Of course, that’s not at all what happened. These kinds of things never turn out the way you think they will. What happened next went something like this: I was sitting in that closet, questioning everything in my life that had led to that moment, and the person who walked into the room was not in fact Kellan, but Kellan’s we’re-definitely-not-hooking-up-even-though-we-totally-are-hooking-up-and-lying-about-it-to-everybody-but-especially-Matt hookup Amber, who had come, I assume, to hook up. I froze. A closeted gay lunatic sitting on the ground of a literal closet. She didn’t notice me. She made a phone call to her roommate to say she wouldn’t be home that night. She hung up. We both sat in anticipation.

When Kellan returned with his toothbrush, he screamed “GODDAMMIT” the second he opened the door, and for a brief, hopeful moment, I imagined he was pissed to see her, and I would emerge, triumphant, with a look on my face that said, “That’s right, you piss worm, he chose me! Now, get out, because we have some intense spooning to do.” But his ire, it turned out, was directed at the 230-pound mass that was sticking out from his closet. (Did I mention our dorm room closets were the size of small cupboards and covered in sheer curtains?) Amber screamed when she realized I’d been in there, and they threw me out like they throw out drunks from bars in the movies, roughly, with one hand under each armpit. I’d like to think, at the very least, that I made their night together slightly more uncomfortable, but I suspect events continued as planned.

In retrospect, this is what professionals in the therapy community might call “a great big homosexual cry for help.” But nothing much changed after that. I was a strange person to begin with, so hiding in a closet, all things considered, didn’t register as insane, at least to the untrained eye, just immature and annoying and something Drunk Matt would totally do because he’s a weirdo.