A Room With a View

You may be thinking I’m going to write about our nation’s birthday.  Wrong.

Independence Day for me is really July 2. 

Back in 2002 I decided to rent out my spare room to make some money.  I had thought B. was going to be a good roommate.  He was moving out from Michigan and really seemed like he would be the perfect roommate when we first met.  By perfect I mean someone who is dependable for money and never home.

After seven weeks of rooming together I had seen many sides to B.  He enjoyed using the Internet to meet women.  He sat at the dining room table with his laptop and read to me sexually charged and inappropriate things he wrote to these women and their responses.  I would sit in the La-Z-Boy recliner watching tv saying, “Uh-huh,” and “Oh, really,” and “Aahh” in the way that I do when I want to appear as a good listener while secretly I think things like, “Who is this freak?  Who are these women who actually respond to him?”

B. worked for a mortgage company and spend endless hours cold-calling, pouring through lead databases, and doing anything that he could do to close a deal.  Then on the weekend he would lay out by the pool and binge drink and bake in the Arizona sun with no sunscreen.  This activity resulted in him breaking my butter dish while he was cooking one weekend night after a looong day of drinking.  I didn’t really care about the butter dish.  I got it from a secret encouragement pal and was one of dozens of gifts, and like you I thought, “Why a butter dish?”  Still, when B. broke it I was passive aggressively angry with him only to find out in the end that night was a total blank to him.  Didn’t remember slight sigh, stern appearances, and short brisk strokes when sweeping up the shards that were clearly telling him that this was unacceptable.  I don’t know why people don’t pick up on my signals. 

So by the beginning of week eight it was clear that B. was just a little off.  I thought he was just depressed, and I listened and tried to help him connect the dots.  When we did, it spelled CRAZY!  The signs were there, but it did take me a few days to put it all together.  The climatic day was a Thursday.  B. woke me up early because his computer was talking to him.  It turned out to be an email for software that keeps your boss from finding out where you’ve been online.  The email said, “You are being watched!”  Spammers, be careful what you send to the paranoid people, okay?  I fled the house to go to a chiropractic appointment.  I broke down while looking at x-rays.  They let me make phone calls.  I headed to church to talk to my pastor.  Armed with a helpline we can call, I headed back to my house.  B. called the helpline and then said, “I don’t want to talk to you.”  Great, I told myself, one of us will be leaving in a body bag.  I called the friend who I was supposed to meet to play raquetball and said, “Meet me at Denny’s.”  Over a Grand Slam Breakfast I told T. the complete story as I shoveled pancakes and scrambled eggs into my mouth.  T. didn’t get to say much.  He did come back to the house.  B. had called the helpline again and two counselors came to the house to interview him.

We took a sleep-deprived B. to a 24 hour emergency psych ward for the night.  He checked himself into the actual county psych ward for a couple days.  He owed me rent money for July so I did have to take a checkbook in to visit him one day.  On July 2, B’s birthday, his mom and step-dad flew out and the next morning they were on their way back to Michigan in B.’s Saturn. 

That’s a much simplified version of the story, but I’m not sure I have enough bandwidth to share all of the details.  And I’d rather put most of them out of my mind.

He emailed me the other day.  He hasn’t had any “episodes” lately.  He’s hoping to get his Master’s in writing and wants me to read his book and do a critique.  The book is about how to become successful in sales.  Of course B. hasn’t ever been successful in sales.  It’s more about how to fail at every job you work at within days because you’re so consumed with paranoia.  I will need tips on the perfect passive aggressive way to respond to his book when I write the critique.  I think I will also charge him the fee of one crystal butter dish.