文章

langfanyun2001

The Perfect Roommates
完美的室友
By Jason Pettus
胡德丽 译

难度：三个辣椒

应验了中国的一句老话：“金窝银窝，不如自家的狗窝！”没错，文中的住所就像火车车祸现场一样，你也不能指望室友能帮什么忙，可就这样，让作者有家的感觉。文章幽默有趣，字里行间值得慢慢品味。

I am the worst roommate in the entire world. I’m serious. They had a contest. I was entered into it by my roommates at the time, four hippies in my college town with whom I shared a three-story house. They weren’t the greatest roommates in the world either, but we managed to get along quite well. The contest was broken down into the following categories:
A. Inability to clean up after oneself.
B. Unawareness of the strange 1)ceramic objects in the kitchen named “dishes” and the fact that they needed to be washed regularly.
C. A complete and utter confusion over concepts such as “rent” and “electric bills.”
D. A habit of bringing strange people home at three in the morning.
E. An even bigger habit of calling one’s friends long-distance at four in the morning.
The hippies thought I would do well in a contest such as this, and they were right. I 2)walkedaway with first place. My prize was a crown made out of a discarded pizza box, and an 3)evictionnotice. I couldn’t have been more proud.
Please take my word for it when I say to you that I am your worst nightmare. I once set my apartment on fire when I fell asleep with a lit cigarette. I once brought four men home in the middle of the night and said to my roommates, “These guys are in a band I saw tonight. They are awesome. I told them they could4)crashhere tonight. I hope you don’t mind.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I once threw a phone through a plate-glass window after having an argument with my girlfriend. Actually, that’s a lie. I’ve done that twice.
In the school year of 1990 to 1991, I moved eleven times in twelve months. Not a single one of them was by choice. I have had roommates throw my belongings in the street. I have had roommates sell my stereo to make up for rent I didn’t pay. I eat all the food in the house, even it’s not mine and even if it’s out of date. I am the worst roommate in the entire, entire world.
That is, until I met my match.
Her name was Kim. I found her through an ad in the newspaper. It said:
Wanted. One roommate to share a two-bedroom apartment in Andersonville. Must like animals, loud music, smoking and having parties.
I gave her a call. Kim was a 28-year-old sculptor of household objects. Her specialty was in making pieces of furniture out of discarded electronic items: chairs made out of burnt-out televisions, a bed fashioned out of 36 Macintosh computers.

When I walked in the apartment, I couldn’t even tell whether the place had carpet because I couldn’t see the floor. Every inch of the floor was covered in 5)debris. It was like a graveyard for computer nerds. In one corner was a 1950’s 6)mannequin, spray-painted orange and covered with bullet holes. Kim said: “Don’t mind that. My boyfriend gets a little crazy sometimes, and the only way to calm him down is to let him shoot off his pistol for a while.”
I moved in the following Saturday.
Kim and I got along great. In fact, living with Kim made me think of starting a new business:
Bad Roommates Placement Services. Always forgetting to change the kitty litter? Fine, here’s another person just like you. Go crazy. Like to get real drunk and play your stereo at top volume in the middle of the night? Hey, Bob here likes heavy metal music just as much as you. And we just found a 7)comfy little couch house you can call your own.
Within weeks, Kim’s and my apartment was an absolute train wreck. My friends would come over and say things like: “Oh my god, how can you live like this?”
And I would just quietly shrug my shoulders, 8)dumbfounded. The conditions seemed fine to me.
The thing that was great about Kim and I as roommates was that we always expected the worst from each other, so we were never disappointed. She would come home one night and I would say something like, “I needed to pay the gas bill today, so I took all your CDs down to the secondhand shop and got 40 dollars for them.”
And this was perfectly fine. We never argued over the dishes because we owned no dishes. We never ate each other’s groceries because Kim had turned the refrigerator into a wardrobe. We received a notice from the landlord every single month because our rent was overdue, and at least 50 percent of our time was spent with our gas and electricity turned off because we didn’t pay the bills. We couldn’t have been happier.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. One day there was a knock on the door. It was the police. They held a 9)megaphone up to their mouth and shouted: “Attention Kim and Jason! People were never meant to live like this! You are a 10)menace to society! Come out with your hands in plain sight!”
With the police was a priest. They gave the megaphone to him and he said: “Children of God, your home is an 11)abomination. It is a cursed and evil place, where 12)rodents and other tools of Satan tread upon the ground.”
And he was actually right about that part.
“Children of God, please vacate this 13)foulplace, so that the land may be 14)exorcised and brought back into the folds of Heaven.”
But we would not go down without a fight. We knew what a nightmare we were as roommates. We knew that neither of us would ever be able to live with someone else again. This was our home, damn it! I mean, sure, there was that big hole in the wall from that night we saw “Fight Club” and decided we could learn how to make our own explosives. And yes, technically the 15)cockroaches actually had possession of the house and probably brought in more income than us anyway. But this was our HOME, damn it!
Kim and I 16)barricaded the door with a pile of old magazines the size of a small boy. Unfortunately, we forgot about the back door, which we kept unlocked because we couldn’t actually find our keys. The police had us removed, the priest 17)sprinkled the place with holy water, and they burned the whole damn building down to the ground.
I live alone now. People are still horrified when they come by my place, but it’s just not the same. There’s just no way for a studio apartment to truly ever embrace chaos the way a three-story house can. I got a letter from Kim recently. She’s in jail. She says it’s the best living arrangement she’s ever had. Her bathroom can be cleaned with an industrial hose, and her landlord never, ever threatens to kick her out.


我是世界上最糟糕的室友。我是认真的。曾经有过“最糟糕室友”的比赛，我的室友们就帮我报了名，当时我和四个嬉皮士一起住在大学城的一幢三层楼的房子里。他们也不是世界上的最佳室友，可我们学会了和平共处。那次比赛被细分为以下几项内容：
一. 从不整理打扫。
二. 对厨房里叫做“碗碟”的瓷质物体完全没有概念，更不清楚这些奇怪物体需要经常性的清理。
三. 完全搞不清楚诸如：“房租”和“电费”概念。
四. 会凌晨三点带陌生人回家。
五. 更厉害的是，在凌晨四点的时候和朋友煲长途电话粥。
室友们认为我一定能在这样的比赛中脱颖而出，结果正是如此。我轻松地摘取了冠军头衔。奖品是一顶由废弃的比萨盒做成的皇冠和一道驱逐令。那是我感觉最荣耀的时刻。
当我说我会成为你最糟糕的室友的时候，千万不要以为我在开玩笑。我就曾经因为拿着点燃的香烟睡着而引发了火灾；我也曾经在半夜三更的时候带着四名陌生男子回家，然后对室友说：“这几个人是我晚上刚认识的，他们是一个乐队的，表演真是太棒了，我跟他们说今天晚上可以和我们一起挤挤，希望你们不要介意。”
女士们先生们，我曾经和女朋友吵完架后把电话从落地玻璃的窗户扔了出去。事实是，我说谎了。这样的事情我做过两次。
在1990到1991学年期间，我在一年内就搬了十一次家，没有一次是我心甘情愿的。我的前室友甚至把我的东西扔到了大街上；还有室友干脆卖掉了我的音响以支付我拖欠的房租。我把屋子里的所有食物都吃完，也不管是不是我的，或者是不是已过期。我的的确确是世界上最糟糕的室友。
以上都是以前的情况，直到我遇到了对手。
她叫金，我是通过报纸广告找到她的。广告上说：
“招租，诚招一名室友，安德森威列街，两居室公寓，必须喜爱动物，能容忍大声的音乐、抽烟与朋友聚会。”
我给金打了电话。她今年28岁，是家居用品雕塑家，她最擅长的是利用各种废弃电器制作家具，例如，由废旧电视机做成椅子，用36台麦金托什电脑做床。
当我走进公寓的时候，根本分辨不出地板到底有没有铺地毯，因为我就没看到地板，每一寸地板都布满了电器碎片，看上去就像是电脑怪人的坟场。在角落里有一尊二十世纪五十年代的人体模特，橙色喷漆下尽是枪眼。金的说法是：“别介意，我的男朋友有时候会变得很狂躁，唯一能让他平静下来的方法是让他放几枪。”
我在接下来的周六就搬了进去。
我和金相处得非常好。事实上，和金做室友甚至让我想开发一项新业务：
糟糕室友介绍服务：你是不是经常忘记换猫沙？没关系，这里有个人跟你一样。你喜欢喝酒喝得烂醉，然后在半夜的时候把音响的音量调到最高吗？我们这儿的鲍勃和你一样喜欢重金属音乐。我们刚找到了一间舒服的带沙发的房子，你可以把它当成你的家。
几周之内，我们就把公寓变成了火车车祸现场的样子。我的朋友们来访的时候都会说：“天啊！你们怎么可以住在这样的地方呢？”
我只是默默地耸耸肩，也是一副迷惑不解的样子。我觉得这样也没什么呀。
我们相处得好的原因是因为我们从来就把对方想得很糟糕，因此我们也就没有失望过。就比如说，她晚上回来，我就这样跟她说：“我今天必须要缴交煤气费，所以我把你的所有CD都拿到二手商店卖了，卖了40美金来交费。”
这样也绝对没关系。我们从来没有因为碗碟的事情吵架，因为我们根本就没有碗碟；我们从来不互相吃对方的食物，因为金把冰箱改成了衣橱；我们每月都会收到房东的催款通知，因为每次我们都迟交房租；至少有一半的时间我们是在断电、断气的情况下度过的，因为我们没有付清这些帐单。即使这样，我们还是活得很开心。
倒霉的是，所有的好事情总有到头的时候。有一天，门外响起了敲门声，原来是警察。他们拿着扩音器大喊起来：“金和杰森注意了！人不能像你们这样生活！你们对社会构成了威胁！快放下手里东西，举起双手走出来！”
和警察一起来的是一名牧师。他们把扩音器递给他，他说：“上帝的孩子啊，你们的家是令人憎恶之地。它是受诅咒的邪恶之地，啮齿动物和魔鬼撒旦的爪牙们在地上横行。”
在这一点上他还真没说错。
“上帝的孩子啊，快点撤出这块肮脏的地方吧，让我们为这块地方驱邪，让这块地方重新回到上帝的怀抱！”
但是，我们才不想在没有抗争的情况下束手就擒呢！我们很清楚我们俩作为室友住在一起，简直会给别人带来噩梦；我们也知道我们任何一方再也不可能和别人住在一起了。这就是我们的家，该死的！没错，我是说，墙上的确有个大洞，那是因为那晚看完《搏击俱乐部》后我们决定学着制作炸药。没错，尽管从技术层面来说，蟑螂实际上拥有这座房子，说不定收入比我们还多。可这就是我们的家，去死吧！
我和金用旧杂志堵住了门，这个路障大概有一个小男孩那么高。可非常不幸，我们忘记了后门。因为找不到钥匙，我们一直没锁。警察强行把我们带走，牧师在那里泼洒了圣水，最后他们把整座房子焚毁。
我现在一个人住。人们经过我的房子的时候依然会很惊恐，可已经物是人非了。一个一居室的公寓房不可能包容三层公寓所能容纳的杂乱。最近我收到金的来信。她现在正在监狱里呢！她说那是她住过最好的地方——她的浴室会被工业用的软管喷水清洗，并且她的房东永远不会威胁说要把她赶走。


1) ceramic [si5rAmik] adj. 陶器的
2) walk away 轻易地胜出
3) eviction [i(5vikFEn] n. 驱逐，驱赶
4) crash [krAF] v. 借宿，找到临时寄宿或避难的地方
5) debris [5debri:] n. 碎片
6) mannequin [5mAnikin] n. 人体模型
7) comfy [5kQmfi] adj. 舒服的，轻松的
8) dumbfound [dQm5faund] v. 使人哑然失声，使发愣
9) megaphone [5me^EfEun] n. 扩音器
10) menace [5menEs] n. 威胁，危险物
11) abomination [E7bCmi5neiFEn] n. 憎恨，厌恶
12) rodent [5rEudEnt] n. 啮齿动物
13) foul [faul] adj. 污秽的，肮脏的
14) exorcise [7eksR:saiz] v. 驱邪，除怪
15) cockroach [5kCkrEutF] n. 蟑螂
16) barricade [7bAri5keid] v. 设路障
17) sprinkle [5spriNkl] v. 喷撒