The Sexy Gay Jesus and the Case of the Missing MP3 Player

Dear Sexy Gay Jesus,

First off, HUGE fan of your work. The whole water into wine thing? Well played, SGJ. You have the whole classy with character thing going on and I like it.

Something not so classy happened in my apartment last week. No, no sexual deviance- just a missing ipod. I went out of town for the weekend and when I returned, my ipod was missing but my case and headphones were left behind. The ipod was last seen in my idock, in the bedroom. My housemate had some friends over that weekend and they were going through my room to get on the porch, someone passed out in my bed for a while. Housemate did not stay awake for the whole party and there was a lot of drinking.

I searched my room, moved everything around and searched the rest of the house. I looked at work, in my car, friend's car, etc. But really, I didn't bring it with me for the weekend so I knew it had to be in the house. Housemate has asked friends (mostly co-workers) if they have seen the ipod, no one has any recollection of it. No one has confessed either. I have no idea what happened to it for sure, but I think it was taken because a) case and headphones were here, ipod was gone. I would never take it anywhere without a case, especially not camping. b) quite a few people were going in and out of my room when I was not home c) it just simply disappeared, where else could it have gone?

I'm afraid this will be a housemate/friendship ruiner if I don't approach this the right way. I love my roommate and she is a great person. I'm planning to talk to her about respecting space when someone else is not home and you have guests over but I'm not mad at her, I just feel like she was negligent. I am however, really fucking pissed all my music is gone and I want my ipod back. It was pretty expensive for a broke kid like me and I feel like something should be done about it. Does roommate pay? Half? How do I approach such a delicate topic? What to do if roomie flat out refuses? Is it my problem and I should stop being bitchy and pay for it myself?

Please help me, SGJ! You're my only hope.

Yours Truly,
Suzy Sadface

P.S. Tell Lauren I say "Honk if you love Presidential board games."

Dear Dear Suzy,

I am so sorry to hear about your recent misfortune. Also, Lauren would honk about the nerdy presidential boardgames if she currently had a car with which to honk. But about your question: that is some shit luck, my friend. Well, there is always a sliver of a possibility that a drunk guest just wanted to peruse your music selection and then set the pod back down somewhere weird and next month you'll find it in a pile of towels or in a utility drawer. But probably not. It is gone. (Presumably your music is on your computer or something also?) And while it sucks that it happened while your roommate had people over and you were gone, you can't make her help you pay for a new one, either. Let me tell you a little cautionary tale about overreaction (you're not having one, I just want to make it clear that you should continue to not have one):

Once upon a time, my friends and I went into Jerusalem for Passover, because that's where the best parties were. We showed up at the temple (which is pretty much supposed to be my house, or at least my dad's house), and it's like a fucking hippie farmer's market up in there! Not to mention the terrible exchange rates those assholes were offering. Anyway, I got a little bit upset and may have participated in some property damage. Now nice Christian folks in Sunday School try and justify it. There are a number of different depictions of this event on the tubes, but I chose the scene from my favorite musical (obvs) because it was the gayest version:



Anyway, I felt kind of bad about it later. So you should not break any of your roommate's furniture or free her livestock even though she let strangers (to you, anyway) wander through your house who probably stole from you. I think a conversation is in order, but there's not really anything you can do about this now. Perhaps if she questions her coworkers they will come up with a suspect, but it doesn't really seem worth pursuing. Maybe she will feel guilty and offer to help buy you a new (or refurbished) one, maybe not. I don't think you can justifiably ask her to replace the ipod for you, but you can set up some ground rules about parties, friends of friends, and personal space. Presumably she never suspected any of her invited guests were thieves, but they probably brought some friends, and there was drinking and haziness and apparently the hostess passed out for awhile. While neither of you can be expected to keep track of each other's personal items at all times, you can reasonably expect one another to respect each other's things and try to make sure nobody fucks with them while the other is away.

Especially since you are friends, I think your roommate will understand that you are upset, though be careful not to blame her or make any monetary demands. I'm afraid my advice is mainly just to suck it up and start trolling Amazon for deals.