Week In Review

The Week In Review

When I was in college, I once found myself trapped in an attic with a roommate while an enraged lesbian tried to break in so she could kick our asses. I alluded to this story once before, but to recap, I leased a room in a house along with ten other complete strangers. As I was having a cigarette in the living room, I struck up a conversation with an attractive young woman in her early twenties, one of my roommates. She introduced herself as Mary Pat, and after exchanging pleasantries, I noticed that she wrinkled her nose at my cigarette smoke. “I’m sorry, is my smoke bothering you?” I asked. She assured me that it was not, as long as I didn’t blow it directly at her. Now I am nothing if not polite, so I put out the cigarette entirely and we had a nice chat lasting at least fifteen minutes.

The next day, as a couple of my new roommates and I watched TV, Mary Pat came downstairs and asked the smokers if they could refrain from smoking in the common areas. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think the smoking would bother me, but it really does. Is it possible for you guys to only smoke in your rooms?” And of course, we immediately agreed to do this and apologized for any inconvenience. The very next day, Mary Pat approached me with a sheepish look on her face. “I feel really bad about this, I really do. But the smoking in the rooms thing isn’t working for me. I was sitting in my room and I could actually see smoke coming out of the vent.” I immediately told her that I would tell everyone else, and that we would only smoke outside the house. She thanked me very kindly for my understanding, and I went off to tell everyone else.

About a week later, I was having a smoke on the back porch with two of my roommates when one of them said, “Hey, who is that in our back yard?” We looked over and noticed a woman with a shaved head and a massive scowl on her face storming directly toward us. “Holy shit, it looks like Mary Pat, but… She shaved her fucking head!” Within a few seconds, Mary Pat was upon us. “YOU CANNOT SMOKE WITHIN ONE MILE OF THIS HOUSE! DON’T YOU KNOW THAT CIGARETTE SMOKE IS RADIOACTIVE AND TRAVELS THROUGH WALLS? DON’T YOU DARE SMOKE ANYWHERE NEAR ME! DO YOU HEAR ME?!?” And with that, she went into the house, slamming doors behind her. We were speechless.

I have no idea where she got the idea that we were smoking anything radioactive.

I have no idea where she got the idea that we were smoking anything radioactive.

What precipitated this outburst eludes me to this day. I asked every single one of my roommates, and none of them had any bad experiences with Mary Pat. She just went out, shaved her head, and came back nuts as if all of her common sense wound up on the bathroom floor alongside her hair. The next several weeks were very intense. I tried to be nice, figuring that maybe she’d just had one hell of a bad day, but even a simple “Hi, Mary Pat!” was met with open hostility. Finally, all of my roommates (male and female) had had enough of her shit and we pretty much ignored her when she was at home, which wasn’t very often.

One night, right around the time that the bars were closing, Mary Pat came in with another woman. They briskly walked through the living room and were approaching the stairs when I rang out, “Hi Mary Pat! Who’s your friend?” Her friend stopped and smiled out of habit and politeness and started to introduce herself when Mary Pat grabbed her by the arm and said, “Don’t talk to them. They’re assholes” and they went upstairs to a chorus of, “That’s not very nice Mary Pat! We just want to meet your friend!” and all kinds of other sarcastic bullshit.

When the laughter had died down a bit, one of my roommates named Sean said, “I wonder what they’re doing up there?” We looked at him incredulously. “You’re kidding, right?” I asked. “I mean, you know Mary Pat is a lesbian, right?” This came as a great shock to Sean who demanded to know how, exactly, we knew this to be true. “Look, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out. Shaved head, bringing women home from the bars…” One of my female roommates weighed in, “Oh, yeah, I knew it before she shaved her head. Definitely a lesbian.”

Definitely a lesbian

Definitely a lesbian

Sean still didn’t believe it and somehow the ensuing discussion turned into a bet. If we could prove to Sean without doubt that Mary Pat was a lesbian, he’d buy a keg of beer for a party next weekend. Deciding that Mary Pat was very unlikely to share her sexual life with us, we decided that there was only one way to find out: Peek through her window. The only problem was that her room was on the second floor. Walking around the side of the house, however, I noticed that her window was directly beneath a small vent/window in the attic.

So Sean and I went up there with a small mirror we had attached at an angle to the end of a broomstick with duct tape. We had to be extremely quiet because the extendable stairs to the attic were pulled down from the ceiling right outside of her room. We were, however, able to get up there without anyone seeming to notice.

After opening the window and lowering our makeshift device, Sean was unable to get an angle to see anything, so I took over and positioned the device, slowly rotating until… Oops! Almost! I almost had something there and… Oh… Oh my. I don’t know what I had expected to see but it wasn’t what I was confronted with. Mary Pat was lying down between her friend’s open legs and vigorously lapping at her. It was hard to make out at first because her friend was on the really large size, but when I realized what I was looking at it looked like her friend’s crotch was on fire and Mary Pat was trying to quickly put it out with her tongue. Oh my.

Other than that, there wasn't anything out of the ordin...HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!

Other than that, there wasn't anything out of the ordin...HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!

Whispering to Sean, I said “Holy, shit! Here. Just hold this and don’t move it. Look straight down.” As I moved over and Sean got into position I was worried that the sound of us moving around so much would cause boards to creak or give out some other audible sign that we were up there. I needn’t have worried. Sean whispered to me, “I still can’t see… … …” Then he exploded with a loud, “HOLY SHIT!” and as he did so, he accidentally rocked the broomstick so that it hit the top of Mary-Pat’s window. This caused him to drop it entirely, and so it made a loud noise as it slid down the side of the house and then shattered in the driveway below.

We froze for an instant. I remember thinking, “That happened so fast, Mary Pat may not know what it was or where it came from. I mean, she’s kind of busy right now.” Mary Pat was out her door in an instant, and was shouting at the attic entrance. “YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU ASSHOLE! COME DOWN FROM THERE RIGHT NOW!” Sean raced over to the entrance and grabbed the top of the stairs so that Mary Pat couldn’t pull them down, although that certainly didn’t keep her from trying. She’d pull down violently, Sean would pull back, making a shitload of noise in the process, and I sat there freaking out, trying to be quiet for some reason.

Because our other roommates knew what was going on, they decided that they weren’t going to come up there and face Mary Pat’s wrath. So Sean and I sat there, wondering how many hours it would be before we could come out of the attic safely. Luckily, Mary Pat and her friend left about fifteen minutes later, and one of my other roommates called up to us. “She left! You can come down now!”

This story was a considerable source of merriment at the time. I felt kind of bad about it afterwards. I mean, we violated this woman’s privacy over a keg of beer. My roommates reasoned that since it wasn’t done for a sexual reason and because it would not have happened if Mary Pat wasn’t such a bitch, that it was ok. It wasn’t ok. But I cared a little less about it during the keg party that weekend.

Caring a little less.

Caring a little less.

Mary Pat moved out a short while after that. I learned through a third party that it was not because of the Peeping Tom incident, or the cigarette smoking on the premises. She had signed the lease shortly before stumbling across a living arrangement more to her liking, and she simply didn’t want to be there. She sued to have her lease terminated and all rent and deposits she had made to date returned to her. Her grounds were that the lessor failed to provide a safe environment with regard to the cigarette smoking that was going on outside the house. As this was back when you could smoke pretty much wherever the hell you wanted, she was bound to lose the case.

Unfortunately, our roommate (and the person who sub-leased the rooms to everyone else) showed up late for court after playing a gig in Chicago. He was wearing a t-shirt, cutoff shorts, and sandals. He was unwashed, unshaven, and the first question the judge asked him was, “How long ago did you have your last alcoholic drink?” When the judge heard that the answer was “I dunno, four, maybe five hours ago” the judgement was made for the plaintiff. “You disrespect this court at your peril, sir. I ought to throw you in jail for contempt of court!”

The last we heard of Mary Pat was the following Spring when a roommate looked up from the local newspaper with a laugh. Handing over the article to me, I was amused to read that Mary Pat was running for city council on a platform of eliminating all men from government. Given our behavior, I can’t say that I blamed her.

We were assholes

We were assholes

On to the week you missed while cowering in your attic for other, but no less bizarre reasons.

Every week I take time to roll in the big pile of money my sponsors send me. Then I wake up. I have no sponsors, and I won’t get any by continuing the Involuntary Advertising series:

On to our Poll of the Moment, which has just gone official although NBC called it for Al Gore four days ago, those fucking morons.

[poll id=”9″]

This was one of the more memorable presidential races in that it was less moronic than the travesty we’ve got going on right now. Voters chose JFK as having the longest pole, edging out “Anal” Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt in a tight three-way contest (yes, I know, I said “tight three-way”). George Washington languished with only two votes, which is not a whole helluva lot for a military badass and our first president. Must’ve been the wooden chompers, which polls show is a turn off to women. No one likes a splintery poon, George. FDR also registered two votes, which seems low to me. I’m not telling you that I know this for a fact (I do), and I can’t give you any details, but let’s just say that polio was not the reason the press never pictured him from the waist down.

Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan, the man that took down the Russkies by exploiting the fact that their economy gargled yak-balls, got no votes. None. Sorry, Ronnie. They called you the Great Communicator, not the Great Fornicator.

That’s all for the week that was. Now let’s get ready for the week that is to be. Hopefully it doesn’t involve an attic.

April 2, 2012by Greg