Dear Roommate: An Ill-Humored and Not At All Enlightened Rant.
You know I can hear you have sex. I can hear your bedframe crack and bang against the wall, I can hear the smacking of flesh against flesh, and of course I can hear the spanking. I can even hear you masturbate; those rhymthmic creakings of the bedframe when there isn't a girl around can be nothing else, now that you let the hard-core porn keep running on your laptop while I talk to you. I've got to wonder: do you do anything with your time besides have sex and masturbate?
I'm tired of the endless parade of random girls through the apartment. You won't have even washed the dishes from your encounter the night before a new girl wanders in. The last girl will still have her hair caught in the shower drain, and you'll be in bed with another. I don't like hearing you shush the more disposable girls out in the morning. I don't like my own desire to shake some of the more regularcustomers girls and ask them what the hell they're doing with you.
I hate the way that, immediately after sex, you stomp over to the kitchen, leave the freezer door open while you crack a bunch of ice cubes, and pour yourself and only yourself a big glass of ice water. Is the girl never thirsty? Do you never snuggle? Have you considered a pitcher of water next to the bed? Of course, it's even worse when the two of you take turns in the shower, immediately after sex, for the next hour and a half.
I also hate your special post-coital oatmeal, which seems to be the only food you know how to cook. Maypo, mayple syrup, cocanut milk, sweetened condensed milk, and sugar: that shit hardens into glue on the countertops, did you realize that? No, I know you don't---because you never clean up after yourself. And no, I don't want any of your special post-coital oatmeal, and no, offering me some doesn't make up for your eating all of my cookies and bread and all of our other roommate's chocolate.
I may notice more than I'd like to, but you're careless to the point of selfishness, and the walls in this place are paper-thin. Our elderly landlords, who live on the first floor, are unhappy that our apartment has seemingly become a flophouse or a brothel of some sort, and our lease comes up for renewal in the spring. I'd suggest you go to her place, but then a lot of your partners seem to be married or engaged or living with protective family members or in the dorms. Maybe I can convince you to turn pro. Call-out.
Added:
If the scheduling goes as planned, in a couple of days we're all going to sit down to sort things out. Ice cubes and post-coital oatmeal will not be mentioned.
I'm tired of the endless parade of random girls through the apartment. You won't have even washed the dishes from your encounter the night before a new girl wanders in. The last girl will still have her hair caught in the shower drain, and you'll be in bed with another. I don't like hearing you shush the more disposable girls out in the morning. I don't like my own desire to shake some of the more regular
I hate the way that, immediately after sex, you stomp over to the kitchen, leave the freezer door open while you crack a bunch of ice cubes, and pour yourself and only yourself a big glass of ice water. Is the girl never thirsty? Do you never snuggle? Have you considered a pitcher of water next to the bed? Of course, it's even worse when the two of you take turns in the shower, immediately after sex, for the next hour and a half.
I also hate your special post-coital oatmeal, which seems to be the only food you know how to cook. Maypo, mayple syrup, cocanut milk, sweetened condensed milk, and sugar: that shit hardens into glue on the countertops, did you realize that? No, I know you don't---because you never clean up after yourself. And no, I don't want any of your special post-coital oatmeal, and no, offering me some doesn't make up for your eating all of my cookies and bread and all of our other roommate's chocolate.
I may notice more than I'd like to, but you're careless to the point of selfishness, and the walls in this place are paper-thin. Our elderly landlords, who live on the first floor, are unhappy that our apartment has seemingly become a flophouse or a brothel of some sort, and our lease comes up for renewal in the spring. I'd suggest you go to her place, but then a lot of your partners seem to be married or engaged or living with protective family members or in the dorms. Maybe I can convince you to turn pro. Call-out.
Added:
If the scheduling goes as planned, in a couple of days we're all going to sit down to sort things out. Ice cubes and post-coital oatmeal will not be mentioned.
Marilee Scott 5:27 PM
25 Comments:
dang. ugh. good luck.
Thanks.
Wow. For someone who has become accustomed to encomiums to the clean floors, thoughfully stocked toiletries and graceful solicitousness of lovers, such that he is left wondering about his own ignorant youthful obtuseness, when no one to so much as hinted what he might have done differently, this is a useful corrective. And a reminder that all those cultivated qualities, however welcome in context they may be, are as nothing in context to raw attractiveness and opportunity. And that the experience of many, and the numbers make me wonder whether most, women will be that this is normal, comes with the territory, and plainly poses no barrier in the aggregate. Nose against the window pane again.
At a board meeting last week, I smiled when the congregation's mission statement, referring to a 19th c. formulation, spoke of Reform Judaism's "sublime mission of service," because of what I'd been reading in snatches on my first day at work.
Yes, best of luck on this one.
Word to the wise for noisy slobs, male or female, out there: check and see if you live with a blogger.
No? Clean up your act. Yes? Clean up your act, move, and assume new identity.
"post-coital oatmeal"
This could be the symptom of a medical condition. In conjunction with the incidence of Maypo, this could be indicative of Casanova syndrome aggravated by retro-Opie disease.
Additional symptoms include zsa-zsaing still photograghs of Anne Nicole Smith, known in the Merck manuel as F.O.X. disease, and the appearance of chronic feral apostrophes in blood serum and emai'l's'. '
Treatment includes ostracizing, quietude, and finding someone, not just anyone, to love. If the crowded room you look across happens to be your bedroom, then your bedroom is too crowded. Conduct a census and consult your roommate.
Misspelling "manual" and "photographs" is considered a separate disorder, rarely leading to malignant etiologies.
Preview is your friend, unless preview's bed squeaks and preview leaves questionable substances on kitchen counters.
Then, preview requires a good talking to.
IDP, the floors are clean because I like having clean floors. And the girls don't (usually) stick around; those who do are either using him or are exchange students from misogynist cultures.
Treatment includes ostracizing, quietude, and finding someone, not just anyone, to love.
Someone else will have to treat him, but this does sound like the best remedy.
The reference to the floors invokes the kind of testimonial appreciations, such as one Becks wrote a few weeks ago concerning what might be, and sometimes is, handy to the bed. Or the one about tampons being available. A glimpse of what we might be, of thoughtful, worldly care, that the earnest, inexperienced young man—and we know they still exist and would welcome advice—might aspire to.
Against that, the success of your roomate, however you've qualified that success (using him? we should be so lucky; "keep on using me, until you use me up!") is a disheartening, in some respects humiliating thing to contemplate.
I don't envy any part of his success. And I believe that most of the girls will grow out of his sort of appeal. He's already dating girls who seem to have hangups in one direction or another.
Everyone has hangups in one direction or another. But I take your point.
the earnest, inexperienced young man—and we know they still exist and would welcome advice
Hi!
"Call-out"?
Rilkefan, you clearly have not perused the back pages of your local weekly! Um, I didn't really mean that last suggestion that he turn pro, but I would rather his assignations happen elsewhere more often.
I just don't know what "call-out" means in English. Simply "elsewhere"? "I call you out" means "I summon you" or "I challenge you to a duel" as far as I understand...
I was being circumlocutious above because I feel a bit guilty about this last part.
"Call-out" is attached to a prostitute's advertisement to mean that the customer is going to have to supply the lodging.
I think IDP is trying to say that there are guys, cleaner, more respectful, and far less successful in picking up women who would find the success, if that's what it is, of someone such as your roommate disheartening.
Sure! And I'm trying to spit on that definition of success.
It is disheartening. I feel bad for these girls; I don't know why they put up with him or what they see in him. In their defense, though, most of the girls are feeling out their wings, and he is fairly safe, I guess.
Gah! How inconsiderate! I really hope your intervention turns out well. You have such a great apartment -- it's a shame he's making it unpleasant to live there.
(and I'll admit to guiltily making a mental note to try using coconut milk the next time I make oatmeal)
I saw Becks name appear under this post in "recent comments" section on the sidebar and I thought, Oh god!
In their defense, though, most of the girls are feeling out their wings, and he is fairly safe, I guess. This takes back what you seem to be offering in placation. What makes him safe? Compared to whom? To his hypothetical antithesis as characterized here?
Well, he's not abusive, he can speak in complete sentences, he doesn't do drugs (as far as I've seen), he's not jealous, and he lives with two women. I can see how that would be a profile of a fairly safe guy to have a fling with.
Obviously, I hope that the sex going on in the other room is as safe as it can be, but that's not what I was thinking of when I used the word "safe."
How do the stream of women he brings home know these things? Complete sentences I get, wherefore not abusive, not jealous (whatever that means)?
I know this might be tedious, but the nose-pressed-against-the-window feeling I mentioned above never goes away. "How do guys like that do it?" "What have they got?" are questions which gnaw at men whether you think they ought to or not.
I think it's the easygoing, careless demeanor. He just comes off as a good-humored ne'er-do-well.
I'd say that the way he probably does it is by having little shame about asking and little sense of loss about being turned down. When I'm not annoyed with him, I marvel at his lack of neurosis.
There's another side to the "How do guys like that do it?" question, which isn't really about how they pick up women, but rather about how they're able to handle touching, euphemistically speaking, so many women without (evidently) wanting something more lasting. Worrying about these guys' pickup strategies is less of a concern, I would think, if one has other definitions of success, although I suppose even then your chances will be improved by force of number alone.
how they're able to handle touching, euphemistically speaking, so many women without (evidently) wanting something more lasting
Misogyny.
There's also a weird thing going on with my roommate in that he pretty much won't date white girls. My other roommate and I have decided that means that if he has a white girlfriend, he'd have to marry her.
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