Did I ever have roommates?

No I didn't. But his name was Jacques. He was from Montreal or something. We didn't talk much. He spoke English but he was good for forgetting whenever I asked him not to smoke. Which was a lot, actually. I didn't at first because I didn't want to be that jackass who tries to enforce his right to not seek out lung cancer on other people and because Jacques seemed like a nice guy, maybe the kind of nice guy who would take my throwing open windows and making pantomime choking faces as hints. Maybe he had aspergers. I hear those guys have trouble picking up on social cues. So I started getting more verbal and I swear to god he jumped to three packs a day - three packs a day while in the apartment, who knows what he did outside.

That was when we stopped being nice to each other, I think, well, it's when I stopped being nice to him at least. Did you know he didn't drink milk? He called me bad words in French and said I was disgusting, and then, and this wasn't a coincidence because this man was nothing if not controlled and regimented chaos, he went two weeks without a shower, and he still brought home at least three different women during that same period (one of them introduced herself as Mercedes which at least made me feel a little bit better). It got to the point with Jacques that I would stop bringing friends over because to everyone in the world except myself, the one man in the world who had no choice but to be around him, he was the most charming Frenchman in the world, which is saying something, I think. If I had had a girlfriend (and I never did during our time together, a detail that Jacques was never shy in pointing out) I would have quickly lost out to my roommate.

I don't remember what he did for living. He might have been a bicycle courier. He definitely biked a lot. He kept the bike on the balcony (once, in a fit of vengeful rage after I "accidentally" used his expensive oyster mushrooms in a quite excellent stir-fry, he "accidentally" knocked over the adorable potted mint plant I had been growing that my mother had given me as house warming gift and it dropped twenty stories straight before making some neighbourhood cats very happy). He also followed competitive racing; he may be the only person I've met to own up to that. I heard him tell a woman once that he had been this close to the Olympics once, and it was stupid but I didn't disbelieve him right away.

You asked if I ever had a roommate. I haven't, but his name was Jacques.