Tuesday, December 20, 2050

Introductions and Disclaimers

Well, let's start this off by saying it plain and simple: I don't know what the hell I'm doing right now.

Yes, I understand I'm writing a blog, I just haven't completely figured out why yet. I guess I thought it might be nice to share a bit of my life with the world. I've done my share of stupid and, against all odds, I've survived. I'm not telling you my way is the right way and, for the love of God, don't follow my example. Use what you find here as material for your stand up comedy. Use it as a heads up for what you might encounter in the halls of your high school. Use it to have a laugh at someone else's expense.

Don't try this at home, kids.

My Seven Evil Exes:
1. Momento
2. ADD
3. Pyro
4. Athens
5. Saint Patrick
6. The Rock
7. Tyler Durden
-------------------------
Scott Pilgrim


My Unofficial "How To" Guides:
How To: Avoid Talking about Sex with your Parents
How To: Survive Joan Crawford as a Mother

My Unofficial "How Not To" Guides:
How Not To: Deal with a Stalker
How Not To: Experiment with Hallucinogens
How Not To: Handle your First Roommate
How Not To: Handle with a Drunken Mexican Roommate
How Not To: Play Drinking Games (Part One)
How Not To: Play Drinking Games (Part Two)

More Details than you Need:
Birth through Grade Six
Seventh -Eighth
Ninth - Tenth
Eleventh - Twelfth 
College Freshman
Summer of 2011

Saturday, January 14, 2012

How To: Survive Joan Crawford as a Mother


If you haven't seen Mommy Dearest, this reference is probably lost on you. It's a pretty decent movie - recommend watching it once before you die. It will make you realize your life could be a million times worse.

Scattered through this blog, you'll find stories of the failed relationship my mother and I have attempted to maintain. Part of the blame comes from the lack of time we spent together, I'm sure. However, I feel most blame comes from my mother's strictness and complete lack of humanity towards me.

My parents enjoy holding me up to the best standards of other children and relatives, but never take into consideration their flaws. While I was expected to have the straight A's of my nerdy cousins, I was also expected to be involved in dance like more preppy children and have tons of friends like my popular relatives. After I got home from my lessons and wanted to stay up late for a little relaxation time, this was unacceptable. I was to go straight to bed and wake up in the morning for class, chipper and ready to face the new day.

Throughout high school, people noticed that I was timid or apologetic. I was also shy and refused to talk to a teacher one-on-one until my junior year of high school. Perhaps it was because my parents didn't accept failure. I was yelled at for a straight hour, once, for dropping and breaking a dish. I was once grounded for receiving a C grade on a report card among seven As. Maybe it was because I had to tiptoe around the house for fear of waking up my mother during one of her five hour naps. It really began to wear on my self-confidence.

I've struggled with my weight throughout the years. Take, for example, my run-in with an eating disorder. I'd like to add a new reason for this battle: my mother. I hadn't realized it before tonight, but my mother turned food into some sort of forbidden fruit. There's a comical story about me tucking candy away from Halloween in cans on a shelf in my room. I can remember sneaking the candy and hiding the wrappers around the house so my mother couldn't find them in the garbage can. I, to this day, have to hide any sort of ice cream, cookie, or candy that I bring into this house. If my mother were to find any of these things, she'd yell at me for it.

"You shouldn't be eating all that junk!" she'd say. "You're going to gain even more weight!"

Food has always been connected to comfort for me. When I'm stressed or upset, or sometimes even happy, sweets will bring pleasure every time. They're not highly addictive, you can drive after consuming them, and they don't cause you to make poor judgments. So, the more my mother shamed me and upset me, the more I wanted to eat.

It took me 15 years to realize that this wasn't an okay way to be treated in regards to food. I wouldn't have handled tonight the same way I would have five years ago. It has taken me 15 years to deal with tonight's events without crying.

I entered the kitchen, setting up for some friends visiting, to find my parents discussing something I didn't particularly care about. However, they decided to include me.

"What's a good mixer for scotch?" my father asks the only underage person in the room.

"No clue. Since when do you drink scotch?" I ask, sitting at the table and pulling out my phone to look something up for him.

"My doctor told me I needed to lose weight to get my blood pressure down. He told me to cut back on the whiskey, which has a lot of sugar in it, and drink scotch instead."

"It's funny," I decide, foolishly, to add to the conversation. I should have learned by this point in my life that conversing with parental units only leads to their attempting to shove their beliefs down my throat. "My doctors notice that I've gained weight, but they can't figure out why my blood pressure remains on the floor. It's the strangest thing."

"I was the same way, you know" my father begins. "But it won't be that way forever. You need to lose weight." I sigh and continue searching for a cocktail, deciding not to say anything in return. This would only end in an argument.

"Exactly how much weight have you gained" My mother more demands than asks.

"I don't know" I spit, already seeing the route this discussion has taken.

"You know, you might be skinny now, but a few years down the road when you have children and hit menopause, you're going to gain weight. You need to start trying to lose it now."

"Look, I've decided I'm done dieting". I tell them both, trying my hardest to keep myself at the table and not "storm off" as I usually do.

"We're both overweight" my father informs me. "I've made attempts to get my weight down because I want to live. You should to". Disgusted, I rise to my feet.

"If a cookie is what makes me happy, I'm going to eat a cookie. I'd rather be fat and happy than skinny and miserable" I managed to prevent myself from finishing my line with "like you". "Scotch and dry vermouth" I tell my father before walking out.

My BMI would say I'm overweight, but I happen to have some melons on me that add a good few pounds. I battled with my body image the large majority of my life, mostly because of conversations like this one. My mother wouldn't hesitate to tell me when I looked like I was putting on a few pounds. With all the body hate the media is forcing onto women and men alike,  your parents should be the last people on earth telling you that you should conform to the standards the modeling industry has impressed upon us all. They should be your greatest allies. If they ever tell you otherwise, kindly inform them that they should forcibly insert their thoughts into their anus.

On second thought...Don't do that if you still live with them. It's usually best to wait to use this language until after you have the means to survive on your own. Regardless, you get the point!

I have been told that I am an attractive person. I currently wear a size 13 pair of jeans and I am still getting asked out on dates by guys. Hell, I've even had a few girls ask me out. Your weight is not what makes you pretty - it's your confidence. Screw those anorexic models on magazine covers. Ever notice that they kind of look like aliens? Guys do too. It's not attractive to wake up next to a skeleton in the morning. It's downright frightening.

Never feel embarrassed about what goes into your mouth. If that's what you want to eat, and you're not threatening your life with it, more power to you! If losing weight is what you think will make you feel good, then try that too! All the more power to you! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have a damn cookie. Maybe I'll even dunk it in some milk. Even better, I might smother it in peanut butter. And, if my mother has anything to say about it, I'll be sure to tell her she should have a cookie too. Maybe, if I'm lucky, she'll choke on it.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

How Not To: Play Drinking Games (Part Two)

This is a night that has lived in infamy among my friends. It's a night that I would prefer to never speak of again...But here I am, sharing my embarrassment so you don't have to live through the same pain.

The drinking escapades continue from Part One the next weekend. We decided to up our game and go all out with more Fun Day Monday drinking games. This time, there were two bottles of Wild Turkey between the five of us: myself, Marshall, Lily, Barney, and a girl we tend to refer to as Morgan Freeman. Last time, I was saved by the fact that there was only a half a bottle of tequilla to go around. However, Lily dropped out after three shots, then Morgan around eight. We lost Barney shortly after and lost count before Marshall and I decided to finally call it quits for our own health. We didn't finish all the alcohol, but we came frighteningly close.

We never finished watching that episode of Fun Day Monday. We all stumbled our way down to the dining hall to get some food in us before we ended up sick. It was obvious we were all trashed. I'm sure we smelled like a brewery. A cop was wandering the lower halls of our dorm that we narrowly dodged on our way out, so we were trying to lay low. All of us, that is, except Morgan Freeman. Morgan had convinced herself that she was invincible to humiliation, but also trouble. As  leaned against Barney, fully relying on him to keep her standing, she began to play the Penis Game. We're not sure who she was playing with, but we think she was winning. It was obvious how drunk she was just by the way her voice cracked and her speech slurred. If there had been a cop in the dining hall, we all would have been busted, though she assured us it would be fine because she did this all the time in the dining hall. Of course, Morgan, of course...

We finished our food went back up to the dorms and sat down in Marshall's room. We then turned to each other, realizing Morgan and Barney had vanished. Typical Barney, I guess. Marshall and Lily insisted that I stay with them, afraid to leave me alone with how drunk I was, so Marshall and I settled in p where Lily could watch our drunk asses.

It was at this point that Marshall and I became violently ill. I typically would have been too embarrassed to go into the men's restroom, but at this point, I was too sick to care. Unfortunately, while Marshall was able to toss his cookies, I could not. I clung to the porcelain throne in a cold sweat, but nothing was coming out. I learned a valuable lesson this night. You may think that throwing up makes you weak so you might try to hold it back. Take it from me: if you think you're going to puke, it's better to force yourself to get it out of your system than to relive the following scenario.

The beds in Marshall's dorm were bunked. With all three of us being too drunk to climb up to the top bunk safely, all three of us were forced to lay together in the twin sized bed. I'm still not sure how we managed to do it. I was ready to fall into my drunken coma and sleep through all the next day's classes. However, as I closed my eyes and drifted off toward a peaceful slumber, my stomach lurched. Oh shit.

I sat up, my hand covering my mouth. I looked at the garbage can across the room, then I looked down to realize I was the smashed against the wall by two people and I couldn't hold it in any longer. I wasn't aware that I had eaten and drank enough to produce the amount of puke that poured from my mouth. Suffice it to say that my clothes, Lily's clothes, Marshall's clothes and the sheets were covered and ruined.

Lily, being the awesome babysitter that she was, immediately escorted me into her bathroom in a version of what she deemed "Advanced Friend Making". She ended up having to walk out in basically her underwear in front of all the guys because I had covered her in the contents of my stomach. She is a braver woman than I.

I was too drunk to figure out how to shower and had to stop every few seconds, my breathing becoming shallow as I broke into cold sweats. Lily had to practically walk me through washing the crap out of my hair, ignoring what I felt like were endless apologies. After I got cleaned up and Marshall changed his sheets, we all went back to bed.

I awoke the next morning confused to why my phone wasn't going off. I knew I had set the alarm before I started drinking. I checked the time, panicked realizing I had missed my first class and rushed downstairs to my room, minus a shoe that we didn't recover until a full month later. To my surprise, my roommate had my phone. According to her, Morgan and Barney had dropped it off earlier that night for reasons she didn't understand. I shrugged and rushed to the bathroom to freshen up only to discover Morgan Freeman desperately trying to hide the most ridiculous hickeys I've ever seen in my life. It looked like something had clawed down the side of her neck in three long, thin stripes. To this day, we haven't figured out what Barney could have done to pull this off. She tried her best to cover the marks with the hoodie and off we went to class and work, pondering the events of the previous night.

The events of this night ruined Marshall on alcohol for a full year. Lily and I couldn't stand the smell alcohol, even in perfume, for a good three months. Barney earned a new respect for alcohol, never quite reaching that level of drunkenness again. As for Morgan Freeman...She was back to drinking the very next weekend.

And so Jack Sparrow owed Marshall a new set of sheets.

How Not To: Play Drinking Games (Part 1)

The night this story takes place, I happened to be hanging out with a guy I will call Marshall Eriksen, taken from the show How I Met Your Mother. He was watching a show about Starcraft, a  computer game I don't play or understand, nor do I have any desire to learn. I didn't understand a word of what the host was saying, but I was bored out of my mind and had nothing better to do. I decided to keep watching in hope that the man on the television, Day 9, would start speaking English sometime soon. The show we were watching was called Fun Day Monday. That's about all I understood or remembered.

About half way through the show, probably sick and tired of my endless questions, Marshall mentioned that there was a drinking game that went along with the show. He had wanted to play for ages, but he didn't know anyone who drank and he didn't have any alcohol. Excited to potentially have my first college drinking experience, but also anxious to get my hands on anything that would make this show more bearable, I scurried off to my room to retrieve the half a bottle of Cuervo Gold I had smuggled into my room.

Here's a pro tip for you all: don't play drinking games with hard liquor when you're supposed to be using beer. It ends badly.

It should have been a sign something was wrong when we were required to take drinks in such a rapid succession that we could barely pass the bottle between us before we were supposed to do another shot. The bottle disappeared alarmingly fast. So fast, in fact, that we ran out of alcohol before either of us felt buzzed. So fast that it didn't hit us until the show was over and we were in our dining hall ordering burgers.

I distinctly remember ordering my food and sitting down with it. However, I can't tell you what happened to the food. I had the burger in my hands, I looked up to talk to Marshall, I looked back down and it was gone. That span of time has vanished from my memory. I knew I was in trouble around that point. The trip back to the dorm was a wobbly one and spawned one of my most memorable drunken quotes. As I stumbled along, I was spilling my root beer out of its paper cup and all over the sidewalk.

"Careful," Marshall warned me. "You're going to get root beer all over yourself"

"No, no, it's okay" I assured him. "I'm like a ninja - I can see the drink as it falls and dodge it"

I know, I know...You don't need to tell me how stupid I sounded. I've spent ages trying to live this one down.

It had been ages since Marshall had a drinking buddy, apparently, and he was so excited that he invited his brother over several days later for round two of the drinking games. We're going to stick with the How I Met Your Mother theme and call him Barney Stinson.

Because I was honest about every facet of my life with Tyler, I of course told him about my first drinking escapade with Marshall. He wasn't very comfortable with the idea of me drinking with another guy in his room unsupervised. Tyler then forbade me from ever drinking alone with a male if he wasn't around. I, of course, ignored him and decided to do this day's drinking behind his back. The plan was to stop drinking when he called and said he was on his way which would give me a half hour to sober up and prevent me from drinking too much in the first place based on when he claimed he would be leaving for my dorm.

This time around we would be playing Dance Dance Revolution drinking games with Wild Turkey Honey.  The rules of the game were simple: do your dance and take a certain number of shots based on your grade. You would do three shots for an A, two shots for a B, and one shot for anything less. You kept going until you felt unsafe to continue or we ran out of Wild Turkey. Half way through the bottle, Barney had to leave. He seemed fine at the time, but we received a few texts later on suggesting otherwise. After the third illegible text, we called the people he was with and received reports that he was mooning people out of car windows on their way to a football game. We really did a number on that kid...

Marshall and I killed the rest of the bottle and chatted a little. That's when Tyler called, informing me he had already left and would be arriving at my dorm in five minutes. Fuck. I shooed Marshall out of the room and let Tyler in. I managed to get him into the room but I knew he could tell something was up.

"I'm not even going to lie" I slurred. "I'm really fucking drunk". He just laughed at me and asked how much I had drank. I pointed to the bottle.

"Are you okay?" He asked, mildly concerned. He thought I had drank the bottle myself.

"Yeah, I'm fine" I waved him away.

"...Are you sure you're fine?"

"Yeah..." My stomach gave a lurch. Damn it. Why did he have to ask?

"On second thought," I groaned. "could you hand me that garbage can?" I puked once and very quickly got it all out of my system. Then, for whatever drunken reason I had, I decided to inspect my vomit. I was slightly amused, but mostly horrified, to find it a bright purple color. I hadn't eaten anything that day, so I can't be certain what would turn the contents of my stomach that particular shade of violet.

"Cool..." I grinned. "Wanna see?" I held the garbage can out for his inspection. He just took the bag out, threw it away and replaced it for me. After telling him I hadn't eaten anything, we decided it might be a good idea to go get food or I might be in for a rough night. I invited Marshall who invited down his girlfriend. I will call her Lily Aldrin, also following the How I Met Your Mother theme.

We went to a local pizza place. I had nearly fully control over my body on the way down as the full effect of the alcohol hadn't quite hit yet. It was in full swing by the time I ate, though. As we sat, Tyler caught me performing my typical anxious girlfriend routine, checking over his shoulder to read his phone every time he brought it out.

"Why do you keep looking at my phone?" Tyler finally snapped.

"Just making sure you aren't receiving messages from Sea Cow" I replied coolly.

"Who is Sea Cow?" Lily asked politely, smiling from across the table, clueless. I didn't skip a beat.

"That's the bitch he cheated on me with". Lily has told me it was this exact moment that she knew we would be best friends.

We finished our food and Marshall left for a frisbee tournament, sobering up twice as fast as I did. It was at this time that we collectively discovered what happened when I got really drunk: I turn into Jack Sparrow. I'm fully equipped with the hands, the swagger, the knack for avoiding trouble, and the moves like McJagger. Tyler and Lily each had to take one of my arms to escort me back up to the dorms. If I was trying to walk in a straight line, it didn't show. As we approached the one building separating us and the path to the dorms, I noticed something my two guardians hadn't: a cop checking IDs at the door. I came to a sudden halt, both Tyler and Lily looking at me curiously.

"Cop" I gave my one word explanation. "This way..." I scuttled off, dragging the two of them with me as I sneaked through a side door and up a back stairway. We weren't caught, I managed to get Tyler back to my room, I wasn't lectured and, although I didn't realize it, I had met one of my best girl friends.

And so Captain Jack Sparrow lived to drink another day.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

The Aftermath (Summer of 2011)

Escaping the gravitational pull of Tyler Durden was a difficult feat to say the least, especially when I had to continue working for his family for the rest of the summer. Things were going smoothly, however, until he showed up at the office one day to work on the computer systems. I avoided him at all cost, but Tyler forced me to stop and talk with him. He wanted to know if we could still be friends. I responded to this request by bursting into tears. He reacted the way he had for the past three years: by rushing in and giving me a hug. It was a completely familiar feeling, yet foreign at the same time.

As he calmed me, stroking my hair as he had so many other times, something snapped within my mind. I don't know quite how to explain the coinsurance. I've tried so hard to hide what happened at this point that I've managed to forget exactly how things went down. Basically, I decided at that moment that I was going to do everything in my power to coerce him into doing something stupid. I wanted to seduce him if I was able, just to prove that I could. I wasn't making too much progress, but I managed to get him talking about his new girlfriend, who was already claiming she was in love with him. He discussed, at great length, how he planned to cheat on this girl while she was at school. I laughed along with him and explained how it was the perfect situation for me. I couldn't ask for anything more: the guy who crushed me destroying my backstabbing ex-best friend's heart.

Then, as he was leaving, just when I thought I had failed, he did something I didn't expect: he kissed me. It wasn't passionate or meaningful. He did it as quickly as he could before darting out the door. He texted me a few minutes later, laughing about what a terrible person he was for kissing me just to confuse me. I couldn't help but laugh, myself. It was like I had won some sort of sick game. He left me for another girl but in the matter of 15 minutes, I had him crawling back to me. I contemplated telling California about what had happened, but I decided not to interfere with Karma. Besides, she probably wouldn't believe me, anyway.

My mother, who was on vacation in Myrtle Beach at the time, decided to buy me a plane ticket so I could be with her and out of the house. I was grateful for the gesture, but I knew that this is as far is the motion would extend. My parents don't really know me. They try, I think, but they missed out on the majority of my life because work always came first in their eyes. They showed up at my baton recitals and sat through my musicals, but if it came down to it, they couldn't name any of my friends. Hell, I was lucky if they could remember that I was coming home on the weekend.

So, for a week I sat on the beach with my mother and my aunt, drinking rum straight out of the bottles they continually supplied me with. I really opened up to my mother throughout this trip, but she still doesn't know a lot of my secrets. As far as she's concerned, I'm still a virgin. Obviously, she knows nothing about my being raped. However, I finally told her about my experiences with cutting. She seemed shocked, but when I brought up potentially receiving counseling, she really resisted even when a close family friend urged her to support me. I think she's still too afraid of damaging our family's image.

I heard from Tyler one last time a week before school started. I received a one sentence text message: "I hate you more than any other person I've ever met". Presumably, California had left for school and Tyler was alone once more. He blamed me for how alone he was. It was apparently my fault he didn't make any friends in college, because I "required" him to come home every weekend. I also forced him to live in off-campus and behave like a miserable prick. I don't think he was ever able to own up to the fact that he had no friends because he chased all of them away with his greed and hubris.

I received the text while drinking, something I did a lot that summer and into the beginning of the school year.  I wasn't drinking to cope, but drinking to be social. If I was surrounded by other people, I couldn't focus on how alone I was. If I was drunk, I could fall asleep at night without thinking about how empty my bed felt.

Anyway, it was with the help of these friends that a response was written. "Who is this?" I asked. I haven't received a text from Tyler Durden ever since.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

How Not To: Handle a Drunken Mexican Roommate

I have a nice job on campus. It works around my schedule and gives me a decent amount of hours. They even let me do my homework while I sit at my desk. So, when they ask me to come in on a weekend once every other month, I don't complain and I try my damnedest to make it on time. Meanwhile, life tries its damnedest to make me late.

I was already having issues falling asleep. I needed to be out the door at 7am and it was roughly 1:30am when I lost consciousness. It was 3am when my dorm door came swinging open and my entire hallway came pouring in, my roommate Nicki hoisted up onto their shoulders. Seriously?!

Two of Nicki's cohorts shoo everyone out of the room and flip the lights on while Nicki begins screaming something at the top of her lungs in Spanish. I took French in high school, so none of this even remotely makes sense to my sleepless brain. Only once everyone is out of the room do the cohorts realize that I'm on the top bunk, half awake and very grumpy. They begin to explain the situation - Miss Minaj went to a house party, got herself fall-down drunk and worked up over something stupid. Then, Nicki did what Nicki does any time shes drunk: she began crying inconsolably.

When the group finally managed to call a taxi and get her out of the party, they somehow smuggled her past the cop at the front desk at which point she broke away toward the bathroom. Thing 1 and Thing 2 let her alone for a while, but when they realized their fearless leader had been a gone a good 15 minutes, they decided to go check on her. She was found passed out on the bathroom floor, apparently without ever having done her business. Thing 2 was forced to crawl under, unlock the door, and carry out the Nicki we see now - a hysterical, screaming, Mexican train wreck who keeps screaming one Spanish phrase on repeat at the top of her lungs.

As I lay on the top bunk, my head between two pillows quietly contemplating smothering myself, Things 1 and 2 try to soothe the Chupacabra below. This is no easy feat. The more they try to calm her, the louder she yells and the more violently she begins rocking, threatening to eventually roll off the bed and onto the floor. It's at this point that our RA, Crush (ever seen Finding Nemo?), comes to the rescue. Kind of.

Crush tried to calm things down a little more, but nothing is really working. Nicki begins hyperventilating and actually stopps breathing at one point. Crush wants to be the cool RA and doesn't want to send her to the hospital but, truth be told, she actually started to worry me at this point. However, no one is getting anywhere because only one person in the room understands Spanish aside from Nicki. That person isn't Crush. As Nicki begins to yell at Crush in Spanish, Crush begins to yell back in German as some form of retaliation.

The time is now 2am. Thing 1 has finally decided to translate for Nicki who is completely incapable of English. We're not really sure why she lost mastery over her first language, but she did. Regardless, we're now told that the mystery phrase she's been shouting for a half hour straight is, drum roll please: "I need to go to the bathroom". Gee! Imagine that! You yanked her out of the bathroom after she told you she needed to pee, never accomplished her goal, and she still has a full bladder!

Crush tries to help her up to get her to the bathroom, but Nicki wrongly believes she is still capable of basic motor function.

"No!" she slurs in the first bit of English I've heard out of her in over an hour. "I've got it!". Of course you do. She takes one step away from Crush, the only thing supporting her, runs into a wardrobe and cracks her head off the floor. Great. Now my roommate's dead. Wait, what am I saying? That IS great

Ah, but drunks are a surprisingly resilient bunch. To my dismay she picks herself up, brushes herself off, and allows Crush to all but carry her into the bathroom. She returns victoriously, still being carried by Crush. However, when she recognizes her dorm room, she breaks free from Crush, once again convinced she's capable of more than babbling incoherently. She proves this point by abruptly falling and cracking her head off the desk this time, landing with her head against the chair.

I now see what's coming, but the rest of the room seems oblivious because no one is rushing to her aid. You see, we have those chairs most dorms have that rock back when the weight is placed off center. She has landed in a slumped position sure to knock the chair back at any second. And, sure enough, the chair rocks back causing her to crack her head off the floor. Again. I am told that I am a bad person for laughing at this.

Things 1 and 2 and Crush each take a section of her body and hoist her back into her bed. Crush calls it a night saying we're on our own and leaves, suggesting Things 1 and 2 try to get Nicki out of her jeans and clubbing shirt. She seemed to be doing the toddler's "I'm uncomfortable" dance. When the door shut, they got to work.

It's now 4am and I have just witnessed Thing 1 getting kicked in the stomach and Thing 2 being punched in the face by Miss Minaj. This has been one of the most satisfying moments of the night. She has finally started to sober up, I think, because she has also spit out her second English sentence of the night: "Get the fuck away from me you stupid bitch"! Ah, music to my ears. If I'm going to be kept up by anything, please let it be the sounds of my roommate drunkenly attacking her own friends.

Things 1 and 2 gave up on changing her shortly after this. Nicki began rambling in Spanish at this point, which none of us could understand, and I tried to go back to sleep. Around 5am she decided that the only way she would be alright is if she spent the night in Crush's room. Happily, we shooed her out.

I woke up at 7:15 the next day to Nicki pounding on my door, looking for aspirin. If it hadn't been for her, I might have slept the whole way through work. I guess I can be thankful for that.

Friday, October 15, 2010

My Evil Ex-Roommate: Nicki Minaj

This should be a short post considering Nicki and I did not spend much time together - this was no accident, I assure you. Her name spawns from her obsession with the female rap star Nicki Minaj. My roommate loved her so much that she actually attempted to cut her hair exactly like Nicki did. It was pretty awful and ended up looking like a terrible rendition mullet wig.



Nicki was my second roommate assignment. My first assignment bailed on me before we even had the chance to meet, then lied about it. I was angry at first, but then the stories started to roll in. Within the first month of class she apparently uploaded a video of herself jacking a guy off into a cup and drinking his jizz. I think the swap might have been for the best.

I sent Nicki an e-mail and while waiting for a response, I decided to try my hand at Facebook stalking. What I found wasn't promising. Her favorite book series was Twilight and her favorite television show was MTV's 16 and Pregnant. She appeared to be an overbearing Christian while I was a struggling agnostic on the best of days. She replaced the letter "s" at the end of words with the letter "z" because it made her feel more Hispanic. She also replaced random letters of sentences with numbers.

I was dealing with a class A idiot.Why did I expect anything more out of life?

Your roommate is your first friend when you go to college when you don't know anyone else. We really tried to get along, but we were quickly discovering that we had absolutely nothing in common - no bands, no books, no movies, not even any classes. We found our own friends and went our separate ways shortly after the first week. Luckily, her work schedule and my involvement in so many clubs kept us out of the room and away from each other so we didn't have to fight.

Except, fighting wasn't something either of us was really good at. Despite the image I might portray here, I'm very non-confrontational. I will do anything to avoid an argument. Nicki was, apparently, very similar. No matter how many problems the two of us had with each other, we never discussed them. Ever. It was some sort of unspoken rule. I only found out she hated something I did when she bitched to the rest of the hall. Occasionally they were kind enough to convey her messages to me.

The one thing she did tell me to my face was that Tyler wasn't allowed to spend the night or even visit for extended periods because she was so afraid he might hit on her. Really? That's the best you could come up with? I guess I see where she was coming from in hindsight, but it's not really fair to limit who your roommate can have spend the night when you routinely invite guys to spend the night with you. I would often walk in to find a naked guy cuddling with her. That really not what I need to see on my way to Chemistry class.

She also had plenty of annoying habits. She would skype all hours of the day. Because she didn't have class until late in the afternoon, she had no problems with walking in with a group of friends at 3 am with friends, talking very loudly when I needed to be up at 6 am the next day. Beyond this, she also had an annoying habit of talking about me in Spanish while I was in the room. Little did she know, I had a couple friends who were Mexican. I invited them in from time to time just to hear what she had to say.

These were the mundane confrontations. There were others that were much worse. For example, there was the time when she found a pair of panties that fell off my bed and onto her dresser. Rather than leave them and mention that I needed to move them, she threw them out into the hallway and invited everyone to come have a look. I'm not really sure what she thought she was accomplishing here. There was also the time when she came in drunk, which is a fantastic story if I do say so myself.

In the end, she moved off to California and decided to live at home the following year. You know, I'm finding it kind of funny how most people I hate seem to move there.