Don’t Take Your Subleasing Decisions Lightly

Rob Fox13 years ago

Spending the summer in your college town is fun. Even if you decide to take summer classes (which you totally should because they’re way easier and the professors barely give a shit) most of your time will be spent doing fun things. Your days will be filled with drinking and your nights… well, also drinking. You’re basically just going to drink a lot, like even more than during school, let’s not make this more than it really is. But that’s still really fun. Who doesn’t want to drink all the time? The last time I spent a summer in Columbia I drank so much Trops that I almost became a Type 2 Diabetic. There aren’t many downsides to a college town summer, but there is one potentially big one, sub-leasers.

Although there are fraternity houses that stay open when school isn’t in session, most people who stick around America’s college towns during the summer end up living off campus. I was already living off campus when I spent my first summer in Columbia. Two of my roommates, electing to be productive humans, left town for internships. I had a feeling that I’d be fratblogging dick jokes one day, so I thought it’d be best to stick around (obviously it paid off). My fourth roommate also stayed for the summer, but he didn’t have a good excuse. I know what you’re thinking, what a piece of shit. One of the roommates who left for the summer didn’t want to pay rent so he subleased his room to another guy in our fraternity.

The thing about subleasing is this; you don’t treat it with the same weight you would when finding a normal roommate. The short amount of time you’ll be living with the sub-leaser, combined with the relief of finding someone to take the room, overshadows rational judgment. If I were asked whether or not I wanted to live with our sub-leaser for a full year, I would have said no. I would have emphatically said no. I would have laughed hysterically, said no, and complimented the person asking on their funny joke. But living with this guy for the summer? Fuck it. It was barely three months and it was nice to have an extra person on the electric bill. Also, even though I never wanted to live with our soon to be roommate, I assumed that despite the fact that his pledge name had been “Liability,” he couldn’t be that bad.

But as everyone knows, when you actually live with someone, you find things out. Maybe they don’t do their dishes. Maybe they dress up like a clown and murder large breasted teenagers. Regardless, you’re going to find out some new and terrible fact about your roommates. What I already knew about the guy was that he was a big boy and a raging alcoholic. Now, I know we’re all “alcoholics,” but this guy was bad even when you compared him to other alcoholics. That summer he went through whiskey like a Las Vegas Walgreens goes through Plan B on a Sunday morning. He was a terrible drunk. While watching him fall down stairs at the fraternity house was funny since it wasn’t my problem. But being in closer quarters with him meant that my belongings and I were in Whiskey Hulk’s path of destruction.

Things pretty much ended up broken or filthy all summer. I once had to go next door to take a shit because he had clogged the toilet on one floor and passed out trying to puke on the other. Also, one of his favorite past times was eating string cheese, shoving the wrappers into couch cushions, and then passing out drunk. But the perfect example of his perpetual destruction was the random Monday night I found him alone on the back porch angrily throwing all our patio furniture into the woods behind the house. Why? Fucked if I know. I’d blame it on the fact that it was a Monday, but he didn’t have a job so it’s not like he had a reason to hate Mondays. At that point I wasn’t even really surprised, just curious as to why he was doing it. I asked him what he was doing. The conversation went like this:

Me: What are you doing?

Drunk Asshole: Guh ferk yerself.

(*Drunk Asshole walks inside, grabs string cheese from fridge*)

As shitty as that guy was to live with, our second sub-leaser was far and away worse. For the sake of anonymity I’ll call her “Stupid Bitch,” because she was a stupid bitch, and because she’s saved in my phone as “Stupid Bitch.” She was a house groupie who needed a place to stay for a month in between apartment leases. She also happened to be the ex-girlfriend of our fraternity brother/neighbor (we had a couple houses in a row). She promised to help pay utilities, cook us lots of food, and clean the house. It seemed like a sweet deal. She ended up spending most of her time banging her ex-boyfriend in her room. That wouldn’t have been an issue, except that her ex/our brother had another girlfriend at the time. That girl started frequently coming over to look for her boyfriend and to accuse Stupid Bitch of being a whore.

Although constantly lying to this guy’s girlfriend was annoying, the whole affair was still sort of entertaining. There were days I could just pour myself a drink, kick back, and watch the show. I could’ve cancelled the cable. What really sucked about Stupid Bitch was her puppy, a black Scottish terrier that was zero percent house broken. It crapped everywhere, got into the trash, etc. If it wasn’t so Goddamn adorable I would’ve hated it, so instead I focused my hate on Stupid Bitch. That hate came to full fruition when she ran into my room one day, crying hysterically. It was about the puppy.

Me: What’s wrong?

Stupid Bitch: BAAAAAHHHH AAAAAHHHHAAAAA BAAAHHHHHH

Me: What the fuck is wrong with you?

Stupid Bitch: BAAAHHHHHHH Scotty got into the trash and ate a chicken bone BAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!

Me: So?

Stupid Bitch: IT COULD KILL HIM!!!!

Me: How?

Stupid Bitch: BAAHHHHHH You have to make him throw it up!

Me: What? No. How would I even do that?

Stupid Bitch: Please. PLEASE! The bone pieces will cut his intestines up and make him bleed internally! BAAHAAHHH Please! Do you have hydrogen peroxide?

Me: Yeah…

Stupid Bitch: You have to pour it down his throat until it throws up.

Me: You want me to poison your fucking puppy? I’m not doing that.

Stupid Bitch: BAAHHHHHHHH PLEASE BAAHHHH HE’LL DIE!

At that point I couldn’t listen anymore. If pouring poison down this puppy’s throat was going to stop Stupid Bitch from wailing in my face, so be it. I grabbed some hydrogen peroxide and went downstairs, ready to choke a puppy. Then I got to her room and found this face staring back at me.

Ten minutes later the puppy had thrown up three times, revealing NO bone shards, and my soul was shattered into a million pieces. Goddamn you, Stupid Bitch, Goddamn you to hell.

All of this is basically to say, don’t take your subleasing decisions lightly this summer. If someone sucks to live with, they suck to live with RIGHT AWAY. There isn’t a two month grace period before they become intolerable. If you do brush off your subleasing decisions you might end up like me, a patio furniture-less puppy poisoner.

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