The Journal of Best Practices (16 page)

A few months later I was bunking with Phill the percussionist, who despised and ridiculed the shape of my feet and listened to Jethro Tull at deafening volumes. After a two-week stretch in which he incessantly snapped the Morse code pattern for the word
marimba
with his fingers, I took a clerical job in the office of residence halls administration, which gave me a first look at all the prime single dorm rooms available on campus. At first, room turnover was slow, but I bided my time. Someone eventually requested a room change, and I helped myself to the fourteen-by-twelve single suite she was vacating. My new room was on a coed floor, across from a pair of dazzling Delta Gammas. Unpacking my milk crates, looking out over Lake Osceola and the music-school campus, and knowing that no roommate would be barging through the door while I typed up my letter of resignation to the residence halls administrator, I wondered how any student could ever walk away from such a beautiful room.

After Kristen and I started dating, I spent nearly every night at her house and never longed for the solitude of my own apartment. That was a first, and it proved that we cohabited well. She was the only person other than my family to earn that distinction. Growing up, I understood the power structure and everyone’s role in the household: Mom and Dad were in charge and it was best not to challenge them. My brother was three years older, so he, too, could give me marching orders that I’d blindly accept if it meant he’d play with me (“Here, Dave, drink this paint thinner. Then we’ll Hula-Hoop”). Most important, my family understood me. They loved me and accepted my little world for what it was. “Don’t mind our son,” my parents would say to guests as I pushed myself down the hallway floor on my face. The brushing sensation of blended-fiber carpet pile against my forehead put me in a place of tranquillity that to this day I can’t achieve with sex, drugs, love, or money. Their guests would cautiously step back against the wall, allowing me to pass. “That’s just our Dave.”

I didn’t have to worry about the sounds that escaped from my head. I had always mimicked the sounds of my environment, so even when I was older a few moos and quacks here and there didn’t seem out of place. Using the corner of my mouth, I would serenade my mom with a perfectly rendered trombone solo as she sat barefoot at the kitchen table, watching
I Love Lucy
reruns and paying bills. Sometimes she would turn down the volume on the TV and snap her fingers in time, or set her checkbook down and just watch me; if I became self-aware, I’d run upstairs and press my forehead against the cool glass of my bedroom window. Because we lived on a farm, I could get lost in a daydream and wander off for hours without anyone thinking to bother me. If they did come looking, they weren’t surprised when they found me standing motionless, expressionless, watching the wind pluck through the lilac bushes, or sitting alone in a cattle pen, tying individual strands of hay together. “Oh, there you are, Dave,” my dad would say with a smile, his steely blue eyes sparkling the way they often did when he was amused. “Supper’s almost ready, come and get washed up.”

Some behaviors were too obnoxious for my family to tolerate. High-pitched shrieking, lunging forward and backward, rewinding the same banal movie passage over and over. My mom would reach her threshold and firmly tell me to stop. In my dad, who was normally gentle and reserved, these types of behaviors provoked a different reaction. When he thought I was out of control, his face showed it—frustration, disapproval, anger. He hardly ever had to say anything. I drew my own conclusions about what he was thinking whenever he’d thunder away from me, growling, “Well, for Christ’s sake.” Namely, that I was a disappointment. The swish of his blue jeans accompanied him, whispering accusations at me above the stomping:
Well . . . now . . . you’ve . . . done . . . it . . .
After I frustrated him I wouldn’t see him for hours. I would hide in my closet, or behind an open door, and mentally replay whatever had happened over and over, forcing promises upon myself to never be annoying again.

After a blissful first year of dating, and having decided that marriage was in our future, Kristen and I began playing with the idea of buying a house together. At first, we viewed the idea as a practical next step in our relationship. “I think it would make sense to find something now, even if it’s strictly an investment,” Kristen said. I agreed, and as we began searching for properties, our conversations about real estate grew more and more romantic. “Ooh, here’s a nice two-story,” she said, showing me a listing online. “Look at that family room. Isn’t that
so
us? Can’t you just see us in there, playing games in front of the fireplace?”
A good investment, and I get to live with my hot girlfriend—just the two of us. Nice!
But Kristen had a different idea.

“What if we looked for a bigger place, and we each picked a friend to live there with us?”

I thought about it for a moment. “Would they pay us rent?”

Kristen seemed confused by this question, as though I’d completely missed her point. “Well, yeah. I suppose they would pay rent. But I was thinking more about how fun it would be, all of us living together. Can you imagine?”

I considered the advantages of dividing a mortgage four ways. Yes, I could imagine having roommates.

I immediately thought of Delemont, an incredibly mathematical guy with whom I’d been friends since middle school. He ended up designing bridges—a job that’s just barely challenging enough to keep his interest. We worked about ten minutes from each other and met at least twice a week to have lunch, talk about math, and recite lines from Chris Farley movies. He had dark, wild hair, the sort I imagined could easily clog a drain. That was a check in the minus column, to be sure, and there were other demerits to consider.

When we were younger, Delemont tended to be loud and belligerent, especially whenever he drank or got himself into a crowd of people. In school, he would do or say anything if you paid him—he ate wood chips and friends’ goldfish for a quarter, and struck a science teacher over the head with a textbook for a dollar. He didn’t do these things because he needed the money; he did them because he needed to be outrageous—a motivation that I understood and admired. By the time he finished grad school, he had mellowed out somewhat, but his lack of regard for authority and rules in which he personally did not believe remained. Those weren’t the types of qualities I’d normally look for in a roommate.

Still, Delemont had a capacity for friendship and decency that could make this plan work. In high school, during open gym, some skid mark of a kid was teasing me about how little I could bench-press. He wouldn’t let up. I had tuned him out to study the tiny rhombuses etched into the grip of the weight bar when Delemont went crazy on the kid—getting in his face, yelling at him until a crowd gathered, then demanding that Skid Mark get on the bench and show everyone his highest weight. “
You
do it! Come on, big shot! Let’s see
you
do it!” He stayed on Skid Mark like a pit bull and since then I’ve remained loyal to Delemont, who also appreciates a fine rhombus when he sees one.

Kristen agreed that Delemont would make a good choice and then revealed her selection. “I’m going to ask Meredith,” she said.

Kristen had been close friends with Meredith since college, when they became sorority sisters. Meredith also had dark, wildish hair, though it was prettier than Delemont’s, and she had a big, booming laugh that I figured I’d be hearing a lot of. At least, I hoped I’d hear a lot of it. I’d gotten along great with Meredith the few times we’d hung out, when I only had to be some exceptional version of myself to get through the evening. But living with her would present an entirely new set of demands. Full-time demands. For starters, she spoke as fast as lightning. Were she to tell me something important as I snapped a green bean, I’d miss it completely. I also worried that she would get to know me and realize that she didn’t like me. Kristen dismissed the idea, but I had more concerns, none of which I voiced.
Will I be expected to hang out with both of them all the time? What if Meredith needs time with Kristen when I need time with Kristen? What if they start an inside joke and they don’t let me in on it? What if Meredith takes huge dumps? Will I be forced to plunge her way out of it? Good God, I don’t want to know that about a sorority girl.

A week later, we asked Delemont and Meredith if they’d be interested in living with us. Kristen’s conversation with Meredith went precisely like this:

Kristen: “Dave and I are buying a house and you’re totally moving in with us!”

Meredith: “Oh my God! Fun!”

That was it. That was their entire discussion.

Delemont and I took a different approach, belaboring the strategy and logistics as only engineers and lunatics would. Discussing geography over lunch one day, we used a french fry to trace a series of ketchup arcs that represented ideal, acceptable, and unacceptable distances from our respective hamburger and hot dog offices, which we then analyzed against real estate prices.

It took some time to convince him, as there were plenty of cheap apartments within walking distance of his office. What ultimately sold him was the idea of living one last time with a group of friends.

“I think it will be fun living together,” he said. “After living with my parents, some freedom will be nice. Just try to find something in this second ketchup arc.”

A month later, Kristen and I found a three-story town house with two bedrooms and two full bathrooms upstairs, a beautiful kitchen, family room, and dining room on the main floor, and a full basement finished as an apartment. The location suited our commutes, so we arranged a visit with a real estate agent. Kristen fell in love immediately. She floated from room to room, lifted in reverie, suggesting who might sleep where and how we might arrange our new furniture, while I hunted for substandard craftsmanship and structural problems. We spent all of ten minutes in the house before Kristen announced, “This is the one. This is our home.”

And so it was. We were thrilled. Everything about the house was perfect—even the walls were pristine. The rooms had been tastefully painted, and the upper floors had these great picture windows that looked out onto the large pond in the backyard, and into the woods beyond that.

Kristen and I moved in a week before anyone else and felt at home right away. In the mornings, we’d open the windows in the breakfast nook and listen to the faint whispers of blowing leaves and wind chimes. Late in the afternoon, sunlight would pour in through the windows in the family room and spread across the rich oak floors, causing them to glow, illuminating the bottom of our dark leather furniture. Fifteen minutes would pass in an instant as I’d stand in one place, mesmerized, staring at the floor. Kristen had been right—this was our home.

Then our friends moved in.

I wanted to be easy to live with. Really, I did. If I ever end up on trial for being a pain in the ass, prosecution’s Exhibit A will be the two-page memorandum I circulated to our roommates before they arrived. It was Asperger syndrome in its purest form, delivered in four excruciatingly long and schizophrenic bullet points and an anxious half-page conclusion. The first two points essentially read
Let’s have fun this year
and
Let’s remember that we’re friends—it’s best to keep the lines of communication open.
The latter half of the memorandum read like this:
On second thought, let’s not overdo it on the communication—it’s probably best to give each other plenty of space
and
Actually, let’s not overdo it on the fun, either. And don’t damage anything.
I had intended to convey to my new roommates just how easy and comfortable our living arrangement
could
be, as long as we all adhered to a few simple guidelines—
my
guidelines.

Delemont and Meredith were remarkably generous, saying only, “Does Kristen know you sent us this?” and “I think most of the guidelines in your memo go without saying.” The latter was probably a reference to my prohibition of major renovations and rowdy all-night parties. Everyone seemed to be on the same page. Almost.

I’d asked our new roomies to refrain from hanging picture frames on “my pristine new walls,” which left a giant loophole for Delemont, who skirted my request by nailing a dozen frameless pictures of bridges around his room shortly after he moved in. “You said no picture
frames,
” he said, proudly extending a gigantic middle finger to me and my policies, and my rage ignited. Rather than confronting him directly, I spent several days bemoaning Delemont’s actions to anyone who would listen and being short and dismissive with everyone else. I was standing outside on the deck with Kristen when she decided she’d had enough of my moping.

“Dave, I understand that you’re upset with Delemont and his nails, but can you please tell me why it’s a big deal to you?” she asked.

“What can I say, Kristen? He’s completely fucking insane. Who nails pictures to walls? Pictures that he tore from a fucking
calendar
about
bridges
!”

“Delemont does, I guess. But I still don’t get what you’re so angry about.” Meredith spotted Kristen and me from the kitchen and wandered out to join us.

“Kristen, nails leave holes. The house that you and I bought last month didn’t have nail holes; it was spotless. Now, in partial custody of a crazy person, it does. I didn’t put them there, you didn’t put them there.
He
put them there.”
Great, now
I
look crazy. Can’t you just agree that this is a huge deal and that my anger is 100 percent his fault? He is to blame. He is to be questioned, not me! I’m the victim!