My senior year at college started disastrously. The Housing Office messed up and assigned me as roommates to a student who was destined to become either a ruthless corporate CEO, or a convict -- he hadn't yet committed to a major.
Don sold weed and pills out of our dorm room, organized huge keg parties, and juggled three girlfriends, seldom pausing for classes. Several nights a week I'd come "home," find the door locked with a sock on the handle, and need another place to sleep.
One night I got back to the room before he did to study for a test the next day. He showed up around 8pm with girlfriend No. 2, Shelly. She conveniently went to the Ladies Room down the hall so he could ask me to sleep someplace else. I refused.
"Screw you" he said, "She's staying here tonight anyway."
Mine was the top of the two bunk beds. I laid there for hours hearing them fuck, the whole bed shaking as he pounded her. It was like trying to hold on in a lifeboat during a storm while listening to a porn soundtrack.
By the next morning I had blue balls -- and had had enough of my roommate. I decided to move out. With all the dorm rooms filled by that point, off campus housing was my only option.
I checked out the bulletin board in the student center, where rooms were advertised, got a fistful of quarters, and started calling to set up appointments to check out the options.
The second place I visited seemed perfect. A speech pathologist and her husband rented out a bedroom on the second floor of their attached duplex in a quiet neighborhood near campus. The house was tidy, and they interviewed me when I showed up with a few basic questions -- if I had a job, smoked, could pay two months' rent in advance. I signed the rental agreement on the spot and set up a move-in time.
As Mrs. Stolzfus walked me to the front door she offered the usual pleasantries -- "The rent is due on the first of each month. You can use the kitchen, and washer and dryer if you are tidy" -- that kind of stuff, until we reached the front door.
"And here are your house keys, front and back doors." She held up a pair of keys on a simple key chain. As I reached out for them she pulled her hand back.
"Oh, did I mention our daughter, Leslie -- she lives here too."
She gestured with the keys to a picture on the bookcase, a young woman in a high school graduation gown, skinny, big smile, long frizzy blonde hair, braces. "We've got big plans for her. She's at Penn State." Penn was at the opposite end of the State, hundreds of miles away.
I looked at her with one of those placeholder smiles -- you know, waiting to understand the point.
Her mother continued. "What did you say your major was? Some liberal arts thing? That's so sweet. We're planning on a pre-med student for Leslie. Maybe pre-law. Either would make a good husband for her." Mom looked at me with a tight smile that didn't disguise the steely look in her eyes. She said nothing more, waiting for what seemed like a long, uncomfortable pause while I thought about this.
Then it dawned on me. This was a polite way of saying "stay the heck away from our daughter."
Now, as obnoxious as that might have seemed, it really wasn't.
The duplex house was small with one bathroom. The bedrooms were all on the second floor. It wasn't as tight as a dorm, but close. And Mom -- well, being a mother who grew up in the 50's - wanted her daughter to ascend to a life of luxury as a doctor or lawyer's wife.
Made sense. Didn't take a brick building to fall on me.
"She's very pretty Mrs. Stolzfus, and must get her looks from you." The opportunity for suck-up flattery with my landlady wasn't lost on me, even at that age. "I'm sure she'll meet a nice pre-med major."
Mom's smile relaxed. "I think you'll work out just fine here. You probably won't run into her anyway -- she'll only be back during school breaks." And with that she handed me the house keys and held the door open for me.
By that point I was working part time and trying to finish up my classes, and the semesters passed quickly. Sometimes on the weekend I'd share dinner with the Stolzfuses, but it didn't happen that often with my schedule.
And as far as their off-limits daughter? Mom didn't need to worry. Leslie came home over the Thanksgiving break, and at Christmas, but otherwise wasn't around.
Besides, when I first saw her picture -- and told her mother how pretty she was -- I was lying. She wasn't my type -- skinny, flat chested, fly-away hair, a few zits, big nose, and an attitude to match.
From what I could gather her hunt for a pre-med student wasn't going that well. She spent the breaks at home either on the phone, or out with her high school friends, so we rarely talked.
I'd sometimes see her in the hallway as she went from her bedroom to the bathroom in her underwear in a flimsy nightgown, or oversized t-shirt. I confess that I'd sometimes jerk off thinking about her -- more to relieve my perpetual 20 year-old horniness than because of any interest in her, although at that age it didn't take much to get me going.
By the week of graduation my schedule was winding down -- classes were over, finals had been completed, and I had quit my part time job. I had a free week to kill before I left for grad school across the country, so I spent the time trying to relax, and prepping for my move West.
It was that Saturday that Mr. Stolzfus asked if I'd like to join them for dinner. "Since you'll be leaving next week we thought we could get a pizza and thank you for being such a model tenant." I didn't have a car, was always low on cash, and heck, free pizza was...free pizza.
"Sure, that would be great." It turned out that Leslie wouldn't be home until the following weekend, something about a potential boyfriend in State College she was flirting with, or something, so it was just the three of us.
Dinner was really casual -- sweats and socks. Mr. Stolzfus set out the pizza and dinner plates, and we chatted. Charles was a life insurance salesman, and this was his second marriage -- Leslie was his step daughter.
I politely asked questions about his work, but half of what he told me was incomprehensible, and the other half was as boring as watching paint dry. He didn't seem to have any hobbies or outside interests, and when I asked him what he did for fun, he said simply "watch TV and relax."
Mrs. Stolzfus -- Jo - ran the house. In fact, it was her house before Charles moved in, a house which she was awarded in her divorce.
"My first husband never really understood me" she said, "but he gave me a lovely daughter and this house, and besides, I learned how to marry right the second time." In addition to her day job as a speech pathologist for the local school district, she was a part time, amateur actress at the local playhouse in town. Trying to be sociable, I asked her questions about her acting - which was the cue that she seemed to have been waiting for, all actresses being extroverts.
"I'd love to show you one of my plays -- we have them all taped. Let's clean up the kitchen."
We put a few things away in the kitchen and moved into the den in the back of the house. Charles took the big Laz-e-Boy, and Jo and I sat on the couch. "This is from last summer" she said -- "I was in Equus. Have you ever seen the play? It's a psychological drama, almost a thriller."
Seriously? I could count the plays I'd seen on one hand, and that included stuff I'd seen as a little kid, like Peter Pan. This sounded like it was going to be tedious -- sorry, "deep," a good euphemism for 'boring'.
Charles turned the lights down, passed me the popcorn, hit the "Play" button on the VCR, and the image rolled up on the screen. This was going to be worse than I thought -- and my expectations were already low.
The play had been taped from a camera on a tripod in the back of the theatre, with the same grainy quality as a public access cable TV station.
The first Act seemed to go on forever, and I had trouble following it. Something about a kid working in a stable, some fixation with horses, and his psychiatrist. To be honest, I didn't care enough to follow it -- I'd be leaving in a couple of days, and I figured this was the price I was paying for the "free" pizza.
Nothing is ever really free.
The tape omitted the intermission, and so the play seemed to flow from Act I into Act II with barely a pause. "Jo's part is coming up" Charles said as Scene I, Act II unfolded, opening in a stable. The main character -- the troubled young man with a horse problem -- was being seduced by a female stable hand. Jo was playing the part of the stable-hand seductress.
The lights onstage were dim, and Jo was sitting on the stable floor, naked from the waist up, a blanket in her lap, as she tried to coax horsey-boy to get frisky with her. Between the poor quality of the taping, the dim light, and distance of the camera from the stage you couldn't see much, but I could definitely tell it was my landlady, sitting half naked on the stage, even as she sat next to me munching popcorn.
When I thought that neither Jo or Charles was looking I glanced sideways at her to look at her breasts. Yup, pretty sure those were hers up there on the screen.
The play ended and the screen faded to black. The only sound in the room was Charles munching on popcorn. Jo turned to me. "So? Did you like it? What did you think?"
I lied, but only some. "Yeah, I really liked it, and you were great." The first part not true, the second part true.
Naked women, like pizza, are always great.
"You know" Charles said, "Jo had to fight for that part. The Director said it was written for a younger woman and she was too old. He wanted someone half her age -- but they couldn't find anyone in this town with the courage to do it. Anyway, I don't think she's too old for that part. What do you think Bob?"
I was momentarily speechless, caught off guard by the question, and then Jo piped up. "You know Charles, that tape is so poor, let's see my part again."
