Page 4 of Talk to Me

“Do you ever consider that being a nerd is diminishing your social life?” he asked as he zipped around the room behind me.

“Did you ever consider that if you spent one night here studying you could bump your GPA up a full letter grade?” I replied.

“There are no hot men here to take to bed,” Collin quipped. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

I’m not ugly. Collin’s not ugly. We simply have no sexual or romantic interest in each other. Two gay men can be roommates and not desire each other’s intimate bits. I suppose it helps that neither of us was the other’s type.

“And not all of us have Friday classes,” he expounded. “Some of us planned our schedules so that we could enjoy our junior year.”

“Some of us planned their schedules so they could have three day weekends every week to chase tail,” I replied.

“Well, there is that.” Collin cackled mischievously.

“Max again, is it?” I asked, tapping away at my keyboard as I continued with my pizza feast.

“Max?” Collin declared as he zipped up his bag. “Max? I haven’t talked to Max since first day back!”

I spun patiently in my desk chair to look at Collin. As soon as I finished chewing and had swallowed my bite of my pizza, I responded.

“So…three days ago?”

He waved me off and continued zipping around the room.

“Who is it then?” I asked. “And what are you looking for?”

“Some freshie named Dylan,” Collin replied as he continued to search his side of the room.

“All the sophomores, seniors, and our fellow juniors onto your tricks, eh?” I teased. “You had to go after one that hadn’t met you yet?”

“And,” Collin growled, ignoring me, “I’m looking for my earbuds. I can’t sleep without my earbuds. Especially in a strange bed!”

“Not that I think you’ll end up sleeping much,” I mumbled, “but shake out your comforter. You were sleeping with them last night.”

Collin grabbed the long side of his comforter and shook the blanket roughly up and down as I sat and watched. A moment later, a small thump emanated from the wall next to his bed. He turned his head to look at me.

“Put them back on your bedside table to charge each morning,” I said. “I keep telling you this.”

Collin was already waving me off and diving over his bed to retrieve the small white case that held his earbuds. I turned back around in my chair and took the opportunity to get another bite of my pizza. By the time I’d turned back to Collin, pizza still in hand, he was standing by his bed, slipping the little white square in his hip pocket. I bit off another slice of pizza as he slung his bag over his shoulder.

“Nothing I can say to convince you to not be a nerd for one night?” he asked, leveling me with his eyes.

“Anything I can say to convince you to take your studies seriously for one night?” I replied.

“Fine,” he said with a dismissive wave as he headed to the door, “don’t wait up.”

“Seeing as I won’t be up all night, I won’t,” I said with a laugh.

Collin shot me a rather rude one-finger gesture over his shoulder as he exited our room. When he pulled the door shut behind himself, he turned and blew me a kiss.

“Have fun, lover boy!” I hollered.

With Collin gone, I had our dorm room to myself. From my experience of sharing a dorm room with Collin in our freshman and sophomore years, I expected I would have the entire weekend to myself. When my roommate found himself enamored with a new romantic prospect, things like studying, and even sleeping in his own bed, became unimportant to him. College wasn’t so much an opportunity for education and career advancement for Collin. It was the chance to meet as many available—and sometimes not so available—men as possible.

It wasn’t that I had anything against using some of my time at university for romantic prospects. However, with the cost of tuition at the institutions of higher learning in America, romance could not be my priority. Like most college age kids from a lower-middle class background, I was going to have loans to pay off when I got my degree. Unless some rich guy in college wanted to pay them, he would have to come second to focusing on my education.

I went back to the three pieces of pizza in the Ziploc bag, my laptop, and my syllabi.