“You Better Tell Him to Stay Away”
By: Terry Barr
Tags: Food, Weeds And Wildflowers, Nonfiction, Friendship, Roommates

Once my grad school roommate Mark moved to Mexico to begin his new consulting firm, “LOS — In Service of the Imagination,” I had to scour the want ads for someone else to help me cover the $220 monthly rent in our cereal box apartment complex on Kingston Pike in Knoxville.

Those were the days when sharing a two-bedroom apartment with another guy didn’t give me the creeps, and so I never thought about being too selective. I had already put up with a joker, a smoker, and all-day toker — a guy whose idea of cleanliness was setting up roach motels throughout the kitchen, which made early morning discoveries before coffee enough to put into perspective later day seminars on early literary Modernists like Woolf and Joyce…and Kafka.

So when I saw an ad from a guy who had just returned from the Peace Corps in Africa and who was entering the second degree program in architecture, I thought,

“Might as well be him as anybody.”

I already knew several people in that program, knew how difficult it was and how hard they had to work as the semester drew to a close, pulling all-nighters for at least the last ten days of every term. So I figured this guy would be working steadily and would also be gone from our place enough to give me a certain freedom. And on some level, I was right about both.

Still, new roommates, unknown ex-volunteers, can’t be buttonholed or categorized, and this couldn’t have been more true for the guy who answered my ad early one September evening.

His name was Sean Mackie, and, as his name might lead you to conclude, he was red-haired and of Irish descent. I seem to remember his saying that he came from Boston, but that could be my mind reaching for greater stereotypes. Yet he had a northern accent, and even on that first night, was friendly, suggesting that we get a beer while we talk.

It took me maybe thirty seconds to say,

“Okay, you want to move in now?”

And he did want to, and by the next night, he had the front bedroom all made up in his image, though I hardly remember anything about that image except for the African flag he flew from whichever country he had lived in. I’m going to guess Mali, but it’s just a guess at this point.

Sean was an able guy, and there were nights that we cooked for each other, but mostly, our lives passed only late at night. Sean didn’t smoke tobacco, so we often shared a late-night joint and discussed who we were, or at least who we had been that day.

I took him to English Department/grad school parties, and most people thought that at the very least, he was an unusual guy. Most said they liked him in that way many of us say we “like” corned beef tongue. Nothing bad happened really until it sort of did.

But before I get to the semi-bad story, here are a few other moments from the year we spent together:

I can be a selfish asshole sometimes, and so I decided to make for my supper one night kielbasa and sauerkraut. I mean, a whole package of kielbasa, one pound, and two cans of kraut. It was enough for three people, but I ate the entire batch. And when Sean came home and declared that

“Something smells mighty good,”

all I could say was,

“Yeah, it was.”

And I deserved to receive the look on his face, too. I hate being an asshole, but sometimes my feeling doesn’t stop me, which, I guess, firmly situates me in the middle of the human experience.

One of my other friends — a guy who deserves to be featured in this series, and whom I also assholed myself to — liked Sean pretty well. They must have bonded over something like sci-fi movies because one night Sean told me that the friend was coming over and that they were,

“…going to drop some acid and head over to the university center to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

They invited me, but I had seen the film and didn’t want to see it again, especially while tripping. I had given that up after watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time as an undergrad. Some experiences leave a mark.

I suppose they had a good time, but Sean’s eyes when he returned — eyes that were borderline crossed under normal circumstances — had turned in on themselves and back out and back in again. He rambled loudly, and when I went to bed, he was mumbling something about women and cars, and how one can tell the two apart.

Another time — and here’s the scene I hope I prepared you for — I took Sean to one of our parties, and he found a woman there he liked. She was redheaded, too, and her name was Joanna. That she happened to be dating another guy in our program didn’t deter Sean, and I suppose that consenting adults consent to whatever they want to. And I was just a roommate and had no right to express any moral outrage even if I actually had any.

It was none of my business, though, but I often think that twenty-five-year-old guys should express their moral outrage more than they do, which might also help prevent them from making similar mistakes. Anyway, I left the party at some point and next morning saw Joanna leaving our apartment.

Which again, didn’t exactly concern or bother me, except a couple of weeks later, her boyfriend confronted me in the department mailroom, where all the throwdowns, of course, occur.

“Listen, you better tell your roommate to stay away from my woman.”

I looked at him, a guy I had casually known for three years, and said,

“Hey Gary, tell him yourself. I’m no one’s messenger.”

And I’m not.

Poor Gary. He looked just as Sean did when he heard about the engulfed kielbasa. But he took care of his own somehow, for a year later, he and Joanna married each other, and lived, well…I don’t know how they lived, but I do know that they gained and lost weight together.

Sean was non-plussed by the affair, and as far as I can remember, the rest of the year passed without incident.

But as spring came, I decided to move further off campus, and I found a basement apartment just one street over from where my future wife’s family would one day move. Knoxville both is and isn’t that large.

So I said goodbye to Sean, who moved out, too. We kept in touch for a few months, and the last time I saw him was at another department party at an apartment complex on the other end of town. Sean showed up with a guy whom we met while camping out for Police tickets the previous spring. A troubled guy who for some reason was looking for a fight with me. But I had neither stolen his girl nor made him trip in any way. Sean just shrugged when he saw me giving him the stink eye for bringing this asshole.

The asshole looked at my semi-Mohawk haircut and said,

“It’s not even,”

in a semi-threatening way.

My friend Steve sidled over at that moment and asked if I needed any help.

“No, don’t think so, but I’m glad you’re here.”

Who knew grad school in English could be so threatening?

Nothing happened, though, and even Gary and Joanna weren’t bothered by the night.

But, it was the last night I ever saw or heard from Sean. I neither know what happened to him, if he finished his degree, nor if he ever took acid again.

It seems a shame, but that’s what happens to old roommates and lost friends.

They look at you so meaningfully, until one day, they don’t.