The Horror of a Craigslist Roommate Search

For an older person, finding a new living situation from scratch is horrifying at nearly a John Carpenter film level. The good ol’ days of strolling down the road with your belongings in a handkerchief tied to a stick over your shoulder while whistling Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” and copping a room on the cheap that could be paid for by “two hours of pushing a broom” are long gone. After nearly four decades of a greedy, me first-fuck you, Ayn Randian jackhammer level of psycho-social politics and propaganda, the American spirit has devolved on a person to person level to such a point that the country’s official symbol should be Uncle Sam with a Colt 45 in one hand and his dick in the other with the phrase, “GIVE ME THAT, IT’S MINE” … but in Latin, so it looks cooler. As it stands today, after a couple of months of looking for a new living situation with Craigslist being the primary search tool, I can state that if you want definitive proof that this country is completely stratified and at loggerheads, chocked full of solipsistic, money grubbing finks heading for a Roman Empire level collapse, try finding a “shared living” arrangement with strangers.

With that in mind, track back two months or so when my quest for new digs began. First off, this rooming with random strangers thing is kind of new to me. I’ve mostly jumped from place to place with people I already know or at least somewhat knew beforehand. In my nearly three decades of paying rent, I’ve lived in close to 20 different homes, apartments, by the week motels, art studios, campers, a converted bus, and the basement of a giant club in Portland after sleeping in a car for a while, and this doesn’t count the sporadic couch surfing with friends in my late 20s and early 30s. The last two places I’ve lived in were both five year stints ending partly due to my sloth like, homebody, familiarity breeds contempt ways and by once single roomies coupling up, but such is life, and that’s the way it should be: two people attached at the hip with the rest of the world carefully regarded as potential enemies and interlopers. And really, that is the case with most of my friends these days. They are either married with a mortgage, kids, car payments, etc., and the spare room in the house is only for grandma and/or grandpa when she/he/they drop by occasionally, or my single friends have real jobs and the cash to live alone and like it that way; color me diaper poop green with envy for the last group. Hence, with my usual options thinned out due to time and aging, I began my search in today’s electronic version of the classifieds: Craigslist.

Over the years, Craigslist has made the news with it being used as an ersatz social hub for swingers to hook up and occasionally rape and murder each other. It can also be a sort of electronic garage sale for the buying or selling of items, like my bike that was stolen off the porch the week before and ended up for sale in Lake Elsinore by an organized group of tweaker thieves operating a chop-shop that got raided by the cops the next day (true story). And, of course, there are the “wanted” ads for employment that are just a bouillabaisse of con-men shilling for multi-level-marketing pyramid schemes by throwing out lost leader posts for “warehouse work” or “management trainees” to rope some poor kids into slinging Amway (or whatever they’re calling themselves these days), water filters, essential oils, beauty products, or even knives or perfume door to door or to reluctant friends, so what else should have I expected from their “shared living” section but the slumlord variation of the same?

Thankfully, unlike the old timey paper classifieds that were paid by the word so that that “financially initiated brevity” created various unknown elements and mystery, Craigslist allows its users a much more generous platform in which to place their ads with all of their psycho-babble and particulars for the whole world to see; hence, you get a real understanding of what that person is looking for in a housemate. This is a positive thing so that sometime after moving in, you won’t have the police called on you for putting milk in their “vegan only” refrigerator (true story; not mine but a friend’s). Therefore, I know that there is no possible way I would survive the various postings stating they are looking for a “Vegan, cat loving, LGBTQIA, housemate to share our spiritual quest through arts and crafts; no drinking, smoking, drugs (except weed), drama, or pets (except kitties).” It’s cool if that’s your kind of party, but that’s not really my kind of party.

The other area of posters run the gamut of religious psychopaths who have the same “no drinking, smoking, drugs, drama or pets” motif but with an entirely different spiritual quest, one that you must also absolutely share with them down to whatever particular Branch Davidian style sect they have chosen to worship. Speaking of religion, creepy molesters and sex fiends of all shades are festooned in the listings and pop up like a jack in the box with a big red rubber dick swinging around your face, but at least they are honest and up-front about their target markets, and it’s further proof that the beautiful people (or just guys with giant dongs) get a lot of extra benefits and deals in life, assuming that swapping sex with a potential lying, hairy swamp-creature for a break in rent is a benefit.

Aside from the aforementioned groups of people from the happy time fun club above, the more prevalent posters are the various slumlords practicing their ancient craft. Similar to the creepy sex fiends, the slumlords today come in a variety of flavors: young homeowners in over their heads and renting out rooms to cover the mortgage they can’t afford on their own, older folks in giant homes who have split the place up into mini apartments, people (like me but on the other end) caught in the dilemma of moving out or replacing a long term tenant, and good old fashion, dyed in the wool, gutter dwelling, sewer rat slumlords, who own the property but don’t live there; they usually live right nearby, so they can put their nose in your business as much as possible. There seems to be the addition of property investors using professional management companies to actually rent out rooms, along with the classic entire homes. I can only speculate this must be due to the housing market collapse a little over a decade ago, and the feeding frenzy of offshore buyers buying up “distressed” properties at auction for pennies on the dollar, coupled with the shattered diaspora of dispossessed that still needed a place to live. Unfortunately for these investor type slumlords, this inland valley area is mostly kind of a shithole, or these monthly rooms wouldn’t exist because all of the homes would be Airbnb’d by now. But that’s a topic for a different rant.

None-the-less, I began my search and found the least draconian listings that would mesh with my lifestyle choices. The funny thing is, for the real expensive places, it looks like they don’t care if you’re a cigar chomping, fecal freak with a rabid pit-bull and a meth habit, but that is the way of the world: money takes care of everything. Unfortunately, that’s not my story. My first showing was with a middle-aged, Asian woman. It was a nice newer home at the top end of my price range. The place, like the woman, was immaculate, as in OCD clean. She liked that I was an educator, but I could see that my rather scruffy Captain Caveman look was a concern. When she took me to the kitchen, I was impressed by its cleanliness, as if it was completely unused. I told her I enjoyed cooking and was informed rather shakily that the only cooking allowed was in the microwave. Using the stove was not only too messy, but the smells got into the walls and would knock the home’s value down. I could see her getting a little agitated; maybe my walking in moved some of the carpet fibers in the wrong direction, and she was going to need to spend the next hour with a fine-toothed comb putting them back in order, so I thanked her for her time, commented on how lovely and clean her home was and made my way out of there carefully like backing off from a spooked farm animal.

My next showing was a walk through in Stepford Land; 700 bucks a month for a postage stamp of a room. Not even that long ago, people could rent a nice, older, two-bedroom house in this area for 700 a month. This potential slumlord was at least attractive. She was also very professional, fitness crazed, and motivated, the type of woman who is going to get everything she wants out of life and won’t take no for an answer. You know, the exact opposite of me. As she began grilling me about my jobs and education, she kind of eyed me suspiciously, especially after the bubbly professional woman driving a Mercedes and holding a bag of doughnuts showed up for the walk through. They hit it off immediately: two old souls in young, fit bodies. I suddenly became a ghoulish shadow haunting their presence with my weary and ominous old ways. I was pretty sure Doughnut Girl had that one in the bag, no pun intended, so after she told both of us to go online and fill out the apps, I said I would and then declined that further waste of my time and money (50 bucks).

The following room-for-rent viewing was only 500 a month in a “fixer upper” of a place, that would stay in a permanent state of “fixer upper” because I recognized it when I drove up. I had partied in that house two decades ago, and it was a shithole back then with very few changes over the years. The area too was a bit on the dicey side, not packing heat to make it from my car to the house dicey, but definitely loaded shotgun in the closet and dead bolt on the bedroom door dicey. It was however in my price range and would put me back into downtown. The walk through was going splendidly until the old, Slavic bat asked to see my teeth. MY FUCKING TEETH, like a real life, old timey, slave trader. Normally, I’d quickly retort by saying something cheeky like, “Let me see those old titties first,” but I was so speechless that I just started laughing and walking away. She tried explaining to me that she wanted to make sure I wasn’t a drug addict, a “meth-head person.” Through my laughter, I said, “Lady, look at my waistline and try that sentence in your head again and see if it still works.” I left her rambling on the curb to my car as I drove away.

And this was the first time I went out looking and doing walk-throughs. Later that night, peeling the wax off a bottle of Maker’s Mark, I just sat there questioning myself as to what the fuck is happening out there in the real world? Is this some kind of pre-apocalypse floor show? Three different rooms in three different homes, all owned and/or managed by women, and it’s a crazed stew pot of control freaks at an OCD square dance. At that point, I was afraid to meet up with any of the men who happen to be in this slumlord game today. Was I going to come up against some Bond villain petting a cat who asks me to drop trou’ to check if my balls are big enough and then demands that I fight a street bum on his front lawn for the opportunity to rent a room?

Man, this process really shows that if you didn’t make all of the right moves in America by pimping up a fat stack of cash and property and are still somehow alive in your 50s, you are a stone cold fucking loser of epic proportions. I think I have a solution though. Instead of finding a room to rent here in California, or even in the USA, I’m going to sell everything I have and buy a one-way ticket to Norway. Then, right after my plane lands, I’m going to rob a bank and just wait for the cops to show up. They’ll arrest me and put me in a Norwegian prison where I’ll live better than I do here in the USA, while not working three jobs to afford a room, plus have medical and dental coverage while incarcerated. Hopefully, it will be at least a 20-year sentence, which would be the longest I’ve ever stayed in one place.