Don’t screw the crew
Memoirs of a recovering ex-roommate part 2
“I took test today,” said my roommate in a worried tone of voice. “I am pregnant.”
Oh, shit.
Yong-Mei was a 19-year-old exchange student from Taiwan. She’d been placed with a host family near our university, but she answered my ad because she wanted to live on campus. Partly because I was desperate for a roommate, and partly because she had a great ass, I helped her escape from her evil* host family and had her moved into my apartment by the end of the day.
Things got physical almost immediately. We had barely finished our “welcome to Glen’s apartment” pizza when she announced that she was sexually interested in me. However, she made it clear that she was only interested in casual sex, because she had a boyfriend in Amsterdam. I was in an open relationship at the time, so this arrangement was fine with me. From then on, every second or third night Yong-Mei slipped into my bed for a romp, and the rest of the time we lived like normal roommates.
But alas, cracks soon started to form in our non-relationship. To my frequent vexation, she revealed herself to be what I call an “accusatory insomniac.” Accusatory insomniacs are the scourge of apartment buildings and dormitories everywhere—people who suffer from a mild sleep disorder, but instead of realizing that the problem originates with them, they blame as many innocent bystanders as possible. When Yong-Mei couldn’t sleep, she would become enraged at the sound of me typing at my computer.
“Stop that!” She’d shout from her bed in the next room. “I trying to sleep! Have some consideration!”
Then I’d emerge from my room and say, “Yong-Mei, I’m a writer! And I write at night! I’m not making any noise. I’m not talking on the phone. I’m not playing music. I’m just quietly working at my computer, in my room, with the door closed.”
“It too loud! Type more quietly!”
“Get ear plugs! If you can’t handle the sound of a keyboard softly tapping on the other side of a goddamned wall, you’ve got bigger problems than you think!”
We were also experiencing technical difficulties in bed. There’s no easy way to say what I am about to say without alienating a large segment of the reading public, but what the hell. My penis was too large for her. When the sex got vigorous—as it inevitably must—she would grimace in pain and emit unearthly Chinese yelps that I found intensely erotic. And so, our trysts became less and less frequent.
In the meantime, Yong-Mei was taking a keen interest in one of my friends, Arnold—a short, fat, hairy, sedentary fellow who hadn’t been laid in over four years. And this, dear reader, was when my true colours came shining through. There I was with two lovers, and Arnold with none. As his friend, it was my sworn duty to put his sexual needs before my own, so I enthusiastically set Yong-Mei and Arnold up. They saw each other twice a week for the next two months, and as Arnold’s penis was, shall we say, much more to her liking, their sex was mutually enjoyable.
Shortly after Yong-Mei and Arnold got together, my one remaining lover ditched me for a manic-depressive rock vocalist, leaving me with zero lovers and Arnold with one. Typical.
And this, dear reader, was when Yong-Mei’s true colours came shining through. As soon as she learned I was bereft of carnal love, she started playing manipulative little games with me, like prancing around my room in a towel or crawling into my bed with me, in the hopes of getting me aroused and then denying me if I made a move. Her scheme didn’t work, but only because the thought of her with my corpulent friend was a potent aphrodesicide.
It was during her affair with Arnold that Yong-Mei announced she was pregnant. I knew I probably wasn’t the father—I hadn’t slept with her in ages, and I’d used condoms—but I was terribly concerned for Arnold, who had evidently emerged from four years of celibacy to impregnate an obnoxious exchange student.
Yong-Mei said she didn’t know if she would have an abortion or keep the baby, and that she had no idea what to do in either case. For three weeks, I worried incessantly about Yong-Mei and Arnold.
Then—get this!—Yong-Mei revealed that she wasn’t pregnant, and never had been. The whole thing was her idea of a joke. Worse, Arnold had gone in on it with her!
I was enraged. What kind of twisted mind gets her kicks from falsely telling people she’s pregnant? And what kind of corrupt, idiot friend goes along with it?
I eventually forgave Arnold, on the grounds that finally getting laid after so long clouded his judgement. As for Yong-Mei, I now knew there was no depth to which that little brat wouldn’t sink for a cheap laugh.
The original plan was for Yong-Mei to live with me for eight months to a year, but in the end, she ended up staying only four months. The end began with the surprise arrival of her infamous Dutch boyfriend, Rutger, which heralded the end of Yong-Mei and Arnold, and the beginning of a lot of anxiety for me.
Rutger was short, fat, hairy and massively built. He seemed to measure about five feet in all three dimensions, and something about the darkness and thickness of his eye lashes gave the false impression that he wore eye liner. He smiled all the time for no apparent reason, giving him the ambience of a violent psychotic on a very mellow and giggly tranquilizer.
After Yong-Mei’s histrionics over my late-night typing, I was darkly amused when she and Rutger subjected me to night after night of ear-splitting Sino-Dutch sexual noises, the novelty of which wore off as fast as lipstick at a kissing booth. Some nights it was all I could do not to shout, “Have some consideration! Fuck more quietly!” But I didn’t, because I have always believed that this planet needs more loud sex, even if I must occasionally suffer for my ideals.
However, the sleeplessness was nothing compared to my concerns about personal safety. Yong-Mei had coyly mentioned that Rutger would pulverize me if he found out about our affair, and I didn’t doubt it. Every morning, when Rutger was in the shower, she would taunt me by saying, “I feel so guilty about what we did, I think I will have to tell him,” and then smiling a big, wide, “I’ve got your balls and we both know it” smile.
In the end she never told him, but I’m sure this was only because she valued their relationship too much to blow it over the fleeting pleasure of seeing me beaten. In the meantime, I had persistent nightmares in which Rutger’s arm suddenly punched through my bedroom wall and throttled me as I slept.
Things came to a head over the issue of when Rutger would leave. At first I didn’t understand why Yong-Mei concealed his visit until the day before his arrival, but I figured it out soon enough.
“How long will Rutger be staying?” I asked.
“Not long.”
“How long?”
“Not very long. Two, maybe three months.”
“Two or three months?! Uh, no.” The place was barely big enough for two. There was no way I’d let her force this powder-keg steroid-dwarf into my apartment as a long-term resident. After a heated debate, she agreed that Rutger would find somewhere else to stay by the end of the month.
Shortly thereafter, Yong-Mei did something utterly predictable: she pulled a runner. I returned from my Christmas holiday to find Yong-Mei and her boyfriend had vanished. This didn’t bother me too much; sure, I had to pay extra rent until I found a new roommate, but on the other hand, I no longer had to worry about getting the shit kicked out of me in my own home.
I didn’t expect to see Yong-Mei again, but as it turned out, I was fated to deal with her one last time. Seven months later, she came crawling back when she was evicted from her place due to shenanigans I never found out about. She needed somewhere to stay for a few weeks until her flight back to Taiwan, and I let her stay on the condition that she repay the rent money I lost when she moved out without notice.
Naughty little Yong-Mei had been busy in her absence. A mutual friend informed me that after Rutger’s early-spring departure, Yong-Mei got together with yet another short, fat, hairy guy, this one a virginal engineering student who spent his spare time posting sexually explicit stories on the Internet. Alas, she took his virginity, and in return she gave him...
...wait for it...
...venereal warts.
Ah, venereal warts. What a dulcet note on which to end a reminiscence. Suffice to say that when Yong-Mei returned to Taiwan, she left behind two very fortunate young men. I was fortunate because I’d had the sense to use condoms, and Arnold was even more fortunate, because he hadn’t had the sense to use condoms, yet withdrew unscathed.
That lucky bastard. After his collusion in that pregnancy hoax, if he’d got warts I’d have had no recourse but to laugh in his face.
* * *
In early 2003, almost six years after Yong-Mei’s final curtain, I came upon a mysterious roll of undeveloped film in a box of odds and ends. There were Chinese symbols on it so I suspected it might have been Yong-Mei’s.
So I had it developed, just for kicks. I’m not sure what I expected to find, but I’m sure I didn’t even remotely consider the tiniest possibility that there just might be a nude photo of Yong-Mei on that film.
Well, whaddaya know. Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in print, a nude photo of Yong-Mei, shitty roommate extraordinaire!
Of course, I gave Arnold a copy to keep as a memento. Arnold, incidentally, hasn’t been laid since his last romp with Yong-Mei in December 1997—over seven years ago. And that, I think, is the greatest tragedy of all. •
Completed in 2004 for inclusion in the Wasting My Youth book, based on unused material from 1999.
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2007 update:
I’m pleased to announce that Arnold finally had sex again in late 2005, bringing the total length of his celibacy to just over eight years. Unfortunately this relationship didn’t last long, and at the time of this update, Arnold is already more than one year into a new celibacy phase.
Watch this space for further Arnold celibacy updates.
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