I was recently slumming over at Write Procrastinator's blog, joyfully cringing as I read about his experience with some of life's more awkward moments.
Write's heartwarming tale reminds me that I need to take a poll of my Gentle Readers. The following actually happened to me and my friend Martha, and it's imperative I find out which of us should be more offended.
My senior year in college I studied abroad during the first semester, so there was a mad scramble to find housing for my spring semester back on campus. I ended up in a dorm room in a cool old building on campus widely known for its ample supply of drugs. Lucky me, I wound up as a roommate to one of the dorm's dealers. On one level it was convenient, but on many other levels it was highly annoying; visitors traipsing through at all hours and that sort of thing.
Although I found him repugnant, my friend Martha was one of those gals who dug the bad boys, so of course she took an immediate shine to my roommate, Roland. At first Roland and I didn't have much to say to each other, so he didn't really know who my friends were. Which was nice for Martha because it enabled her to stalk him.
One day Roland came back to the room and said "I swear to God there is a woman following me around campus" and proceeded to share an elaborate tale of how he took all these winding paths to see if she would lose him - and she didn't. A few days after that, Martha dropped by our room for a few minutes when we were both there, and when she left Roland said "my God, that's my stalker! You know her? She's hot!"
Well, I thought, this will be very interesting.
We lived together in that dorm room for the next five months, and while I couldn't stand a lot of his drugged out friends, he and I actually got on quite nicely. Even started to hang out a little bit toward the middle of the semester, at which point I decided to facilitate relations between him and Martha.
One night I organized an outing to the town's only bar and made sure that both Roland and Martha would be there. I kept finding ways to include the two of them in any conversation I was having, and by the end of the night they were getting quite chummy. I made plans to sleep over in another friend's room.
The two of them carried on in some fashion for a month or so, although it never grew serious. They were just having a good time, an endeavor I wholeheartedly supported.
********************
Flash forward. About a year later, Martha and I had graduated and were both living in Minneapolis where we still hung out together a lot. One day she and I made a trek down to St. Olaf for some reason that I can't remember right now.
We were walking around campus, and decided to stop in the student center for a refreshment. Lo and behold, who did we run into but our old friend Roland!
"Roland!" we both exclaimed. "Hi!!! How have you been? What's going on? Are you graduating soon?!!!"
"Hi..." he said rather tentatively. "Yeah.... things are going fine.....how are you guys, um......?"
Martha and I looked at each other, looked at Roland and then back at each other.
He didn't remember us. Neither one of us. He lived with me for five months, and fucked her for a month, yet had no idea who we were.
"Roland, remember me? Your old roommate?" I said.
"OOOOOH, yeah, that's right, in Ytterboe, right? I know I know your name....."
"Tom."
"YEAH, TOM! Hey bud, how's it going? What have you been up to?"
"And I'm sure you remember this lovely young woman," I said. I wasn't going to make this easy for him.
"Oh yeah, it's.... it's... M......M something......"
"Martha," she replied, flatly.
"Yeah, Martha baby! How you doing, girl?"
"Fine. It was very nice to run into you. Tom, we do need to get back on the road now."
"Ok. See you Roland." We turned to leave.
Martha was fuming. While I was not fuming, I did find it a bit insulting that I slept in a bed next to him and talked to him every day for five months straight, only one year prior - and he had no idea who I was.
Martha thought that was nothing compared to the fact that she had sex with him at least a dozen times and he had no idea who she was.
We then debated at length as to who should be more offended. Most of my girlfriends started off saying she should be, but when I laid out the facts (five months of day-to-day vs. one month of passion) they were on the fence.
So the question is now put to you, Gentle Readers. Who should be more offended here? CP or Martha?
