The other day, when I was washing up after dinner, he sat down in the living room with his computer. “I thought we were going to watch a movie,” I said as I dried my hands on a dirty kitchen towel, but he didn’t reply. I made a few attempts to reach him, to lure him to me, to no avail. I went into his room, closed myself in, and half hoped he would chase me, but he never came. I took off my pants, lay in his bed, and masturbated. Serves him right, I thought, his loss. Still, it would’ve been even better if he’d walked in on me and realized that there was a person of flesh and blood in his apartment who wanted him here, now.

Bachelors II

Bachelors II

I feel so sorry for his roommate. He recently had a birthday, and his family gave him a vacuum cleaner as some sort of half-serious joke. Three weeks later, it’s still in the box in the hallway. His roommate has continued to wear nothing but his perpetual bathrobe, and he’s continued to eat cheap burgers from the corner shop. When he doesn’t want a warm meal, he eats stuffed Oreos and slugs Diet Coke. I’ve never met such a Coke nut.

Nobody ever visits his roommate. If I lived alone, I’d always invite people to parties and dinner. He must be very lonely. A few days ago the strangeness of their living situation really hit me. The roommate had locked himself in his room and was listening to Damien Rice, the same CD, the volume cranked up, over and over and over and over. We were in the front room watching a film when we heard the music from his room, so we started laughing about the sad Saturday night sing-along alone in his room. By the time we went to bed, he’d turned it down a little. The same song on repeat, the singer meowing, “Cold, cold, water surrounds me now . . .”

As the night wore on, the music continued, and I began to feel really perturbed. Maybe he’d offed himself and we were just giggling on the other side of the wall. I asked him if he’d go and check on his roommate, to see if something was wrong. But he was tired, and he said, “No, no, he’ll be fine.” In the morning, we were sitting in the kitchen and eating our cereal when his roommate stepped out of his room, unkempt and ashen. He mumbled some sort of greeting, tightened the belt of his robe, grabbed a half-empty bottle of Diet Coke, retreated to his room, and put Damien Rice back on.

The Ex III

The Ex III