#02: Jake
If you are part of my generation, you'll remember the despicable newspaper advice columnist Ann Landers. Occasionally, she would publish a letter from a reader, relating an interesting story of how he met his wife.
Over the years, I've been collecting stories of how men met their wives, or how wives met their husbands. These are stories that Ann never would have published. Here's the story of how Jake met Erin. Of course, the names and details have been fictionalized for privacy.
If you have an interesting story, please contact me using the feedback form. Remember to provide your email address so I can get back to you.
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A few weeks before the start of my junior year of college, I learned that my friend Mark, who I was going to room with, was not going to be returning to school. His parents had some sort of financial problem, so he was going to transfer to a local school and live at home. This was bad news for him, but for me too. When you don't have a roommate, the school assigns you one, most likely somebody that nobody else wants. You might be lucky, but the odds are against you.
When I showed up at school on move-in day, I learned the bad news. When I met my new roommate Sandy, I tried to be polite, introduce myself, shake hands, and smile, but he wasn't interested. Over the next weeks, it went downhill from there.
I'm the sort of person who can always think of something nice to say about anybody. I look for the good qualities in people, and there's always some good in everybody. Everybody, that is, except Sandy. As best I can tell, he has no redeeming qualities.
Let's start with the obvious—he's unkempt, dirty, and ugly. He wears a Hitler mustache and has long greasy hair that is never cut, hardly ever washed, and never combed. He shaves when he feels like it, which isn't often, and showers even less. His clothes have food stains and rips and are washed about as often as he showers. He looks like he smells bad, but he doesn't really-- maybe he does if you're up close, but I have no intention of getting up close.
It's not polite to judge a person by his appearance, so let's talk about his "inner qualities." Those are even worse. He's rude, unfriendly, and obnoxious, and doesn't talk much except to grunt. He's lazy and manages to stay in school only because he cheats on exams. He goes to bed late, sleeps late, and spends his days with porn and TV.
Now here's the best part. He masturbates loudly when I'm trying to sleep. I don't want you to think I'm a prude. I've been known to give myself a good wank now and then (more "now" than "then," to tell you the truth), but I try to be discreet. I do it when I'm alone in the room or in the shower, or if I really need to do it when my roommate is sleeping, I'm as quiet as I can be. Not Sandy. He wakes me in the night, rummaging around in his desk looking for lotion, followed by loud grunting that lasts forever. When he's done, he goes back to his desk looking for a towel to clean up the mess. Sometimes he even does it when I still have my light on, and I have to cover my eyes to keep from seeing this filthy thing stroking himself.
My one consolation is that I know he has a really small cock. He deserves it.
After a few weeks of this, I couldn't take it any more. I yelled at him and told him to stop waking me up and to go jerk off in the shower, but he just looked at me and didn't respond and nothing changed. I guess he can't jerk off in the shower because he never takes showers.
I didn't think it could get any worse than that, but I was wrong. Boy, was I wrong. About a month into the semester, Sandy met Marilyn.
If there is any male in the world who would be unattractive to women, it would be Sandy. But I guess it's true that there's somebody for everybody, because Sandy and Marilyn found each other. She's every bit as unkempt, dirty, and ugly as him, but at least she doesn't grunt. She yells.
Almost immediately after they met, Sandy and Marilyn were in love and in heat. Marilyn was in our room every night, and now, instead of listening to Sandy jerking off, I had to listen to the two of them screwing, with him grunting and her moaning and yelling, and the bed straining. And, in case you're wondering, sometimes they left the light on. It was a sight not to be believed, with her riding on top of him yelling about how good it felt, her dirty zit-covered boobs flopping around, or with him on top of her, trying to find the hole. The floor was littered with used condoms and condom wrappers and Kleenex, which, of course, they did not bother to throw away.
Even worse than when they were screwing was when they weren't. They were madly in love and they played their roles Hollywood-style, calling each other "darling" and "honey" and "lover" and batting their eyelashes at each other and holding hands and patting each other's butts and telling each other, over and over again, "I love you sweetheart." With me, Sandy wouldn't talk at all, but he would talk to Marilyn, but only to say some stupid cliché that he thought was romantic. She would respond with something equally inane. They would have hour-long conversations talking about nothing but how much they loved each other. It was truly nauseating.
This went on for weeks and finally I lost it. I screamed at them and threw their bottle of "massage oil" across the room, followed by their box of condoms, and told them to get the hell out of my sight and never come back. I ended the tirade with "Why don't you do this in her room instead of mine?" and I slammed the door on my way out.
When I came back to the room, I got a pleasant surprise. They weren't there! I noticed that the massage oil and the condom box were gone too. The used condoms, though, were still on the floor.
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Suddenly, life was a lot better. Without Sandy, I could relax in my room, invite friends to visit, and sleep through the night. Maybe I could even clean the place. I was enjoying my solitude. I didn't see, hear, or even think about Sandy or Marilyn. It was heaven.
It didn't last long. A couple of days later, I was in the dining hall at breakfast, concentrating on my pancakes, when I heard a girl's voice. "Hi," she said.
I looked up and there was a tiny girl, not even 5 feet tall, with short auburn hair and a pixie nose covered with freckles, wearing an emerald green sweater and rolled up jeans. She was wearing huge glasses that covered much of her face and magnified her hazel eyes. I didn't think I knew her, but she reminded me or someone or something-- I didn't know what.
"I'm Erin," she said.
That was it-- Irish. That's what she reminded me of -- a leprechaun. A leprechaun with big glasses. I told her my name and she went on, "You're Sandy's roommate, aren't you?"
My heart sank. The last thing in the world that I wanted people to say about me was that I was Sandy's roommate, but it was true so I reluctantly agreed. This couldn't be good news. Every time I heard the name "Sandy," bad news was sure to follow.
"I'm Marilyn's roommate. We live on the third floor," she said.
