The Worst Roommate Ever (Seriously)

MilesMorales1

Creek was tall, slim, and handsome, with hair as black as squid’s ink. Though he was 60, he looked to be in his late 40s. When he came to visit the apartment, he brought his dog, a 13-year-old Border-collie mix named Zachary, so that he could meet Miller’s arthritic black Lab, Cosimo.

To Miller, Creek’s arrival felt like a godsend. She was dealing with the sudden departure of a roommate, a looming lease renewal, a bank account kept precariously afloat by part-time work at a juice bar and at a nearby law firm filing paperwork. Here was a courtly gentleman, Miller thought, as she walked Creek through her cluttered apartment, an experienced lawyer who’d lived in Europe and the Middle East. At the end of the tour, they settled on her couch and fell into a deeper conversation. Creek shared his interest in Buddhist meditation; Miller told him about recent romantic troubles and Creek offered advice. The sky outside was turning dusky blue when Creek said, “I like the place, and I like you. If you like me, I could just do this now”—move in, he meant.

His abruptness surprised Miller, but Creek said he could pay her on the spot. He pulled a check from his pocket and made it out for $800. Miller noticed that the upper-left corner of the check was blank, and in the space where his name and address should have appeared, Creek wrote “219 E. Willow Grove Ave” — her own address now made his. He did not write his name. He signed the check in a messy scrawl, the only discernible letter an enormous, looping J. Then he and Zachary hailed an Uber, with a promise to return that evening. Miller asked if he needed any furniture. “No,” Creek said. “I have everything I need.”

Everything Creek needed, Miller saw when he returned, fit inside six Rubbermaid bins and a cat carrier. (It turned out that along with Zachary, he had a desperately shy tabby named Abigail.) He brought no mattress: For a bed, he dropped a heap of comforters on the bedroom floor. It struck Miller that someone who slept like this might not have much in the way of a proper bank account. But the following afternoon, she deposited his rent check and it cleared.

Then, on April 5, their 11th day of living together, Miller showed Creek the utility bills and asked for his half, $140.80. Creek refused. The bills, he noted, covered a period before he’d moved in. When Miller pressed him, he texted, “We can handle this in court if you would prefer.” At first the escalation in tone jarred Miller. Looking at the dates, however, she second-guessed herself: Maybe Creek was right.

Strange things began to happen. One evening, Miller came home to find the living-room lights wouldn’t turn on — Creek had taken the bulbs and screwed them into lamps in his bedroom. A few days later, the six chairs at the kitchen table disappeared. Miller knocked on Creek’s door, and when he opened it she saw he’d fashioned them into a desk. Miller had assumed Creek spent his days in court, but neighbors said they saw him loitering on the property throughout the afternoon. He began sprinkling his speech with legalese. When they argued, he accused her of breaking “the covenant of quiet enjoyment,” a technical phrase Miller recognized from her days working for a real-estate agent. When he found a cigarette butt in the toilet bowl one afternoon, he told her flatly that he would not be paying the next month’s rent. As a paralegal, “you should know about the warranty of habitability,” he texted her.

Hearing about Creek’s behavior, Alex’s mother asked her daughter for his phone number, then plugged it into Google. She found two articles and didn’t finish reading them before picking up the phone and calling her daughter. “Alex, we have a big problem,” she said. “Jed Creek is not who he says he is.”

Creek’s legal name was Jamison Bachman. In 2012, Bachman had shown up at the home of a woman across town named Melissa Frost, claiming to be a New Yorker whose home had been destroyed in Hurricane Sandy. Overcome with pity, Frost let him in — and nearly lost her house. In an expensive and frightening ordeal that dragged on for months, Bachman slowly laid claim to the space, using his intricate knowledge of tenancy laws to stay one step ahead of her. He scuffed up the floors, kicked down the doors, and clogged the toilets with cat litter. “He went from being this cordial, polite person who understood he was a guest in my house,” Frost said in one of the articles, “to someone who was approaching me aggressively and flat-out saying, ‘This is my house now.’ ”

I reached out to Frost this past summer, having read about her encounter with Bachman. Over the years, she told me, other roommates had written to her; working with them and with public records, I soon identified a dozen victims of Bachman’s, spread up and down the East Coast. Bachman, these stories made clear, was a serial squatter operating on a virtuosic scale, driving roommate after roommate into court and often from their home. But Bachman wasn’t a typical squatter in that he did not appear especially interested in strong-arming his way to free rent (although he often granted himself that privilege); instead, he seemed to relish the anguish of those who had taken him in without realizing that they would soon be pulled into a terrifying battle for their home. Nothing they did could satisfy or appease him, because the objective was not material gain but, seemingly, the sadistic pleasure of watching them squirm as he displaced them.

It's quite a long one, but well worth reading. Guy was a ****ing mental case. House/Room mates are more trouble than its worth.


http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/jamison-bachman-worst-roommate-ever.html?utm_campaign=nym&utm_source=fb&utm_medium=s1

McMurphy

Creek was tall, slim, and handsome, with hair as black as squid’s ink.

As black as squids ink ye say.

gw80

Johnny Dogs wrote: »

As black as squids ink ye say.

Aye, squid ink, the blackest of the blackiest black things, to be sure, aaarrggg.

Raging_Ninja

Wasn't there a fella posting either here or in R&R about his alcoholic housemate who got a carving knife and was roaming the house with it before passing out on the landing? The poster locked himself in his bedroom before emerging and taking photos of the passed out housemate with the big fúckoff knife in his hand.

Another boards member poster about how they were living with a raging alco who smeared his excrement along the walls and thought it was perfectly normal.

Ken.

Johnny Dogs wrote: »

As black as squids ink ye say.

gw80 wrote: »

Aye, squid ink, the blackest of the blackiest black things, to be sure, aaarrggg.

It's not black its just really really really really really really really really really really dark blue.

gw80

Conspectus wrote: »

It's not black its just really really really really really really really really really really dark blue.

Well bless my barnacles!

McMurphy

Raging_Ninja wrote: »

Wasn't there a fella posting either here or in R&R about his alcoholic housemate who got a carving knife and was roaming the house with it before passing out on the landing? The poster locked himself in his bedroom before emerging and taking photos of the passed out housemate with the big fúckoff knife in his hand.

Another boards member poster about how they were living with a raging alco who smeared his excrement along the walls and thought it was perfectly normal.

Remember the post on boards about the lad who had diarrhoea and couldn't use the jacks in his house because his gay Brazilian housemate and his partner were "hammering the hoops of each other" in there while he was shyttin through the eye of a needle into a pint glass or something similar?:pac:

Thank fcuk my days of sharing sleeping quarters with randomers is long behind me.