Boyfriend Panic

My new roommate has a boyfriend. They’re a couple. They act all coupley. They do coupley things like help each other move into apartments and pick out paint for their bedroom walls and order take-out together. And pretty soon they’re going to spend the night here together. And the walls are kinda thin.

Suddenly, I’m in a panic. I need a boyfriend! I can’t be the single guy in the house. I don’t want to be the one in bed alone trying not to listen to someone else’s sex noises. That used to be my old roommate! Actually, that’s been every roommate I’ve ever had, and they were always my sex noises.

So now I’m thinking I need to find a boyfriend, and quick! Which is weird, because I don’t really want a boyfriend. They’re like pets or children. You have to make time for them and worry about whether or not you’re mistreating them. I don’t want to have to think about someone else that much. I don’t want to have those weird little tiffs in bars and subway stations where it’s not really a fight, but you’re just annoyed with each other and not communicating properly. I’d much rather have a really intense flirtation or unrequited infatuation, something that burns really brightly, but only lasts a few seconds, like fireworks. It’s not love, it’s adrenalin, and there’s nothing domestic about it. It exists at night in a pristine world of cocktails and dazzlingly vicious repartee and you never take it home, because, baby, who cares what you’re like when no one else is around?

Maybe I could do a prolonged transcontinental affair where we only see each other once or twice a year. The phone calls and the love letters get us through and somehow we both know that it’s real, that this is it, we’ve found each other. We know it like we know that too much chocolate brings on a head ache or how to ride a bike even though we haven’t been on one in years. We know because we’ve been there, we’ve felt it, and we will never, ever forget. We know because of, not despite, the fact that neither is willing to relocate. That’s the kind of relationship that lasts. It should be open-ended, no climax, no resolution. It should leave questions. It should leave me still in love.

Hemming and Hawing

There were six guys doing it in my boss’s bedroom. I was not one of them.

It all started up on the roof where two parties were going on. One was mostly gay web porn people; the other looked like it was mostly straight NYU students. For the most part, both seemed pretty uneventful; just a bunch of friends getting drunk on a perfect summer night, on a close to perfect New York rooftop. My friend Josh and I hashed out some ideas for the super-secret web project we’ve been planning. I met a nice lad who works at Urban Outfitters and can allegedly put a bowling pin up his butt.

Then I turned around and people were performing fellatio! Right in front of the door leading to the stairwell, a minor porn star and two other guys were being mighty naughty, in full view of the mostly straight, and now totally freaked out, NYU kids. Someone told them to take it downstairs, and somewhere between rooftop and bedroom they recruited a few more guys.

There was a lot of hemming and hawing outside the bedroom, a lot of lingering, a lot of peeking in even though it was so dark you couldn’t really see anything except the flash of eyes reflecting the light coming in from the hall. You couldn’t see what was going on, but you could smell it. A thick, fleshy, familiar smell was coming from that room and anyone who came out of there.

My friend Charlie had this warm, drunk look on his face. “You want to go in there, don’t you?” I said. “Just go. Nothing’s stopping you.” He was all hesitation, looking for permission from I’m not sure who. It’s then that I realized there were two types of people at that party: those who wanted in on the orgy and those who weren’t sure what they wanted. Charlie knew he wanted in. We all knew he wanted in. He just needed a push.

I opened the bedroom door and walked in. “Hi guys, my friend Charlie wants to know if it’s ok to join.” I know that sounds obnoxious and I’m sure Charlie was mortified, but there was a sort of general welcoming and when I left the room he didn’t follow me out.

I was headed back up to the roof when I got this sinking feeling inside, like I’d forgotten something in a cab, something important, something I would need later. I sat down in that florescent lit stairwell and sent a text message to a friend from college: “Remember the me who used to jump into orgies? Now he pushes other people in and walks away.”