The worst thing I’ve ever done to my housemate

‘He didn’t do the washing up so I left it in his bed’


Housemates: can’t live with them, fantasise about living without them. Unfortunately, they pay a (roughly) equal portion of the rent, and so they must stay. Don’t play nice though – there are a hundred small and subtle ways in which to fret someone’s very last nerve and drive them out.

Some of them aren’t even that subtle.

Alex

I took slugs out of my room and threw them into my housemate’s room. When he said, “we have a slug problem”, I  responded, “nah mate, you have a slug problem”.

Emma

I stole £200 cash from one of my housemates.

Chloe

I had sex in the bathroom of our old house and broke the door. We had a really remiss landlord so it didn’t get sorted for months. It kept swinging open while people were shitting, showering and pissing. I guess it was a pretty bad thing to do to myself, too.  

Clem

A few years ago I was living in a big house with four other mates. One New Year’s Eve, those of us who were in London had a big boozy dinner before we went out, and we thought we’d cook chicken and play at being grown-ups. The only nice cooking dishes we had belonged to the only one of our housemates who wasn’t there, but we figured she wouldn’t mind – everything’s communal, right? It was one of those grown-up ones: Le Creuset, with a heavy lid. Very expensive, and usually sat on the counter, looking pretty.  

We cooked the meal, got totally fucked and threw a party at ours and then did the cleaning the next morning. Except we forgot to clean the dish out, because it was just sitting with its lid on on the side, and so we sort of forgot it was full of moulding, slimy chicken bones.

A few weeks later – when it was crawling with maggots – she opened it up to start cooking a meal for her mum who was coming round. She threw up on top of the pile of rancid bones. We bought her a new one. They really are fucking expensive.

Anya

My housemate wouldn’t do his washing up so I left it in his bed and he came home drunk and lay on some dirty plates. He got congealed ketchup all over his sheets.

Laura

My guy mates had been going through some bins and found a discarded fleshlight. They thought it was hilarious and showed me, and we thought it would be funny to hide it in my housemate’s room. Worrying that it might have been used, my mate washed it out with soap before running into my housemate’s room and sticking one of her make-up brushes in it. She is pretty clean and was definitely going to hate it, but really couldn’t stop laughing at the make-up brush poking out this fake vagina. Anyway, we put it in a drawer and kind of forgot about it. Until she came home and starting yelling. She ran downstairs, where we sat smirking. She screamed, “what the fuck?” and then as she pulled her makeup brush out, which was apparently pretty expensive, the soap my friend had washed it out with came oozing out. She thought it was cum, and it went on her hands, and that’s when she completely lost it. She said she expected it from the boys, but not from me. I felt really bad.

Sophie

My housemate had a really weird boyfriend in our second year of uni. He was way older, always smelled like weed and was quite handsy. We didn’t like him. They always had sex really loudly above our living room and so one day when he stopped mid bang – HE ALWAYS CLIMAXED IN AN AMERICAN ACCENT – and came into our living room to ask, bashfully, for a condom, I didn’t help. You could tell he was trying to articulate the word “condom” but couldn’t bring himself too because he was too embarrassed. Normally, I would have helped him out, but he was really annoying. Eventually she came in and dragged him off, telling him to leave it. Anyway long story short she got pregnant, moved out, and now they have a kid.

Sara

In first year I had a flatmate who was a bit weird and antisocial. She drank alone every night instead of coming out with us. She was out one night with her (only) friend and the rest of us were having some drinks in the kitchen. Someone went to get something from the fridge and noticed something unusual in the fridge shelf – it took us a really long time to figure out what this slightly convex, round thing was but then the penny dropped and someone said, “wait, that’s a diaphragm”. Seriously. She is the only person in the 21st-century who still uses a diaphragm. Someone threw it at someone else, and that was it, we spent quite a while batting our flatmates’ diaphragm around the kitchen. Yeah, it fell on the floor. Yeah, we put it back in the fridge and never told her.

Callum

He was being really annoying over drinks, so we slipped a viagra into his pint. He threw up ten seconds later.

Matt

It was Halloween, and I was on a mad one. I’d fake tanned my entire body and dyed my shoulder-length hair black – I was going as Khal Drogo from Game of Thrones in a very skimpy outfit. I went out and long story short I scored, but when we got back from the club and stumbled into my room we found my housemate asleep in my bed. Turns out he’d actually spoken to me on the phone earlier that evening and texted me twice to say he needed to sleep in my room because the neighbours were having a party and he had an exam to revise for – I’d completely forgotten and was now waking him up by bursting half-naked through the door with Catwoman on my arm. Not content with ruining my relationship with just one housemate, I decided it would be a good idea for us to shag in the bed of my other housemate who was away for the weekend. After all, he’d never know. Although, of course, he did know – his white sheets and pillowcases were so badly stained with black hair dye and knock-off St Tropez that he had to throw them away.

Tom

My depressed, lonely housemate stole my other depressed, lonely housemate’s fleshlight one night without telling him. He kept quiet about it until one evening, while we were drinking together, he confessed anxiously that he had contracted genital warts without having sex. The fleshlight owner confessed he had them too. They both went to the doctor the next day. I haven’t seen the fleshlight since.

George

My housemates and I were pretty close, so we used to watch films together snuggled up in one duvet or share a bed after particularly heavy night out. Anyway, it was exam season, so when I developed a kind of itchy, eczema like condition on my legs, I attributed it to stress. Even when it continued for a good six weeks I still couldn’t be arsed to get a doctor’s appointment, and when I finally did I knew they’d just tell me it was stress. How stupid I felt, then, when the doctor turned round to me and told me I’d been living with scabies for the best part of two months. Not as stupid as my five housemates, however, who all had to cover themselves head-to-toe in insecticide and put their clothes and bedsheets in bin bags to stop the infestation spreading.

Ellie

Even though I’d go mad if my flatmates let their friends stay in my bed without asking, on more than one occasion I’ve offered up their empty beds if people have ended up crashing. On this particular evening, my friend and I had gone to a party where we both ended up pulling. The four of us came back to mine, as I was the only one who lived in London, and we carried on drinking. It got to a point where we all knew what we were waiting to do, and knowing my flatmate was away, I told them they could have her bed. I woke up in a state of panic the next morning, worried my flatmate would get back to find them butt naked in her bed, condoms on the floor. I burst into the room, telling them they could go and sleep in my bed. I did a quick recce of the room before I left that day – and missed a condom under one of the pillows. 

Zoe

I didn’t get on with one of my housemates at uni, and when she broke up with her hometown boyfriend, she started spending a lot of time at this other guy’s house. She’d go and smoke weed with him and come back at all hours, and it really wound me up she wouldn’t just admit they were sleeping together. I don’t know why. Anyway, one day, she asked if any of us could go to the STI clinic with her, but wouldn’t tell us why, saying she just wanted a “regular check up”. A few evenings later, she was out at his and I had some friends over for pre-drinks. We were getting ready in my room, and they were asking where all my housemates were. I proceeded to go into drunken, excruciating detail about how we didn’t get on, and how we’d gone to the STI clinic together which was definite proof she was shagging this guy and he’d given her chlamydia – completely unaware she’d come back early and heard everything.

She left it a whole week before she confronted me about it, during which time I’d got drunk and told her how much I loved her to try and subtly make her forgive me. She came into my room, sat down on my bed and told me she could never trust me with anything personal ever again.