#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.
Oh shit. She was going to send the loving couple back to me and probably rip me a new one for sending them to her. Shit. Shit. Shit.
I looked at her and thought some more. She seemed friendly enough. She was smiling, a little nervous, not angry. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad, so I invited her to sit down. Her tray had fruit salad and yogurt and a class of milk. Mine had the remains of pancakes, eggs, sausage, and two orange juices.
She started talking, "I know that you had them in your room for weeks so maybe you've got some ideas on how to handle them. I could really use some suggestions." Then she went into a high-speed monologue about all the terrible things they'd done to her, in front of her, and near her-- while she was sleeping, while she was studying, and on and on.
"You know, I grew up with three brothers so I'm used to some dirt and some rudeness and sex and wild stuff, but nothing like this," she started. Her eyes grew wide underneath those big glasses. "Sandy and Marilyn are like, doing it --you know what I mean? doing it? —two or three times a day. Right there in the room when I'm there. I come back from class and they're doing it. I come back from dinner and they're doing it. In the middle of the night, they're doing it. And Marilyn is always screaming the f-word, you know, like 'f me baby' and 'f me harder' and 'I really need a good f.' I'm no prude, you know. When you've got three brothers, you get used to hearing the f word, but still..." She went on and on, her hands gesticulating and her voice getting more and more excited.
Then she slowed a bit and, still talking, considered the other side, "I suppose they have a right to do it. You know, it is her room too. Maybe it shouldn't bother me so much. You know, sex is a natural thing and everybody does it and it's nice that they enjoy it so much. They sure do enjoy it, don't they? They probably have never had a girlfriend or boyfriend before, have they? So I'm glad they found each other. Really I am. I just wish..."
She didn't stop there. She told me about how noisy they were, how filthy they were, and how annoying they were with their fake romance. Then she considered the fake romance from their point of view, how they didn't know what romance was like except from the movies and they had to learn sometime. She talked non-stop, hardly taking a breath, like she was pouring out her soul to the one person in the world who would understand. That was me, alright, the one person in the world who truly understood.
She talked continuously like this for maybe 15 minutes. It was a long time without a break, with me saying little except "I know," "Yes", "They did that to me too," and other minor agreements whenever I could get a word into her stream of consciousness. I nodded and looked concerned a lot. Finally, she ran out of breath and checked the clock. As abruptly as she arrived, she gulped down the milk, said goodbye, and left, off to class, with a big smile and a wave. She'd hadn't eaten the fruit or yogurt.
As she was talking, I couldn't help but notice how good-natured she was, considering the enormity of her problem. She wasn't angry, mean, or out for revenge, like I would have been. Let me tell you -- if somebody had done to me what I'd done to her, I wouldn't have been polite about it. On the contrary, she was friendly and cheerful and seemed to want nothing but somebody to talk to -- somebody to commiserate with. She seemed like a good kid.
I didn't run into Erin very often. Maybe just once or twice a week. But whenever I did, I stopped to talk or sat down next to her in the dining hall. She was always alone. It's nice to be around cheerful people, and she always had one or two new Sandy and Marilyn stories to tell, or sometimes she just wanted to talk about other things. Sometimes I added my own stories, but most times she was talking so fast and steadily that it was easier (and more fun) to listen to hers, always told in the most colorful detail. We'd usually end up laughing.
Her three brothers were a common topic also, and it was obvious that she adored them. She had one brother two years older who was studying to be a teacher. The other two are twins, a little younger than her, and they are the stars of their high school wrestling team and very muscular. She loved to recount the raucous boy-behavior that surrounded her when she was growing up-- pushing and shoving, jumping on people's beds in the middle of the night, fighting over the toilet and the shower, turning water hoses on each other. To tell you the truth, it sounded a lot like things my brother and I did, though I didn't have much opportunity to tell her that.
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It was a Saturday evening and I had just gotten into bed when I heard a noise at the door. I thought somebody had just accidentally bumped into the door so I ignored it, but then I heard a girl calling my name. I went to the door and opened it.
There was Erin in her night clothes, clutching a huge pink furry pillow to her chest. I almost didn't recognize her for a moment because she was so unlike her normal cheerful self, but the glasses were unmistakable. She was looking down to the floor, tense, angry, frustrated and at the same time sad and hurt. I didn't know what to make of it and looked at her quizzically.
She sighed deeply then looked up at me, "They've discovered anal sex."
