A Sweet Setup
A Sweet Setup
My new roommate has been in the shower for at least three hours. I mean, I like a long shower. I basically kill Lake Michigan every time, but this guy is a pro. I keep thinking that he is seizing on the floor, knocked out cold on the cheap linoleum, or having problems with low blood sugar. I don't think he's diabetic, but that's not necessarily something you put up on Furfriender. Maybe he's not even here? He left his stuff on his bed. He might have had a long drive and he's just taking a very, very long time to recuperate.
There's a knock at the front door and finally it opens. I turn to look for, Rod, my old roommate from last year. Instead I find my new one followed by three women. The older one is obviously his mom.
"Oh hello!" she squeals, "And which one are you?"
"I'm T. B. Coyote, but everybody just calls me T-Bone," I say.
"Hi T-Bone, I'm Theyer. Nice to meet you," says the wolf in front of me while he doles out a friendly handshake, "This is my girlfriend Mallory and my sister Jamie."
"Hello you two," I say as I shake the paws they offer.
We babble on about majors and the like from then on and they ask about why I decided to go to an out of state college. I laugh at the question.
"It's not a long drive," I say, "Just long enough so that no one visits me."
"And you are a sophomore, right?" asks Theyer's mom.
"Oh yeah, this is actually the reverse of what happened last year. Me and Rod were the freshmen living with two sophomores. It was great."
She's obviously delighted by this fact for some reason. Her tail wags as she says, "Oh that's great Theyer! You'll be able to learn the ropes from these guys!"
"Well, Rod isn't here yet, but you'll meet him soon Theyer. He had a campus job all summer."
They help Theyer set up his room a bit before taking off. Living with roommates can be a little odd. Here's this person, who you've never met before and hardly talked to, that you have to live with for as short as a few days, but quite possibly several years. You both know this, so you both try really hard to win each other over and prove that you're not a douche. At least that's usually the case, which it thankfully is with Theyer.
The athletic wolf brings out a copy paper sized box full of packaged food into the main room, but it was all seemingly the same things.
"Hey," he says, "my aunt works for Nabiscuit, so she gave us a ton of food. I can't possibly eat it all, so go ahead and pick out what you want."
My canine ears perk up at the suggestion. "Really?" I asked, "You've already gotten what you want out of this?"
"Oh yeah," he says, "Go for it."
There's plenty of breakfast stuff, which I'm severely lacking in as I packed nothing but dry soups. I load up with more than I could possibly use before our meal plans kick in. Theyer is really saving me some money!
"Thanks man! This is great!" I say, "Hey, I got an uncle who sells Harleys. Just saying."
"Yeah I might want a bike someday. I just might take you up on that."
Oh crap! He'd have to leave the state! Plus, I don't think Uncle Van would really cut him a deal just because he's my roommate!
I nervously laugh a little as I mentally panic. I should have gone with my aunt's funeral home. Because of my nervous state, I decide to switch to a more relaxed and basic conversation. High school.
We talk about how they were set up, but my try for a more tame conversation instantly turns into a "Small Town Contest." I had one with Rod and won last year, but this guy might give me a run for my money.
"I drive a truck," he says.
"I don't have a car nor do I drive anywhere because there's no where to go."
"I live on a gravel road."
"Oh yeah? Mine isn't gravel, but that's just because there's a veteran's cemetery and a golf course built there specifically for the quite and empty setting. I'm pretty sure my hometown has more dead residents than living."
"My graduating class was 50!" he triumphantly declares.
He's got me there. Mine was 200, but that's just because they had to pull in kids from two counties. It's time to bring out the big guns.
"I sleep with a night light back home, not because I'm afraid of the dark, but because I can't see anything. There's no street lamps. My uncle is building his own whiskey still. I never learned how to ride a bike because there are no sidewalks or cul-de-sacs and if you're feeling up for some target practice, you can just step outside and shoot beer cans off the fence post."
"What with bb guns?" Theyer challenges.
"Sure, if you're seven. You can use whatever you want; there's no one around to care."
"Wow. That's hick," he says.
"Yep," I agree.
We talk a bit more. Apparently he's in Air Force ROTC, which is pretty cool. Even if he turns out to be annoying, it means he'll be out of my hair most of the day so I can write or sleep. I'm all over that. Plus it means he's kind of cut. Not like a Marine or anything, but defined. Emphases on the "fine".
It took me a long time to come to grips with the fact that I'm bi. But, I now know what I like and I'm starting to give less and less of a rat's ass what people think. I like girls with heavy accents, and very obviously gay guys my age. All roommates are safe. I've seen how they operate and they're straight anyway. However, if Theyer asked nice enough, I'd probably go down on him.
Suddenly, Rod busts in the door with two white, rectangular boxes. He works at the only bakery in his home town, so he always brings dozens of donuts and pastries. We end up having to throw them out because we can never eat them fast enough.
He puts the boxes down on the table and gives me an Eiffel Tower high five. As a deer, he's much taller than me. It could just be the antlers.
"Sup bro!?" he asks in his fake frat boy voice.
"Sup bro!?" I return.
He turns to Theyer and says, "You should see this guy! He's a total bro. He's so bro that every time I see him, I have a total bro-gasm. Let's go drink some Natty Lite at the freshman experience center T-Bone!"
"Hell yeah bro! We can pick up some skanks with my new haircut! This shit be epic!" I shout before giving him a chest bump.
Theyer stares on, obviously frightened by our ridiculous display. Odds are he's seriously considering not eating lunch with us.
Rod takes on his business approach and gives Theyer a nice handshake. He works for the campus police, is in the honors program just like me, and he's president of a service organization, but that doesnt stop him from playing around.
"What do you have in those boxes Rod?" asks the wolf.
"Donuts," Rod says.
"Dude, check this out," I say as I point to Theyer's Nabicuit box, "He's sharing this with us."
"Holy shit!" the buck exclaims, "There's like... ten things of Oreyo's in there! We can have this?"
"Yeah, this is all for you guys," he says.
"Man, we're gonna turn into fat kids," I say, "Between you're donuts Rod, and Theyer's aunt, we're gonna have a lot of free snacks."
We sit down on our chairs, each with his own choice of junk food to discuss our summers. I didn't do anything during my summer except paint and mow, but I'm sure Rod's was more exciting. He was bored out of his mind most of the time when I called, but at least he had a job.
"Okay, dude, you're not gonna believe this," he starts.
"Yeah?" I ask.
"You know our dorm right? We had this room last year Theyer, just so you know. Right. So anyway, you know how there were kids living in here right?"
"Oh yeah," I say, "couple of foreign exchange students or something."
"Not all of them, but anyway this guy keeps going to the front desk to pick up refunds for the laundry machines because they'll eat your quarters sometimes. But, he's showing up all the time saying he lost a whole dollar. You pretty much figure out the thing is broke dick after fifty cents, so that's a little suspicious. So campus police start tracking him, and he's netting about fifteen dollars a week."
"What a tool," says Theyer.
"So get this. Campus police show up to our room to arrest him for petty theft or something. So they get in, and in our bedroom Boner, on my side, are stacks of stolen university computers."
"Holy shit!" I exclaim.
"And, apparently he's a druggie, so they find crack and pipes and shit too, so they book him for petty theft, the crack, and all these computers."
"Whoa. So he was like... lighting up crack and smoking that shit in our room? I mean marijuana is one thing, but crack is like... crack," I say.
"Housing gives any room a good thirty minute cleaning," says Rod, "but I guess they were in here for like, eight hours because it was horrible."
Theyer looks around and says, "Seems good now though."
"Oh yeah, they don't screw around," I say, "Anything else happen?"
"I made friends with some lesbians. Julia and Sarah."
"Seriously? Oh you have to invite them over some time Rod. That is too cool," I say.
"It took me a while to pick up on it. I mean, I thought they were just friends. But, they'll say stuff like 'We were in the shower' and I'll be like, 'Wait. We? Oooooh."
"So what is there to do here off campus?" askes Theyer.
"Uhh... there's club Nextor, but I've never been there," I suggest, "I'm just glad there's no strip clubs or anything; you wouldn't want to see them titties, trust me."
"No there's a strip club," says Rod as he give his head a shake. Every time he does that I feel like he'll poke my eye out.
"I'd never go to one of those," says Theyer.
We all agree that strip clubs are kind of weird, and that if you have to pay a woman to take her clothes off for you, you might want to reexamine your priorities.
"Well, actually. I went there with Julia and Sarah," Rod admits while he buries his face in his hooves.
"WHAT!?" I shout, "That'd be awesome! I would totally do that!"
"Dude seriously?" askes Theyer "That would be the best. Sign me up for that."
Thus, we reached the verdict that guys that go to strip clubs are creepy, but guys who are invited to go to strip clubs by lesbians are the coolest guys on the planet. I hope to gain some of Rod's awesomeness through osmosis over the next two semesters.
"It was actually pretty cool. I couldn't drink or anything, but it was sweet. I mean, you can walk down the street and see a hot chick, so you'll turn around to check her out. But when you're with Julia and Sarah, you'll look over at them and they'll both be nodding their heads like, 'Yeah, she was hot.'
"Invite them over. A lot. They can even eat our goodies, I don't care," I said, "They sound like a hoot."