In the mid-1990s, I moved into a five-person cooperative household on Madison’s east side where a good friend already lived. The house was ramshackle. If you placed a marble on the floor, it rolled toward the backyard. But that backyard was spacious and filled with gardens and greenery that spilled all the way down to the river.
I ended up living there for two decades. I made wonderful, lifelong friends, and, perhaps inevitably, I also endured periods of conflict and tension. Over the years, several housemates became so difficult to live with that we had to ask them to leave. One person who’d started out sweet and New-Age-y began acting like a minor despot, making increasingly outrageous demands. Another person became convinced that one of our neighbors was a murderer. There were bitter conflicts between meat-eaters and vegetarians — for instance, the person who insisted on cooking bacon despite the vegan housemate who claimed to be desperately allergic to the smell. There was a guy surreptitiously sleeping with all three female housemates at the same time. And at a whole other level of tragedy, there was a young woman who swallowed sleeping pills, filled her pockets with rocks, and drowned herself in the lake.
To be fair, none of these roommates were mean-spirited or villainous. They were my friends, and each contributed generosity and good humor to our household. They just had compulsions that made them difficult or impossible to live with.
We had our share of benevolent oddballs: the artist who painted in his bedroom and slept in a tent in the backyard; the woman whose bedroom housed a gigantic, canopied bed and a forest of houseplants; the guy who occasionally went into the backyard and howled (that was me). All told, despite the periods of chaos and tension, the household experienced many long stretches of joyous, peaceful coexistence: dinner parties, music, bonfires, saunas, pets, potlucks, shared gardens, dancing parties, games, and backyard barbecues.
Unlike me, most of the people who lived in the house were passing through and didn’t stay more than a few years. Whenever someone left, we had to go through the difficult and time-consuming process of finding new housemates. We used a consensus model, so, in theory, everyone had veto power. Yet, several times, given the pressure to get the rent paid, I agreed to let someone move in despite my gut feeling that they were going to be difficult. On each occasion, I was right, and we ended up dealing with that person’s problems for months or years.
Other times, we talked it over and decided that, yes, it would be interesting and a kick in the butt to, say, get a high-energy working-class guy with a red meat diet living with all of us hippie types. And it was fun, for a while. For a few years, even. But after five years, when we no longer had anything new to say to one another? What then?
I often enjoyed the housemate interviews. We’d all sit in the living room playfully grilling the prospective candidate. Where did they work? Why were they moving? Did they like to garden?
Someone would always ask: “How do you respond to conflict in the household?” A great question, it would seem, except that most people who wanted to live in a co-op already knew the “correct” answer. They all said they were direct, that they addressed conflict openly and honestly, never allowing resentments to fester.
This rarely turned out to be true. Instead, most people were terrible at addressing conflict. They were defensive, self-righteous, manipulative, or passive-aggressive, complaining to others and presenting themselves as victims. Or they just clammed up and suffered in silence. I was no better. When things got heavy, I tended to run away, avoiding the conflict altogether.
Another stock question was: “What irritating habits do you have that we should know about?” People would laugh and mention tiny eccentricities like singing off-key or whistling while cooking. Nobody said that they never cleaned up after themselves or that they never shut up. Or that they were paranoid and stayed in their room all day.
I may have been a slow learner, but after many years and dozens of housemate interviews, I quit paying much attention to the stock questions and answers. If everyone said they were neat, tolerant, good communicators, and easy to get along with, why even bother asking?
What mattered, I concluded, was not the small stuff — like cleanliness or messiness — that seemed the source of most conflicts. What mattered was the big stuff: a person’s overall integrity, their values, their warmth and sense of humor. How much fun were they? How kind? How self-aware? Were they lively and interesting enough for me to imagine still being excited to talk to them several years later? I figured that if we genuinely liked and respected one another, we could work out the little stuff. So, I started asking a new question:
“What is important in your life right now?”
This simple, open-ended question tended to bypass people’s defenses. There was no right or wrong answer, so they would answer honestly, and I would learn a lot about them — what made them tick, what was going on inside them. I always asked the question casually, and then I’d watch carefully as they answered. Did they seem soulful and deep? Did I like them?
With my new question in hand, I finally put my foot down. No more compromises. Unless I was really excited about someone, I would veto them. Period. So for the final few years that I lived in the house, no difficult housemates. Unless perhaps I had become one.
Years have gone by now. These days I share a small house with one other person and have no need to interview potential housemates. Yet I still use that question. At a party, maybe, or when I run into someone I haven’t seen in a while.
What is important in your life right now?
It’s a good question to ask anyone. Even yourself.
Richard Ely is an artist, editor and writing coach in Madison.
If you are interested in writing a personal essay for Isthmus, query lindaf@isthmus.com.
