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“What for?”

“Oh, no, yeah. No problem.”

And with that the door closes and I am all alone.
Finally, for crying out loud.

At least they left easily enough. After all, they don’t even live here; every time my damn roommates go out on the town, I have myself a grand old time, so I don’t particularly like to see that they’ve left their compulsively noisy friends behind to keep house. But those friends can at least take a hint, unlike my roommates, and have the meager hints of consideration, unlike my roommates…well, two of them are decent, I suppose. They still will bang around, but their voices are not so loud as to grate on my nerves every second, and they at least join me in friendly, open conversation. Which I appreciate immensely when I consider the third roommate.

Ah. Now, the third roommate, he is something of a bane to my existence.

Not only is he an arrogant prig, narcissistic, in fact, but it seems he goes out of his way to make me feel unwanted. I give a “Good Morning!” to whomever I meet, accompanied by a smile; he ignores me. His voice stutters along like a bloated frog choking on its own tongue, and his opinions, you can tell, seem to him the facts. He will look at you with a grin and laugh when giving his thoughts, as if it was so clear and you were so foolish to not see how things really are. The pitch in his tone pierces my eardrums from even the bathroom, three doors away, and even he, as “intellectual” as he is, possesses no conception of what the proper volume for a voice indoors is. And when the majority of phrases that come out of his mouth are “That girl had a really nice ass” and “Bitch, fuck,” I pray for a return to the eloquent literate decadence of E.L. James.

I also pray for a good reason to clock him in the jaw.

Last night would have been a good occasion, perhaps. At three-forty-two in the morning, my roommates and their friends barge into the apartment and start making plans to smoke some marijuana or form an orgy or some Californian nonsense like that. That’s dandy and all, but what really chafes my cheeks is that they have no qualms about acting like President Trump was assassinated by the sexual slaves Bill Clinton holds captive on his secret perverted island. I swear, people in San Francisco could hear these fools laughing and stomping about. My third roommate especially clomps around like his feet are filled with lead. Or dried dung. And what were they laughing about?

Absolutely nothing. That’s the world I live in, folks.

So I can’t go back to sleep. I really try, and I can’t. At 6:30, when they all return, I’m up and at ‘em. One of the friends thinks he can sleep on the sofa; I let him because I’m considerate, but it doesn’t mean he’ll stop me from making coffee and eating cereal and doing my daily devotional. But he sleeps through it. He also sleeps through those confounded lawn hands up at the crack of dawn. Some people can do it, I guess, but I’m not one and I’m awfully cranky when I can’t get to sleep and need to.

Anyway, they pretty much held the room hostage the entire day, so I was prompt to kick them out and have the quarters to myself. But who comes waltzing back after saying he was going on a date with a girl and her nice ass? My third roommate, of course.

So at first he seems surprised because his friends are gone. Was he going to show her off to them? Not much to show off, if I say so myself. Might I also add that a completely different girl was in his bed at the beginning of the week, so I’m feeling a tad sympathetic towards her and will not direct any more insults in her direction. Except for why I can’t see how anyone would be subordinate to this clumsy baboon.

It’s nine-thirty; I’ve had the room for an hour. Not a sufficient amount of time to accomplish anything but finish the template sheet for my screenwriting homework and clean the wax off the bottom of my surfboard (some jack told me to put wax there when I first bought it, and only recently did a strange stoner correct me), but that can’t be helped. I am about to make some tea, though, and look forward to it since I have some delicious honey candies to try out from Christmas. But does my roommate introduce me? No. In fact, they are both rather rude and act like I’m not even there. But they hardly talk to each other, and mull about with seemingly nothing to do.

Then they stoically flee to my roommate’s back room for funky time.

Remember, it’s nine-thirty at night. I am a virgin, and proud of it, but I thought fornication only occurred past midnight so the person could leave and you never have to see their face again. That’s how it happens in my roommate’s filthy hole, anyway. But, you see, I’m miffed because there is no way to escape. My usual “safe space” is locked on weekends, and I still have a load of reading and writing to do tonight. Usually my roommate, who tells me I have no empathy for women when he treats them like a new Fleshlight to be exchanged every week, is busy spanking and slapping and moaning and groaning with the poor nympho he lured into bed that season, so I never get any sleep on these nights. It happened my first day back; he didn’t expect me, had a girl over, and, needless to say, I wanted to be home again.

But I digress. For a reason, granted, but I digress.

Tonight, I wasn’t going to take that crap. This is my time, dammit, and to think I’m one of your sheepish little followers is the absolutely wrong impression. I’m not scared of you. So, what do I do? I’ll tell you what I do. The same thing I do every Saturday night when I’m home alone.
I sing.

Okay I lied. First I do my whole list of unique character voices, just to make myself laugh and practice one of the talents I neglected to study screenwriting. It’s very fun putting some bitter old hag to a piece of feminist rubbish I’m reading for my Rhetoric class, but my tea gets cold and I hate the piece even more. That’s when I get the bright idea to not go so easy on my roommate tonight, and to simply act natural. And, boy, do I act natural. I act so natural that I’m sounding like Craig Ferguson in drag got a cherry stuck up is nose and is hacking and coughing away to get it out. But then it gets snorted down the wrong tube, and, before I know it, I’m singing.

I enjoy “Unchained Melody” immensely. So of course I sing it, purposefully horrific. But I realized I might be encouraging them, so “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” pops on to guarantee no flowers will be shed tonight. Then “Living in the Sunlight, Loving in the Moonlight” switches the record. But I’m so into this Tiny Tim persona that I alternate between the two with ease, even acting the rebel and rocking into a rad whistle scale. Then I get bored and call up my only true friend down here in Hell’s crotchpocket, an artist, delightful boy, and solidify our plans to celebrate my birthday the following evening.

I actually forget about my man slut of a roommate for a while, until I hang up.
Of course they turned on techno-garbage that sounds like music to drown me out. So I went to the shower to sing even louder.

This was strategic position. For some reason I know not what, my roommate will leave his room and run to the bathroom every thirty minutes. Curious, I decided to have a soothing one-hour shower to rain on his parade, blasting notes I would never do in the living room (quiet time is at twelve; I abide by the rules). I visit some old showtunes like “Stars,” “Live in Living Color,” and “Mean Green Mother,” making sure to visit Elvis and Sinatra beforehand. Some time along, I create a little gathering called the “Hot Shower Club.” Its members are a raspy lisping bird-man, a depressed tortoise, a Japanese rabbit that turns French and then Mexican, and a feminine porpoise. It’s all so amusing to me, and I continue the conversation when I exit and go through my hygiene routine. They’ve stopped their music and are into the spanking part of the program, so I sweetly mumble to myself and slam a few doors and stomp between rooms.

Just stuff my roommate considers normal.
I keep anticipating him to come in and tell me how rude I’m being. I wish he would, and then I would kindly say, “Oh, so you don’t think the walls are soundproof? I’m glad, it means I’m not the only one,” or maybe “She must not be that good if my melodious crooning is more worth your attention.” Then he would probably look down his nose at me and call me petty, saying I’m rude when I know he’s sexing it up. To which I’d politely reply, “Oh, there’s someone here? Funny, I didn’t meet anyone. I don’t think you told me you’d have a guest either. I guess we’re both at a loss.”

But that won’t happen. Everyone is so guarded over here, afraid of confrontations because they risk looking downright foolish. So I take every opportunity to exploit this delicious personality flaw found in every fragile snowflake down here in good old SoCal.

Suddenly, I see a young man in a red hoodie sitting on a picnic table in the lawn, working with some music-mixing machine on his laptop. I’m feeling especially friendly now, for some odd reason, and feel like calling out to him, but then he jumps up and starts taking some angsty jabs in the air. He doesn’t even look like he’s particularly enjoying these motions, or was inspired by much to do so. He’s probably pretty cold, though.

His friend, swearing like Chuck Schumer in the Senate, pulls him off somewhere, and the midnight world is filled with nothing but glowing lamps and the murky landscape. Then it hits me, a splendid idea! A young woman comes walking along, and I whistle at her. But it’s not just a whistle.

It’s an eerie rendition of “Moon River.”

I appear a disconcerting figure in the window of a dark apartment, whistling a spookily flat scale up and down the smooth lyrical slopes. She never looks at me, but I know she can hear the tune. She crosses the corner, so I follow her to my other window, halting the verse and picking it up again after a few seconds. It startles her, causing her to glance back before quickening her pace.

I continue on in this fashion several more times, my favorite being a noisy girl complaining to her friend on the phone about what is or isn’t “desirable.” She actually stops talking to search for me, fumbling with the bike she won’t ride, then picks herself back up and turns the corner. I follow her and she stops again, pushed to fear for her life by the unseen Melody Meister.

But the people stop coming, and I am left with the trees and the dormitories; and that’s fine, even preferable. I see these children wandering around on the ground, parched for the next big thrill or fun time, dependent on the party or the people or the bed. Yet the most important thing these children forget is how to be a child, how to enjoy anything and everything. Those aristocratic children of Smith’s, sweet French immigrants on their sublime beach; they knew what their mother didn’t. Without such youths, we’re left with my unlikeable roommate and the noisy girl with the bike; unhappy, depressed during those spaces of time in which they feel deprived of that happiness that they are deluded in thinking they have a right to.

You can take that to the bank as a falsehood fresh from Hell’s crotchpocket.

And me? I have a right to happiness. I have a right because I don’t go drudging up every mattress or liquor bottle I can get my grubby paws on in order to find it. No, for me, happiness is all around and never really goes away until those prissy poutfaces with their panties wedged so far up their sphincters they’ve got their kidneys by the balls stumble drunkenly onto the scene and throw a hissy fit with just one dreary look.

My roommate waltzed in at twelve-fifty with a smile on his face, commenting that I was up late and replying to my “Good Morning” with an “I’m doing just great.” It’s funny because I know that cheer is fleeting, that concern is just part of the hormone-high, that tomorrow or the next day his typical glum frown will return and happiness will neglect. But I will continue to be the person who perplexes others by standing at a window and whistling “Moon River.” Many a high-maintenance mind cannot fathom why a man would stand in a window and whistle “Moon River” in a strange fashion to passerby, and they never can. How can those who are not happy know what true happiness is? They ask an impossible question.

But, I guarantee you, this whistler is enjoying himself more than they ever will.

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