My dream share house turned into a bucket-filled nightmare. It wasn’t a leak
Updated ,first published
The year was 1999, and it wasn’t just the ’90s that were coming to an end. My college friends were leaving campus life, cutting their hair, and moving into the adult world of shirts and ties (yes, ties). I still had long hair and was supposed to attend college for another year, but my supervisor, despairing at my lack of progress on my final project, doubted I would graduate. Meanwhile, my girlfriend broke up with me to go to Bristol on exchange. As a sign of courtesy, he offered me the rent of the old three-bedroom house he rented opposite the university.
The house was basic and had no heating or cooling, but it still looked too nice for wild students like us, with our vinyl store jackets hanging in the hallway, stolen street signs adorning the living room, and a front porch full of couches where we spent hours reading, people watching, drinking beer, and listening to music.
Years ago, I would regularly sit by the roadside in my school uniform and stare at the same house, dreaming of its freedoms, while waiting to be driven back to the suburbs.
I was now 21 years old and my name was on the lease. It would be easy to find good roommates in such a central location where you can get out of bed and get to class without putting on your shoes. In the world of shared homes, a three-bed was perfect; It is affordable, spacious and most of the time there is a high probability that you will have the whole room to yourself.
Shared housing had by now been as liberating as I ever dreamed it would be as a schoolboy – whether it was the skinny Canadian living off rice and soy sauce and burning off his Saturday morning hangover with a 10k run, the British PE student who wore absolutely no shirt, or the ‘Wash the dishes’ signs plastered around the house. or “Who ate my chicken!?” I adopted the idea that open-mindedness and tolerance were essential for a happy family.
Word spread among friends about vacant rooms, and I hung A4 posters with phone numbers torn out on campus notice boards. I soon found Mick, apparently a clean-cut commerce student with a broad smile, and Sarah, a rural science student fed up with boarding college.
Maybe Sarah had an idea of what would happen, but it took less than two weeks to remove the logs. He missed his friends at university, a room came and he was gone. I couldn’t afford the rent, but the good news was that we found Will, a history student and DJ, through a friend of a friend.
It started well. Will, swimming in CDs, gifted me the new PJ Harvey album and, with his trademark positivity, adopted Mick’s protein-supplementing and iron-pumping habit.
It was Tuesday when I realized this wasn’t the only habit Mick had picked up. The bucket bong (a homemade device that uses a bucket, a cut soft drink bottle and a cone to create a powerful effect), previously located in Mick’s room, had become a permanent feature of the living room. Like Mick’s best friend Gary, who collapsed on the sofa one Friday night and never left. When he took a year off, our house was suitable for him and he didn’t mind sleeping in our living room. The three of them were soon hauling their super-powered buckets for breakfast, making it a habit to drink coffee every morning before heading out into the world. Except for Gary, who never leaves the couch except for his daily weight training sessions with Mick.
My perfect student accommodation quickly turned into a mecca for bodybuilding stoners to gulp staggering amounts of buckets. A visitor on Friday evening looked at me sarcastically as he handed me a beer and said he couldn’t afford to go out like his father, who always had a drink after work.
As more buckets of water filled the living room and protein powder filled the kitchen, paranoia levels rose and everyone kept a special stash of toilet paper in their rooms. You didn’t need to read He Died with Felafel in His Hand I knew how bad home TV series could get, but at this rate I’d be a student forever.
My ex came back from Bristol and took pity on me. I regularly took refuge in the closet-sized houseshare down the road, with my mini-fridge-sized computer on his desk. we would watch the episodes Charmed I was consuming large amounts of coffee to avoid sleeping so I could finish my studies and join the real world. To my supervisor’s astonishment, I set the deadline.
When it comes to the Aquarius house, I am left with no choice but the nuclear option; giving up that valuable lease. I offered this to my housemates, but none of them wanted the responsibility, so the house fell apart. My 1999 has come to the end of cleaning out the entire house and years of dirt, accumulated furniture and of course buckets in the hope of regaining enough vineyards so I can visit Sydney to celebrate the New Year.
There, at the foot of the Harbor Bridge, I found myself surrounded by millions of joyful faces as I dreamed of the possibilities ahead in the new millennium. Two weeks later I had cut my hair and was wearing a tie.
Damien Nowicki Age‘s deputy opinion editor.
This is from a summer insight series where writers share a life-changing year.
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