but he did tell me that it disturbed the older lady across our place.

Even though now I know he is not the perfect flatmate, I can’t complain much considering I have lived with worse.  Back in college I lived in a house with several high school red-neck drop outs where one guy (that seemed like a gentle giant) walked around the house with a hand gun, just got out of prison, and had to take medication to control his anger.  Even though I don’t play video games that much, I do get really good at games I have never played before rather fast so I really had to try to control myself and let this potentially dangerous bloke wins a couple times when both of us where playing Xbox.  Also, there was a Labrador dog that lived inside the house that will piss and crap in the living room, a 19 year old girl that would get high and drunk and sleep around with everybody that was in the house while her 16 year old babysitter did the same and my ex-girlfriend and I were left with pity and took care of the unattended 3 year old baby girl that was eating bacon bits by herself that she found in the kitchen because she was hungry.   From this house, the most respectable person was a 50 something year old man that got kicked out by his wife and had to find a place to live.  Lucky for him his wife forgave him or they worked out their differences after two months and he moved back with her.  Lucky bastard.

Part IV: The cats almost died of starvation … twice.

So it’s time to fly to Texas and spend Christmas with my family.  I told my flatmate to make sure the cats had their litter cleaned and their food/water bowl filled up before he went back to his town of origin for Christmas and New Years, not a daunting task.  Anyhow, after a nice time with my family and everybody being surprised that I have lost 22 pounds (10 Kg) so far in my weight loss plan since they last saw me I returned to my new home in Alexandria, VA to find my cats starving, thirsty and the house smelling like cat shit and piss.  The litter boxes were filled to the top and the cats were starting to use the carpet around the litter boxes.  I was very incensed with my flatmate at the time because he could not perform a simple favor I asked him and almost caused three cats to die of hunger and thirst or possibility them become cannibals.  He came back from his vacations and I had a talk with him and he gave me excuses, excuses, excuses.  I thought to myself … what a load of BOLLOCKS!!!  The cats almost died over his incompetence!!! No excuses!!

Two weeks after arriving from Texas I then had to fly to San Francisco, California and then drive south to Mountain View to work on a security project at Google Headquarter within the Googleplex for a week and a half and also go to a company conference at the Wynn hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada for three days, which by the way also had memorable stories that have already circled the globe within my companies off-shore offices, but that’s another story to tell another time (however, not as good as this one ).     Since I already know that my flatmate is incompetent, lazy, as dense as bottled shite, and not very thoughtful of the poor cats I went ahead and put more food/water and litter boxes for the cats since I was expecting him not to do anything.  Anyhow, I told him to please make sure the cats have food and that their litter was clean, but I was not expecting much from him at this point.  After returning from my west-coast business trip, I came back to a house smelling like cat shit and piss, very aggressive cats fighting for any scraps of food, and overall a very dirty house.  I remember the cats trying to get whatever was left from a McDonald’s French fries red carton, drinking whatever water they can lick off the moldy pile of dirty dishes in the kitchen that my flatmate has not washed.  I was very angry at his laziness and also frustrated because even when I told him multiple times to wash his dishes he would not.  I considered moving out, but also I remembered that finding a flatmate that accepted cats was difficult to find so I decided to bear it out for a bit longer because there was a possibility that my friend would be transferring from the London office to headquarters around April/May so we could probably move in together.   Anyways, I could not get my hopes up at the time.

Part V: Secrets and sexual paraphernalia.

It is February and I have been living in my flat for 2 months now and things are getting worse.  My flatmate was starting to behave rather weird.  At first I didn’t make much of it, but I noticed that he would sleep on “MY” futon almost every night and pick lock his own room whenever he had to go in.   At first I asked him if he needed help opening the door because I thought he locked himself out, but then I realized that this was happening almost every day so I didn’t want to ask questions.

One day I went to pick up the mail and I noticed a letter sent to him by the local government that looked rather important.  I don’t know, but I sensed that it was an eviction warning so I put the letter up against the light to see if I could read some of it, but I could not read much.  However, I did manage to read some words where it was a warning that if rent was not paid then he’ll have to leave.   When he arrived from work I told him that he received a letter that looked rather important.  Later on I asked him if everything was ok and he said that everything was fine, which is a lie because I had a strong feeling things were not fine.   I was starting to get scared that one day I’ll come home from work and all my stuff would be outside and I did not have a house anymore so what I did was I went to the leasing office and pretend I was him and find out more about the status of the rent.  As it turned out, he was 2 months behind in rent so I was not very pleased.   I already wanted out, but I had to bear with my current situation until mid-April when I can move in with my friend arriving from London, I just hope I don’t get thrown out in the street by then.

Things took a turn to the creepy side when one morning I was watching TV when my flatmate came out of his room with a little of hysteria asking me if anything was missing from the house.  I found the question to be very eccentric considering both of us stayed in the flat that night.  I looked around and didn’t notice anything missing and I reassured him that everything looks fine and then he calmed down and said that it’s because he had a girl over that night.  I don’t know what kind of girl one brings where you have to be nervous that she will take something.  My best guess is that he brought over a prostitute that night since I have never seen him with a girl, but who knows.    Later that day when I went to take a shower I found a big pink dildoe in the tub.  I honestly didn’t know what to do because I was never confronted with this problem before.  He was not in the house at the time and I was not going to pick it up so I drove to the gym to shower.  I didn’t see him for a couple days afterwards because of his odd working schedule so I showered in the gym for the next couple of days.  A few days later when I went to check the bathtub, the dildoe was gone.  How embarrassing!!.  I don’t know if that’s what he used with the prostitute or what, but I didn’t want to think too much about it.  Anyhow, whatever happens in his room is his privacy; just don’t leave sex toys in the common living space.

Part VI: Feces

I had my mind end up; I would be leaving will at the end of March.  I just had to survive the months of February and March in this shit-hole.  His bedroom was next to mine and we shared the same toilet so every time I went to the toilet I had to pass the door of his strange and mysterious dwelling so and to make things weirder I started to notice that as the days of February passed a smell of baby diapers got stronger and stronger outside his room.  At first it was very faint so I suspected that one of the cats had defecated in a closet next to the toilet, but soon I realized while trying to clean up the suspected cat mess that the smell was coming from his door.  I knew that he had a child, but I didn’t know his child was staying with us plus I haven’t heard any crying so I really don’t know what that smell was.  All I know is that it smelled like some type of fragrance trying to cover up the smell of feces.

Part VII:  Vaginas, Dildoes, Human Feces, swords, and rifles

The last 10 or so days of the month of February were very exciting for me.  Let me give a little reminder.  It has been 5 months since my breakup so I was starting to recover from it physiologically, in other words I was starting to see the light. I have also lost 32 pounds (14.5 kg) in a very healthy steady diet, my self-esteem pretty much had recovered and probably was higher than it has been in years, just met a girl which brought me lots of happiness at the time, spring was arriving (which is always a boost), just received my annual bonus from my company so I also felt financially secure, and shortly I was going to move in with friend arriving from London (he did manage to transfer) which I was looking forward to considering it was the first friend other that my past girlfriend I that I moved in with and with my current situation I was really desperate to move in with someone I could trust.  The months following April were very happy times for me, probably some of the best considering how I felt, and are days I will never forget.  By coincidence, the same month five years prior when I lived in Ireland also had a profound effect on me, but that’s another story.   Anyhow, I still need to put up with the remaining days of February and March before I can be free.

Going back to the story (February 2007), my fear of getting evicted was getting bigger and bigger and since I’m not legally on the lease I don’t have any rights and I felt helpless.  I had to read that letter that was sent earlier that looked like an eviction warning so I could be aware of what is going on at my place of residence.  To realize that objective I needed to go into his room and hope that it was somewhere visible in his room because I really didn’t want to be going through my flatmate’s private stuff.   Since his room was locked I picklock his door and got in and for the life in me I cannot describe to you exactly what I felt that moment.  When I opened the door and before I could see anything, a big unimaginable stench of human shit … no … let me correct it so express what I felt… fucking grisly stench of human shit hit me hard on the face.  I remember feeling a bit faint at the unimaginable strong stench that was trapped in there for who knows how long.  Once I got my senses back everything I saw and smelt started to explain his strange behavior with pick locking his door, sleeping on the sofa, etc.  The first thing I saw after recovering from the smell was a big rubber vagina mounted on what seemed to be towels or something so he could hump it and get his wicked way with that silicone or rubber self-pleasing paraphernalia.   About a foot and half to the right were his military trousers were I managed to see inside of them, even though I truly wish I hadn’t, and what I saw were dirty diapers. That would explain the diaper smell on the hallway.  I was completely startled, but I still had my head focus on finding that letter so I scanned the room to see if I could see it so I could grab it and step out of that disgusting and ghastly room.  My eyes were moving to the dresser two feet to the right of the trousers with the diapers when I saw three Safeway grocery bags filled up with more diapers.  This mingin bloke could not even take out his own trash out of his room.   Moving on … while scanning his room I saw the downgraded military rifles at the back of the room along with those SkyMall Harry Potter type swords they sell you on air flights.  I also saw his punctured air bed which would explained why he slept on my futon, and as I scanned the room I saw multiple miniature pocket-size sex toys and plastic vaginas throughout the room and the same big pink dildoe that I surprisingly encountered in the bathtub earlier on.  So I did see a letter on top of one of the furniture, but at this moment I could give a rat’s arse to what the letter contained.  I had to get out of there before February ended because even if he behaved like a sloth I could not predict how he’ll be next month considering things have been going downhill for him for a while already.  The only thing he was predictable of was collecting my $500 dollars on the first two days of the month.  Regardless of the taunting task of finding a place in short notice I was convinced that I could not stay the month of March there.  I had no clue where I was going to stay for the month of March, but I had to jump over board and hope for the best.   By casual talk I told this story to my manager at work and she felt very bad for me so she offered me her spare room at her house and I could bring one cat with me.  I was surprised because I was not trying to get help, but I took the help without thought because I really didn’t have many choices.    Honestly, I didn’t have any choices.  I then gather three friends to help me move everything out of my flat on Tuesday February 27, 2007 because I had a date the following night with girl whom would later become my second longest lasting relationship.   A few days before the move out date, I started to sneak packed boxes out of my room while my soon to be former flatmate watched a movie.  I didn’t want him getting suspicious because I knew he was in a desperate need of money and I could not risk the notion of him finding out he was not going to get his expected $500 dollars in a couple of day.   I moved everything except my huge and monstrously heavy king size tempurpedic bed which my friends and future flatmate hate with all their might.  I was moving everything I could so when my friends arrive to help me move out we could move the rest quickly considering I had a 3 hour window when he was not going to be there.  I could not risk him showing up earlier than expected so I tried to make the move as quick as possible so that all four of us could get everything out in one hour.   When my friends arrive to the flat they were appalled at the stench my flat had and could not believe how I could live in that situation for so long.  After moving everything out, one of my friends wanted to see the legendary and iniquitous rubber vagina so he convinced me and I picked lock the door so he could peak inside my flatmate’s room.  He could not step in and was just in horror at the sights and tried to film it with his mobile phone so he could upload it to youtube, but with the nervousness he accidently deleted it and didn’t realize it until we were already on the moving trunk scramming from that grim and filthy place.  Also, before we left, we saw the same pink dildoe as before in the bathroom again, but this time in the shower holder where I keep my toothbrush.  Disgusting, is as if he wanted to scare me out of his place or really didn't give a rat's arse anymore about what people think.  Also, to make matters worse, there were some drops of blood on it.  A theory that my friends and I have up to this day is that he used the dildoe on himself and damaged some anus muscle hence he had to use diapers due to anal leakage, but it's just a theory.

Part VIII: The after math and moral of the story.

After moving out of that ghastly place, I never heard from him again.  I lived with my manager for a month and half before moving in with my friend whom transferred from our London office.  The date with the girl went well and after a few weeks dating we built a strong relationship and later moved in together.   However, we ended the relationship before I ever planned writing this story.  Continuing ...  I also finished my first 10 mile race, which was a big feat for me at the time.  My new flatmate was ideal and we had really good times.  As of now he bought a house and moved in with his girlfriend and I moved in with another friend which is also going fantastic.  Subsequently, life went up-hill after moving out of that horrid place and I was starting a new chapter in my life hence life was good I was very happy.  However, I was sad that I could not help his little cat and I had to take one of the cats to the shelter.  However, on the positive side, the one cat that moved in with me when I lived with my manager is still alive and happy living with a married couple from my company in Dupont Circle, Washington DC.  As for the futon, I left it behind because I could not imagine bringing that to my new place considering he slept on it every night and who knows what he has done on it.  As for my bed, I still have it and it’s comfortable as hell; I just don’t want to move it again.  And the moral of the story ... don't judge a book by it's cover and be perceptible to other people’s actions.  At the beginning of this story I saw the guy as my savior and then I was proved wrong.