Adventures with My Roommate: MySpace Man, Part I
One night, after spending hours upon hours in a friend’s dorm room, I waltzed into my room at roughly eleven p.m., a time that normally finds my roommate tucked snugly into bed, and instead found her awake and alert, talking on her cell phone in remarkably chipper tones.
Excerpt:
“Oh, no —no, aww, naw, I’m not cute, no,”
“Aww, you’re so sweet, but you’re the only one who thinks I’m purty.”
And, after a belch (my roommate burps constantly, and never excuses herself): “Oh, goodness. You think everything I do is cute.”
My eyes rolled; my eyebrows reached my hairline.
There is a particular voice that (some) girls use when they talk to males that they find attractive on the phone. I refer to it as the Cute-for-Boy Voice. My dear roommate was employing just that voice.
“I just think it’s so wonderful that we’re getting along so well,” she cooed, squeezing a pillow between her (sizable) stomach and right forearm. “It’s like we’ve known each other forever.”
When she finally hung up — sighing rapturously — I had changed into my pajamas and was sitting in my desk chair, thinking about the best way to assuage my curiosity.
I decided to take the oh-my-god-let’s-be-girls route.
“Who was that?” I asked, my tone as suggestive as I could make it, my eyes glowing with Interest.
She womanly-smiled. “Oh, just a boy,”
“A boy?”
“Mmhm. I met him on MySpace.”
In a tone that certainly sounded less shocked than I was (my roommate has always seemed decidedly suspicious of relationships that do not begin in church parlors): “MySpace?”
“Yeah,” she responded, clicking her Hawaiian-patterned cell phone into its charger. “He’s wonderful.” Her tone was dreamy; her eyes were glazed.
“That’s great,” I gushed. “What’s he like?”
“Well,” she said, warming to the idea of telling me — telling anyone, really — about her new boy, “He’s just so wonderful to talk to. You’re going to think he’s too old, but — he’s twenty-one.”
“Too old?”
“Oh, wait — it’s you. You don’t mind.”
She seemed to had remembered that this was her Corrupt and Godless Roommate that she was talking to. I decided, for the sake of research, to let that remark slide. I instead continued my investigation: “Where’s he from?
“A town near me — about forty-five minutes away.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding.
“He’s got a little boy,” she continued, busying herself with typing up a clever nighttime away message — “time 4 sleep, good nite, sweet dreamz, leave some luv” — and avoiding my eyes.
“A little boy?”
“Mmhm. A little carrot top.”
“And the mother?”
“Oh, well… it was an accident.”
I bet the kid appreciates that terminology. “Well, yes, but — ”
“My mother’s bothered by that.”
Naturally. Her mother is a deeply religious — and, more importantly, deeply protective — woman. My roommate’s family is nothing if not rigidly moral.
For my part, I was more bothered by I‑met-him-on-MySpace than I was by he-has-a-little-boy. After all, illegitimate children are nothing in the face of shady internet interactions.
Less than two weeks later, they had reached the I Love You phase of their relationship. At this point they were talking nightly, for hours, and I was wondering about the cell phone bills. Eventually she realized that cell phone minutes are not limitless, and she started having him call her on the room phone.
They were making plans to meet soon: Interrogation-By-Parents followed by a dinner and a movie.
Her mother is still disapproving.
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