Once that genie is out of the bottle. Well. You've been there.
Yet. We both had roommates who NEVER LEFT THE ROOM. Or, better said, roommates who commandeered the room for their own amorous purposes (RENE'), to the point that one evening, when Calvin and I returned to my room, we saw the big potted palm that usually lived in the corner of the room I shared with Rene' blocking the door to the room. (Even back in the early '80s, college students were not wearing ties, which meant the traditional tie on the doorknob was not an option.)
We stopped, confused. Then clarity hit us like a mackerel across the face during fish slapping season.
"I think this means we're not supposed to go inside," Calvin mused.
He wasn't summa and PBK for nothing.
"That's riiiiight!" sang two voices in unison from inside the room.
You see? My roommate and her boyfriend almost always had first dibs on the room. It was their love nest, even when I was there studying. I would sit at my desk, trying to concentrate on the narrative structure of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Rene' and BF would be canoodeling in the big chair that someone had found abandoned by the side of the road in University Park, a fairly tony neighborhood as far as castoffs go, although not as fancy as Really Rich Neighborhood, but RRN people may not have abandoned their unwanted furniture on the curb the way the UP folks did.
It is not easy to concentrate on narrative structure or hidden meanings or where is the sex, which is the main question that drives almost every English major analysis of a work (if it's not sex, it's death), when your roommate is baby talking and cuddling with her boyfriend.
The amazing part of all this is that my roommate was a civil engineering major who got very nice grades and yet did not appear to put a lot of time into her studies. The necking worked for her.
And, in a way, it worked for me. Their shenanigans drove me to the library to study. I made the honor roll for the first time because I spent so much time out of my room. Who knew that a lot of concentration was the key to good grades?
Back to the ranch.
Calvin and I did not have a private place to canoodle and etc, so we were forced to take drastic action, such as necking in the empty physics lecture hall or on top of the geology building. Those are not ideal locations, though. Better to get in the car and drive to the beach and neck while parked on the sand! With the bonus of being environmentally responsible!
It's an ugly beach: brown sand and brown water. It's the beach for people who have never been to Florida's Gulf coast, where the water is clear and the sand is white.
But it's not hard to get into a romantic mood when you are 20 years old and don't have a mortgage or a flooded basement or are taking drugs that make your hair fall out.
One evening, driven to desperation, we did just that: hightailed it down to the beach. We found a deserted area. Parked. Got into the back seat. Stripped. Started getting busy.
When a bright light flashed through the window.
And did not go away.
We froze.
What to do? What to do?
Blinded, I felt frantically on the floor for my pants, but did not have time to put them back into their proper position, which was on my body.
A knock.
Calvin, who had not completely stripped, as such is not so necessary for a guy, opened the window a crack. This was back in the days when it was possible to open a window without the car being turned on.
A cop shone a flashlight on us.
"Evening, ma'am, sir" he said politely. This was the south. People are polite, even if they are looking at your almost nekkid body. Your almost nekkid body to which they have never been introduced. It would have been rude to comment on our clothing status.
We stared.
"Do you have some identification?" he asked.
"Um. Yes," I answered, reaching my hand back to grab my Small Private School ID out of my jeans pocket.*
Only the pocket was not on my butt where it belonged but somewhere in front of me in the pants that I was holding up to cover my nekkid glory.
Calvin had already extracted his ID from his wallet. I fumbled until I found the ID and then handed it to him.
He took it, looked at it, and handed it back. "Y'all run along now, hear?" he said, probably thinking of his own college age daughter and praying she was not in the same situation.
We nodded. Waited for him to leave. Put on our clothes. Drove back to town. Said goodnight with a chaste kiss.
Nothing will kill the mood like a bright light.
* Wow. Was there really a time I could leave my abode with nothing more than an ID and a key?
"That's riiiiight!" sang two voices in unison from inside the room.
You see? My roommate and her boyfriend almost always had first dibs on the room. It was their love nest, even when I was there studying. I would sit at my desk, trying to concentrate on the narrative structure of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Rene' and BF would be canoodeling in the big chair that someone had found abandoned by the side of the road in University Park, a fairly tony neighborhood as far as castoffs go, although not as fancy as Really Rich Neighborhood, but RRN people may not have abandoned their unwanted furniture on the curb the way the UP folks did.
It is not easy to concentrate on narrative structure or hidden meanings or where is the sex, which is the main question that drives almost every English major analysis of a work (if it's not sex, it's death), when your roommate is baby talking and cuddling with her boyfriend.
The amazing part of all this is that my roommate was a civil engineering major who got very nice grades and yet did not appear to put a lot of time into her studies. The necking worked for her.
And, in a way, it worked for me. Their shenanigans drove me to the library to study. I made the honor roll for the first time because I spent so much time out of my room. Who knew that a lot of concentration was the key to good grades?
Back to the ranch.
Calvin and I did not have a private place to canoodle and etc, so we were forced to take drastic action, such as necking in the empty physics lecture hall or on top of the geology building. Those are not ideal locations, though. Better to get in the car and drive to the beach and neck while parked on the sand! With the bonus of being environmentally responsible!
It's an ugly beach: brown sand and brown water. It's the beach for people who have never been to Florida's Gulf coast, where the water is clear and the sand is white.
But it's not hard to get into a romantic mood when you are 20 years old and don't have a mortgage or a flooded basement or are taking drugs that make your hair fall out.
One evening, driven to desperation, we did just that: hightailed it down to the beach. We found a deserted area. Parked. Got into the back seat. Stripped. Started getting busy.
When a bright light flashed through the window.
And did not go away.
We froze.
What to do? What to do?
Blinded, I felt frantically on the floor for my pants, but did not have time to put them back into their proper position, which was on my body.
A knock.
Calvin, who had not completely stripped, as such is not so necessary for a guy, opened the window a crack. This was back in the days when it was possible to open a window without the car being turned on.
A cop shone a flashlight on us.
"Evening, ma'am, sir" he said politely. This was the south. People are polite, even if they are looking at your almost nekkid body. Your almost nekkid body to which they have never been introduced. It would have been rude to comment on our clothing status.
We stared.
"Do you have some identification?" he asked.
"Um. Yes," I answered, reaching my hand back to grab my Small Private School ID out of my jeans pocket.*
Only the pocket was not on my butt where it belonged but somewhere in front of me in the pants that I was holding up to cover my nekkid glory.
Calvin had already extracted his ID from his wallet. I fumbled until I found the ID and then handed it to him.
He took it, looked at it, and handed it back. "Y'all run along now, hear?" he said, probably thinking of his own college age daughter and praying she was not in the same situation.
We nodded. Waited for him to leave. Put on our clothes. Drove back to town. Said goodnight with a chaste kiss.
Nothing will kill the mood like a bright light.
* Wow. Was there really a time I could leave my abode with nothing more than an ID and a key?
Omg, deja vu. Only I was caught with underwear akimbo while still in high school in my boyfriend's MG TD (a two-seater!) There were two cops and they made us get out and one talked to him and one to me. They even threatened calling our parents, although I think they had no intention of doing that.
ReplyDeleteI made it through high school without getting pregnant...but just barely. And yes, the bright light of a policeman's flashlight is a real mood killer. But, as Roseanne said in the episode where Becky asks about birth control: "Nothin' kills the mood like a screamin' baby with a loaded diaper." :)
Yep, been there. Definite mood killer!
ReplyDeleteExcept for my freshman year I always had my own room at college. I also went to a school (Vassar College) where the women way outnumbered the men. Ah, the good old days. :)
ReplyDelete