My Ex-Roommate Romeo

The people the Universe brings into your life — and the start of a series of character profiles

Being a barely-surviving English teacher in Europe for most of my twenties, I’d always rent a room in a shared apartment. I changed cities in Spain every year and felt all Woody Guthrie with my guitar case and bags. I often wouldn’t even line up the accommodation before arriving.

I’d roll in with my entire life squeezed into two suitcases, have a cheap hostel booked for a few nights, and scour the internet for hours, usually taking the first thing I saw that was around two hundred euros a month.

I rented a place sight-unseen in Jaen, arrived at 9 pm, moved my stuff into a four-bedroom flat in the heart of the city, and ended up having one of the greatest years of my life with a cigarette-smoking Irishman, a tall legend from the south of England, and a Frenchman who refused to speak English and helped us Anglos practice our chunky Spanish. I’m friends with them all to this day.

I’ve obviously been on the wrong end of that and had to lose a deposit and change apartments after a few months of living with an unemployment-collecting-pot-smoking-wannabe forty-five-year-old DJ, who’d sit at home all day and berate me when I walked in the door because he’d taken the trash down three times in a row. But he did teach me the importance of always properly wringing out a dishcloth. I twist that sucker, pull it flat, and gently fold it to this day.

There were very few places I turned down, one in the seediest neighborhood in Sevilla and another tiny spot in Palencia that had an onion stank that burned the eyes and this elderly limping man, who’d be my flatmate and kindly showed me the teensy kitchen with only a toaster oven, electric burner, microwave, and a prison cell-sized room with a bare twin bed.

Overall, I mostly had luck with apartments and with roommates. But there’s a character that stands out head and shoulders above the rest.

For this story, I’ll use the fake name he used in his dating app profile: Romeo.

As with most apartments I had rented, the first weeks were pretty chill. Everyone wants to appear adaptable and hide any self-diagnosed mental issues that they might have.

In reality, Romeo and I got along fairly well, but that’s mostly because I’m a people pleaser who wants to be liked. There was a little tension between him and my anarchist-Italian-still-great-friend Leonardo, but Romeo and I had beers on many occasions, went out partying, and even ran and worked out together once.

I never felt in danger, but he did make me nervous. Something was off about him. It was the only room I rented where I made sure to lock the bedroom door every time I left. It was the only contract that I signed where I thought, “I hope my passport number doesn’t appear in Romeo’s contract.” And it was the only living situation where I’d enter my room and look to see that nothing had been moved or altered.

I was honestly a bit tipsy when I saw the apartment but was so desperate that I would have taken anything. I had been sitting in a hostel “chill zone” searching for and calling apartments for three days. Everything in my basically bankrupt price range was booked.

Sevilla is a good student city, and cheap rooms go quickly. I was twenty-seven but still in the under three hundred euro a month market. It was late September and everything had been scooped up in August. It was tough. Most calls I made were a quick, “yeah, it’s already gone.”

After dozens of misses, hang-ups, and extending my stay at the hostel, I finally lined up a viewing at the aforementioned sketchy-feeling neighborhood in the south of the city. The two middle-aged immigrant men who lived there seemed friendly enough, and I’d seen worse apartments, but it was not ideal. Down on the street, there were bars on all of the windows, the sidewalk was cracked and weedy, and there was garbage blown into all the corners. It was so far from my school, but I didn’t have many options. When I left, I was losing hope, walking to the bus stop and thinking maybe I’d have to grit my teeth and book this shithole, but then I got a call.

It was a super frail-sounding Spanish woman named Maria. I had inquired about the apartment the day before, and lucky for me an Italian girl, who was going to rent one of her rooms, had backed out, so she asked if I wanted to look at it. I said I’d book it right then over the phone. She laughed, said don’t be ridiculous, and, after my repeated double-checking, promised I was first in line to see it and make a decision.

She gave me Romeo’s number, and after a few drinks at the hostel waiting for him to finish work, I went to the apartment half in the bag. I was ready to sign a contract ten seconds after looking at the tiny white-walled three-bedroom with a futon in the living room and old-but-passable kitchen.

It was fifteen minutes from my school, two hundred euros a month, and Romeo didn’t seem like a serial killer or smell like onions.

I thought, ‘yeah, maybe he’ll use my personal data to take out a dozen credit cards and max them out but he’s not going to hurt me.

As with most apartments I had rented, the first weeks were pretty chill. Everyone wants to appear adaptable and hide any self-diagnosed mental issues that they might have.

Romeo, Leo from Italy, and I were no different. Romeo was born in Morroco but spent most of his life in Andalucia. He had native-level Spanish, Leo’s was good, mine wasn’t all that bad, and I really enjoyed shooting the shit with the boys in another language.

But very quickly Romeo’s ego became apparent. He knew a bit about everything, loved to argue, and was girl-crazy.

He made a lot of off-putting comments about women and sex, as men can sometimes do when trying to ‘bond.’ Romeo reverted to ‘locker-room-talk,’ misogyny, and unsolicited stories of sexual conquest. I thought he was overcompensating to try and make some sort of alfa-male first impression, but that turned out to just be who he was.

In the eight months, there was one time I remember him having a female friend over and graciously putting his used condom on top of the full kitchen garbage.

There were a lot of mysteries surrounding Romeo. One was the long white cable that came out of the wall near our internet router — the bill being, of course, connected to my bank account. I never knew what that chord did but it went under Romeo’s door and into his dark room, the interior we never got much of a look at. The shades were always drawn, he never turned on the light, and when he opened the door you could kind of see the side of a desk with a computer, but other than that, it was a cave of foreboding mystery.

On weekends, I often wouldn’t see him emerge once in a two-day stretch. Maybe we just missed each other, but I’d be home many evenings and sometimes wouldn’t see him come out to eat, drink, and always wondered if he went to the bathroom.

I got my answer when taking out the plastic recycling.

The tap water in Sevilla is drinkable, but not that good, so I would buy cases of 1.5-liter bottles. The plastic would pile up quickly. One day, when crushing bottles to take down to the recycling bin, I picked up a worn bottle of a different brand, and as always, I loosened the cap, held it in front of my chest, squeezed, and twisted it small with a loud crunch.

My face was hit with a warm ammonia-smelling gust of air from inside the bottle.

I immediately wanted to vomit and then kick Romeo’s ass. Not only was he gross and weird enough to pee in a bottle in his own home, but after dumping out most of the piss, he put it in our freaking recycling bag. I only crushed plastic bottles when I knew the full chain of custody after that.

The weirdest thing, however, was his job.

Leo and I never really knew what Romeo did every day. I know we asked and Leo says he claimed to do something in renewable energy. He did leave before eight in the morning most days in a hoodie and jeans and came home around six. Beyond that, we weren’t sure what he did, and I don’t think I wanted to know.

About a month into living together, around Halloween, Romeo and I went bar hopping in the center of Sevilla. He had lived in the city for years so I followed his lead as we drank cerveza after cerveza.

For the record, we had drunk quite a bit and this was a few years ago, so my memories aren’t perfect. But at some point, I was without Romeo and smoking a cigarette with this stocky middle-aged British guy with a goatee and newsboy hat.

He said he was a journalist, reported on crime in Sevilla and Spain, and told me that the guy I was hanging out with was a member of a Moroccan criminal organization.

Again, I don’t remember all the details, we didn’t have much of a conversation, and naturally, I assume I asked follow-up questions but recall being more intrigued than anything.

As I said, I never got dangerous vibes from Romeo. I thought, ‘yeah, maybe he’ll use my personal data to take out a dozen credit cards and max them out but he’s not going to hurt me. Plus, I have his full name and national ID number. Even if they’re fake, he probably wouldn’t want to burn a perfectly good alias for a few thousand bucks.’

So this tipsy dude at the bar, who claimed to be a journalist, said my roommate was a member of an underground fraternal organization. It would have been an interesting anecdote that I wouldn’t have taken too seriously and forgotten all about, but Romeo’s reaction was more suspicious than anything.

Once I saw him again that night, he immediately started making up stories about seeing the British guy when we walked in and telling me that this Brit had been watching and whispering to his girlfriend and, for whatever reason, hatched a plan to drive a wedge between us. That was Romeo’s theory.

I repeatedly wanted to change the subject, but he wouldn’t drop it. And I could tell he was gauging my level of concern. I was weirdly chill for a person who just heard their new housemate might be a gangster, but Romeo kept trying new explanations.

The next morning, I told Leo the story and said he should know that our new housemate might be connected to the mob. He was also quite laid back about it. Romeo then came out of his room and into the kitchen, asking how much I remembered from the night before and again, clearly eyeing if and how nervous I was.

But Leo and I were chill as long as he didn’t come home covered in blood, we didn’t see a gun in his waistband, or have thick dudes in tracksuits knock on our door asking questions.

None of those things happened.

I moved out in June, and three years later, haven’t gotten any crazy credit card statements or visits from INTERPOL. Other than being charged for the internet the rest of the summer after Romeo promised to change it to his name and bank account, we left things on pretty good footing. He and Leonardo had beef over a mocha pot coffee maker when Leo moved to Berlin.

The last time I spoke with Romeo was when he sent me a text on New Year. We exchanged some pleasantries, and he said he was thinking about buying the apartment from Maria the landlord, who was in poor health.

He seems to be doing fine, and if I went back to Sevilla, I’d probably hit him up for a beer.

If that happens, I hope I have the courage to dive into the details of his day job and if he’s still pissing in bottles in his own home.

You have to love the roommates the Universe brings into your life.