Johnny America

 

Meth­ods My Room­mate Patrick Giroux Us­es to Psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly Tor­ture Me

by

  1. Once a month he cooks a large bowl of pop­corn and gath­ers all the bills on the cof­fee ta­ble, where he splits them even­ly. He lets out a long sigh then hands me an item­ized list­ing. He com­plains about at least one bill, some­times two, us­ing a strange nasal ‘com­plainy’ voice he on­ly em­ploys when com­plain­ing about en­er­gy, gas, and ca­ble conglomerates.
  2. He kiss­es his girl­friend with in­cred­i­ble vol­ume, acousti­cal­ly. Even in my bed­room with the door shut, I can hear their smack­ing be­tween gig­gles as they watch Star­gate SG‑1. They’re us­ing their skulls as res­o­nance cham­bers to dis­tract me from read­ing, which is not polite.
  3. I rou­tine­ly steal cans of his Dr. Pep­per from the re­frig­er­a­tor, which he knows. Every time he pur­chas­es more Dr. Pep­per he an­nounces so with great flour­ish, to re­mind me that I’m a lousy mooch.
  4. Sim­i­lar­ly, he is thin­ner than me, and more mus­cu­lar, a physique he main­tains in or­der to re­mind me of my lazi­ness and lack of phys­i­cal coör­di­na­tion. He struts around in trim eu­ro-style clothes, to telepath: lookin’ kind of pudgy to­day, aren’t ya? I don’t un­der­stand where this hos­til­i­ty comes from.
  5. He takes off his shoes when he en­ters the house, which would be a pos­i­tive if he did so neat and or­der­ly like a Japan­ese per­son, since it would re­duce the dirt build-up and vac­u­um­ing re­quire­ments. In­stead, he just sort of aban­dons them, block­ing the door. He does so to com­pli­cate my ac­cess to the fresh world and out­side air, which he knows I love.

Filed under Non-Fiction on November 15th, 2005

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Reader Comments

Emily wrote:

Don’t for­get, he al­so fails to de­liv­er promised mi­ni-comics in a time­ly fashion.

Jay wrote:

Al­so, he of­ten leaves for work with the bath­room ra­dio tuned in to NPR, as part of some ploy to turn me in­to and East-Coast liberal.

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