Officer, please place my roommate in protective custody.

It's for his own good.

I consider myself to be a peaceful person. A pacifist even. However, if there’s one thing I value in my daily life, it’s a big ‘ole portion of sleep.

The last few nights, my downstairs, nocturnal roommate has not been allowing for a lot of it. So, I have spent many moments over the last few days thinking of terrible things to do to him. Is this wrong?

He is more a frustrating neighbor than a roommate, but by technicalities, he is definitely a roommate. We share the same entryway, but otherwise, little else. He has two rooms in the basement, his own bath, and a really beat/half-functioning kitchen, and hence he rarely visits the upstairs portion of the house (aka, “the day world”). In that sense, I suppose he is okay. In every other though…

He works overnights, four nights a week. I thought I would have gotten used to him coming into the house very late on a week night and softly turning on his television. To some extent, I have. The problem though is that I think he has also become more comfortable, so over the last three nights, he has had no concern with talking on the phone constantly with his booming voice, which the floor does nothing to muffle, or inviting friends over about 2:30 with the same vocal qualities.

Last night, he seemed to be participating in some phone dating service where he would call girls and have to introduce himself over the phone. It was very odd and sad. Through the floorboards, I'd hear the same jokes occasionally. I was home about 10:30 last night, in bed reading by 10:45. He was already on the phone (so who knows how long he had been prior?) and continued to make random calls until about three hours later, when finally I went downstairs to the land of the night people.

I just don’t get it. Why the change? It’s not 9am yet and I am already miserable and tired. Someone, please purchase all of his tie-dyed hippie sheet/robe things that he sews (his side business) so he can afford to live somewhere else.