Gay people can be misers too!
After my first year in University, in halls, I went out and rented a flat in town with my best mate from my course. You can find out a lot about people without living with them - I knew he "preferred the intimate company of gentlemen" - but there's a lot you can't. Like realizing that someone is a total fucking miser.

So we move in and, to smooth things along (and being a stupid, naive and inexperienced young student), I sign up to most of the utility bills in my name.

The penny began to drop that there was something not quite right with this guy when I started spending more weekend time with him. He had a succession of "boyfriends" come up from London, all of whom seemed to be immensely rich. He'd then spend the whole weekend living the life of Riley at their expense, after a couple of weeks of which they'd mysteriously vanish, only to be replaced by a new model after the next clubbing trip down to the smoke. Once we were flat sharing, I used to get invited out on these little jaunts, and the "boyfriend" usually seemed happy to extend his largesse for his partners' flatmate. The first couple of times I thought this was a great wheeze, but when it happened time and time again, it was a bit troubling.

It starting to trouble me directly when the weather turned colder and we started to have the heating on. My flatmate refused to turn on the radiators in his room in order to save on heating costs. I thought this was fair enough, so when the first gas bill came in I suggested he only pay a third, and I pay the rest. He didn't like this suggestion and, to my astonishment, got in contact with British Gas the next day and attempted to find out exactly how much a given length of radiator took to run per hour so he could calculate precisely how much we should each pay. Of course, this would entail us keeping perfect records of how long each of us was running a radiator for and then doing long sums to calculate the totals each quarter. It seemed self-evident to me that this sort of record keeping was both pointlessly annoying and likely to lead to even more bitter arguments over the bill, so I just let it lie and paid the whole thing myself.

That was bad enough, but what really took the biscuit was the phone bill. My flatmate took incoming calls, but never made them - again, on the pretext of saving money. So, on phone bill time, I suggested we split line rental and I pay for the full costs of the calls. Fair enough, you might think? Not a bit of it! No, apparently us having a phone line was a luxury and he'd do without it if he had to, so it was my responsibility entirely and I'd have to pay the whole lot. Wanting to actually be able to stay in touch with my friends and family and the bill being in my name I had to comply.

After six months of this shit, I'd had enough and moved out having got him to agree to allowing me to sublet the room to someone else. He didn't insist on vetting the candidates though, so I saddled him with the most peculiar individual I could find - a mature student who wanted to have his entire family visit from time to time and live in the small room. I was absolutely delighted to discover, some months later, that the subletee had moved out after causing considerable domestic chaos, leaving a couple of months rent unpaid which my previous flatmate had had to stump up to the angry landlord. I suspect the total came to quite a lot more than 50% of a couple of gas and phone bills.

Karma, everyone. Karma :)
(MattDP (Squiggle), Tue 28 Oct 2008, 10:59, 1 reply)

sure, but
if you call them a tightarse, be sure to clarify.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 15:09, closed)