Your friendly neighborhood bartender is taking a break from his wild dating life to tackle your questions with his patented blend of advice and adult beverages. So slide on up to the bar my friends. Now, what can I get you?
Hey JT,
So I’m having a huge problem that I need your sage-like wisdom to address. I’m a recently-graduated young professional woman living with two guys and another girl. The girl is lovely, as is one of the guys. The second guy, however, is starting to get on my freaking nerves.
We live in a two-story house. Each room is roughly the same size, so we all split rent and utilities equally. Since we live in such an egalitarian state, one would think that would mean we all pitch in and help out around the house, right? Well, my one lackluster roommate (we’ll call him “Eddie”) does NOTHING.
He’s not a slacker in general. Like the rest of us, he has a job, he’s never late with rent, and is generally a laid-back, nice guy. But the difference between him and the rest of us is that we all contribute to keeping our house clean, while he lays back and contents himself to watch us work. He will be IN THE SAME ROOM as someone who’s cleaning and still do nothing. And when we ask him to, he always has an excuse.
The other girl and I are the ones who are on the lease, as the two guys moved in after our first two roomies moved out. So … do we kick Eddie out?
Frustrated with Roomie
"You look me in the eye when I'm asking you why you're such a terrible person!"
Ah, the pain of having roommates. Like zits on prom night and watching an entire episode of American Idol, it’s a horrifying but essential rite of passage.
I had a roommate like Eddie one time. After my ex Gimli and I broke up, I moved out and found myself living with a bright, warm, and engaging young woman whose name escapes me for the moment, so we’ll just call her Tootie Von Bindersnatch.
Now, Tootie was everything you could hope for in a roommate, by which I mean our interactions were pleasant, brief, and gloriously infrequent. We had opposite work schedules, so usually if I was home, she wasn’t, and vice versa. She was also chronically single, which was great news for me because it meant I didn’t have to ever deal with some weird dude I didn’t know hogging my bathroom while he greases on hair gel or takes selfie photos or whatever other weird sh*t straight guys do.
But if Tootie had a flaw, it’s that she was allergic to housework to the point of ridiculous, 90’s-sitcom-level absurdity.
One week we agreed that the upcoming Sunday would be an uber-cleaning day. We would roll up our sleeves, dive into our stockpile of Mr. Clean Magic Sponges (and holy crap on a stick, you guys, those bitches are REALLY MAGIC) and clean the sh*t out of our apartment. It was going to have a hymen, it would be so pure when we were finished.
So the morning comes. I’m excited, because I like both clean things and group projects, and several months into our cohabitation, this would be the first time I ever saw Tootie lift a finger to clean anything, so, you know, new things are always interesting. I woke up around 9ish, brushed my teeth, rolled up my sleeves, and started working, figuring she’d get up soon and I would take a break to have breakfast with her before we resumed together.
An hour went by, and I started getting hungry. I left the house and went to Dunkin Donuts - don’t judge me, I was working and didn’t feel like cooking - and when I came back, I saw things had been moved around in the bathroom, but she had returned to her room and shut the door.
Frowning, I ate my breakfast and went back to cleaning. Hours passed. Suddenly I heard something coming from her room -- music. I knocked on her door and called out her name, and the music slowly decreased in volume until it disappeared. I called her name again, but was met with only silence, and I imagined her frozen inside, no doubt thinking that if she didn’t move I, like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, would be unable to locate her.
A few hours after that, I had cleaned basically the whole apartment, and took a shower. When I came out, her door was wide open, and her room was empty. She had left. I texted her to ask why she didn’t help, and she responded, “OMG, wuz that 2day? Lol i forgot! Next time k?”
I’m sure you’re ahead of me in the story at this point -- the “next time” never happened, and I was totally the maid and butler of that apartment.
The reason I’m telling you this self-indulgent story, FWR, is that there are people who will always coast when they know others will pick up the slack, and most of us have lived with one at least once. In my situation, my roommate and I were both on the lease, so I wasn’t in a position of power. You are.
I’m not saying kick him out immediately. What you should do is initiate that oh-so-dreaded cohabitational phenomenon, the house meeting. Talk to the other roommates beforehand so you’re on the same page. Let Eddie know this isn’t personal, and that you all like him very much, but living as a group means all parties have to contribute equally, and you all have enough to do without picking up after him. Agree to meet again in a month and discuss the situation again. If progress is made, great. If not, give him another month to find a new place.
Dear JT,
Does the homophobia of the world ever get to you?
With the induction of the latest pope and his views on homosexuality, I want to rage to the world that my 15-year-old son is not an abomination. He is happiness and joy and sunshine. He is a true blessing to his father and me. He is not evil just because he has pictures of his favorite gay TV characters on his bedroom walls and blushes whenever he talks about his best friend and other boys. He is filled with love and goodness.
People keep telling me, "Well, what do you expect? It's the Catholic Church. They're always going to take that stance." How is that an answer? How is that right when a religious or political leader preaches vile, homophobic hate to millions?
Mom of a Beautiful Teenage Son
Yeah. It definitely gets to me.
I remember when marriage equality was up in the air here in New York, my home state. My straight coworkers couldn’t understand why I was gripping my seat with white knuckles the week leading up to the vote. Awful, awful things were said about gay people, and many of them by leaders in the Catholic community, especially that piece of human waste, Timothy Dolan, whose hatred and bigotry only cause him to climb the ranks of Catholicism ever higher.
I was raised Catholic, and one of the most frustrating obstacles I face with my extended family is many of them still are. The worst part is they just can’t figure out why I find that problematic. My cousins, however, who are all my age and younger, to the last one have renounced Catholicism.
And while that’s a specific example, it’s also indicative of a trend, and that trend is how I keep from getting too despairing about the rampant homophobia present in Catholicism and many other religious institutions: young people are overwhelmingly in favor of gay marriage. Among Americans aged 18-29, a stunning 81 percent say they’re in favor of gay marriage.
81 percent.
I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty amazing. Especially when you take into account that the demographic that’s most opposed to gay marriage is the elderly, and I don’t want to go all Lion King on you here, but guess what happens to old people in the great circle of life? They die, and are replaced by young people. Who, again, happen to have a four fifths majority in favor of equal marriage rights.
Change takes time, and it takes even longer in millennia-old institutions with legions of blindly devout followers who listen to the whinings of geriatric virgins. But it does happen, and if there’s anything to be learned by the decade since Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage, it’s that sometimes change happens even faster than we expect.
Any fight for truth, justice, and other Superman-y stuff will always have enemies. The way you beat them is by not letting the world’s homophobia get to you. It’s by being a beacon of hope. It’s by being a supportive and loving mom to a gay son, which you are. It’s by doing the right thing as much as you can and as publicly as you can, so others can see you and be inspired. It’s by spreading love, which always has more sticking power than hate.
If you do that, they can’t touch you.
Hey JT,
I started dating this guy a while back who's super into comics. I've always liked comic book movies, but was never much of a comic reader myself. Any good titles to recommend to a comic newbie?
Funnybook Neophyte
I'm going to pass this one on to the crowd, my friend, because there's a whole world of possibility out there and my scope is limited. But if I had to suggest one, I've been having a blast reading the latest Batgirl title.
A while back, DC rebooted their entire universe, and so Barbara Gordon, who since the 80's has been the wheelchair-bound superhero Oracle, was now back under the mask as Batgirl. I've always been partial to the character, and writer Gail Simone is doing an awesome job with the book, so that's my vote.
Anyone else?
To ask JT a question, email him at jtadvicecolumn@gmail.com. Or you can be super tech-sexy and ask via Twitter. Messages may be edited for space (but they're totally more likely to get chosen if they're three paragraphs or less. Just sayin'.)
You can find previous editions of AfterElton's Ask JT advice column here.
