“Not Enough Natural Light”
I am 31 years old and live in New York City. As such, I have roommates. Two of them, to be exact. Let’s call them B and T. It is not an ideal situation, being 31 and having roommates but, this being New York City and the cost of living and all being what it is, and yada yada yada…well, you understand. If I had my druthers, I would be in a studio apartment with a sound system and a dog dancing around while I played Bob Dylan records. But that’s not the situation on the ground. I have two roommates, let’s call them B and T, and a few weeks ago, I found out from T that B was moving in with his girlfriend and we had a week to fill the room before December came.
We started to panic, T and I, and then we promptly got to work filling the room. We took pictures of the apartment and the room and posted them on various websites (“Gypsy Housing” and Craigslist). We were pressed for time, so I would check my Facebook messages constantly to see if anyone responded. Not a lot of people did. But one day, there was a fish on the line. For the purposes of this story, I will call him Chooch. I got a Facebook message from Chooch telling me he was interested in the room and that he would be in the neighborhood tomorrow and could he come by and see it? Sure he could, I responded to him, and tidied up the place to show it.
When Chooch walked in he was full of life and exuberance. His eyes darted around the place, inspecting every crevice and every corner. He was a smaller man and just bounding with energy. I found out from him that he was a PhD student (wow, legit). When I would talk, he would nod over and over again and then repeat the things that I had just said, which made me wonder whether or not he was actually listening to me, but there it is. Like, I would say “So over here is the kitchen and here’s the sink and there’s plenty of room in the refrigerator here” and he would nod and say “yeah, plenty of room in the refrigerator here, yeah”. This went on for a while as I showed him the apartment. I would say something, about the proximity of the subway or a bar or a coffee shop and he would nod and then repeat the things that I had just said with some “yeahs” thrown in. I could tell, from showing him around the apartment, that he liked it alright, but that he was not sold.
“So, what do you think?” I asked him.
“It’s a cool place,” he said, breaking from the protocol of nodding and repeating, “It’s a cool, cool place. You guys seem very cool.”
This was vague. Purposefully vague.
After I finished showing him around, we took a seat in the living room- I on our black couch (pictured above), Chooch on one of our chairs. There was an exhale (we had gotten that over with) and then a pause.
“So,” Chooch said, “What’s the gay scene like around here?”
“I think it’s good,” I responded, not really knowing myself but making an educated guess based on people that I had known in the neighborhood. Now I was nodding and repeating. “Yeah, yeah, I think it’s good.”
“Do you ever…dabble in any of that?” Chooch, the short, exuberant man put forth.
“I mean, I have, I don’t, you know, there’s nothing wrong with that,” I offered. “I’ve even tried dating men before.”
“Yeah? What happened?”
“I like the company of men, I do. In a lot of ways, I wish that I was gay because it’s so much easier to relate to men for me. But I tried dating a man, and we had a good time, but when we would mess around, it didn’t move.”
“It?”
“Yeah. It. It didn’t move. Nothing happened. So I guess that’s that.”
“But you tried.”
“Yeah. I tried. It didn’t move.”
“I see,” Chooch said, sizing up the situation.
Then, he got up from his chair and crossed over to me on the couch.
“Can I help you?” I said.
“How about a hug?” Chooch said, a mischievous grin blossoming on his face.
“I’ll give you a hug,” I said. “One hug.”
“I’m a sensual person,” he offered.
“Me too,” I replied. But that didn’t mean that I would give him more than just a hug.
I gave him a half hearted hug. My arms barely squeezing his squishy midsection. He reacted.
“Oh, come on, that’s not a hug. Give me a real hug.”
I squeezed him tighter.
“There, that’s better.”
We held the hug for awhile, me sitting on the couch, him standing in front of me. At the moment that it felt natural to break the hug and return to our respective corners, he advanced further. I now found myself sitting on the couch and Chooch was straddling me. Then, I felt and heard his lips giving me some smooches on the head and upper ear.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “That’s enough.”
“What? I just wanted a little human contact,” Chooch offered up.
“That’s very nice, you’re very nice, you smell very nice but no thanks,” I said, feeling myself being nice and caving into the pressures of the situation a bit. Where was the New York directness? Why was I all of a sudden reverting back to California anything goes-ness? Why had I let this small man have his way with me in my own apartment? What was wrong with me that I couldn’t just tell him no and kick him to the curb? I guess it was the desperation of selling the room, the prospect of forking out hundreds of extra dollars in December for no good reason that had got the best of me. This city is crazy, I tell you, and it will make you do crazy things if you stay here too long. That, and I am, by my nature, a sensual person.
We talked for a little while longer, the tension in the room thick with the remnants of what had passed between us. Eventually I showed him the door. He gave me another long hug.
“You aren’t taking the place, are you,” I said, sensing his lack of enthusiasm.
“Nope,” he replied. “Not enough natural light.”
And with that, Chooch descended the staircase and disappeared onto the streets of Brooklyn from whence he came.
When I closed the door to my apartment, I felt violated and ashamed (this man had crossed my boundaries without much consent) and tickled (a short, enthusiastic PhD student named Chooch had just humped me on a Saturday afternoon).
I am 31 years old and living in New York City and I let a man straddle me because I was desperate to rent out a room in my apartment. It’s not an ideal situation, but those are the facts on the ground.
If you were curious, we eventually rented the room to a short fiction writer from Iowa.
Crises averted.
For now.
