by princessbedhead
Lisa seemed to be everything that I wasn't. She was
petite with honey blonde hair that hung in a long ponytail, with a slim frame
and bounce in her step; I was the tall, big boned girl with the dark eyeliner
and purple lipstick. She set her alarm for 6 a.m. sharp; I stayed up reading
deep into the night. Lisa had a label on everything she owned and her clothes
hangers were color coded. I shoved things into whatever drawer had space at the
time.
So, naturally, we were made freshman year
roommates. I knew there was going to be a problem when I had just affixed my
Buffy poster to the space next to the door, and this perky voice said, "Uh, you
weren't going to put that *there* were you?"
"I was just seeing how it looked," I said, since
I was too afraid of getting off on the wrong foot with my new roommate. "But I
think I'll put it next to my bed." Next to my bed was where I was going to put
my Muse poster. I tried to fight back the small amount of resentment and fear
that built up in my throat as I walked meekly to the other side of the room.
"Good," she said. "I don't want any distractions
when I study."
Distractions? What the fuck?
That was how I met my roommate. Less than thirty
seconds and my optimistic fantasy of being besties disappeared over the
placement of a Josh Whedon poster. Poof! There went my vision of late night
talks about boys and sex and professors and sex and classes and sex and...well,
you get the picture.
It's too bad Lisa was such an uptight,
control-freak bitch, because there were actually some things we had in common.
Both of us were major bookworms. Lisa studied a lot. You could tell she was one
of those types who pulled the top grades through sheer force of will. Even on
Friday nights sometimes she was up late reading, using a pink highlighter for
her biology notes and a green highlighter for humanities. This drove me crazy,
as well—she was always around. Always. Of course, I only knew this because I was
always around, too. It just didn't seem fair. If I was going to get an oh so
perfect Barbie wannabe for a roommate, shouldn't she be going out all the time
and partying and give me at least a few hours to myself on the
weekends?
Lisa wasn't a partier. The second weekend of
school, she told me, very primly, "I expect that you will want to drink. What
you do is none of my business, but I don't drink myself and I would rather you
not do it in the room."
Honestly, seeing as how she never left the room
in the first place, there was no way I was going to party in our room anyway,
and like all of her irritating remarks, I just let it slide.
As much as she got under my skin sometimes, I
really did want to like her. She was horribly insecure about school and I could
tell she felt so much pressure from her parents to succeed. I knew a lot about
insecurity, but all of the times I thought to bring it up, I'd fumble for what
to say and just stay quiet. And here's a silly thing, but something that made me
think that inside of her was someone fun and mysterious: she had the most
adorable underwear.
You'd never know it, since she dressed out of a
J. Crew catalog. But underneath each one of her perfect outfits was something
sensational. You would never get me to admit it to her, but it was damn sexy. Of
all the odd things about her, this one was always the oddest to me.
Mostly, though, she was a pain in my ass and I
was a pain in her ass. We were never going to be friends so we tolerated each
other as best we could. I was far from a slob, but I could never keep things
neat enough for her standards and I gave up trying to win her over after a
while. The thing I could tell annoyed her the most about me was that I liked to
stay up late and read or chat after she went to bed. I knew she hated it since
she always made the biggest fuss, tossing and turning and sighing and putting
her pillow over her head. I would just roll my eyes and keep doing what I was
doing.
One Thursday night in October I was finally the
first one to bed. Lisa was out, which was unusual for her on any night, let
alone a night when she had class the next day. I had drifted off and I was woken
up by this crashing, fumbling noise. It was Lisa, and she was drunk. I knew
right away. I could smell the beer and cigarette smoke on her from across the
room. I pulled my pillow over my head and blocked out the light from her desk. I
thought about huffing and puffing and making a big old show of how rude she was
being, but I knew it would be lost on her. I knew she was drunk for sure when I
heard the sound of her clothes hit the floor right before she snapped off the
light and crawled into bed. In six weeks of living with her, every single piece
of clothing went either to the laundry basket or to the drawer or hanger where
it belonged.
I don't know what time it was; I had really been
deep in sleep. I tried to settle myself and found it weird to sleep with her
moving and breathing just a few feet away. I actually had a little sympathy for
her when I thought of how she went through that with me every single night. Just
before I drifted away again, I heard something.
I wasn't sure what it was at first. It was
movement, I could tell that. A sort of rubbing noise, and I strained to discern
what it was. A moment later, Lisa whimpered, and I knew exactly what was
happening: my prim and proper roommate was masturbating.