I buttonholed Joe after ROTC that first morning after room roulette was announced. “Joe, given any thought to what you’re doing in room roulette?”
He eyed me curiously. We got along well enough, but if I was asking, it was obvious what my reason was. “Why? Interested in rooming together next year?”
I nodded. “I hadn’t heard that you had hooked up with anybody yet, and my ritual number has me living in the pantry.”
Joe nodded in agreement. “Yeah, you’re shit out of luck. I heard Bruno’s moving in with Lynchburg into the triple.”
“Yeah. Ever been over there? They’ve got a fireplace for God’s sake!” I thought for a second. “Barry’s rooming with Terry up on the third floor.”
“Barry’s going to have a single half the year. Terry’s going to be out on an internship the entire first semester,” commented Joe.
“Then that makes you the man! You’re top dog of the freshmen after those two. Interested in teaming up?”
“The Cisco Kid is still looking for a roommate,” he answered with a smile.
“I’ll get an apartment before I do that. If you haven’t noticed, personal hygiene isn’t high on Tony’s agenda.” He stunk! Cisco had a heart of gold, a head of cheese, and armpits from hell. “Anyway, you interested?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“I have a mini-fridge and a stereo,” I said, sweetening the deal.
“That’s nice,” he said with a smile.
I thought for a second. I had roomed with Joe our sophomore year, but it broke down at the end of the year. Junior year I had the single on the third floor, and senior year I shared a room on the mezzanine with a sophomore. I suspected I had been the one who screwed up with Joe, and didn’t want to repeat the mistakes. “Joe, you got any rules I need to be aware of?”
“Like what?”
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I like girls. What happens if Marilyn wants to come for the weekend? Is that going to be a problem?”
“It is if it’s every weekend. Are you tapping that yet?”
I ignored the question. “How about once a month, and only if I clear it with you ahead of time?” Marilyn didn’t end up coming over more than that anyhow, but we needed to give him more warning.
“That I can handle. You never answered my question,” he commented.
“No, I didn’t, did I. Anything else? You do know that I’ve been known to smoke the occasional joint now and then, right?”
His face hardened at that. “I don’t want any of that shit anywhere in the room. No way, no how!”
It was as I suspected. Previously I had been a serious doper. He hadn’t said anything, but I had known he didn’t like it. I nodded in understanding. “Okay. If I keep it out of the room, is it a problem if I still smoke on occasion?” I figured I could store my head kit in somebody else’s room.
He shrugged. “I just don’t want that stuff around.”
“How about liquor or wine? You have a problem with that?” Joe was a pretty straight-laced guy, but I didn’t recall him as a teetotaler.
He shrugged again. “I don’t care about that. Just no drugs.”
“Deal!” I stuck my hand out.
He thought for a second and then shook my hand. “Deal.”
“Next time we’re at the house let’s shop for real estate,” I replied. He smiled and agreed.
As expected, the idiocy ran for the full two weeks, and went right on up to midnight on Saturday. It really only affected about half the house, since the other half had some sort of squatter’s rights going on. When it finally became clear what was happening, Joe and I found ourselves claiming a room on the third floor facing Burdette. It was a decent size, square, with a couple of built-in bunk beds in an L shape in one corner, and a pair of long built-in desks on the other two walls. The only drawback was that it was at the top of the house, and we would have to carry my mini-fridge up about a million stairs.
Chapter 31: Road Trip
It was our last date of the semester. Finals were just ended and most of us had already taken off. I was sticking around for another week before heading out. I definitely wasn’t heading back to the old homestead! Before he went home, Joe Bradley and I had boxed up all our shit and driven it over to Kegs. It had taken us several trips, but our boxes were now all moved in. I would be in the room before he was, so I told him I would sort it out at some point.
It was a last date in several ways. Marilyn was heading home tomorrow also, but she wasn’t coming back to Saint Rose in the fall. Much like before, she had flunked out. It wasn’t that Marilyn was dumb. She wasn’t. Maybe she wasn’t a genius, but she wasn’t stupid. However, Saint Rose was a bad mix for her. She needed the structure and discipline of family to keep her focused, and she certainly wasn’t getting that in Albany.
Tomorrow her parents were coming to pick her up and take her and her possessions home. She would start over again in the fall at Mohawk Valley Community College. She could apply her credits from Saint Rose, but since I don’t think she passed a single course all year long, nothing would apply. I didn’t tell her I knew that, but I let her put as good a face on it as she could. Regardless, Marilyn was quite depressed about it, and the fact that she felt we were breaking up and would never see each other again had her on the verge of tears.
I had felt that the first time around as well. I had taken her out to dinner and afterwards had cried myself to sleep. Then, we started writing each other over the summer, and I took the train from Albany to Utica in the fall and we figured out how to see each other. The rest was history, or would be history.
I picked her up outside her dorm about seven or so. I had stressed that I wanted to take her to a nice restaurant, and I was going to wear a suit, so she needed to dress nicely as well. A dress and heels would look good on her. It was a beautiful spring day, dry and warm, and I was all smiles when I saw her. She had on a red and black knee length dress with a U-shaped neckline that showed just the tops of her breasts and was tight enough through the waist with a slight flair at the thighs, along with hose and medium high heels. She looked like she was on the edge of crying, but trying to make a brave go of it.
“My God! You look fantastic!” I told her. “I won’t be able to eat, I’ll be too busy fighting off the other men in the restaurant!”
She smiled at that. “This is all right?” she asked. Marilyn really wasn’t a very fancy girl, and her mother wouldn’t have been helpful at all, even if she had asked her for help.
“Turn around,” I said, twiddling my fingers in a circular motion. Marilyn slowly pirouetted and I whistled appreciatively. Our daughter Maggie really had been correct, in her utterly tactless way; Marilyn was hot! “You are gorgeous!” If we had gotten that far already, I would have taken her inside and ravished her a time or two before we went to dinner.
But we hadn’t gotten that far yet. This was, without a doubt, the longest period I had gone celibate since I lost my cherry to Shelley Talbot. Marilyn, however, was very Catholic, and she had told me once the difference between a good girl and a nice girl. ‘A good girl goes home and goes to bed, and a nice girl goes to bed and goes home!’ Marilyn was going to be a good girl, right up to her wedding day, and told me so in no uncertain terms. Marilyn also got extremely turned on when we were making out, as much now as before, and even if Marilyn’s mouth was saying ‘No, no, no!’, her body was screaming ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ Early in the fall I finally popped her cherry, and I was hard at work on moving the timetable forward.