Roommates... A Home On Castro

I moved in on January 1st 2004. It was a 20 something bachelor pad and the living room furniture was a matching green futon couch and chair. I cant remember if there was anything on the walls... The most annoying thing about this new home was that it was the unfortunate dwelling of Psychotica, the most evil, people-hating cat I have ever known. There are stories...

But this is about the roommates. Psychotica belonged to Matt McDearmid, which meant she felt most at home in my room. She was not allowed in my room. The front room was occupied by one of the cutest boys ever DJ Lee Decker, who at the time worked for Wired Magazine. The first month I lived there there was a lesbian named Ashley living in the front room. But as I was moving in, she was moving out. Matt McDearmid (you'll understand why I keep using his last name in just a minute...) had not only found me to take his room while in Canada, but found someone to take Ashley's room, enter: Matt Klein. Matt Klein was this cool as shit gay surfer dude from hawaii, super hot, friendly and relaxed as all get out... every time I have a room come open, I ask him if he wants to come back, he was that cool.

A month and a half after I moved in Jenny gave her notice that she was finally moving in with her boyfriend (because this time he was leaving the wife for good!) and as she and her feminine wiles left I made a mistake that would turn into my greatest lesson on roommate hunting. Do a really good search and interview before offering someone a room. This lesson came at a hard ugly price by the name of Jason Gates. Who ended up being on the top of the list of the most disgusting roommates I have ever lived with. Now, I'm not gonna spend this time ranting about him, I'll just tell you that we had to institute a rule that he was not allowed to leave his door open, else the odor would waft out...

Jason was the nice teller that always helped me at Citibank. When Jenny gave her notice I had just come from the bank and had been having a conversation with Jason about him needing a new room somewhere. I ran back over to the bank right as it was closing, Van the manager (also a friend) gave Jason a call and I offered him the room. It wasn't until about a month after he moved in that I realized that he was the ultimate nightmare roommate. He never cleaned. He didnt even know how. He didnt own furniture for the first two years, he just let dirty and clean clothes intermingle in piles on the floor. If he had more than one pair of sheets I never saw them. He was just that guy that no one ever wants to end up living with.

Unfortunately, all the roommates were on the lease, so we all had to just learn how to deal with each other no matter how much we disliked it. When Matt M came back from Canada, he stayed out at his family's ranch for a week or two and when he finally came back to claim his room, Matt K felt the call of the wave and packed his two bags and moved back to Hawaii... So Matt M took Matt K's room and I kept Matt M's room. Did you follow all that? I barely followed it... jeeze.

The four of us somehow found a balance for about a year and a half. None of us really liked Jason, but Matt was really good at being impartial and Lee just had no interest in any issues. In January of '07 Lee's boyfriend Paul moved in all the way from Minnesota. They stayed for another two or three months while looking for their own place, and when they left Matt didn't want to give up the cheap room, so I as the next longest resident got to move into the front room with a bay window overlooking Castro and 18th.

As I slid my belongings into the master bedroom, my good old friend Mikey "Meatball" was moving in to my room. Mikey and I had an interesting history... We had gone on two and a half dates (date two was Feb 9th 2001 because we went to opening night of Hannibal), the half because in the middle of the third date, at the Cafe, he turned to me and said "Shane, I really like you, you are a great guy, and I dont want to date you because I would rather have you as a bestie..."

Me, being used to this tactic, took a breath and smiled and said "Ok... oh... oh... turn to your right... HOTTNESS! Subtle..." He looked at this hot boy that had just come up and stood next to Mikey, his back to us. He was a hot guy, I knew it, Mikey knew it, and I had seen him up-and-down Mikey before deciding on a spot to stand.

Mikey turned back to me and gave the sign for "OMGFUCKYEAH". I had decided that if he wanted to be friends this date had to end here and now. So I tapped the guy on the shoulder, he turned and I towered over him and said "Hey, this is Mikey... Mikey, I'm out, talk at you tomorrow..." and I walked straight out the door and went home. I guess all I need to tell you after that is that he got me a job at Heller Ehrman as a file clerk and we had a gay ol time.

So Mikey moved in and I had a friend in the house, Matt liked him, and Jason didnt seem to mind him, so it stayed that way for a while... maybe 8 months or so... and then Mikey moved out, and moved in with the guy he was seeing. I dont remember his name, but I remember his pug nosed dog that breathed so loudly I though someone was continually being choked to death... gross dogs... anyway... Mikey Moved out and we found a guy from Craigslist named Mike. Yeah... weird, Matt replaced Matt and Mike replaced Mikey. Mike was a cool alternative gay guy that you can catch on dvd in the "24 Hours On Craigslist" documentary. He was fun and friendly and made electronica music in his room. All in all a pretty cool guy.

Matt eventually graduated college and decided to get his own place with his boyfriend somewhere out in the Polk and was never heard from again... I'm kidding... we text... on holidays. I was now the longest tenant (which meant nothing in reality) and Psychotica finally had scratched me for the last goddam time as Matt tried to decide whether to take her to the new apartment or the ASPCA. I voted ASPCA. What, she was a crazy bitch and I just wanted her OUT!!!

Replacing Matt was cute boy Nick. Who came from money, drove a hummer, was adorable in that I-just-want-to-be-dominated kind of way, To this day my best friend Frankie refers to him as Curious George, because when he shaves his head he looks a little bit like the titular monkey with those big floppy ears.

Somehow, in possibly the most unusual pairing in history, cute boy Nick (who was my friend and that's how he got the room) became allies with fat, stinky disgusting Jason. I know, you think I'm being harsh, but after the first four months I finally asked him to clean the shower room that he always left filthy with hair and schmootz. His response was "Um... ok, I guess, how do I do that?" I then, literally had to show him how to clean a bathtub and sink. They then started conspiring against me, and systematically making me feel more and more uncomfortable in the rest of the house.

The build up of tension led up to a surprise house meeting at 10:30 at night after I had taken my sleeping pill where Nick and Jason demanded that we hire a maid and pay her $125 each, every month. I told them no, I clean up after myself, and I went back to bed. When I woke up in the morning everything that I owned that had been in the house somewhere was piled up in front of my door. I pulled it all in my room and showered and went to work.

For a week everyone stayed in their rooms. The silence was broken when Jason came to my room and asked if he could talk. I asked what he wanted and he tried to ask me to move out. When I asked why he thought I would leave he replied with "Well, do you really want to live where you're not wanted?" Without missing a beat I said "You managed to stay here for three years when no one wanted you, so yeah, I'm not going anywhere, you however can feel free to go fuck yourself." And with that I slammed the door on him and entered six months of awkward silence around the house.

Mike and I were still friends but Nick and Jason and I didnt say a single word to each other until the day they all told me they were moving out. Nick, Jason and Mike had found a new place together without me... right next door. No, seriously, next door. I still had to see them through the kitchen window, which looked onto their hallway. Awkward!

At that point the landlord met with me and made an offer to buy me out of the lease as I was the last remaining tenant. I'm sure what he really wanted was to raise the rent to fair market value, which would have been about a thousand more a month, four years ago. I made him a counter offer and explained that the drama all came from the fact that there was no master tenant, and therefore no one was in charge.

So in December of '06, with horrible credit, living paycheck to paycheck and still job hopping through professions, I somehow managed to score my very own third floor, four bedroom Victorian flat on the corner of Gay and Gayer. And I got to pick the all roommates, and I was in charge.

I picked Chris Garcia first... kind of as a favor to my friend Chad Fox. Little did I know at the time, but Chris like Matt K, turned out to be one of the best roommates I ever had the fortune of living with. He came from Colorado (like me) and was as calm and free spirited as the fairies that he hung out with. Nothing ever bothers him. He's still here today, living in the fainting room, and making it his home. I hope he never leaves.

With Chris by my side we interviewed about 10 of the 50 applicants for the room. We picked a hot latin architect named Marco first, but he had already found a better place closer to work, probably good, he may have been too hot to live with. He was the first interview of the day. The second was Gabe. He was younger than we wanted to go... a lot younger... 22! But he was very mature and a go getter, and I thought he would make a nice strict mom in our house, so he became the third roommate.

As he was leaving, the third interviewee came. Gabe later remarked that he was wondering if we were actually looking for roommates or trying to find the hottest guys in the city. Travis Hege seemed like a nice quiet southern gentleman that was just starting to find his way in his gay life. And for a while, that is what he was. Well, until he started dating my best friend. And I started realizing that he was a hermit that hated being gay.

This was another one that got very awkward and uncomfortable, I'm not going to go into it now, I'll just say that choosing Travis as a roommate cost me my best friend (and I dont think we'll ever be back to who we were with each other), and ended in me trying to evict him. His pseudo law degree helped him just enough to screw me and almost make me lose my home and he stayed another six months in silence before finally bailing in the beginning of September '08 without giving proper notice or paying his rent or bills.

I scrambled to find a way to pay his share of the rent that month. Luckily my best friend Mark had just gotten his insurance settlement from his car accident, so he lent me Travis's share of the rent, and I found two straight Swiss guys that were here on vacation for the month of Sept looking for a place to rent. Ahhhh Andreas. Thats both of them Andreas 1 and Andreas 2. Hilarious guys! I liked them a lot, introduced them to some local California cannabis and a show I like called Lost. They watched all three seasons.

To replace the swiss we found a really good kid named Andrew J Adams. Again a bit younger that I wanted, but in the interview that rare thing happened when you all stop having an interview and it becomes more like hangin out with friends. I liked him instantly as did the house, and in he came...

I should also mention the other frequent house occupant, my boyfriend Danny Torres who started staying over weekends not long after we started dating in August of '07. By the time we did the search for AJ in October of '08, Danny was pretty close to a full time roommate. In fact we had offered him the room first, bur he wasn't in a place where he could afford it. Now that I think about it we offered the room to Matt K, James Picerno and Josh Blackburn too but none of them took it either. Dammit!

So for a good ten months there is was Chris, Gabe, AJ, Danny and I. But as you have come to notice, it never stays the same for long... Gabe decided that after two years it was time for him to upgrade to a swanker pad with one less roommate, and he moved in August of '09, over to Delores park with one of our best friends Jeff Flora. He still stops by for a hiya, I miss Gabe sometimes.

When Gabe moved out Danny could finally afford to move in. We asked AJ to take Gabes room so that Danny and I could open up the adjoining doors to our rooms, but he had already settled into the middle room and had hung his garden-box out the window, so Danny took the far room and tried to make it home, but for a few months there, the only use that room got was at the end of the night when Danny dragged himself to sleep.

I dont know what went on between them, but something changed between Danny and AJ midway through their time together under the same roof. Which in total lasted about eight months. Danny started taking up Gabe's role of strict mother and AJ just started disappearing to his boyfriends house for days at a time. I dont want to try and figure out what went wrong there, AJ knows he is my friend and I will miss having him around. And Danny is happy that we get to open up the doors and that AJ is gone.

So here we are, April 1st 2010. When I left for work this morning AJ was gone and there was nothing but a white empty room. When I got home the metamorphosis was complete. All the doors were finally open and the room looked like it never had before, we now live in a delux suite and as I type this our new roommate Thomas is closing the back of his u-haul and driving over here... Hopefully, this will be the last time I update this story for a long while.