living with a garbage whale I've got to vent about my roommate. We'll call this thing "Richard" (details changed to protect the indolent). I've been friends with Richard for a good while now, we went to school together, our parents are friends, and Richard adopted some pets from me. I always thought Richard was a decent person apart from his weight. Richard lost his job earlier this year, and, compelled by friendship, I opened my small home to him while he looked for a new job. Some things to bear in mind: I never really had a sense for scale, I don't have many fat friends, I certainly never asked their weight, and I had no clue how much Richard weighs. If asked two months ago, I would have guessed 250. (Now I figure it's gotta be more 350-400. His ass alone is four feet wide.) Richard and I lived in different states lately, I hadn't actually seen his living conditions in five or more years. I also never lived with Richard, but we're in our 30s now, well out of college fecklessness, so I assumed Richard basically had his private life together at this point. I viewed Richard moving in with me as an opportunity for him to have a fresh start, new city, new him. My place is fucking tiny, 1-bedroom apartment, it works for me because I am a reasonably-sized, perfectly mobile healthy adult, with my belongings on shelves or organized to maximize space. I figured it wouldn't be hard to accommodate Richard for the short term. Turns out I was wrong on every count. Richard is dirty: 24 hours after Richard has moved in and been granted the pull-out bed in my love seat sofa (my largest piece of furniture), I find the first roach in my home. Richard had an out of control roach problem that he tried to keep secret, and as anyone with a quarter of a brain could predict, they came in with his luggage. I killed over thirty roaches in one night in roach traps, and two months later I am still finding survivors breeding in my apartment. Richard is lazy: We eventually had to put Richard on a mattress on my living room floor because he was too fat for my sleeper bed, and bent it. The couch sags now. Richard uses that mattress as his sole furniture because when he tries to sit on the sofa, which is JUST wide enough for him, he still can't sit comfortably because his goddamn seat bones are pushed to the front edge of the sofa by the DEPTH of his ass. This results in him basically never moving off the mattress. Richard is a slob: Richard won't do basic household maintenance chores like sweeping, cleaning the toilet, wiping the counter. He'd rather buy Styrofoam plates than use a fucking dish because he doesn't want to have to wash it. I had to bully him into using our goddamn laundry facility the first time, and he's incapable of keeping his stupid mattress throne tidy, made straight, or free of discarded laundry. Richard is stupid: He doesn't understand how to sort trash into the various bins my neighborhood uses for waste, even though they are clearly labeled; like, fast food garbage doesn't go in with the yard waste, etc. Richard smells: This unpleasant odor like a really dilute version of belly button funk just emanates from him. Belly button funk is bacteria and dead skin cells, right? I guess this is the dead skin and bacteria trapped in his rolls. Richard is a glutton: Every single goddamn meal has to have cheese in it. The only reason his every meal doesn't have bacon in it was that I don't eat meat and told him it isn't allowed in my house. The one single time I convinced him to go walking with me, he became famished by the unaccustomed activity, and had to scarf a whole plate of cheese fries to recover. Richard isn't interested in getting his life together: he stays up until 4 or 5 in the morning on the internet on his phone, wakes up after noon, spends, oh, maybe an hour a day actually job hunting, the rest of the time it's just lazy scrolling through Instagram or where ever, while I'm out actually working a 60hr/week job. Richard has zero interest in aligning his sleep schedule to fit with regular human beings hoping to have a real job. tl;dr: I was friends with a fucking fatass and now I'm paying for my sins I guess.