Houseguest Hell

[gordonzola]

OK. Reader participation time. Tell me about you WORST houseguest(s). Some of mine will follow in the days to come.

This could make a good zine actually.

Comments

[tarynhipp.livejournal.com]

well one time this dude from san fran something or another stayed at my house and ate my corn pops and was really nice and... wait, nevermind.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I didn't eat any corn pops. I had something corn related while watching that movie, but it wasn' corn pops. I did steal some milk from someone for my tea though.

n

[tarynhipp.livejournal.com]

i thought you had corn pops for breakfast. hmmmm.

[misscallis.livejournal.com]

once i had two gays and a big goateed guy who smelled like cheese all sleeping on my fold out couch. it was totally creepy.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

Wth Kelli it's always 1993 and I still have a goatee. I hadn't been around cheese for 3 days by then. Does it just ooze from my pores?

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I should have realized my entry was smart-ass bait.Unsurprisingly Kelli and Taryn took it first.

But real horror stories please. don't be shy.


t

[ex-dirtylaun442.livejournal.com]

i've never had a bad houseguest that i can recall. i can only tell you that kelli & greg were the best: they washed my dishes!

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

That was good luck. I've heard some horror stories about that combo. . .heh heh heh.

[misscallis.livejournal.com]

we actually got kicked out of Arielle Greenberg's apartment for not washing her dishes fast enough.

i have plenty of houseHOST horror stories but no bad houseGUESTs.

Well. there was that time when a couple of Canadian riot grrrls stayed at my house and they didn't speak to me the whole time. Except to tell me that they didn't think playing drums in a DRESS was very smart.

Oh, 1995, where did you go?

[theknife.livejournal.com]

"hey i am friends with a friend of a friend of you. can i stay for 2 nights?"
"sure"
(2 weeks later)"when are you going to leave again?"

he was from sweden and annoying!! i even liked going to work in that time.

[jamie-miller.livejournal.com]

Houseguests or roommates?

The worst houseguests I ever had stank up the place and shoved their dirty dishes underneath my couch. That's not too bad, I suppose, but what really burned was that they were allegedly anarchists who believed in mutual aid, responsibility, collective living, etc.

The roommates I ever had -- and there were lots of them -- were mainly bad because they stole from me, either directly (by taking hundreds of dollars out of a cashbox used by one of the political groups I was in) or indirectly (by failing to pay rent for months and then moving out).

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

Roomates are a whole 'nother story for another thread. Don't get me started.

Anarcho-tourists seem to be either really great or really bad. Or both at the same time. Like, they might make a fabulous looking meal out of dumpstered food for everyone in the house, but then you start eating it and the greens are unwashed and full of dirt and bugs.

HouseGuests

[queen-beeanna.livejournal.com]

Once when I was 19 I had a friend who was unemployed, emotionally unbalanced, idolized Jack Kerouak and needed a place to stay. My roomate and I offered him our couch for 2 weeks, so he could get his act together and look for a job. He proceeded to spend all his money on beer, eat our food, make big messes and not help with household stuff. We finally told him he had to go...after like a month...so what does he do? Sets up a tent in our backyard. No joke..the last straw was:
We had guests over from Santa Cruz. Everyone was shrooming. I went off by myself for a nice moonlight solo bikeride, high as a bug on a hot summer night. On the way home I determine that the best place in the universe is in the backyard under the sprinkler in my underwear. So I get home, put the bike away, come 'round the corner only to discover that there is a TENT in our backyard. OK, no problem, I will just take the hose and go in the front yard. Wait, were is the hose? Wait, why does the dome tent have an angle on it? Wait, Why is there a big dent in the aluminum storage shed where someone got up on top to tie thE HOSE TO THE TREE TO THE TENT BECAUSE THEY HAD BUSTED A SUPPORT POLE FOR THE FREAKIN TENT?!?!!!! OK...on to plan C, which was to just go lie in my room listening to music and ride out the rest of my peak. Get in the bedroom...and the adaptor to my little radio plug in is gone. My roomate had the same radio, but had lost her adaptor....I go out in the kitchen, and notice a big extension cord running out to the backyard. Towards the TENT. I follow it out, and lo and behold, there was my adaptor hooked up to my roomates radio playing music for the pleasure of the occupant inside. Who had denied me my moonlight sprinkler fantasy. Needless to say I had to take a couple of deep breaths to calm myself before commandeering my adaptor and going into my room to play music.
Ironically, when I walked up to get the damned thing from him, the verse that was playing was off of the album Wah Wah by James: "lay the law down in your home/ lay the law down in your home/ smiiile."
..shit was that too long?

Re: HouseGuests

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

no way, not too long. That may be the worst houseguest story i've ever heard that didn't involve serious tradgedy or the police. thanks for sharing.

Re: HouseGuests

[ultrabeavis.livejournal.com]

so when do we get to do roommate stories?

A houseguest I think has some parameters for containment - they don't live there, they don't have any right to live there, they are friends of yours, etc. A room mate might be a total stranger, and considering legal problems with eviction etc might have consideration grounds to prolongue the unpleasantness to the point of violence and mayhem. I think this is where our lives become literary.

Re: HouseGuests

[queen-beeanna.livejournal.com]

There is more....years later (actually happened quite recently) concerning the same houseguest....
Wanna hear it?

Re: HouseGuests

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I think we ALL want to hear it. My lj is your lj.

Re: HouseGuests

[arasay.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes! And do I know him?

[easilyirritable.livejournal.com]

My husband's a softie, and so when his friend, who lived in Seattle, lost his job, Chris found him a job in Massachusetts and offered to let him stay in our spare room for a while. It was all well and good, until said friend began:

1. Leaving his window wide open in January and freezing the rest of us out of our minds.
2. Eating our food and not replacing it.
3. Inviting friends from the Internet over to stay at our place with only the slightest notice.
4. Not cleaning anything ever.
5. And a whole mess of other, more minor sins.

He promised us he was saving up to get a new place, but every other week, he'd be gone to some other place meeting some other girl he met on AOL. The last straw was when he asked Chris why we didn't have sex very often (his room was right next to ours). It never occurred to him that a) we could be quiet, b) we waited until he was out of the house, and c) it was none of his FUCKING CONCERN.

After four months, we finally got him out.

[(Anonymous)]

A punk rock circus came to crash at a house I lived in. The strait jacket escapist vaguely knew my housemate Evilovna and ended up sleeping with her while the giant accordian-playing tranny tattered angel and the withered spoken-word hippie and the adorable waif slept on the living room floor. In verly little time at all Escapist and I had fallen B-movie hard in love (fortunately Evilovna was through with him) and were mooning around like a couple of cows on X. A few more circus folk wandered in and out, including Mr. Sister PhatManDee, who ended up shrieking the night away with Ski Slope, a roommate who was popping any number of Sister's cherries. In the morning, baggy of eye and hairy of tooth, we said Slope shoulda gagged her, and we were told that Sister had been gagged and had a pillow shoved over her face all night. Somewhere around this time it became clear that Evilovna was no longer interested in the circus and thus was not the host, yet I hadn't invited them and they weren't really my guests. Galvanized, the household sent a bunch of wayward clowns packing. Escape and I have been together for years in a wild roller coaster ride of lurve. Evilovna turned out to be astoundingly Evil. She threatened to kick Slope's ass. Eventually we kicked them both out of the house. Sister is now a jazz sensation in Pittsburgh, PA, and also sometimes does Ramen Wrestling at events.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

oh god, don't remind me of Evilovna. What a psycho. Still, overall they weren't bad guests. Bad housemates, yes! But the guests were ok.

houseguest heaven

[fluxions.livejournal.com]

I actually like having houseguests, but it doesn't happen very often. I have no horror stories to tell. Houseguests = people cleaning my house for me. My houseguests have always washed my dishes, vacuumed my apartment, cleaned my windows, done my laundry, and cooked me dinner. I always wondered if they cleaned my apartment when I was at work because they were so horrified by the state it was in and cleaned it just to make their stay more pleasant.

Re: houseguest heaven

[jactitation.livejournal.com]

Don't get me wrong, I've had those folks, too. One guest made sushi for nine. One made jam. Dinner guests who jump up to dry the dishes always get invited back. But they're just not nearly as memorable as, say, the ones who refused to leave and informed you that they were (literally) raised by wolves. In their previous life, of course. To which you would return them if you could without going to jail.