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Life's A Sitcom: Woman Looking For Fake Roommates To Impress Visiting Family
By
Ben Yakas
Published Oct 4, 2012
Modified Oct 4, 2012
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Oct 4, 2012
Modified Oct 4, 2012
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It might sound like something out of Three's Company or Mork and Mindy, but it's actually a real life Reddit thread: a Korean foreign student, who is engaged to her white boyfriend, is looking for someone who can lend her their apartment (and perhaps pose as her roommate) in order to impress her overly protective family that is visiting...and doesn't know she is engaged, or that she lives with her boyfriend. And she's offering money to help her perpetuate the ruse!
I have a dilemma, with a proposition for Reddit. I'm a Asian foreign student who is now engaged to my lovely boyfriend - who is white. My loving and protective Korean mother does not know any of this, and I have (unfortunately) been lying to her for nearly a year now. Amongst a slew of other issues/lies involved here regarding faking my activities in New York (this story only goes deeper), she is now sending my brother to NYC for the first time to visit me, and check up on me. He is arriving in the next few days to stay until the end of October. I have convinced my mother and my brother that my boyfriend's friend left town for work for a few weeks, and just so happens to be the same time my brother is coming, and is able to hook us up with his apartment to stay at.
Unfortunately, my mother and brother both want to see my 'apartment' that I live in, in which I have told her I have female roommates in a 2/3 bedroom apartment. I will have to take my brother to this mysterious apartment in the next few weeks, albeit for just an hour to look around to make sure I'm doing good in the big city.
I'm offering $100 to anyone, preferably female in a 2/3 bedroom apt with other female roommates, to let me use their room for an hour to pretend it's mine. It has to be furnished but doesn't need anything special since he doesn't know what furniture I have, would just bring along a school textbook, picture and what not. Extra cash for pretending to be my roommate!
And we're sure some hilarious hijinks will ensue! Of course, the woman is ostensibly entering into a serious, adult relationship by getting engaged—she could stand strong with her fiancé now, fess up to her family about living in sin and such things, and perhaps avoid another stack of lies that are just as likely to bite her in the ass once her "protective Korean mother" decides to visit in the flesh, and sniffs that something isn't right. Or she could go the exact opposite route, as one other Redditor offers:
For an extra $50 though, I can ride up on my motorcycle, smoke a cigarette, and pick you up and ride away in a loud and seemingly reckless manner after showing your brother your "apartment". Hopefully, when your brother passes on this scene to your parents, they'll be distressed enough that they won't care about the color of the "next" boyfriend/fiancee you show them.
Tagged
fabrications
korean parents
lies
parents
roommates
sitcoms
tv
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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