February 10, 2012

Dear Luv Doc,
Whenever I buy Neapolitan ice cream, my roommate eats the chocolate and leaves the vanilla and strawberry. What kind of person does that?
– Sarah

Sarah, your roommate is a sociopath. I don’t mean that in a hyperbolic, drama-queen kind of way. I mean it in a get-out-of-the-house-now kind of way. I could be wrong, but you may want to poke around down in the crawl space just to be sure. Wait a minute … hold off on that idea. Nothing good ever comes from poking around in a crawl space. Trust me. I’ve been there. Your crawl space may not be a catacomb full of rotting teenage drifters and truck stop prostitutes, but rest assured, there’s some scary shit down there: cobwebs, rat turds, mold, rust, roly-polies, and things that drop on your bare neck that feel exactly like a brown recluse and cause you to freak out and start thrashing around like an epileptic. Really, nobody in their right mind willingly goes into a crawl space unless there is some serious pay involved (like the kind of sick cheese plumbers make) or unless their immigration status is questionable. That’s why crawl spaces are popular for stashing corpses. Now admittedly, just because your roommate is a sociopath doesn’t necessarily mean he or she is also a serial-killing psychopath, but really, do you want to roll the dice on that one? Of course not. So before you resort to a drastic measure like inspecting your crawl space, you might want to check something a bit less dangerous, like your roommate’s car. Is it a windowless van with curtains behind the driver’s seat? Are there clowns and balloons and candy painted on the side? Are there Beanie Babies all over the dashboard, bloody handprints on the inside of the windows? If you answered “yes” to any of the preceding, you might want to consider making your roommate selection process a little more rigorous. In fact, if a potential roommate drives a windowless van and isn’t a superhot touring musician, you should politely move on to the next applicant. Same deal for anyone who drives a Hummer or a Camaro, but that goes without saying, doesn’t it? Actually there is a whole laundry list of signs someone might be a bad roommate: Does he/she never blink? Track marks? Rotten teeth? Twitchiness? Extra-long pinkie nail? Pierced tongue? World of Warcraft tattoo? Vibram Fivefingers? Regardless, as far as roommates go, your goose is already cooked. At least you know what you’re dealing with. Your best bet now is to buy a handgun and hire a bodyguard and a food taster.