My Craigslist Roommate From Hell Thought I Ate Her Tub Of Margarine
By Siân Melton
This one time, I thought I had a boyfriend. One day, we were in his kitchen making breakfast and he commented about how it was very obvious I’d been living on my own for a long time. Something about how I wasn’t very aware of him being around me. Basically, I was blocking his way a lot. Some might blame that on a butt-fuck narrow kitchen that I would argue even the most polite and aware of people would still have trouble navigating, but dudes who you think are your boyfriend will blame it on you being in the way. Reading this over now, that I thought I had a boyfriend when I actually didn’t is also evidence that I’ve lived on my own for a long time.
Narrow kitchens aside, it is true. That I’ve lived on my own for a long time, not that I get in the way. I mean, okay, so maybe he had to step around me when I was fixing tea. But it’s not like I sprawled out across the entire floor, rolling around, shouting, “TRY TO GET AROUND ME NOW, GREYJOY.” Mostly because the kitchen was far too narrow for me to get a good sprawl going.
But I do prefer to live–and sprawl–alone. I’ve always been somewhat of a loner. And by “somewhat” I mean “definitely, 100%, no doubt about it”. Unfortunately, I don’t exactly live the sort of lifestyle that awards me my own apartment all the time. And that is how, once, I found myself with the worst roommate of all time.
I was cursed with my Worst Roommate of All Time because I was stupid enough to use Craigslist to search for a roommate. That was my first mistake, one brought on by desperation. My other roommate and best friend at the time, Madison, had found ourselves a super awesome three bedroom apartment. We had another mutual friend lined up as the third roommate, but she dropped out at the last-minute. And in an effort not to lose the apartment, we turned to Craigslist.
She seemed nice enough via email. She could spell, at least. Her name was Stephanie. I can’t remember her last name. Maybe it was Meyer? No, that’s the author. And I think I’d remember if I let a Mormon housewife come to live with me, because sparkly vampires. Madison and I arranged to meet with Stephanie Not-Meyer at a local coffee shop. She was almost an hour late with no explanation or “I’m running late, sorry” text.
I have a thing against late people. As a person who is generally always ten minutes early for everything, I hate having to wait around for late people. I should have kicked her off the island right then, but I didn’t. She was cute in person. And she knit! Knitters aren’t bad, right? Madison and I decided to give her a chance. We set up a second meeting and I did what I always do when dealing with my perpetually late friends: I picked a place close to where she lived and made sure to only show up right on time because I knew she wouldn’t be.
She was still over a half hour late. But we were still desperate, and with that we had ourselves a third roommate.
Everything started off innocuously enough. We all pretty much kept to ourselves. Her friends were a little weird. I think she secretly hated my cats. She got really mad when I made the mistake of doing her dishes once (if there are other dishes in the sink along with mine, I’m going to clean all of them, okay? Just appreciate my commitment to having an empty sink and get over it). And then, one day, I got the Facebook message. Cue the ominous tones.
It was addressed to Madison and me and was about Becel. Yes, as in the margarine. Apparently, she had gone down to the kitchen to have some toast because all she wanted was some toast (so far, making sense), and when she went to go and butter her toast, she found her entire tub of Becel margarine was empty (well, that’s weird). And because Madison was in the kitchen at the time and said she wasn’t the one who used the margarine, therefore by process of elimination it was up to me to replace it (say what, crazy lady?).
But don’t worry, she wasn’t mad, but “she would be if her margarine wasn’t replaced”. Oh, and make sure it’s the kind with olive oil, please and thank you. Also, she swore up and down that her giant 1.5lb tub of margarine was full on Sunday.
It was Tuesday.
What did I do? I replaced her fucking margarine. Obviously. Because it’s margarine. And there are more important things in life than arguing over fake butter. She could have accused me of eating an entire tub of margarine once a week and I would have kept replacing it for her because I just didn’t care.
Naturally, after that things just got weird. She got all sneaky with her food and tried to hide it around the kitchen. She also got all sneaky in my room and removed my laptop charger to use on at least one occasion. But Madison and I just tried to ignore her and live our lives. We also started calling her Becel behind her back. Because sometimes the only way to deal with living with a crazy person is to make up a hilarious, yet appropriate, nickname for them.
Not too long later, I was at work and my boss (who also happened to be my landlord) asked me if I knew that Becel was moving out.
“Stephanie just emailed me to say she’s moving out and she wants her last month’s rent back.”
“When is she moving out?”
“Beginning of next month.”
“But that’s in about a week.”
“I know. That doesn’t give you a lot of time to eat her margarine again.”
Naturally, I was incredibly angry. So naturally, I called and left Becel an angry voicemail. And naturally, I called her a c*nt in the angry voice mail. Now, I love the word “c*nt” – it is probably my favourite insult. But I know that the ladies are super sensitive about that word, so I don’t toss it around (c*nt) as much as I would like to. I figured Becel would get really upset that I’d called her a c*nt. Which, you know, was the point.
What I didn’t expect was that she’d call the police and tell them I’d threatened to kill her.
I wasn’t home when it happened, but Madison was when the police barged in without any warning or introduction. Becel was with them and she proceeded to pack up some of her things while the police officers supervised. They spoke briefly with Madison.
“Miss Not-Meyer tells us that she wants to move out of this apartment, but you won’t let her, and that you’ve threatened her life so we are here to keep her safe while she packs.”
“Uh, no. We want her to leave, it’s just she’s trying to leave without giving enough notice.”
“What a c*nt.”
“Right?”
At this point, the cops probably realized that Becel was crazy, because they continued their “supervising” from outside on the sidewalk.
After that, Becel officially moved out. Despite telling my landlord she’d been offered a really awesome job back home, which is why she had to leave so suddenly, she really just moved to a different neighborhood in Toronto. It was all for the best, though. She probably would have suffocated us in our sleep with margarine if we’d let her live with us any longer.
And let’s go back to that for a moment, shall we? What in the name of god did she think I’d done with a 1.5lb tub of margarine in two days? I couldn’t have eaten it, because I would have died. I wasn’t bathing in it, or using it for an art project. And as fun as throwing globs of margarine at passing cars is, I didn’t do that either.
To this day, I still have no idea what happened to that margarine. I guess only Becel knows. (The actual Becel, not the shitty roommate nicknamed Becel.)