The Roommates

After I returned from Christmas break I found that I had been assigned a new roommate. My straighter-than-straight roommate had been replaced by the introverted straight-and-over-sexed slightly smelly guy named Matt. Mat was nice enough. His girl friend was nice enough. I just wish more soap had been involved in their group showers. Matt and I were never really friends…and that was just fine with both of us.

I was developing a nice group of friends, mostly all associated with the music department. I met Christian while on a trip to a performance of Carmen at a neighboring college. We had some similar interests and seemed to get along well together. He was a Bio major, but also participated in the college choir. As the semester progressed so did our friendship, but I was noticing some disturbing tendencies. Christian was becoming slightly obsessed. Everything that I did, he did. If he noticed that I was wearing a grey shirt at breakfast, he would change into one by lunch. He wanted to know who cut my hair, what kind of styling products I used, and started to plan our social events for the weekend. He would get pissed if he walked into a room and I hadn’t saved a seat for him…right next to me. While the thought of Christian’s sexuality had never crossed my mind (mostly because I was not attracted to him at all), I was starting to realize that he was developing a crush on me. To make things even worse, I had already made the commitment to be his roommate the next fall.

That spring, while on the 9 day choir tour Christian developed an attitude of deep detestation towards any person I ‘showed favor’ towards…especially Ravi. I was actively avoiding any one-on-one time with Christian and I always surrounded myself with people that I knew would deter him from approaching me.

Things went downhill fast with Christian. He was acting, for lack of a better term, like a middle school girl. One afternoon towards the end of the school year I went to his room to talk things out. After talking through the door for a while, he finally let me in the room. He had been crying and listening to his ‘sad’ music all day. Again – middle school girl. We talked, but no real progress was accomplished. I told him he had until I left for home to set things straight. I still wanted to be his friend, I still wanted to be his roommate, but I was no where near understanding the depth of his obsessions…