The Boys: Dirty Artie and Brandon the Bartender

Let me introduce you to my new roommates:  Dirty Artie and Brandon the Bartender.  I'd met Dirty Artie when I first came to see the place, but Brandon the Bartender was out so I actually didn't meet him until after I moved in.  During the week I rarely saw either one of them.  Dirty Artie was a paralegal at a corporate firm in midtown and basically made his own hours, usually leaving our place around 10:30 am and getting back almost twelve hours later.  Brandon the Bartender and I worked completely opposite hours -- I would run into Brandon as he got home in the morning when I was getting ready for school.  He generally got back up around dinner time.  The funniest thing about Brandon is that when he got home from work he would smoke a little pot in his bedroom, which was the converted room in half of the living room right off the kitchen.  Since he worked nights, though, I would generally be in the kitchen getting a cup of coffee in my bathroom when the smoke wafted under the door.  Kind of ridiculous.

Dirty Artie was also a little ridiculous, but not in a silly, "isn't it funny that I'm going to teach eighth graders in a hour and you're smoking pot?" kind of way, but in a "you belong on an episode of 'Hoarders'" way.  Dirty Artie's room was the biggest of three, but he didn't have much to show for it.  His bed was pushed over, almost all the way to closet, leaving a space almost as large as my old bedroom (10' x 7') between the bed and the window.  He could have fit a couch and entertainment center over there, or a nice desk and workstation, but no --  Dirty Artie had piles and piles of garbage.  I'm not joking, he literally lived in garbage.  There were also piles of dirty clothes and old newspapers.  All of the piles reached the height of his bed and there wasn't even a way to reach the window (unlike most self-respecting hoarders, Artie hadn't managed to make any little pathways through the mess).

Now, God knows I am not the neatest person.  I have a relatively high threshold for dirt.  At the moment there is a half-unpacked backpack on my floor that I keep stepping over rather than picking up and my kitchen floor could definitely use a good mopping, but seriously, leaving garbage on your floor, and then sleeping there?  Sober?  And, this is the kicker, chivalrously offering up your bed to your mom and sister when they come to visit and taking the couch . . . without even touching the piles and piles of clutter, newspapers, drycleaning, and old take-out containers?  Disgusting.  It never occurred to me to take pictures, but I did take people on a tour of the filth when they came to visit just so I'd have corroboration for my story.  I am not exaggerating, his room kinda looked like this, but with less floor space and more actual garbage: