Claremont, oh Claremont, how I’ve loved oversharing with you these past couple years. I’m heartbroken to report that my time here is drawing to a close, but I wouldn’t dare miss my last opportunity to spill some spicy stories. What I’m trying to say is: let’s go out with a bang — pun intended.
First, allow me to take you back a few years to a moment that was not my finest. In a bit of a dry spell, I had a friend give my number to a guy I had met at a party. Why don’t we do that anymore? We should do that more. On our subsequent ice cream date, he showed up in head-to-toe gray sweats and running sneakers. For reference, I was wearing about 13 rings. It did not bode well for us, but I kept an open mind.
Where this story gets interesting is after I followed up about watching a Wes Anderson movie we’d discussed and got no response. Ghosted by a man in a groutfit? Unbelievable. So when I was whisked into a game of pong with his roommate a few weeks later, I did not contest. This new man had a mullet — much more my style. After a naked-lap-level win and some classic eye-to-eye flirting, he invited me back to his room and we started making out.
It was downhill from there. Perhaps I got what I deserved for pursuing vengeful roommate sex. “Karma’s gonna track you down,” as Taylor Swift once wisely said. While the sex was less-than-attentive to my needs, the aftermath was the real kicker. There I was: desperate to put my clothes back on, strategically avoiding eye contact and frantically scrambling around the floor of a Harvey Mudd College dorm in the dark. My pants were nowhere to be found. Then, mullet boy lets it rip. I am referring to one of the loudest, most prolonged farts I have ever born witness to. I look up at him, baffled. He says nothing. And then I realize: he’s wearing my jeans.
The second tale I have to tell belongs to a friend of mine. Let’s call her Lilly. In typical housing-crisis fashion, Lilly was placed in a triple her first-year and allocated a bottom bunk. Her roommates were nice, though not quite close friends. One of them refused to turn the lights off until the wee hours of the morning, and the other — who I’ll call Amelia — spent a lot of time with her long-distance boyfriend. But being the chill, cool, non-confrontational girl she is, Lilly did not take issue with Ethan’s omnipresent existence in their room. Nor was she bothered by Amelia’s frequent praying and proselytizing, despite Lilly’s somewhat traumatizing Catholic school past.
One rare night when the lights were off before 3 a.m., Lilly awoke suddenly in the middle of the night to the unsettling sound of creaking. More than that, her bunk bed was noticeably rattling and shaking back and forth. Lilly stared up at the bunk above her, confused. Then: a moan. In a matter of seconds, Lilly came to the shocking and near unbelievable realization that just a few feet above her head — in the very bed that she was sleeping in — Amelia and Ethan were having sex. When her initial shock paralysis dissipated, she let out a hearty cough. The moaning persisted. She got up, went to the bathroom and returned. They hadn’t stopped. Defeated, Lilly sat in the hall for the next several hours watching Netflix and went to her RA the next morning.
“I would appreciate it if you did not have sex while I was in the room,” Lilly nervously told Amelia a few days later. “Especially while I’m sleeping in the bunk bed we share.” Their RA nodded along, having encouraged Lilly to advocate for herself. Amelia cocked her head. “What are you talking about?” Lilly explained the scene she had witnessed just a few nights prior. “Oh, haha,” Amelia chucked, “we weren’t having sex.” Lilly insisted that she heard and saw it loud and clear. “Oh, Lilly,” she laughed again, “anal isn’t sex.”
Claremont, with that I leave you. Have fun, be safe and stay sexy. It’s been a pleasure.
Much love,
Sleepless on Sixth Street