Previous installments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
The following week with Mat was more of the same: casual hookups, late-night conversations with Shelly, and a schedule that regularly kept him up until around 5 a.m. He also developed the troubling habit of leaving the door to our room open all night (unless he was having sex), which meant everybody who walked by got an unobstructed view of our living quarters. And that happened a lot, by the way, since we were located directly across the hall from the bathroom. We were only a few weeks into the semester and Mat's lifestyle was already starting to get to me. It seemed as if I never got a full night's sleep, and I hardly ever felt completely comfortable in my own room. The situation was made even worse by a new item that arrived for Mat in the mail.
Mat's favorite beer was Heineken. He raved about that flavorless dreck, claiming it was the best beer in the world. That, of course, is scientifically impossible, since we all know that Guinness is the world's best beer. But if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then drinkability is entirely in the taste buds of the beer drinker, so Mat maintained his delusion about Heineken for the duration of our time together. And that was fine. However, the way he was now able to express that delusion was not.
Mat had ordered a neon Heineken sign. The evil thing immediately went up on the wall over our phone, and that's where it stayed until he moved out of the room. I quickly learned to hate that sign with every last molecule of my being. It was actually pretty cool, as far as neon signs go, and it was a pretty sweet decorative accent to a dorm room. BUT...it was also as bright as the noon sun, and Mat never turned it off. Never. It was like having a spotlight shining in the room 24 hours a day.
I couldn't escape that dreaded light. Even when I wrapped a pillow around my head, I could detect a faint glow through the cheap foam. This made it even more difficult to get any sleep. Mind you, I turned the light off any time Mat left the room, even if he was only going across the hall to pee, but he'd simply turn it back on when he returned.
I didn't know what to do. Mat was intimidating. I must once again stress that he was almost unbelievably enormous. How enormous exactly? Let me put it this way. Early in the semester, the athletic director asked the basketball players for measurements so a warm-up suit could be ordered or, if necessary, custom-made. When it came time for Mat to measure himself, he asked me to write down the results while he wrapped a measuring tape up, over and around his vast girth. The only measurement I still remember is the one for his thighs. They were 34 inches around. For some perspective, that was (and still is) my waist size.
And as if that wasn't disturbing enough, I couldn't help but notice a huge, jagged scar on one of those mammoth legs. It was truly grisly, and I was being entirely serious when I asked him, "How'd that happen? Did you get attacked by a shark or something?"
"No," he said. "I got in a knife fight. The other guys got worse, though"
Guys, as in plural? And they got worse?! Oh God.
He was also a black belt in Judo and claimed to have once been the Dutch National Judo Champion of his age group. (For whatever reason, I never asked what age that was.) He even had a picture on his desk that was taken after he had won some kind of martial arts tournament (or at least that's what he told me it was a picture of.) So here was a gigantic man who was a black belt and got into (and presumably emerged victorious from) brutal knife fights. And I was going to tell him to turn off his damn beer sign?
Since I didn't know what to do, I went to my R.A., Brett, for advice. I hadn't really spoken to Brett after the first weekend. This was partly because he had written me a disciplinary report for something I hadn't done, and partly because my roommate had had sex with his hotty cousin, Shelly. But R.A.'s were supposed to deal with roommate conflicts, so I figured it was time to make Brett earn his free room and board.
Mind you, the Heineken sign wasn't The Problem. It was simply the latest problem. Mat's hours, the rampant sex in the room, the violations of my personal space, and my general lack of sleep because of it all...that combination of things was making me nervous and on edge. Worse, it was making me absolutely hate my life at college. And that's exactly what I told Brett.
Brett's "solution" was pretty much the last thing I wanted to hear. "You have to talk to him," Brett explained. "Sit down with him, explain your position, and ask him to make some changes. He's a great guy, the situation with my cousin notwithstanding. I bet he'll listen to you, and things will work themselves out. If they don't, let me know. But I really think they will."
It was like I'd told Brett there was a lion in my room, and he sent me back to tame the beast without a chair or whip. I figured I'd give it a try, though, but only because I didn't have any other choice. I just hoped the lion wouldn't bite off my head. Or anything else, for that matter.
I spent my evening shift at the dorm's food service rehearsing what I was going to say. In my mind, the speech was powerful and compelling, the kind of oration that no man could ignore. Unfortunately, it ended up being a complete waste of three hours worth of mental speechwriting. My mind went blank as soon as Mat walked in the door from his nightly wanderings. All I could do was improvise.
"Look, Mat," I started, "we need to talk."
He sat down on his bed and stared at me with quiet interest. At least he looked sort of receptive. I continued.
"This, uh, roommate relationship isn't working for me. Some of the things you do, like, you know, having sex in the room, staying up all night, leaving the door open all the time, keeping the Heineken light on, all those things are making me really uncomfortable. I'm not saying, you know, don't do them or whatever. It's just, like, could you not do them all the time? I mean, if you could just, you know, pull back a little, it would be really...help me out. So, uh, like, is that cool with you?"
He nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said. "Sure."
I know now I was being incredibly naive to believe it would be that easy, but relief washed over me in an awesome wave. "Wow. Thanks, Mat. I really appreciate it."
"No problem," he said. "Hey, while we talking, I was thinkin' we should bunk our beds."
One thing I haven't yet mentioned is that there was one seriously kickass benefit to rooming with Mat. Many student athletes, basketball and football players in particular, are simply too big for a standard dorm bed. For this reason, most dorms have special, extra-large beds for their special, extra-large residents. And since many residents bunk their beds to save room space, both beds had to be the same size. Therefore, my bed was eight feet long and wider than the standard dorm bed.
The downside, it seemed, was that Mat actually wanted to sleep either directly above or below me. I probably don't need to explain why the thought of that made me exceptionally uncomfortable.
My immediate reaction was, "Uh, why would you want to do that?"
"Well I was thinking," Mat replied, "it would be cool if we got some furniture. Like a couch or sumting."
Here was a dilemma. On the one hand, Mat had just seemingly agreed to some serious compromises in his lifestyle. On the other hand, I in no way wanted my bed coming into contact with his unless there was an explosion or natural disaster of some kind. However, in light of his apparent concessions, I didn't feel like I could say "no" without looking like a giant asshat. If only there was a way to say "no" but make it look like I was saying "yes"...
"Well," I began, mind racing, "I don't want to right now, but if we do get a couch or whatever, I'd probably do it."
That answer seemed to satisfy him. "Okay, cool," he said.
Whew. It seemed like a safe bet. I couldn't afford a couch, and Mat was always complaining that he had no money. It was like I'd perfected the art of fighting without fighting! I felt so like Bruce Lee. You know, except for the whole "not knowing martial arts" and "not being Asian" things.
"By the way," he said, "you got mail today. I put it on your desk."
Mail? Me?!
It turned out to be card from Aimee's roommate, Latrisse. I don't remember what the card said, exactly, but it was one of those noncommittal "thinking of you" cards, and it was filled with glitter and little pieces of confetti. It totally warmed my heart that somebody thought enough to send me something. It would have been even better if Aimee or maybe my mom had thought to do it, but beggars can't be choosers.
As I was looking over the card, Mat left the room and didn't come back for two days. It was weird. I actually got a little worried. At the time, I remember thinking, "Gosh, he gets drunk and uses drugs indiscriminately. He might be dead!" Shelly, who continued to call in Mat's absence, was sure he was fine. However, she let me know that I would have to be her substitute phone buddy until he got back. "You don't mind that, do you baby?" she cooed. Naturally, I couldn't say no to that. Then she said, "So, tell me what Mat does in his spare time? Is he seeing any other girls...?" Great. Now I was stuck lying for Mat, because there was no way I was going to face his wrath for telling Shelly the truth. I felt like such a sucker.
Anyway, this scenario would become a regular occurrence for the rest of my time with Mat: random, multi-day disappearances. Sometimes they happened during the week, sometimes they happened over the weekend. But they were never announced, and I never found out where he had been or what he had done. And I usually ended up covering for him with girls, teachers and coaches.
I did, however, find out at least one thing he'd done during this initial absence. It was around midnight. I was in bed, of course, and the room was mercifully dark and quiet. Suddenly, the door slammed open, and I saw Mat's huge silhouette framed in the light of the hallway. He had something with him. Something big.
He flipped on that damned Heineken sign and I saw what it was: a giant chair. I mean, this chair was so big it was practically a loveseat. Somehow, he had found a Mat-sized chair. I was stunned. Where the hell did he get that thing? Was "Big Chairs 'R Us" having a midnight liquidation sale or something?
Suddenly I noticed that Mat was sweaty and out of breath, two things I had never seen before. He forced the chair awkwardly through the door frame, scraping off paint and breaking off chunks of doorjamb in the process. Then he muscled the chair into the gap between our beds, after which he collapsed into it with a mighty sigh.
"What...where...?" I tried to ask.
"Oh, f*** me," he said with a laugh. "I just stole this chair from a sorority!"
"You did what?"
He let loose a rumbling belly laugh. "I was at a party at dis sorority, and I saw dis chair." He said. "I liked it. I mean, I really liked it. So I just picked it up and walked out with it."
I can only assume my eyes were popping out of my skull. "And...and they just let you leave with it?"
"Hell no, dey didn't let me!" he cracked. "A few girls came runnin' after me, yellin', 'Bring back our chair, bring back our chair!' But you tink sum girls are gonna stop me? Ha! I just kept walkin', and eventually dey stopped chasin' me."
"I...I can't believe it."
Mat just laughed. He was obviously very proud of himself. Then he flipped on the TV and said, "We'll have to bunk our beds tomorrow."
Uh oh.
Next time: Pictures of our room!
The following week with Mat was more of the same: casual hookups, late-night conversations with Shelly, and a schedule that regularly kept him up until around 5 a.m. He also developed the troubling habit of leaving the door to our room open all night (unless he was having sex), which meant everybody who walked by got an unobstructed view of our living quarters. And that happened a lot, by the way, since we were located directly across the hall from the bathroom. We were only a few weeks into the semester and Mat's lifestyle was already starting to get to me. It seemed as if I never got a full night's sleep, and I hardly ever felt completely comfortable in my own room. The situation was made even worse by a new item that arrived for Mat in the mail.
Mat's favorite beer was Heineken. He raved about that flavorless dreck, claiming it was the best beer in the world. That, of course, is scientifically impossible, since we all know that Guinness is the world's best beer. But if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then drinkability is entirely in the taste buds of the beer drinker, so Mat maintained his delusion about Heineken for the duration of our time together. And that was fine. However, the way he was now able to express that delusion was not.
Mat had ordered a neon Heineken sign. The evil thing immediately went up on the wall over our phone, and that's where it stayed until he moved out of the room. I quickly learned to hate that sign with every last molecule of my being. It was actually pretty cool, as far as neon signs go, and it was a pretty sweet decorative accent to a dorm room. BUT...it was also as bright as the noon sun, and Mat never turned it off. Never. It was like having a spotlight shining in the room 24 hours a day.
I couldn't escape that dreaded light. Even when I wrapped a pillow around my head, I could detect a faint glow through the cheap foam. This made it even more difficult to get any sleep. Mind you, I turned the light off any time Mat left the room, even if he was only going across the hall to pee, but he'd simply turn it back on when he returned.
I didn't know what to do. Mat was intimidating. I must once again stress that he was almost unbelievably enormous. How enormous exactly? Let me put it this way. Early in the semester, the athletic director asked the basketball players for measurements so a warm-up suit could be ordered or, if necessary, custom-made. When it came time for Mat to measure himself, he asked me to write down the results while he wrapped a measuring tape up, over and around his vast girth. The only measurement I still remember is the one for his thighs. They were 34 inches around. For some perspective, that was (and still is) my waist size.
And as if that wasn't disturbing enough, I couldn't help but notice a huge, jagged scar on one of those mammoth legs. It was truly grisly, and I was being entirely serious when I asked him, "How'd that happen? Did you get attacked by a shark or something?"
"No," he said. "I got in a knife fight. The other guys got worse, though"
Guys, as in plural? And they got worse?! Oh God.
He was also a black belt in Judo and claimed to have once been the Dutch National Judo Champion of his age group. (For whatever reason, I never asked what age that was.) He even had a picture on his desk that was taken after he had won some kind of martial arts tournament (or at least that's what he told me it was a picture of.) So here was a gigantic man who was a black belt and got into (and presumably emerged victorious from) brutal knife fights. And I was going to tell him to turn off his damn beer sign?
Since I didn't know what to do, I went to my R.A., Brett, for advice. I hadn't really spoken to Brett after the first weekend. This was partly because he had written me a disciplinary report for something I hadn't done, and partly because my roommate had had sex with his hotty cousin, Shelly. But R.A.'s were supposed to deal with roommate conflicts, so I figured it was time to make Brett earn his free room and board.
Mind you, the Heineken sign wasn't The Problem. It was simply the latest problem. Mat's hours, the rampant sex in the room, the violations of my personal space, and my general lack of sleep because of it all...that combination of things was making me nervous and on edge. Worse, it was making me absolutely hate my life at college. And that's exactly what I told Brett.
Brett's "solution" was pretty much the last thing I wanted to hear. "You have to talk to him," Brett explained. "Sit down with him, explain your position, and ask him to make some changes. He's a great guy, the situation with my cousin notwithstanding. I bet he'll listen to you, and things will work themselves out. If they don't, let me know. But I really think they will."
It was like I'd told Brett there was a lion in my room, and he sent me back to tame the beast without a chair or whip. I figured I'd give it a try, though, but only because I didn't have any other choice. I just hoped the lion wouldn't bite off my head. Or anything else, for that matter.
I spent my evening shift at the dorm's food service rehearsing what I was going to say. In my mind, the speech was powerful and compelling, the kind of oration that no man could ignore. Unfortunately, it ended up being a complete waste of three hours worth of mental speechwriting. My mind went blank as soon as Mat walked in the door from his nightly wanderings. All I could do was improvise.
"Look, Mat," I started, "we need to talk."
He sat down on his bed and stared at me with quiet interest. At least he looked sort of receptive. I continued.
"This, uh, roommate relationship isn't working for me. Some of the things you do, like, you know, having sex in the room, staying up all night, leaving the door open all the time, keeping the Heineken light on, all those things are making me really uncomfortable. I'm not saying, you know, don't do them or whatever. It's just, like, could you not do them all the time? I mean, if you could just, you know, pull back a little, it would be really...help me out. So, uh, like, is that cool with you?"
He nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said. "Sure."
I know now I was being incredibly naive to believe it would be that easy, but relief washed over me in an awesome wave. "Wow. Thanks, Mat. I really appreciate it."
"No problem," he said. "Hey, while we talking, I was thinkin' we should bunk our beds."
One thing I haven't yet mentioned is that there was one seriously kickass benefit to rooming with Mat. Many student athletes, basketball and football players in particular, are simply too big for a standard dorm bed. For this reason, most dorms have special, extra-large beds for their special, extra-large residents. And since many residents bunk their beds to save room space, both beds had to be the same size. Therefore, my bed was eight feet long and wider than the standard dorm bed.
The downside, it seemed, was that Mat actually wanted to sleep either directly above or below me. I probably don't need to explain why the thought of that made me exceptionally uncomfortable.
My immediate reaction was, "Uh, why would you want to do that?"
"Well I was thinking," Mat replied, "it would be cool if we got some furniture. Like a couch or sumting."
Here was a dilemma. On the one hand, Mat had just seemingly agreed to some serious compromises in his lifestyle. On the other hand, I in no way wanted my bed coming into contact with his unless there was an explosion or natural disaster of some kind. However, in light of his apparent concessions, I didn't feel like I could say "no" without looking like a giant asshat. If only there was a way to say "no" but make it look like I was saying "yes"...
"Well," I began, mind racing, "I don't want to right now, but if we do get a couch or whatever, I'd probably do it."
That answer seemed to satisfy him. "Okay, cool," he said.
Whew. It seemed like a safe bet. I couldn't afford a couch, and Mat was always complaining that he had no money. It was like I'd perfected the art of fighting without fighting! I felt so like Bruce Lee. You know, except for the whole "not knowing martial arts" and "not being Asian" things.
"By the way," he said, "you got mail today. I put it on your desk."
Mail? Me?!
It turned out to be card from Aimee's roommate, Latrisse. I don't remember what the card said, exactly, but it was one of those noncommittal "thinking of you" cards, and it was filled with glitter and little pieces of confetti. It totally warmed my heart that somebody thought enough to send me something. It would have been even better if Aimee or maybe my mom had thought to do it, but beggars can't be choosers.
As I was looking over the card, Mat left the room and didn't come back for two days. It was weird. I actually got a little worried. At the time, I remember thinking, "Gosh, he gets drunk and uses drugs indiscriminately. He might be dead!" Shelly, who continued to call in Mat's absence, was sure he was fine. However, she let me know that I would have to be her substitute phone buddy until he got back. "You don't mind that, do you baby?" she cooed. Naturally, I couldn't say no to that. Then she said, "So, tell me what Mat does in his spare time? Is he seeing any other girls...?" Great. Now I was stuck lying for Mat, because there was no way I was going to face his wrath for telling Shelly the truth. I felt like such a sucker.
Anyway, this scenario would become a regular occurrence for the rest of my time with Mat: random, multi-day disappearances. Sometimes they happened during the week, sometimes they happened over the weekend. But they were never announced, and I never found out where he had been or what he had done. And I usually ended up covering for him with girls, teachers and coaches.
I did, however, find out at least one thing he'd done during this initial absence. It was around midnight. I was in bed, of course, and the room was mercifully dark and quiet. Suddenly, the door slammed open, and I saw Mat's huge silhouette framed in the light of the hallway. He had something with him. Something big.
He flipped on that damned Heineken sign and I saw what it was: a giant chair. I mean, this chair was so big it was practically a loveseat. Somehow, he had found a Mat-sized chair. I was stunned. Where the hell did he get that thing? Was "Big Chairs 'R Us" having a midnight liquidation sale or something?
Suddenly I noticed that Mat was sweaty and out of breath, two things I had never seen before. He forced the chair awkwardly through the door frame, scraping off paint and breaking off chunks of doorjamb in the process. Then he muscled the chair into the gap between our beds, after which he collapsed into it with a mighty sigh.
"What...where...?" I tried to ask.
"Oh, f*** me," he said with a laugh. "I just stole this chair from a sorority!"
"You did what?"
He let loose a rumbling belly laugh. "I was at a party at dis sorority, and I saw dis chair." He said. "I liked it. I mean, I really liked it. So I just picked it up and walked out with it."
I can only assume my eyes were popping out of my skull. "And...and they just let you leave with it?"
"Hell no, dey didn't let me!" he cracked. "A few girls came runnin' after me, yellin', 'Bring back our chair, bring back our chair!' But you tink sum girls are gonna stop me? Ha! I just kept walkin', and eventually dey stopped chasin' me."
"I...I can't believe it."
Mat just laughed. He was obviously very proud of himself. Then he flipped on the TV and said, "We'll have to bunk our beds tomorrow."
Uh oh.
Next time: Pictures of our room!
Labels: college stories, Livin' Large
Author's note: If your comment hasn't been published, it's because you correctly guessed the identity of one or more persons and/or places in the story. Congratulations, Scooby Doo. I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you and those meddling kids.
Previous installments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
The next few days were relatively uneventful. I was busy going to class, working and studying. Mat, for his part, settled into a comfy-cozy schedule that consisted of: waking up around 2 p.m.; goofing off until he had to go to basketball practice at 5 p.m.; coming back to the dorm to eat his weight in dorm food; going out for a few hours; coming back home to call Shelly and/or one or more other girls; watching MTV until 4 a.m. or so; and then finally going to bed. Of course, sometimes the schedule was expanded to include a random hookup or two, but that was his life for most of that first semester. Meanwhile, his books, ignored and unmoving, gathered dust on his desk, slowly but inexorably disappearing under a growing collection of CDs and knickknacks.
I tried to keep up with Aimee by phone, but she was so on-the-go I rarely caught her in her room unless it was really, really late. That didn't keep me from calling incessantly, though. As a result, I started to get pretty chummy with her roommate, Latrisse, who by comparison was almost always available.
I actually had met Latrisse the previous summer when she visited Aimee in Kokomo. They had agreed to meet before moving in together to make the college transition a little easier. The three of us gathered at a McDonald's for burgers, fries and conversation. At one point, while Aimee was in the bathroom, I explained to Latrisse how much Aimee meant to me. I'm fairly certain I used the "L" word at one point. I wrapped up by saying, "It would make me feel better if you'd look after her for me." Latrisse agreed, and during one of our phone conversations, she confided, "You know, asking me to look after her really endeared you to me. You're a pretty special guy, Matt." It seemed like a fairly innocuous comment at the time, but it would lead to trouble later.
People on our floor started referring to us as "Big Mat and Little Matt." Shelly coined that double nickname during one of her many phone chats with my roommate. Mat mentioned it to somebody and it spread like wildfire. Soon people I didn't even know were saying, "What up, Little Matt?" when I passed them on my way out of the building. At 6'2" (6'3" in shoes) and almost 200 pounds, I hadn't been called "little" since elementary school. But now I was becoming universally known as Little Matt. That was...great.
On Thursday, Mat initiated conversation with me, which typically didn't happen unless I was standing between him and the bathroom. "Hey man," he said, "I got dis girl coming to visit me from Connecticut dis Friday cause we got dat extra day. (It was Labor Day weekend.) She gonna be staying here for de weekend. Dat cool wit you?"
I was pretty shocked, but I was also extremely pleased. That one little question was the most consideration he'd shown me since we'd met. To that point, I'd assumed he didn't care about my feelings regarding our shared living space. Or whether I lived or died, for that matter. Maybe he was human after all. "Yeah," I said, "that's cool. No problem."
"You know," Mat said, changing subjects, "I think you need more stuff. Your side of de room looks pretty boring."
He wasn't wrong. In addition to the furniture provided by the dorm, my side of the room had a small CD player (on my desk), a TV and VCR (both of which were sitting next to my bed on top of Mat's unused desk chair), a pile of old VHS tapes, three milk crates and a towel rack. That was it. I literally had nothing else, other than clothes and books.
By contrast, Mat's side of the room was totally pimped out. His desk was covered by house plants and street signs (origin unknown). He had a funky bar stool behind his desk (which is why he let me use his chair). There were posters on his walls, and he had CDs stacked everywhere. He had a mini-fridge (unshared). Oh, and he had converted his closet into a sort of entertainment center. Seriously, his side of the room was totally sweet. In fact, if you had drawn a line down the center of the room, the contrast would have looked like a before-and-after picture.
"Yeah," I said, "I really need to do something about that." I had no idea when, though. Maybe when I got my first food service check. Having no money sucked.
Mat wasn't finished. In what turned out to be the high point of our roommately camaraderie, Mat produced a box full of practice shorts and jerseys the school athletic director had given him. "You want one of dese?"
"Hell yeah," I said, taking one pair of shorts and a jersey from the box.
Naturally, the outfit was huge on me. I'm talking laughingly enormous. There was no way I could wear them to work out or play basketball in, but that shorts/jersey combo became my favorite lounge-around gear. One notable feature was that the school name was emblazoned on the butt of the shorts. Mind you, this was before it became en vogue to put words on the ass-end of a pair of shorts...which meant it was okay for guys to do it. You never see that these days. Butt-lettering is now the exclusive province of women's shorts. It's similar to the evolution of belly-exposing shirts. They made their debut in the 80's, and, originally, straight men were the ones who wore them. I'm serious. Go watch the movie Hunk if you don't believe me. Eventually, that type of shirt became "sexy" on women and "gay" on men.
Anyway, it was turning out to be a pretty good night for our roommate relationship. Then Mat lowered the boom.
"By de way," he began, "de girl who's visiting me, she's bringing a friend. I said you'd sleep wit her."
I skipped a beat. Then, "Huh?"
He looked confused, but answered, "I told her you'd sleep wit her friend."
Although I was pretty sure I understood the implication, I played dumb. "Like, you said she could sleep in my bed?"
"No," he said slowly and deliberately, as if speaking to a retarded child, "I said you would have sex wit de girl she's bringing wit her."
Okay. I was starting to freak. "Why did you do that?"
Now he was getting irritated. "What the hell else she gonna do while I'm hanging out wit her friend?" By "hanging out," I could only assume he meant "banging her five feet away from you."
"Uh, look, Mat," I said, the top of my head starting to sweat, "I don't think I can do that. You know, sleep with some girl sight unseen. I don't even know her."
His huge brow knitted. "Why does that matter?"
"Well, I, uh, you know that I love Aimee, right?"
"So?" He was definitely irritated now.
"So...I don't think I can do it."
He shook his head. "You'll do it." That was it. End of story. No more debate. No more conversation. What had started out as a bonding session devolved into a tense, brooding silence. Shortly afterward, I went to sleep while Mat sat down to watch MTV in the dark.
The next day, I avoided our room between classes. While sitting in the Memorial Union, I saw an ad for Alpha Phi Omega. APO is a national, co-ed, community service organization. You don't live in a house or anything, but there's an office for socializing, parties for more socializing, and of course events centered around performing community service. The ad said something like, "Meet new people and help the community!" I liked the idea of helping the community, but I was really stoked about the idea of meeting new people. I immediately walked over to the APO office, which was, in fact, full to bursting with happy, friendly peeps. Oddly enough, when I filled out the pledge application form, I listed soccer as a hobby instead of basketball. I have no idea why, since I was obsessed with basketball and hadn't played soccer since the eighth grade. The mind can play funny tricks, I guess. At any rate, that seemingly meaningless decision would have long-term consequences. More on that later.
Around 3 p.m., I gambled that Mat might be awake and out scavenging for food, so I went back to the room and called my mom, who usually got home from work around that time. I said, "Mom, is there any way you can pick me up and bring me home for the weekend?" When she hesitated, I decided to use a college freshman's greatest weapon against their parents: emotional thuggery. "I'm really, really homesick, and I miss you." That did it.
I threw some clothes in a backpack and called Aimee, leaving a message with Latrisse that I was going home for the weekend. Then all I could do was wait. An hour passed. Two hours. I kept listening for Mat, afraid he'd come back and find me preparing to ditch him. Finally, my mom showed up at the door. We hugged, and then I practically ran to the car. A little over an hour later, I was home.
I met my friends Gauvin and Greg -- both of whom had decided to attend classes at the local community college -- at Pizza Hut. It was like old times. I felt like myself again. It's funny looking back at those first few months away from home. All I could think about was my old life. Once I hit my groove at college, I rarely ever wanted to go back to Kokomo for any reason. But from August through the first of November, I yearned for that dirty little town.
At it turned out, Aimee came home on Saturday. She wasn't happy about it. It turned out that she was having way too much fun at Butler to waste time in Kokomo. And while I would totally get that a few months later, at the time I was hurt and resentful. I wanted her to see the brief trip home as an opportunity to spend time with me. She saw it as time wasted while her budding social life was standing still. When Monday came and it was time to return to our respective schools, our relationship status remained unchanged.
I arrived back at my dorm around 5 p.m. The timing was consciously chosen because I figured Mat would be at practice. When I got to the room, it looked like a tornado had blown through. And it wasn't just Mat's side that was wrecked. My side was in shambles too. And just like The Story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, somebody had been sleeping in my bed. Unfortunately, sleeping wasn't all they'd been doing. The sheets, which were wadded into a tangled mess, were soiled (to say the least), and there were lipstick smears everywhere. And while I didn't have much in the way of decoration, I had brought a few creature comforts to school with me: a case of Coca-Cola, a couple bags of chips, some beef jerky, a few boxes of fruit snacks, and a box of Kleenex. Now, my modest little stockpile was gone. All of it, down to the last tissue. (They left the empty box, though.)
For some reason, this violation of my things crushed my spirit.
I stuffed my bed sheets into a laundry bag. As I did so, a handwritten note fell out of the pile. In what was clearly a girl's bubbly cursive script, it read, "Sorry we used all your stuff. We're coming back in a couple weeks and we'll replace everything!" The message was signed with a little heart that had a smiley face in it.
They were coming back in a couple weeks?!
I took the sheets downstairs. Fortunately, the linen lady was working, and she exchanged that nasty mess for a fresh, clean set of sheets. I returned to my room, made my bed, and sat down to study. It had been dark for hours -- and I was still studying -- when Mat finally returned. I wasn't even afraid of whether he was mad at me for ditching him anymore. I was pissed. Not pissed enough to tell off the seven-foot giant, but pissed.
He must have sensed it, too, because his initial silence wasn't as brooding and intimidating as usual. Finally, he said, "Hey, sorry 'bout all your stuff. I'll buy you new stuff tomorrow."
"Don't worry about it," I said, not even looking up from Selected Essays from the Middle Ages. The evening passed in complete silence, except for Mat's beloved MTV. I called Aimee and went to bed. When Mat received his nightly call from Shelly, he actually pulled the phone out into the hall, presumably so his dirty talk wouldn't bother me. Maybe he really did feel bad.
The next day when I got back from class, there was a case of Coke, a box of tissues (generic) and a bag of Ruffles on my desk. When I saw that, I actually thought that things were going to be okay between us. However, my feelings did a 180 that night when he showed up with a new girl, turned on Sade's "No Ordinary Love," and told her, "You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen..."
Previous installments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
The next few days were relatively uneventful. I was busy going to class, working and studying. Mat, for his part, settled into a comfy-cozy schedule that consisted of: waking up around 2 p.m.; goofing off until he had to go to basketball practice at 5 p.m.; coming back to the dorm to eat his weight in dorm food; going out for a few hours; coming back home to call Shelly and/or one or more other girls; watching MTV until 4 a.m. or so; and then finally going to bed. Of course, sometimes the schedule was expanded to include a random hookup or two, but that was his life for most of that first semester. Meanwhile, his books, ignored and unmoving, gathered dust on his desk, slowly but inexorably disappearing under a growing collection of CDs and knickknacks.
I tried to keep up with Aimee by phone, but she was so on-the-go I rarely caught her in her room unless it was really, really late. That didn't keep me from calling incessantly, though. As a result, I started to get pretty chummy with her roommate, Latrisse, who by comparison was almost always available.
I actually had met Latrisse the previous summer when she visited Aimee in Kokomo. They had agreed to meet before moving in together to make the college transition a little easier. The three of us gathered at a McDonald's for burgers, fries and conversation. At one point, while Aimee was in the bathroom, I explained to Latrisse how much Aimee meant to me. I'm fairly certain I used the "L" word at one point. I wrapped up by saying, "It would make me feel better if you'd look after her for me." Latrisse agreed, and during one of our phone conversations, she confided, "You know, asking me to look after her really endeared you to me. You're a pretty special guy, Matt." It seemed like a fairly innocuous comment at the time, but it would lead to trouble later.
People on our floor started referring to us as "Big Mat and Little Matt." Shelly coined that double nickname during one of her many phone chats with my roommate. Mat mentioned it to somebody and it spread like wildfire. Soon people I didn't even know were saying, "What up, Little Matt?" when I passed them on my way out of the building. At 6'2" (6'3" in shoes) and almost 200 pounds, I hadn't been called "little" since elementary school. But now I was becoming universally known as Little Matt. That was...great.
On Thursday, Mat initiated conversation with me, which typically didn't happen unless I was standing between him and the bathroom. "Hey man," he said, "I got dis girl coming to visit me from Connecticut dis Friday cause we got dat extra day. (It was Labor Day weekend.) She gonna be staying here for de weekend. Dat cool wit you?"
I was pretty shocked, but I was also extremely pleased. That one little question was the most consideration he'd shown me since we'd met. To that point, I'd assumed he didn't care about my feelings regarding our shared living space. Or whether I lived or died, for that matter. Maybe he was human after all. "Yeah," I said, "that's cool. No problem."
"You know," Mat said, changing subjects, "I think you need more stuff. Your side of de room looks pretty boring."
He wasn't wrong. In addition to the furniture provided by the dorm, my side of the room had a small CD player (on my desk), a TV and VCR (both of which were sitting next to my bed on top of Mat's unused desk chair), a pile of old VHS tapes, three milk crates and a towel rack. That was it. I literally had nothing else, other than clothes and books.
By contrast, Mat's side of the room was totally pimped out. His desk was covered by house plants and street signs (origin unknown). He had a funky bar stool behind his desk (which is why he let me use his chair). There were posters on his walls, and he had CDs stacked everywhere. He had a mini-fridge (unshared). Oh, and he had converted his closet into a sort of entertainment center. Seriously, his side of the room was totally sweet. In fact, if you had drawn a line down the center of the room, the contrast would have looked like a before-and-after picture.
"Yeah," I said, "I really need to do something about that." I had no idea when, though. Maybe when I got my first food service check. Having no money sucked.
Mat wasn't finished. In what turned out to be the high point of our roommately camaraderie, Mat produced a box full of practice shorts and jerseys the school athletic director had given him. "You want one of dese?"
"Hell yeah," I said, taking one pair of shorts and a jersey from the box.
Naturally, the outfit was huge on me. I'm talking laughingly enormous. There was no way I could wear them to work out or play basketball in, but that shorts/jersey combo became my favorite lounge-around gear. One notable feature was that the school name was emblazoned on the butt of the shorts. Mind you, this was before it became en vogue to put words on the ass-end of a pair of shorts...which meant it was okay for guys to do it. You never see that these days. Butt-lettering is now the exclusive province of women's shorts. It's similar to the evolution of belly-exposing shirts. They made their debut in the 80's, and, originally, straight men were the ones who wore them. I'm serious. Go watch the movie Hunk if you don't believe me. Eventually, that type of shirt became "sexy" on women and "gay" on men.
Anyway, it was turning out to be a pretty good night for our roommate relationship. Then Mat lowered the boom.
"By de way," he began, "de girl who's visiting me, she's bringing a friend. I said you'd sleep wit her."
I skipped a beat. Then, "Huh?"
He looked confused, but answered, "I told her you'd sleep wit her friend."
Although I was pretty sure I understood the implication, I played dumb. "Like, you said she could sleep in my bed?"
"No," he said slowly and deliberately, as if speaking to a retarded child, "I said you would have sex wit de girl she's bringing wit her."
Okay. I was starting to freak. "Why did you do that?"
Now he was getting irritated. "What the hell else she gonna do while I'm hanging out wit her friend?" By "hanging out," I could only assume he meant "banging her five feet away from you."
"Uh, look, Mat," I said, the top of my head starting to sweat, "I don't think I can do that. You know, sleep with some girl sight unseen. I don't even know her."
His huge brow knitted. "Why does that matter?"
"Well, I, uh, you know that I love Aimee, right?"
"So?" He was definitely irritated now.
"So...I don't think I can do it."
He shook his head. "You'll do it." That was it. End of story. No more debate. No more conversation. What had started out as a bonding session devolved into a tense, brooding silence. Shortly afterward, I went to sleep while Mat sat down to watch MTV in the dark.
The next day, I avoided our room between classes. While sitting in the Memorial Union, I saw an ad for Alpha Phi Omega. APO is a national, co-ed, community service organization. You don't live in a house or anything, but there's an office for socializing, parties for more socializing, and of course events centered around performing community service. The ad said something like, "Meet new people and help the community!" I liked the idea of helping the community, but I was really stoked about the idea of meeting new people. I immediately walked over to the APO office, which was, in fact, full to bursting with happy, friendly peeps. Oddly enough, when I filled out the pledge application form, I listed soccer as a hobby instead of basketball. I have no idea why, since I was obsessed with basketball and hadn't played soccer since the eighth grade. The mind can play funny tricks, I guess. At any rate, that seemingly meaningless decision would have long-term consequences. More on that later.
Around 3 p.m., I gambled that Mat might be awake and out scavenging for food, so I went back to the room and called my mom, who usually got home from work around that time. I said, "Mom, is there any way you can pick me up and bring me home for the weekend?" When she hesitated, I decided to use a college freshman's greatest weapon against their parents: emotional thuggery. "I'm really, really homesick, and I miss you." That did it.
I threw some clothes in a backpack and called Aimee, leaving a message with Latrisse that I was going home for the weekend. Then all I could do was wait. An hour passed. Two hours. I kept listening for Mat, afraid he'd come back and find me preparing to ditch him. Finally, my mom showed up at the door. We hugged, and then I practically ran to the car. A little over an hour later, I was home.
I met my friends Gauvin and Greg -- both of whom had decided to attend classes at the local community college -- at Pizza Hut. It was like old times. I felt like myself again. It's funny looking back at those first few months away from home. All I could think about was my old life. Once I hit my groove at college, I rarely ever wanted to go back to Kokomo for any reason. But from August through the first of November, I yearned for that dirty little town.
At it turned out, Aimee came home on Saturday. She wasn't happy about it. It turned out that she was having way too much fun at Butler to waste time in Kokomo. And while I would totally get that a few months later, at the time I was hurt and resentful. I wanted her to see the brief trip home as an opportunity to spend time with me. She saw it as time wasted while her budding social life was standing still. When Monday came and it was time to return to our respective schools, our relationship status remained unchanged.
I arrived back at my dorm around 5 p.m. The timing was consciously chosen because I figured Mat would be at practice. When I got to the room, it looked like a tornado had blown through. And it wasn't just Mat's side that was wrecked. My side was in shambles too. And just like The Story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, somebody had been sleeping in my bed. Unfortunately, sleeping wasn't all they'd been doing. The sheets, which were wadded into a tangled mess, were soiled (to say the least), and there were lipstick smears everywhere. And while I didn't have much in the way of decoration, I had brought a few creature comforts to school with me: a case of Coca-Cola, a couple bags of chips, some beef jerky, a few boxes of fruit snacks, and a box of Kleenex. Now, my modest little stockpile was gone. All of it, down to the last tissue. (They left the empty box, though.)
For some reason, this violation of my things crushed my spirit.
I stuffed my bed sheets into a laundry bag. As I did so, a handwritten note fell out of the pile. In what was clearly a girl's bubbly cursive script, it read, "Sorry we used all your stuff. We're coming back in a couple weeks and we'll replace everything!" The message was signed with a little heart that had a smiley face in it.
They were coming back in a couple weeks?!
I took the sheets downstairs. Fortunately, the linen lady was working, and she exchanged that nasty mess for a fresh, clean set of sheets. I returned to my room, made my bed, and sat down to study. It had been dark for hours -- and I was still studying -- when Mat finally returned. I wasn't even afraid of whether he was mad at me for ditching him anymore. I was pissed. Not pissed enough to tell off the seven-foot giant, but pissed.
He must have sensed it, too, because his initial silence wasn't as brooding and intimidating as usual. Finally, he said, "Hey, sorry 'bout all your stuff. I'll buy you new stuff tomorrow."
"Don't worry about it," I said, not even looking up from Selected Essays from the Middle Ages. The evening passed in complete silence, except for Mat's beloved MTV. I called Aimee and went to bed. When Mat received his nightly call from Shelly, he actually pulled the phone out into the hall, presumably so his dirty talk wouldn't bother me. Maybe he really did feel bad.
The next day when I got back from class, there was a case of Coke, a box of tissues (generic) and a bag of Ruffles on my desk. When I saw that, I actually thought that things were going to be okay between us. However, my feelings did a 180 that night when he showed up with a new girl, turned on Sade's "No Ordinary Love," and told her, "You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen..."
Labels: college stories, Livin' Large
Author's note: Once again, I'm not including the last names of the people involved or identifying the university at which these events occurred. Feel free to make guesses, but understand that I will not publish comments that contain the exact names of the people or places in question. I'm just trying to avoid any...Imperial entanglements...so to speak.
By the time Mat finally woke up, Brett had already taken Shelly to the airport. This caused Mat to be unusually bummed out all day. I say "unusually" only with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, since I didn't really know much about his habits at the time. But he was dispirited enough to make small talk with me, much of which had to do with Shelly and what I thought about her.
"She was pretty f***ing cool, wasn't she? Man, dat woman is fine. You thought she was fine, right? Damn, I miss her already. This sh*t sucks. I wish she was home already so I could call her. Maybe I should wait, you know, be cool. You think she'll call me? I can't believe I met her right before she was leavin'. Can you believe dat? Aw, man, f*** me." ("F*** me," I would soon discover, was Mat's go-to phrase for virtually every situation, good or bad.)
Eventually, he got around to asking questions about me. Sadly, I had little to tell that he would care about or understand, so he focused on two things: my interest in basketball and my love life. Unfortunately, his knowledge of the NBA wasn't that broad. He knew Rik Smits (who was a fellow countryman) and loved Michael Jordan (which was something of a gimmie). That was pretty much the extent of it. I asked him about his prep school career, and all I got out of him was that he was "really good" and hit "about 80 percent" of his free throws. He claimed not to remember his rebounding numbers, which I found bizarre. The dude was seven-plus feet tall and weighed 300 pounds. I expected him to boast Wilt Chamberlain-esque boarding stats...and the fact that he didn't probably should have told me something.
The discussion of my love life was pretty uncomfortable. I tried to explain the fact that I loved my not-quite-girlfriend Aimee despite her refusal to have a committed relationship with me. ("Shit,man" he said, "you need to tell dat ho what up.") And when I admitted that we hadn't had sex -- that we hadn't, in fact, so much as kissed -- his eyes nearly bulged out of his giant head. ("What the f***? How you love somebody who don't even have sex wit you? F*** me. That's some f***ed up sh*t.") I don't know if we were bonding, but the conversation certainly earned me his rather unique form of sympathy. It also made me feel like a gormless stooge.
"Look," he said, waving off my explanation about how sometimes loving someone means waiting for little things like physical intimacy, "here's what you gotta do. Tell dat girl, 'You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.' I'm telling you, dat sh*t works every time."
I was certain he was right...assuming the line was clumsily delivered by a physical freak who appeared to be -- based on his size alone -- a mortal lock for the NBA. But for me? All I could see was a pathetic, perhaps even lethal dose of fail. When I expressed my skepticism, he suggested I enhance the line by playing Sade's "No Ordinary Love" in the background. He wasn't just paying lip service, either. The "most beautiful woman" line/Sade combination would go on to become a staple of Mat's many hookups, which is probably why, to this day, "No Ordinary Love" makes me want to punch myself in the groin until I pass out.
I was able to hold Mat's interest for only so long, and eventually he simply got up and wandered out of the room. He was gone for several hours, during which time I copied my schedule into my daily planner and mapped a route to each of my classes. I sharpened pencils, packed my backpack...you know, all the things a good little freshman nerd does. Once I ran out of preparations to make, I called Aimee. She had moved into her dorm room at Butler University the day before, and she had been having a blast ever since. She dug her roommate (a nice but socially awkward girl named Latrisse) and had spent the last 24 hours partying and making friends. It made me feel angry and jealous.
When I told her my first couple days at college had been lousy, she was incredulous. "How can you not be having a great time?" I told her I didn't know anybody to have a great time with. "Go out and meet people then!" was her answer to my problem. If only I'd known it was that simple. After a while, I tried to turn the conversation to our budding not-relationship, but she dismissed it. "You know how I feel about that." Maybe Mat was right. Maybe I really did need to "tell dat ho what's up."
Talking to Aimee did nothing to improve my mood. It only turned it from "black" to "blacker." Then one of those strange "only in college" things happened. My door opened and in walked a fat guy with thick glasses and an even thicker belly. He was wearing nothing but a towel that was about 50 percent smaller than it should have been. He took three or four steps into my room before he realized his mistake.
"Oh," he said in mild surprise. "I don't live here. I'm sorry." Then he offered me the hand that wasn't holding his too-small towel closed. "I'm Ron. I live...next door, apparently. Nice to meet you."
I shook Ron's hand and introduced myself. "Well," he said, seemingly in no real hurry, "I'm sure we'll be seeing more of each other. Hopefully I'll be wearing more clothes next time. If you ever need anything, feel free to stop by. In fact, feel free to stop by even if you don't need anything. I'd be happy to have you over, and I'm sure my roommate, Nathan, feels the same way." I couldn't help but wonder if this guy was for real. On the one hand, this was the closes I'd come to making a friend so far. On the other hand, he was weird and mostly naked.
After Ron left, I sat down to do the only thing I had to do at that point: watch an old basketball game. I really needed to get off that crazy rollercoaster of fun.
Mat got back around 10 p.m. and immediately called Shelly. (So much for being cool.) She had only just made it home and was unpacking, but they still sweet-talked each other for the next 45 minutes or so. It was weird to hear this monster of a man cooing like a lovesick teenager, but I found it kind of endearing. By the time he hung up the phone, I was getting ready for bed. "Good idea," he said. "First day of classes tomorrow. Gotta be ready." I asked him if he had his schedule. "Yeah," he said, glancing around, "it's here somewhere."
Then he collapsed into his bed with a huge grin on his face. "Dude, she told me she loves me."
"No kidding?" I said. That seemed pretty fast to me.
"Yeah, she loves me." Then he heaved a deep, self-satisfied sigh.
"So, what, you guys are dating now?"
He thought about that for a few seconds and then said, "I guess so."
So the girl I'd been friends with for five years and had bent over backwards for on more occasions than I could count had never said she loved me nor would she even consent to dating me seriously, but this goon meets a girl, sleeps with her immediately, and then gets an "I love you" the next day? I was pissed, but I played it off.
"Good for you," I said.
A few minutes later, we killed the lights and went to bed. Despite my bitterness over his luck with women, I thought things had gone pretty well between us that day. We'd talked and gotten along. He was apparently in a long-distance relationship, which I took to mean he wouldn't be banging a different girl every night of the week. And he was even going to bed at a reasonable time. I smiled. It looked like this was going to work out okay after all.
The next day was a blur. I had three classes and a seminar for my scholarship group. Even though I'd already picked up the books listed on my course schedule, a couple of my teachers gave us another list of additional books we needed to pick up. I was immediately assigned a couple hundred pages worth of reading, a term paper and a huge Calculus assignment. After my classes, I had to work an evening shift at the dorm's food service, which lasted a grueling four hours. (I was tasked with restocking the dining room, which included a large salad bar, a soft drink station, a tea/lemonade machine, a milk machine that dispensed three different kinds of milk, and two ice cream machines. I also had to clean up any messes. In case you didn't know this: men are sloppy pigs. That is all.)
When I finally dragged ass back to my room, Mat wasn't there. I settled down at my desk and dug into my homework. I was at it for three hours before taking a short break, during which I went down to the grill for a hamburger. When I got back to the room, "No Ordinary Love" was playing because -- you guessed it -- Mat was in the middle of sexing up some girl. She was squealing and laughing like a 12-year-old, and the festivities didn't stop when I came back into the room. Mat had dimmed the lights for obvious reasons, so I stooped down at my desk and quietly munched on my hamburger. Once they finished -- mercifully, it rarely took long -- the girl got dressed and left.
A few minutes passed before I said anything. "So," I finally said, trying to keep the judgment out of my voice, "I thought you were seeing Shelly."
"I am," he said in a casual voice.
"Well, uh, who was that then?"
He glanced toward the door as if trying to recall the girl's name. Apparently, he either didn't know or didn't care, because he said, "Just some girl."
"I don't think Shelly would be real thrilled," I said.
Mat rolled his eyes. "Man, she a long way away, you know?"
I didn't "know," but I kept that to myself and got ready for bed.
Shortly after I crawled under the covers, Shelly called. After the perfunctory greeting, she and Mat began talking dirty, discussing all the naughty things they'd like to be doing to each other. It started to sound a little too much like phone sex to me, so I pulled my pillow around my head and tried to pretend I was alone, in a cave, on the moon. With some effort, I was eventually able to drift off.
Previous installments: Part 1, Part 2.
By the time Mat finally woke up, Brett had already taken Shelly to the airport. This caused Mat to be unusually bummed out all day. I say "unusually" only with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, since I didn't really know much about his habits at the time. But he was dispirited enough to make small talk with me, much of which had to do with Shelly and what I thought about her.
"She was pretty f***ing cool, wasn't she? Man, dat woman is fine. You thought she was fine, right? Damn, I miss her already. This sh*t sucks. I wish she was home already so I could call her. Maybe I should wait, you know, be cool. You think she'll call me? I can't believe I met her right before she was leavin'. Can you believe dat? Aw, man, f*** me." ("F*** me," I would soon discover, was Mat's go-to phrase for virtually every situation, good or bad.)
Eventually, he got around to asking questions about me. Sadly, I had little to tell that he would care about or understand, so he focused on two things: my interest in basketball and my love life. Unfortunately, his knowledge of the NBA wasn't that broad. He knew Rik Smits (who was a fellow countryman) and loved Michael Jordan (which was something of a gimmie). That was pretty much the extent of it. I asked him about his prep school career, and all I got out of him was that he was "really good" and hit "about 80 percent" of his free throws. He claimed not to remember his rebounding numbers, which I found bizarre. The dude was seven-plus feet tall and weighed 300 pounds. I expected him to boast Wilt Chamberlain-esque boarding stats...and the fact that he didn't probably should have told me something.
The discussion of my love life was pretty uncomfortable. I tried to explain the fact that I loved my not-quite-girlfriend Aimee despite her refusal to have a committed relationship with me. ("Shit,man" he said, "you need to tell dat ho what up.") And when I admitted that we hadn't had sex -- that we hadn't, in fact, so much as kissed -- his eyes nearly bulged out of his giant head. ("What the f***? How you love somebody who don't even have sex wit you? F*** me. That's some f***ed up sh*t.") I don't know if we were bonding, but the conversation certainly earned me his rather unique form of sympathy. It also made me feel like a gormless stooge.
"Look," he said, waving off my explanation about how sometimes loving someone means waiting for little things like physical intimacy, "here's what you gotta do. Tell dat girl, 'You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.' I'm telling you, dat sh*t works every time."
I was certain he was right...assuming the line was clumsily delivered by a physical freak who appeared to be -- based on his size alone -- a mortal lock for the NBA. But for me? All I could see was a pathetic, perhaps even lethal dose of fail. When I expressed my skepticism, he suggested I enhance the line by playing Sade's "No Ordinary Love" in the background. He wasn't just paying lip service, either. The "most beautiful woman" line/Sade combination would go on to become a staple of Mat's many hookups, which is probably why, to this day, "No Ordinary Love" makes me want to punch myself in the groin until I pass out.
I was able to hold Mat's interest for only so long, and eventually he simply got up and wandered out of the room. He was gone for several hours, during which time I copied my schedule into my daily planner and mapped a route to each of my classes. I sharpened pencils, packed my backpack...you know, all the things a good little freshman nerd does. Once I ran out of preparations to make, I called Aimee. She had moved into her dorm room at Butler University the day before, and she had been having a blast ever since. She dug her roommate (a nice but socially awkward girl named Latrisse) and had spent the last 24 hours partying and making friends. It made me feel angry and jealous.
When I told her my first couple days at college had been lousy, she was incredulous. "How can you not be having a great time?" I told her I didn't know anybody to have a great time with. "Go out and meet people then!" was her answer to my problem. If only I'd known it was that simple. After a while, I tried to turn the conversation to our budding not-relationship, but she dismissed it. "You know how I feel about that." Maybe Mat was right. Maybe I really did need to "tell dat ho what's up."
Talking to Aimee did nothing to improve my mood. It only turned it from "black" to "blacker." Then one of those strange "only in college" things happened. My door opened and in walked a fat guy with thick glasses and an even thicker belly. He was wearing nothing but a towel that was about 50 percent smaller than it should have been. He took three or four steps into my room before he realized his mistake.
"Oh," he said in mild surprise. "I don't live here. I'm sorry." Then he offered me the hand that wasn't holding his too-small towel closed. "I'm Ron. I live...next door, apparently. Nice to meet you."
I shook Ron's hand and introduced myself. "Well," he said, seemingly in no real hurry, "I'm sure we'll be seeing more of each other. Hopefully I'll be wearing more clothes next time. If you ever need anything, feel free to stop by. In fact, feel free to stop by even if you don't need anything. I'd be happy to have you over, and I'm sure my roommate, Nathan, feels the same way." I couldn't help but wonder if this guy was for real. On the one hand, this was the closes I'd come to making a friend so far. On the other hand, he was weird and mostly naked.
After Ron left, I sat down to do the only thing I had to do at that point: watch an old basketball game. I really needed to get off that crazy rollercoaster of fun.
Mat got back around 10 p.m. and immediately called Shelly. (So much for being cool.) She had only just made it home and was unpacking, but they still sweet-talked each other for the next 45 minutes or so. It was weird to hear this monster of a man cooing like a lovesick teenager, but I found it kind of endearing. By the time he hung up the phone, I was getting ready for bed. "Good idea," he said. "First day of classes tomorrow. Gotta be ready." I asked him if he had his schedule. "Yeah," he said, glancing around, "it's here somewhere."
Then he collapsed into his bed with a huge grin on his face. "Dude, she told me she loves me."
"No kidding?" I said. That seemed pretty fast to me.
"Yeah, she loves me." Then he heaved a deep, self-satisfied sigh.
"So, what, you guys are dating now?"
He thought about that for a few seconds and then said, "I guess so."
So the girl I'd been friends with for five years and had bent over backwards for on more occasions than I could count had never said she loved me nor would she even consent to dating me seriously, but this goon meets a girl, sleeps with her immediately, and then gets an "I love you" the next day? I was pissed, but I played it off.
"Good for you," I said.
A few minutes later, we killed the lights and went to bed. Despite my bitterness over his luck with women, I thought things had gone pretty well between us that day. We'd talked and gotten along. He was apparently in a long-distance relationship, which I took to mean he wouldn't be banging a different girl every night of the week. And he was even going to bed at a reasonable time. I smiled. It looked like this was going to work out okay after all.
The next day was a blur. I had three classes and a seminar for my scholarship group. Even though I'd already picked up the books listed on my course schedule, a couple of my teachers gave us another list of additional books we needed to pick up. I was immediately assigned a couple hundred pages worth of reading, a term paper and a huge Calculus assignment. After my classes, I had to work an evening shift at the dorm's food service, which lasted a grueling four hours. (I was tasked with restocking the dining room, which included a large salad bar, a soft drink station, a tea/lemonade machine, a milk machine that dispensed three different kinds of milk, and two ice cream machines. I also had to clean up any messes. In case you didn't know this: men are sloppy pigs. That is all.)
When I finally dragged ass back to my room, Mat wasn't there. I settled down at my desk and dug into my homework. I was at it for three hours before taking a short break, during which I went down to the grill for a hamburger. When I got back to the room, "No Ordinary Love" was playing because -- you guessed it -- Mat was in the middle of sexing up some girl. She was squealing and laughing like a 12-year-old, and the festivities didn't stop when I came back into the room. Mat had dimmed the lights for obvious reasons, so I stooped down at my desk and quietly munched on my hamburger. Once they finished -- mercifully, it rarely took long -- the girl got dressed and left.
A few minutes passed before I said anything. "So," I finally said, trying to keep the judgment out of my voice, "I thought you were seeing Shelly."
"I am," he said in a casual voice.
"Well, uh, who was that then?"
He glanced toward the door as if trying to recall the girl's name. Apparently, he either didn't know or didn't care, because he said, "Just some girl."
"I don't think Shelly would be real thrilled," I said.
Mat rolled his eyes. "Man, she a long way away, you know?"
I didn't "know," but I kept that to myself and got ready for bed.
Shortly after I crawled under the covers, Shelly called. After the perfunctory greeting, she and Mat began talking dirty, discussing all the naughty things they'd like to be doing to each other. It started to sound a little too much like phone sex to me, so I pulled my pillow around my head and tried to pretend I was alone, in a cave, on the moon. With some effort, I was eventually able to drift off.
Previous installments: Part 1, Part 2.
Labels: college stories, Livin' Large
During college, I had my fair share of adventures and (more often) misadventures. I climbed a 16-story clock tower while it was under construction, participated in a few intramural sports championships, had a 50-pound stereo speaker shatter my nose during sex (seriously), helped design and build potato guns, successfully snuck into various sorority houses, got kicked out of bars, woke up in random places (and with random people) I'd never seen before, so on and so forth. But I'm not going to lie: My first day at college was painfully, even embarrassingly lame.
After my roommate disappeared, I wandered around campus and got lost. I tried unsuccessfully to track down some fellow freshmen from my hometown. I went running and got lost again. I made a handful of mopey phone calls to friends and family. I took a nap.
That evening, my dorm held a beginning-of-the-year dance in one of the two dining halls. I got spiffed up in my own dorky way -- button-down shirt and khaki shorts -- and ambled down to meet and greet. Unfortunately, after only one lap around the dance floor, I got intimidated and left. Armed with my Walkman and a copy of Joe Satriani's "Surfing With The Alien," I took a walk and got lost yet again, after which I vowed to stop going on walks altogether. Defeated, I went to the dorm's after hours grill, bought a hamburger and shuffled back to my room. And even though I usually have only ketchup and mustard on my burgers, that night I added some mayonnaise too. After all, I was in college now. It was time to take chances.
I spent the rest of the night watching old Celtics games. I was in bed by 11:00 p.m.
At around 6:30 a.m., I woke to the sound of dozens of voices. Singing voices. I scrambled to the window and looked down. Our wing of the building was being serenaded -- poorly and somewhat profanely -- by our sister wing from the all-girl dorm across the street. I sleep hard, and I wake harder, so I was still trying to take make sense of this odd tableau when a giant pillow flew past me and slammed against the window.
"SHUT THE F*** UP!!"
My roommate was home. He was pissed. And he wasn't alone.
Mat was in bed on his back, and on top of him was a girl I'd obviously never seen before. Since the sheets provided by the dorm were barely big enough to cover Mat's hulking mass, I quickly realized they were both naked. The scene was...an eyeful. To say the least.
I flopped back down onto my bed and turned away from them, assuming they wanted a little privacy. Mat spent a few minutes yelling at the serenaders to go away, but they ignored his profanity and sang outside our window for almost an hour. Shortly after they finally left, I heard Mat utter a line I would become very familiar with in the coming months: "Baby, you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen." He and the nameless girl then proceeded to have noisy sex for the next five minutes or so.
I was shocked. At the time, that was pretty hard core for me. I'd watched Cinemax After Dark, sure. I'd even shown a stag film called Grind My Groin at a going-away party I threw for my buddy Dave D. before he'd left for the army the previous June. But I had never been five feet away from a couple furiously making the beast with two backs. Even after they finished -- or, rather, after he finished -- I didn't know what to do. I waited a couple minutes, then sat up and tried to act as if nothing had happened. Turned out that was impossible.
Mat had pulled most of the sheet over himself, so the girl's body was almost fully exposed. I couldn't help but gape, less out of lust (although there was a little of that) than surprise and near-panic. As I goggled at his girl, Mat said, "Hey, you want sloppy seconds?"
Following a moment of stunned silence, I said, "Wh...what?"
"Sloppy seconds," he replied, like he was offering to let me borrow a pencil. "Me and the guys at my prep school always shared sloppy seconds."
I was terrified that the girl was going to start freaking out about being offered around like a plate of five dollar hors d'oeuvres, but she didn't look the least bit offended. In fact, she adopted a complacent, "I will do whatever he tells me to do" look.
"I'll pass, thanks."
Mat shrugged. "Suit yourself." Then he rolled over and fell asleep almost immediately. The girl maintained eye contact with me for another few seconds to make sure I really didn't want those sloppy seconds, and then she rolled over and fell asleep herself (or pretended to), an amazing feat considering she was clinging to the outter edge of the bed.
I got up, changed into shorts and a basketball jersey, and left posthaste. Fortunately for me, the co-recreational gymnasium was directly across the street from my dorm. I wasn't there five minutes before getting into a pickup game. Finally, I'd found something that made me feel halfway normal. Under the circumstances, it felt like the happiest hour and a half of my life. But one by one people started to leave until I was the only person left on the court. I berated myself for not trying to get a phone number, or asking somebody to hang out. Something.
By the time I got back to the room, Mat and the girl were gone.
For the next few hours, I just sat in the room watching old basketball games. Eventually, the phone rang and, surprisingly, it was for me. Zach, a semi-friend from high school had just moved into a dorm nearby and wanted to hang out. I probably left skid marks on my way over to his place.
Zach and I hung out for most of the day. We went to Taco Bell, stopped by some book stores, bought a couple posters, tried (and failed) to figure out our way around campus, shared a Papa John's pizza. We didn't like each other all that much, but there was a certain sense of relief in just being with someone familiar.
I had heard about a dance being held at the Memorial Union. Because dancing usually means girls, we tried decided to give it a try. However, after an hour of wandering, it became obvious that we were totally lost. "Zach," I said, totally frustrated, "where exactly are we going?"
"What?" he asked. "I was following you."
Fail.
It took a good deal of backtracking and guessing, but we made it back to my dorm and staggered up the stairs to my room with the intent of ordering another pizza. However, when we got there, my roommate was waiting. And he had a different girl with him this time.
"Uh, I gotta go," Zach said, and he left without another word.
The stereo was blasting "Rat Race" by Bob Marley. I have no idea why I remember that, but I do. As I edged cautiously into the room, Mat lifted a beer to me in salute. "Hey der, roomie!" he blared. "Dis is Shelly."
There's no other way to put this: Shelly was hot. Fit, tan, brunette, huge...tracts o' land. And, most importantly, a really gorgeous smile. She leaped off the bed and hugged me like I was an old friend she hadn't seen in years.
"Hey baby!" she half-yelled as she planted a wet kiss on my cheek.
I had no idea what to say, so I just sat on my bed and looked at them. Mat sucked down the rest of his beer and then produced what I could only assume was a the world's largest joint. "Dude," he said, "you ever been high?"
"No."
"Well, then dis'll be your first time." In case I hadn't mentioned this before, Mat sounded like a reggae version of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I shook my head. "Nah, that's okay."
Shelly grabbed the joint, then came over and crawled onto my lap. She held the joint up to my mouth and whispered in my ear. "C'mon, baby. Get high with us." Man, my teenage hormones nearly exploded. I know that's probably not even physically possible, but I swear it almost happened. I was really close to doing it, and anything else she suggested short of a devil's three-way, but with a titanic effort I collected myself and said, "No, really, I don't want any."
"Whatever," she said, bouncing back to Mat's bed. They then proceeded to get very high and very drunk. I sat in bed reading a book and feeling like the biggest dorkwad the world had ever known. There were a couple times I considered asking for some beer or a hit off the joint, but I felt too stupid and ashamed.
By 11 p.m. I was exhausted, the extreme lameness of my day having worn me out. I went to the bathroom to change clothes and brush my teeth. When I got back to the room, Shelly was topless and straddling Mat. She turned to me, breasts swaying, and said, "Like the view?" I'm going to guess I was blushing, because my face felt like it was about to burn off.
Mat and Shelly went on to have sex while I taught myself to sleep with a pillow wrapped around my head. That skill served me very well for the rest of the semester. Eventually, mercifully, I fell into a dreamless sleep.
At around 6:30 a.m., I again woke to the sound of voices. And pounding. Only this time, it was outside my door.
"GET UP!" the voice screamed. "TIME TO GO SERENADE THE GIRLS!"
Ah, I thought, revenge. I'll pass.
I was about to roll over and go back to sleep, but the door -- which Mat (as would be his habit for most of our time together) had purposely left unlocked -- swung inward. In walked our R.A., Brett.
"Are you guys coming alo..." he started to say. Then he noticed beer cans littering the floor. And the girl in bed with my roommate, which was a clear violation of the overnight guest policy (i.e., you couldn't have any).
Brett grimaced at me and walked over to the huge mass of human flesh on my roommate's bed. He gave the girl a few quick pokes on the back and said, "Ma'am, wake up. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
When she rolled over, Brett cried out out shock. "Shelly?!"
"Brett," she said in a hoarse voice. "Wha'sup?"
I know what you're thinking, but Shelly wasn't Brett's girlfriend. She was his cousin, who was visiting him from California. Only she'd slipped away during an orientation meeting Brett had to attend, and on the way back to his room she had run into Mat. And, well, yeah.
"Jesus," Brett said, slapping his forehead. "You've been drinking," he blurted out, glancing at the remains of the joint in the ashtray, "and doing...other stuff. Do you realize it's my job to keep this stuff from happening here? Do you realize how bad this looks for me?"
"I'm sorry, Brett," she croaked. "I's jus havin' a good time."
"Come on, I'm taking you back to my room, you can sleep this sh*t off there," he said. He grabbed her by the arm and started leading her out. But before he did, he turned to me and said, "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to write both of you a disciplinary report."
"Wait, what? Buh, both of us?" I stammered. "I didn't even do anything."
"Again, I'm sorry, but those are the rules. You're at fault for not reporting the activity to me."
Great. I had managed to resist peer pressure and avoid drugs and alcohol, but I was getting busted anyway. Fan-freaking-tastic.
"Do me a favor and explain that to your roommate when he comes to, okay?" Brett said.
"And tell him I'll call him!" Shelly rasped out as Brett dragged her away.
All the while, Mat lay there snoring. Sometimes unconsciousness is bliss.
Previous installments: Part 1
After my roommate disappeared, I wandered around campus and got lost. I tried unsuccessfully to track down some fellow freshmen from my hometown. I went running and got lost again. I made a handful of mopey phone calls to friends and family. I took a nap.
That evening, my dorm held a beginning-of-the-year dance in one of the two dining halls. I got spiffed up in my own dorky way -- button-down shirt and khaki shorts -- and ambled down to meet and greet. Unfortunately, after only one lap around the dance floor, I got intimidated and left. Armed with my Walkman and a copy of Joe Satriani's "Surfing With The Alien," I took a walk and got lost yet again, after which I vowed to stop going on walks altogether. Defeated, I went to the dorm's after hours grill, bought a hamburger and shuffled back to my room. And even though I usually have only ketchup and mustard on my burgers, that night I added some mayonnaise too. After all, I was in college now. It was time to take chances.
I spent the rest of the night watching old Celtics games. I was in bed by 11:00 p.m.
At around 6:30 a.m., I woke to the sound of dozens of voices. Singing voices. I scrambled to the window and looked down. Our wing of the building was being serenaded -- poorly and somewhat profanely -- by our sister wing from the all-girl dorm across the street. I sleep hard, and I wake harder, so I was still trying to take make sense of this odd tableau when a giant pillow flew past me and slammed against the window.
"SHUT THE F*** UP!!"
My roommate was home. He was pissed. And he wasn't alone.
Mat was in bed on his back, and on top of him was a girl I'd obviously never seen before. Since the sheets provided by the dorm were barely big enough to cover Mat's hulking mass, I quickly realized they were both naked. The scene was...an eyeful. To say the least.
I flopped back down onto my bed and turned away from them, assuming they wanted a little privacy. Mat spent a few minutes yelling at the serenaders to go away, but they ignored his profanity and sang outside our window for almost an hour. Shortly after they finally left, I heard Mat utter a line I would become very familiar with in the coming months: "Baby, you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen." He and the nameless girl then proceeded to have noisy sex for the next five minutes or so.
I was shocked. At the time, that was pretty hard core for me. I'd watched Cinemax After Dark, sure. I'd even shown a stag film called Grind My Groin at a going-away party I threw for my buddy Dave D. before he'd left for the army the previous June. But I had never been five feet away from a couple furiously making the beast with two backs. Even after they finished -- or, rather, after he finished -- I didn't know what to do. I waited a couple minutes, then sat up and tried to act as if nothing had happened. Turned out that was impossible.
Mat had pulled most of the sheet over himself, so the girl's body was almost fully exposed. I couldn't help but gape, less out of lust (although there was a little of that) than surprise and near-panic. As I goggled at his girl, Mat said, "Hey, you want sloppy seconds?"
Following a moment of stunned silence, I said, "Wh...what?"
"Sloppy seconds," he replied, like he was offering to let me borrow a pencil. "Me and the guys at my prep school always shared sloppy seconds."
I was terrified that the girl was going to start freaking out about being offered around like a plate of five dollar hors d'oeuvres, but she didn't look the least bit offended. In fact, she adopted a complacent, "I will do whatever he tells me to do" look.
"I'll pass, thanks."
Mat shrugged. "Suit yourself." Then he rolled over and fell asleep almost immediately. The girl maintained eye contact with me for another few seconds to make sure I really didn't want those sloppy seconds, and then she rolled over and fell asleep herself (or pretended to), an amazing feat considering she was clinging to the outter edge of the bed.
I got up, changed into shorts and a basketball jersey, and left posthaste. Fortunately for me, the co-recreational gymnasium was directly across the street from my dorm. I wasn't there five minutes before getting into a pickup game. Finally, I'd found something that made me feel halfway normal. Under the circumstances, it felt like the happiest hour and a half of my life. But one by one people started to leave until I was the only person left on the court. I berated myself for not trying to get a phone number, or asking somebody to hang out. Something.
By the time I got back to the room, Mat and the girl were gone.
For the next few hours, I just sat in the room watching old basketball games. Eventually, the phone rang and, surprisingly, it was for me. Zach, a semi-friend from high school had just moved into a dorm nearby and wanted to hang out. I probably left skid marks on my way over to his place.
Zach and I hung out for most of the day. We went to Taco Bell, stopped by some book stores, bought a couple posters, tried (and failed) to figure out our way around campus, shared a Papa John's pizza. We didn't like each other all that much, but there was a certain sense of relief in just being with someone familiar.
I had heard about a dance being held at the Memorial Union. Because dancing usually means girls, we tried decided to give it a try. However, after an hour of wandering, it became obvious that we were totally lost. "Zach," I said, totally frustrated, "where exactly are we going?"
"What?" he asked. "I was following you."
Fail.
It took a good deal of backtracking and guessing, but we made it back to my dorm and staggered up the stairs to my room with the intent of ordering another pizza. However, when we got there, my roommate was waiting. And he had a different girl with him this time.
"Uh, I gotta go," Zach said, and he left without another word.
The stereo was blasting "Rat Race" by Bob Marley. I have no idea why I remember that, but I do. As I edged cautiously into the room, Mat lifted a beer to me in salute. "Hey der, roomie!" he blared. "Dis is Shelly."
There's no other way to put this: Shelly was hot. Fit, tan, brunette, huge...tracts o' land. And, most importantly, a really gorgeous smile. She leaped off the bed and hugged me like I was an old friend she hadn't seen in years.
"Hey baby!" she half-yelled as she planted a wet kiss on my cheek.
I had no idea what to say, so I just sat on my bed and looked at them. Mat sucked down the rest of his beer and then produced what I could only assume was a the world's largest joint. "Dude," he said, "you ever been high?"
"No."
"Well, then dis'll be your first time." In case I hadn't mentioned this before, Mat sounded like a reggae version of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I shook my head. "Nah, that's okay."
Shelly grabbed the joint, then came over and crawled onto my lap. She held the joint up to my mouth and whispered in my ear. "C'mon, baby. Get high with us." Man, my teenage hormones nearly exploded. I know that's probably not even physically possible, but I swear it almost happened. I was really close to doing it, and anything else she suggested short of a devil's three-way, but with a titanic effort I collected myself and said, "No, really, I don't want any."
"Whatever," she said, bouncing back to Mat's bed. They then proceeded to get very high and very drunk. I sat in bed reading a book and feeling like the biggest dorkwad the world had ever known. There were a couple times I considered asking for some beer or a hit off the joint, but I felt too stupid and ashamed.
By 11 p.m. I was exhausted, the extreme lameness of my day having worn me out. I went to the bathroom to change clothes and brush my teeth. When I got back to the room, Shelly was topless and straddling Mat. She turned to me, breasts swaying, and said, "Like the view?" I'm going to guess I was blushing, because my face felt like it was about to burn off.
Mat and Shelly went on to have sex while I taught myself to sleep with a pillow wrapped around my head. That skill served me very well for the rest of the semester. Eventually, mercifully, I fell into a dreamless sleep.
At around 6:30 a.m., I again woke to the sound of voices. And pounding. Only this time, it was outside my door.
"GET UP!" the voice screamed. "TIME TO GO SERENADE THE GIRLS!"
Ah, I thought, revenge. I'll pass.
I was about to roll over and go back to sleep, but the door -- which Mat (as would be his habit for most of our time together) had purposely left unlocked -- swung inward. In walked our R.A., Brett.
"Are you guys coming alo..." he started to say. Then he noticed beer cans littering the floor. And the girl in bed with my roommate, which was a clear violation of the overnight guest policy (i.e., you couldn't have any).
Brett grimaced at me and walked over to the huge mass of human flesh on my roommate's bed. He gave the girl a few quick pokes on the back and said, "Ma'am, wake up. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
When she rolled over, Brett cried out out shock. "Shelly?!"
"Brett," she said in a hoarse voice. "Wha'sup?"
I know what you're thinking, but Shelly wasn't Brett's girlfriend. She was his cousin, who was visiting him from California. Only she'd slipped away during an orientation meeting Brett had to attend, and on the way back to his room she had run into Mat. And, well, yeah.
"Jesus," Brett said, slapping his forehead. "You've been drinking," he blurted out, glancing at the remains of the joint in the ashtray, "and doing...other stuff. Do you realize it's my job to keep this stuff from happening here? Do you realize how bad this looks for me?"
"I'm sorry, Brett," she croaked. "I's jus havin' a good time."
"Come on, I'm taking you back to my room, you can sleep this sh*t off there," he said. He grabbed her by the arm and started leading her out. But before he did, he turned to me and said, "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to write both of you a disciplinary report."
"Wait, what? Buh, both of us?" I stammered. "I didn't even do anything."
"Again, I'm sorry, but those are the rules. You're at fault for not reporting the activity to me."
Great. I had managed to resist peer pressure and avoid drugs and alcohol, but I was getting busted anyway. Fan-freaking-tastic.
"Do me a favor and explain that to your roommate when he comes to, okay?" Brett said.
"And tell him I'll call him!" Shelly rasped out as Brett dragged her away.
All the while, Mat lay there snoring. Sometimes unconsciousness is bliss.
Previous installments: Part 1
Labels: college stories, Livin' Large
Most of you have already noticed the new Basketbawful banner. I'd love to take credit for its wicked-awesomeness, but it's actually the work of loyal bawfulite Stephen Robbins. And to tell the truth, I made very few suggestions. Stephen simply used his own estimable talents along with what he knew about Basketbawful's rich and Ostertag-laden history to design a graphic that pretty accurately represents what this site's all about. Stephen: You rock.
What's that, you say? You wish Stephen could do something similar for your Web site, blog and/or bar mitzvah? Well, you're in luck. Stephen is a graphic designer for hire. Check out Stephen's Designs for more information. Feel free to tell him Basketbawful sent you.
What's that, you say? You wish Stephen could do something similar for your Web site, blog and/or bar mitzvah? Well, you're in luck. Stephen is a graphic designer for hire. Check out Stephen's Designs for more information. Feel free to tell him Basketbawful sent you.
Labels: callouts, new banner, Stephen's Designs
Bad news for the Rockets. And I'm talking "You know, it's funny, these people, they go to sleep, they think everything's fine, everything's good, they wake up the next day and they're on fire!" bad. It turns out that Yao's broken foot isn't healing properly -- or at all actually -- which means the Great Wall will probably miss all of next season. Or maybe even (gulp!) forever.
The Rockets and Yao's reps are frightened over his future, and the concern is the most base of all: Does Yao Ming ever play again?Poor Yao. His body just can't stand up to the rigors of NBA action. Kind of like how Pauly Shore's career couldn't stand up to an industry that requires actual talent. And assuming they don't waste another $40 million on re-signing Ron Artest, the Rockets will only have Knee-Mac left to lead them. So this seems as good a time as any for a Transformers:Revenge of the Fallen-inspired Optimus Prime facepalm.
"The realization has hit them that this is grave," one NBA general manager said.
For now, the Rockets have privately told league peers it could be a full season before Yao might be able to return to basketball. Multiple league executives, officials close to Yao and two doctors with knowledge of the diagnoses are describing a troubling, re-fracture of his navicular bone. Three pins were inserted a year ago, but the foot cracked in the playoffs and isn’t healing.
"It sounds like he’s missing most of next season, if not the entire 82 games," one league executive who has had recent discussions with the Houston front office told Yahoo! Sports. "That's all that [the Rockets] will concede quietly, but they know it's probably much worse."
Houston general manager Daryl Morey refused comment on Monday and a team spokesman said the Rockets will not have further comment until Yao undergoes additional medical tests.
There's no reason for the Rockets to disclose the severity of the injury, nor the uncertainty over Yao’s future. Before the Rockets go public with a dire diagnosis, they plan to send him to three more specialists this week, a source said. For now, the Rockets have season tickets and sponsorships to sell. For now, the Rockets will publicly decry these doomsday revelations as premature, but this is the reality that they’re working under within the organization.
Note: This is the first installment of a multi-part story about the first semester of my freshman year in college. During that semester, I lived with a member of the men's basketball team. That team was nationally ranked and featured a future NBA All-Star. Some of you already know where I went to school, others may suspect, and still others might figure it out over the course of this narrative. Nonetheless, I don't plan to divulge the name of the school, players or coaches involved. Other names might also be changed to protect the innocent.
Prologue -- Mid-July, several years ago: It was a lazy summer day, and I was at home doing something utterly meaningless. I can't remember exactly what that trivial activity was, but it might have been watching TV (probably old Celtics games I had on VHS), playing Super Nintendo (possibly Street Fighter or NBA Live), or maybe reading (I'm guessing Unfinished Business by Jack McCallum). Anyway, whatever I was doing, my time-wasting was temporarily interrupted by a phone call from a student assistant who was working for the dorm I would be moving into next month.
The reason for his call was to determine whether I would be willing to live with a student athlete. He said the possibility of that actually happening was remote, but the dorm had to have a contingency plan in case the student in question -- a Dutch-born basketball player -- couldn't be placed with another student athlete. I was mildly wary, but I said, sure, I'd do it.
He said, "That's great. But, uh, there are a few things I need to talk to you about. According to your housing form, you requested a roommate who's a non-smoker, who doesn't typically stay up later than 2 a.m., and who won't have more than four guests in the room at a given time. In order to put you on the list of prospective roommates for student athletes, I need you to waive those requests."
Honestly, I didn't remember making those requests when filling out my housing forms. Maybe my mom had done it. I had no idea. But I shrugged my shoulders and waived the requests without really thinking about it.
The student assistant thanked me and that was that. A week later, I received my housing contract in the mail. My new roommate was named Chad Riggle. Chad wasn't a student athlete. He was a sophomore engineering student from a couple towns over. As it turned out, Chad was the cousin of my soon-to-be girlfriend, Aimee, who described him as "quiet and harmless." Chad and I talked on the phone once. He told me in an exceptionally nerdy voice that he had a couch, mini-fridge and a microwave...which was fortunate, because I had nothing.
Late-August, several years ago: My first trip to school wasn't pleasant. I was in a car with three other people -- my mom, my aunt Peggy and Aimee -- and all my worldly possessions. And this particular car happened to be a two-door Buick Somerset. The car looked like this. Pretty small for four people and a lifetime's worth of possessions, right? Oh, and the air conditioning didn't work. It was 97 degrees that day.
My mom was entering the first stage of empty-nest syndrome, so she was angry and on-edge. My aunt, understanding my mom's volatile mood, was deathly quiet. Aimee, meanwhile, was reminding me why she didn't want to have a committed relationship with me (we were going to different schools, freshman year was hectic enough without a boyfriend, etc.). For my part, I was nervous to the point of near-illness. It wasn't that I didn't want to go away to college. I was more than happy to leave my hometown -- a teeny speck of burg known as Kokomo, Indiana -- in the rearview mirror. But I'd never been away from home before -- I'd never even gone to camp as a kid -- so I was a wee bit high-strung. So much so that, when we stopped for lunch, watching Aimee eat some pintos and cheese from Taco Bell almost made me throw up.
We got to the dorm and went through all the requisite check-in procedures. I filled out some forms, had my picture taken for my dorm ID card, and I signed up for my very first collegiate job...with the dorm's food service. Once we had all that squared away, my mom suggested we go find the room before pulling the car around.
Room 329 was located on the third floor of the building's northeast side. The dorm had opened in 1958 and was built to mimic military-style barracks. It was an all-male housing unit, and the combination of age, heat (remember, it was 97 degrees), lack of ventilation and dozens of sweaty dudes made the place smell like the world's largest locker room. The walk wasn't pleasant for me, and even less so for my female companions, each of whom looked like someone had pulled a dirty jock strap over her head.
When we got to the room, it was unlocked, which I found strange. (Upon check in, I was informed that Safety Rule #1 was "Always lock your door, even when you're in the room.") I walked in and immediately turned to my mom, told her to wait, and closed the door. I wasn't prepared for what I was seeing, so I was pretty sure she wasn't ready for it either.
There was a man laying in one of the two beds. Actually, he was more man-monster than man. He was a giant. And, within the confines of this tiny little room, he seemed beyond enormous. The best way to put it is he was Shaq-size: 7'1", almost 300 pounds. I think sometimes, as an NBA fan, it becomes all too easy to take for granted the sheer bulk of a muscled seven-footer...but not when they're right in front of you, and certainly not when you're trapped in a room the size of a large closet with them. To make matters even stranger, he had a shaved head (something that I had never seen in my hometown) and he was wearing nothing but a pair of bikini-brief underwear.
It was too much for me to take in. I just stood there, staring at him for several long seconds. He was reclined with his hands behind his head, and he didn't seem remotely alarmed or even interested in my arrival. Finally, I stammered out, "Uh, hi. Er, are you, uh, Chad Riggle?"
He sat up slowly and it was like watching a glacier move. He stuck out a hand the size of bucket and, in a low, booming voice, said, "No. I'm Mat [only one "t" because he was Dutch]. Are you Matt McHale?"
Ye Gods! The beast knew my name!
I shook his hand and admitted that I was indeed Matt McHale. He said, "Cool. I'm your roommate."
"No, you're not," I said, almost reflexively.
"Yeah, I am," he said with an air of complete finality. That settled that.
"Uh, okay," I replied, not knowing what else to do. "Well, I'm...going to move my stuff in now."
"A'ight," he said, and began to lay back down.
I took him in again and, noting the exceptionally tiny underwear, said, "Uh, my mom, aunt and girlfriend are going to be helping me." He said nothing. "Yeah. Three girls." Still nothing. "Do you understand what I'm saying? Three girls are helping me move in."
Finally, he said, "So?"
"Could you, you know, put on...something."
He heaved a deep, irritated sigh and pulled on a pair of shorts that were barely bigger than his underwear. But it was an improvement, and likely the best I could hope for under the circumstances.
I walked back out into the hall and closed the door behind me. My mom looked irritated and demanded to know what was going on. I said, "Well, my roommate is...not Chad Riggle."
"What?" my mom asked. "Who is it?"
I didn't know how to explain it, so I said, "Just come in. You'll see."
And they saw. But they could hardly believe it. Mat, though, was apparently used to people staring at him. He once again sat up and, to my great surprise, greeted them kindly and introduced himself. He even offered to share some of the Dutch marshmallows he was snacking on. They declined the marshmallows, but they were all very taken in by his presence, which kind of annoyed me.
Then we began the not-so-fun task of moving all my stuff in. I'll never forget this: While three women helped me carry my things up several flights of stairs, this huge, muscular guy just sat and watched. Not once did he offer to help, although he did flirt with Aimee every chance he got.
Fortunately, I owned almost nothing, so the moving-in process was mercifully brief. After finishing up, we all stood around making a little idle chitchat. Mat hadn't been interested in lifting or carrying, but he was more than happy to talk. He looooooved to talk, mostly about himself. I don't know whether it was his size or some natural charm I wasn't picking up on, but the women seemed to love him, and when I finally escorted them downstairs, they couldn't stop talking about how neat he was. Even my mom, who had been a total grump all day, repeatedly said, "Yeah. Yeah. He's really cool."
We exchanged the official tear-filled goodbyes, after which I watched them slowly drive away. Then I was alone...except for my new, titanic roomie, who was waiting for me upstairs. Only he wasn't. By the time I trudged back up to NE3, he had disappeared, like he was the world's tallest ninja or something. I didn't see him again until I woke up the next morning. And he wasn't alone.
Prologue -- Mid-July, several years ago: It was a lazy summer day, and I was at home doing something utterly meaningless. I can't remember exactly what that trivial activity was, but it might have been watching TV (probably old Celtics games I had on VHS), playing Super Nintendo (possibly Street Fighter or NBA Live), or maybe reading (I'm guessing Unfinished Business by Jack McCallum). Anyway, whatever I was doing, my time-wasting was temporarily interrupted by a phone call from a student assistant who was working for the dorm I would be moving into next month.
The reason for his call was to determine whether I would be willing to live with a student athlete. He said the possibility of that actually happening was remote, but the dorm had to have a contingency plan in case the student in question -- a Dutch-born basketball player -- couldn't be placed with another student athlete. I was mildly wary, but I said, sure, I'd do it.
He said, "That's great. But, uh, there are a few things I need to talk to you about. According to your housing form, you requested a roommate who's a non-smoker, who doesn't typically stay up later than 2 a.m., and who won't have more than four guests in the room at a given time. In order to put you on the list of prospective roommates for student athletes, I need you to waive those requests."
Honestly, I didn't remember making those requests when filling out my housing forms. Maybe my mom had done it. I had no idea. But I shrugged my shoulders and waived the requests without really thinking about it.
The student assistant thanked me and that was that. A week later, I received my housing contract in the mail. My new roommate was named Chad Riggle. Chad wasn't a student athlete. He was a sophomore engineering student from a couple towns over. As it turned out, Chad was the cousin of my soon-to-be girlfriend, Aimee, who described him as "quiet and harmless." Chad and I talked on the phone once. He told me in an exceptionally nerdy voice that he had a couch, mini-fridge and a microwave...which was fortunate, because I had nothing.
Late-August, several years ago: My first trip to school wasn't pleasant. I was in a car with three other people -- my mom, my aunt Peggy and Aimee -- and all my worldly possessions. And this particular car happened to be a two-door Buick Somerset. The car looked like this. Pretty small for four people and a lifetime's worth of possessions, right? Oh, and the air conditioning didn't work. It was 97 degrees that day.
My mom was entering the first stage of empty-nest syndrome, so she was angry and on-edge. My aunt, understanding my mom's volatile mood, was deathly quiet. Aimee, meanwhile, was reminding me why she didn't want to have a committed relationship with me (we were going to different schools, freshman year was hectic enough without a boyfriend, etc.). For my part, I was nervous to the point of near-illness. It wasn't that I didn't want to go away to college. I was more than happy to leave my hometown -- a teeny speck of burg known as Kokomo, Indiana -- in the rearview mirror. But I'd never been away from home before -- I'd never even gone to camp as a kid -- so I was a wee bit high-strung. So much so that, when we stopped for lunch, watching Aimee eat some pintos and cheese from Taco Bell almost made me throw up.
We got to the dorm and went through all the requisite check-in procedures. I filled out some forms, had my picture taken for my dorm ID card, and I signed up for my very first collegiate job...with the dorm's food service. Once we had all that squared away, my mom suggested we go find the room before pulling the car around.
Room 329 was located on the third floor of the building's northeast side. The dorm had opened in 1958 and was built to mimic military-style barracks. It was an all-male housing unit, and the combination of age, heat (remember, it was 97 degrees), lack of ventilation and dozens of sweaty dudes made the place smell like the world's largest locker room. The walk wasn't pleasant for me, and even less so for my female companions, each of whom looked like someone had pulled a dirty jock strap over her head.
When we got to the room, it was unlocked, which I found strange. (Upon check in, I was informed that Safety Rule #1 was "Always lock your door, even when you're in the room.") I walked in and immediately turned to my mom, told her to wait, and closed the door. I wasn't prepared for what I was seeing, so I was pretty sure she wasn't ready for it either.
There was a man laying in one of the two beds. Actually, he was more man-monster than man. He was a giant. And, within the confines of this tiny little room, he seemed beyond enormous. The best way to put it is he was Shaq-size: 7'1", almost 300 pounds. I think sometimes, as an NBA fan, it becomes all too easy to take for granted the sheer bulk of a muscled seven-footer...but not when they're right in front of you, and certainly not when you're trapped in a room the size of a large closet with them. To make matters even stranger, he had a shaved head (something that I had never seen in my hometown) and he was wearing nothing but a pair of bikini-brief underwear.
It was too much for me to take in. I just stood there, staring at him for several long seconds. He was reclined with his hands behind his head, and he didn't seem remotely alarmed or even interested in my arrival. Finally, I stammered out, "Uh, hi. Er, are you, uh, Chad Riggle?"
He sat up slowly and it was like watching a glacier move. He stuck out a hand the size of bucket and, in a low, booming voice, said, "No. I'm Mat [only one "t" because he was Dutch]. Are you Matt McHale?"
Ye Gods! The beast knew my name!
I shook his hand and admitted that I was indeed Matt McHale. He said, "Cool. I'm your roommate."
"No, you're not," I said, almost reflexively.
"Yeah, I am," he said with an air of complete finality. That settled that.
"Uh, okay," I replied, not knowing what else to do. "Well, I'm...going to move my stuff in now."
"A'ight," he said, and began to lay back down.
I took him in again and, noting the exceptionally tiny underwear, said, "Uh, my mom, aunt and girlfriend are going to be helping me." He said nothing. "Yeah. Three girls." Still nothing. "Do you understand what I'm saying? Three girls are helping me move in."
Finally, he said, "So?"
"Could you, you know, put on...something."
He heaved a deep, irritated sigh and pulled on a pair of shorts that were barely bigger than his underwear. But it was an improvement, and likely the best I could hope for under the circumstances.
I walked back out into the hall and closed the door behind me. My mom looked irritated and demanded to know what was going on. I said, "Well, my roommate is...not Chad Riggle."
"What?" my mom asked. "Who is it?"
I didn't know how to explain it, so I said, "Just come in. You'll see."
And they saw. But they could hardly believe it. Mat, though, was apparently used to people staring at him. He once again sat up and, to my great surprise, greeted them kindly and introduced himself. He even offered to share some of the Dutch marshmallows he was snacking on. They declined the marshmallows, but they were all very taken in by his presence, which kind of annoyed me.
Then we began the not-so-fun task of moving all my stuff in. I'll never forget this: While three women helped me carry my things up several flights of stairs, this huge, muscular guy just sat and watched. Not once did he offer to help, although he did flirt with Aimee every chance he got.
Fortunately, I owned almost nothing, so the moving-in process was mercifully brief. After finishing up, we all stood around making a little idle chitchat. Mat hadn't been interested in lifting or carrying, but he was more than happy to talk. He looooooved to talk, mostly about himself. I don't know whether it was his size or some natural charm I wasn't picking up on, but the women seemed to love him, and when I finally escorted them downstairs, they couldn't stop talking about how neat he was. Even my mom, who had been a total grump all day, repeatedly said, "Yeah. Yeah. He's really cool."
We exchanged the official tear-filled goodbyes, after which I watched them slowly drive away. Then I was alone...except for my new, titanic roomie, who was waiting for me upstairs. Only he wasn't. By the time I trudged back up to NE3, he had disappeared, like he was the world's tallest ninja or something. I didn't see him again until I woke up the next morning. And he wasn't alone.
Labels: college stories, Livin' Large
While the Shaq and Vince trades had us wondering exactly what lengths teams will go just to save a buck, a new round of youngsters were selected to have their hopes for NBA stardom crushed in the next three to five years. Let's take a look...
Blake Griffin: There's no question that Blake Griffin is a great athlete and a big-time scorer in college. The big question would be is he capable of rising above the faces of failure, i.e. the Clippers frontcourt. Which actually isn't a sure thing. Kaman has size, Camby is a better defensive presence, and Zach Randolph is (gasp!) a more polished scorer. Also, with Oklahoma, playing D was optional for Griffin. How will he fare on that end in the pros? Can he one-up Zach's "non-existent" D with a "not a liability" of his own? If so, he's primed to be the Clip's most successful draft pick since, um... The Clippers Expect: A savior. Statbuster Expects: Carlos Boozer 2.0.
Hasheem Thabeet: If the NBA season is a war, Thabeet is a player you want by your side in a foxhole. Unless the only way out of said foxhole is making a 15-foot jumper. It's easy to forgive his non-existent offensive skills due to the fact he's 7'3", 265 lbs, and averaged over 4 blocks a night for UConn. And, as a bonus, Darko Milicic becomes immediately expendable. And by "immediately" I mean they traded him an hour later. The Grizzlies Expect: Dikembe Mutombo. Statbuster Expects: Tree Rollins.
James Harden: Late last season, Thabo Sefolosha was the Thunder's
Tyreke Evans: I was really hoping we wouldn't see a boner tonight, especially this early. The King's already have a 20 ppg scorer at SG in Kevin Martin, and needed help at the point, AND Ricky Rubio was still available. Evans actually is a solid ball handler and passer, and could run the point in spot minutes. But a 220 lb guy with an assist/turnover ratio under 2 isn't someone you want defending opposing PGs or running the show for 40 minutes a night. Somewhere, Beno Udrih is giggling maniacally while de-listing his house on Realtor.com. The Kings Expect: To piss off a lot of fans. Statbuster Expects: Larry Hughes.
Ricky Rubio: Rubio brings a court vision that can't be taught. It's everything else that's suspect. With no fewer than 3 PGs on the books for next year, expect 15 minutes a night, a sub-.400 FG% and no fewer than 50 brilliant no-look passes to go ricocheting off the likes of Ryan Gomes and Brian Cardinal. The Wolves Expect: A poor-man's Pete Maravich. Statbuster Expects: Kenny Anderson.
Jonny Flynn: Apparently the Wolves hired the guy from Memento as their GM, as five minutes later, they draft a 2nd PG with their 6th pick. Flynn is more mature than Rubio, and less terrible than Sebastian Telfair, and should get the nod in the short term. However, neither Flynn or Rubio (or Telfair for that matter) are great shooters, so the Wolves' PGBC (point guard by committee) experiment will resemble some sort of masonry convention. The Wolves Expect: Mookie Blaylock. Statbuster Expects: 50 losses.
Stephen Curry: In drafting Curry and dealing Jamal Crawford, the Warriors' opening night backcourt will be comprised of a 6'3" shooting guard (Monta Ellis) and a point guard that doesn't pass (Curry). Which wouldn't work on any other team, but remember, this is Golden State. The laws of basketball fundamentals don't apply to them. The Warriors' Expect: Mike Bibby. Statbuster Expects: Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (minus the Tourette's and the national anthem protest).
Jordan Hill: The fact that the Knicks drafted a PF sums up what the team thinks of Al Harrington and Eddy Curry (and the fact that David Lee will bolt via free agency). Hill will hopefully win over NY fans with hard work and defense, but, when Chris Duhon and Larry Hughes are logging 40 minutes a night, you'll wonder if another PF was the real need. The Knicks Expect: Chris Bosh. Statbuster Expects: Antonio Davis.
DeMar DeRozan: The word "project" popped up when the Raptors drafted DeRozan. Which means a player is big and/or athletic enough to use a lottery pick on despite the fact they have no discernible skills outside of being big and/or athletic. It's hard to ignore the fact that DeRozan basically had no stats (51 assists, 31 steals, six 3's in 1168 minutes) while there were still players on the board that could contribute immediately. The Raptors Expect: Another Vince Carter. Statbuster Expects: Harold Miner went to USC. I'm just sayin'.
Brandon Jennings: Jennings skipped college to enjoy one fairly horrendous year in Europe (38% FG, 6 PPG), but that wasn't enough to scare off Milwaukee from bringing him on as a project (Also see: DeRozan, DeMar). Jennings does have blinding quickness in his favor, but to run the point in the NBA he might need to shoot better and improve on a near 1:1 assist-turnover ratio. The Bucks Expect: Tony Parker, of course. Statbuster Expects: Keyon Dooling.
Terrence Williams: Williams is rare in that he does everything well except score. He was 1st among SGs in rebounds (8.6), 3rd in steals (2.3), 5th in assists (5.0), and 6th in blocks (0.8). Unfortunately, his jumper is somewhere in between streaky and non-existent (43% FG, 58% FT), although he did muster a 38% on 3s his senior year. Although, after watching Vince Carter the last few seasons, I doubt the fans will notice. The Nets Expect: Andre Iguodala. Statbuster Expects: Darrell Walker.
Gerald Henderson: The Bobcats are hoping Henderson will replace Raja Bell as their SG of the future, although I'm not convinced his offensive game will translate to the pros. While he has a great first step, he's a shade undersized (6'5"), and is only an OK ball handler. That along with meh 3-point range (34%) could work together to neuter his offensive game. While at Duke, he showed some solid defensive skills. So, in a worst-case scenario, he'll be a defensive role player, just like that Raja Bell guy he's replacing. That should be awesome. The Bobcats Expect: Latrell Sprewell. Statbuster Expects: Fred Jones.
Tyler Hansbrough: The Pacers came into the draft needing shot-blocking and a point guard to replace Jarrett Jack and/or T.J. Ford, and got neither. But Hansbrough should be a better defender than Troy Murphy, and is already better offensively than Jeff Foster. If Indiana signs one more white guy, they'll have to hire Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper to coach them to an improbable championship run via a series of inspirational montages. The Pacers Expect: Dave Cowens. Statbuster Expects: J.R. Reid.
The Steal of the Draft: DeJuan Blair, who was pegged to be a lottery pick in most mock drafts, fell to the Spurs at 37th. Some people pointed fingers at ACL injuries he had in high school. I'm pointing the finger at Mike Sweetney and Sean May. By whipping themselves into shape for the Draft, then immediately eating their way into irrelevance, they may have ruined the NBA for fat post players everywhere. Although that's probably what Blair will do too.
Labels: NBA Draft
Note: This post is the word of semi-regular contributor AnacondaHL. What follows is the unedited e-mail he sent me late last night.
Bawful, go ahead and cancel whatever you were going to post tomorrow, because do I have a story for you. To be honest, I didn't think there would be enough content for a post when this all started, but with the way things happened, well, you'll have to see for youself. I've got a buddy who moved to Las Vegas to work in a club, and I recieved a text message from him tonight. Said buddy is incredibly sports-unknowledgeable, but he can tell in an instant if you (male or female) are wearing anything from Express. I'm going to post the whole conversation un-edited, minus some comments in parenthesis by me, but you can feel free to edit it however necessary to protect the innocent *snicker*.
(21:40) Las Vegas: There a whole bunch of nba players coming into the club right now. I have no idea who they are u would appreciate this so much more
(21:44) AnacondaHL: The NBA draft is tomorrow holy crap that's hilarious. You are in for a busy next 30 hours
(21:50) LV: Its a private party for the players association. I'm talking to lots of tall people. And managers/owners/important folk. I wish u could switch brains with me cause I don't care about any of these people
(21:58) LV: Who is dr harry edwards?
(22:01) AHL: Never heard. Google says he works for the Golden State Warriors.
(22:16) LV: He asked me to send him a very tall 140 pound woman lol
(22:17) AHL: O. M. G. You need to document all of this so I can post it on BasketBawful.
(22:50) LV: Rashaw mckay?
(22:54) AHL: Uh, Rashad McCants maybe? He's an NBA player oh God please let it be Rashad McCants
(22:57) LV: It's a player. That's probably it that's just what my ears heard
(22:58) LV: Lots of people were recognizing him anyways
(23:02) AHL: Oh God please make sure. I'm emailing you a link to his website, including his poetry/rap.
(insert link here to us discussing it prior on this blog)
(23:05) LV: No data plan I can't use that. Somebody said to him "u were great in north carolina"
(23:08) AHL: OMG. STAY AROUND HIM SOMETHING HILARIOUS IS BOUND TO HAPPEN. REPORT BACK TO ME ANYTHING. GET HIM TO FREESTYLE.
(23:08) LV: There's another guy here too people were talking about. All star won a dunking comp dwight something. Or something dwight
(23:10) AHL: ...No. You are lying. It can't be Dwight Howard. It can't. You liar.
(23:11) LV: I'm not allowed inside I'm working lol. if I try to go in and openly socialize I'll be assassinated by my managers.
(23:12) LV: That's it. How could I be lying I don't even kniw his name. His manager or agent or something was telling he's a huge clown though
(At this point I punched myself in the face)
(23:19) AHL: Yea that's him. I'd send you an MMS, but I'd feel stupid since he's such a recognizable face and name. Ask the agent how much of a jerk Stan Van Gundy really is
(23:23) LV: He's inside now. Nobodies hanging around front with me anymore lol
(23:25) AHL: I want hourly updates on all the NBA groupies going in and out, who their with, 10 scale hotness rating, and percent chance they are prostitutes.
(23:27) LV: Very few women have gone in actually. I'm very surprised. Its all hotshots with admission badges. Although agent manager guy was telling me about the girls they have up in the suites
(23:29) AHL: YES THIS. More tall 140 pounders!
(23:36) LV: Lol I know one of the girls is an employee at tao. Scandalous, but expected
(23:47) LV: Some tall thick black woman just strolled in w/out creds. Nicely dressed and mannered tho
(me, scrambling to load up my computer)
(23:56) LV: Derek fisher? Richard lerner?
(00:00) AHL: Derek Fisher is on the Lakers, who just won the championship, beating the Magic, who's star is Dwight Howard. This is such a confusing list you're giving me
(00:02) LV: Apparently its a commitee. There are player reps here from all the teams
(00:04) AHL: Damn. I knew dreaming for a club confrontation between Vujacic and a thick woman was too good to be true. Ask who's here for the Suns!
(00:11) LV: Lol lemme see
(at this point, I've found this on Google)
(disappointed at finding a lack of thick women in the brochure)
(00:16) LV: My manager doesn't know
(00:25) AHL: Well at this point this event is probably old news on Twitter. F'in scrubs. Let me know if anything/anyone else happens. Plz don't get shot.
(00:30) LV: Lol
(00:31) (Shaq just got traded to the Cavs. Haha now you're stuck in Ohio!)
(00:31:03) (For Sasha Pavlovic and Ben Wallace. Fuck.)
(00:35) (And the Amare trade rumors begin again. Yay economy!)
[Author's note: you may link to the "Haha now you're stuck in Ohio" picture, and the Ben Wallace inflatable defender here in their respective places. I would, but I'm getting calls from funeral services throughout Phoenix, wanting a cost estimate on my crying myself to sleep.]
Labels: blockbuster trades, Cleveland Cavaliers, guest author, Phoenix Suns, Shaq
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