The Time My Roommate Climbed Into Bed With Me

Writing this post reminded me of Bosom
Buddies. If Skip and I had to wear dresses
to stay at the dorm, it would have made
a much more interesting tale.

Man, I really suck lately when it comes to updates. But enough about me. Well, not enough about me. Here's a Story about something that happened to me in college.

It was sophomore year, and I was living in the dorms. The way my particular building worked, you lived in a two-person suite that was connected to another two-person suite via a bathroom that connected both rooms. For my freshman year I was randomly paired with a guy named Eric, who was (and, I believe, still is) from a town in south-central New York called (I'm not making this up) Horseheads.

(The town, outside of Corning and Elmira, was near another curiously named area called Big Flats. I liked to ask Eric if that's also how you described the women that lived there. Yes, there was a time when my jokes were actually worse than they are now.)

He and I were as different as a Horseheads resident and Long Islander could be — when he read my full-of-vowels name off the "This is your roommate" card over the summer, he expected to meet a guy who drove an Iroc and wore wifebeaters all the time, he later told me — but we made a great pair of roommates, so we chose to be roommates in the same room for sophomore year.

Our suitemates were a similarly mismatched pair of fellas who I'll call Ken and Tim. Eric and I expected to become closer to Tim over Ken, because on the first night Ken mentioned how much he liked to smoke what he called "the herb," and back then I was an almost militant teetotaler. But for reasons I'll explain in another post, we ended up being friendlier with Ken, Tim ended up befriending some guys in another dorm and moved in with them for sophomore year, and Ken filled the open slot with his friend Skip, who hailed from way-the-hell-upstate Ogdensburg, which probably was to Horseheads what Horseheads was to Manhattan.

Skip was, and as far as I know still is, a blast. But he liked to drink. A lot.

By sophomore year I'd loosened my standards on drinking, so the actual imbibing didn't bother me. But it was the result of his drinking that led to the incident that is the source of this post. So, now that I've finally completed this prologue, let's get to the Story.

The "Park & Ride" Story, Part 2

This is what it feels like: a wax bonfire.

So anyway, for what it's worth, I turned 40 today.

But enough about present-day me. Let's get to the second part of the story about the time I went to the Park & Ride near the Long Island Expressway and had a couple of interesting encounters.

When we ended the previous story, my friend Chuck freaked out when two otherwise harmless gentlemen revealed to us that they were gay, and he hauled ass out of the parking lot.

I'm not sure what Chuck was afraid of, because I don't think we were in danger of unsolicited sodomy from 10 feet and two layers of car door away. Somehow, though, I was able to convince everyone to return to the scene of the no-crime. Before we returned, Tony insisted we switch seats so I could ride shotgun so it would be easier for me to handle the conversation.

Once we returned...

The "Park & Ride" Story, Part 1

Gather 'round for story Story time!

Throughout one's life, all sorts of events occur. If you're me — and if you are me, please accept my condolences and return my gloves — most of these events are mundane. Somehow, I've been attempting to make many of these mundane happenings somewhat interesting to you, the reader.

Occasionally I'll recall a more memorable event — that is, something less trivial than some book from elementary school that I was reminded of when I mowed the lawn — that I refer to as a capital-S "Story." These are events from my past that, for a short-to-long while, I've told and retold, particularly in settings where telling tales like these are appropriate. Some of my recently recalled Stories include:

• The 7-Eleven Story
• The Mushroom Night Story

I categorize these memories slightly differently the other pieces of my past. I think that's because the Stories have more shelf life than the other events. I do eventually abandon some of my Stories, however, either because I'd forgotten them or because they don't seem as funny anymore due to evolving mores or my age.

CAN I SELL THIS POST ANY WORSE
The following story probably doesn't seem very amusing today — it might seem sad, or even pathetic (and I'm not talking about just my personal involvement — but with enough context, I'm hoping you'll understand what was going in the mindset of the people involved, even if you're shaking your head in disgust anyway.

Wow, what an intro. Are you ready for the Story?