I am continuing the gorging of bad memories in an effort to erase their ghost-like qualities.
Smiley Goth Girl and I lived in a room in a two-bedoom university apartment for four, the other room being inhabited by the Nudist Hippie and the Very Religious Chick. We made for an odd bunch.
Our apartment was part of a group of on-campus housing buildings, and we had all just signed up for on-campus apartments and were thus thrown together like wild boars in their pen. Many adventures ensued, considering the Nudist Hippie and the Very Religious Chick were, well, the quiet, studious types, and Smile Goth Girl and myself were rather, um...boisterous. Luckily the rooms were well divided (Matisse paintings in one room, psychedelic glow-in-the-dark posters in the other) the way they were, and we all got along rather peacefully in the end.
Smiley Goth Girl and I became especially close. We were very different: I was a tall, blond midwestern girl who was still trying to master the use of the Californian "hella," whereas she was from smack dab in the middle of LA and had the most lovely Spanish-enduced accent. She was dramatic and played the whole "tortured soul" thing rather marvelously, I obsessively bought used records and occasionally forced her to listen to Otis Redding for several hours straight. "He's just got so much soul," I would cry happily as she grinned enormously while writing bad poems in her black notebook. We found in the other a lot of differences, but a lot of similarities, and we were both happy to say that we were good friends with with our roomate.
Then she met Horn Boy, or Clown Man, whatever you prefer. We called him Horn Boy (the other names were just made up right here on the spot, but we really did call him Horn Boy) because, well, he wore his hair in two big horns on his head, which he would dye various colors according to his mood. He was one of those quasi-punk types, who wore his wallet on a chain and a used army jacket. I generally do not like it when any man puts that much effort into looking like he puts no effort into his appearnance, but I gave Horn Boy a shot because, well, he was Goth Girl's man.
I liked him alright. He had piercing blue eyes and smiled easily. We got along fairly well, although maybe I was a little bitter that suddenly my smiling gothic friend had decided to spread some of her sunshine with him instead of me. Whatever.
The point here is that I lived with the girl, and never mind the fact that Horn Boy had his own room in an apartment just over a block away, somehow they mutually decided that they would sleep in our room. The room I slept in, too.
Fine, hey, no problem. Actually, the first few times it really wasn't. Horn Boy and Goth Girl slept in the bedroom, but I slept on the couch because I had to get up at 6.00 am. I was afraid of sleeping in my own bed because I feared I would get too comfortable there. Don't ask, it's just a method I have when it really matters that I have to get up early: I can never let myself fully go to sleep.
But then there were weekends where I sort of wanted to sleep in my bed all day, or evenings when I didn't want to have to get undressed in an uncomfortable situation, and of course moments where I just wanted some "me" time and I didn't feel like listening to Horn Boy's crappy ska crap that he kept trying to foist on me. Horn Boy asked me if it really bothered me that he slept there, and being the conflict avoider that I was (am), I just said I was fine with it.
And in a way, I was, because I knew they weren't doing the nasty, which was really all that mattered. Sure, "me" time suffered, and I never got to hang with Goth Girl without his little orange horns poking around the place, but if I had to listen to either of them screaming, I would have had to put my foot down. I didn't care if they made out in front of me, I just didn't want them bumping and grinding in the bed next to mine on a nightly basis. But I was reassured by Goth Girl that she was waiting to get married, and that Horn Boy was really understanding of that fact even though he had had plenty of sexual experience and was probably inwardly rather frustrated.
And normally, information forked over in privacy between friends is really important to me, and I wouldn't divulge this kind of information, but I might have had a drink or two, or maybe I had just too much caffeine, I don't know, but whatever it was, when Zack asked me one day in the living room, "Ugh, that's nasty, how the hell can you get to sleep when they are boning down right next to you?" well, I answered, "Zack, it's not a problem. They're not having sex..." and I managed to go into a full, detailed description of them and their feelings and how they don't want people talking about their sex lives.
And then right then Goth Girl and Horn Boy walk out of our bedroom, obviously having heard what I just said, and just walk right out the door.
Zack thought it was funny, of course, but I felt like shit.
Anyway, word has it that they broke up sometime late the next year (Goth Girl and I lost touch when she moved in with Horn Boy and I moved in with my best friend downtown) and that she eventually went to Mexico to find some boy she was convinced she was her "Aztec soulmate" (her words, not mine), and by 22 she had two kids and was married. So...yeah...I doubt Goth Girl and Horn Boy are stressing over this memory, and if I brought it up to either of them (were I to ever see them), they would most likely just laugh. Probably because they were actually having sex all along.
That virginal and pure act is, in 90% of the cases, just that: an act.
Still, I was really nervous around both of them for weeks after that. I just felt like an absolute dumbass, not to mention a horrible friend.
Everybody has hounting memories like that. My own is an insulting sentence in a letter I wrote to a friend of mine fifteen years ago.