Jenna’s Model Life

This morning I experienced an event no thinking person should ever go through before ingesting morning caffeine. It has motivated me to come up with a more appropriate nickname for the second of the two new room-mates — the same woman who thought it legitimate to try and take up residence before her lease began. I’m going to call her the Turkish Giant.

In her first act after moving in, she came for my bathroom counterspace, and Model Room-mate fell on that grenade for me, agreeing to migrate to the small bathroom with the non-comittal showerhead and the absence of natural light. Turkish Giant pushed my creams and tubes way over to one side, and I finally packed Miguel’s vast miniature landscape of interestingly-shaped hotel bottles under the sink (after one month here, it is now apparent he is not coming back for them). Once all my things had been quarantined in a sector on the far right edge of the counter, the Turkish Giant plonked her enlarging mirror down in front of them. I moved it to a free spot nearer her hairbrush. She put her hairdryer next to my hair serum.

I was content to continue the bathroom-counter chess, but the Turkish Giant was obviously only buying time to think of ways to raise the stakes.

This morning I woke up, and walked to the bathroom to grab the dress I wanted to wear from the closet I now share with the Turkish Giant. There are two closets in the apartment, one in the hallway and one in the bathroom: The four of us share them. I thought the Giant’s boundaries problem only extended to her progressive and insistent extension of the halfway mark on the closet rail. I was wrong.

I reached for my best castings dress. It wasn’t there. And my clothes seemed not just more squeezed-up but actually fewer in number. I looked for my denim jacket: Missing. My coat — gone. Jeans? Nope. Blouses? None. Skirts? Down for the count. One of my favourite swap-meet silk singlet tops was lying crumpled on the floor. I saw red.

Does it even need to be said that, no matter how big your feelings of closet entitlement, and how much it bothers you to have to share, that hiding your room-mate’s clothes is a thing that should never be done, by anyone?

After a mad search through the whole apartment, I finally found my things in the sheets-and-towels cupboard, after I’d moved the Turkish Giant’s suitcases and stacks of empty boxes away from the cupboard door.

I’ve been rehearsing her talking-to since I unearthed the kidnapped clothes this morning.  I am more livid than that time I got a B+ in 19th Century European lit from the jerky Swiss professor who thought what happened to Lydia Bennet was the best joke ever. Every time I flashback to my inoffensive floral blouse lying on the floor I feel my heart thump with rage (which is because my heart is pumping blood heavily spiked with catecholamines and cortisol). That girl is going to learn not to mess with other people’s stuff.