Flashback, part two

Yesterday, I began telling the story of my first living situation in New York, and I had tried to build things up into a Rosemary's Baby-meets-The-Ted-Bundy-Story crescendo, so here's part two:

My next indication that all was not as it appeared was when Thomas's wife came for the weekend. Like Thomas, Mary was a small, sensible, mild-mannered professor type from New Zealand. I got a very distinct feeling upon meeting her that she was "sizing up the competition." But seeing as though I rarely saw her husband, I couldn't understand where such profound jealousy was coming from. On that pad of paper where I had found the physical descriptions of all the women who had come to see the apartment, it had seemed like there were several with more glowing and graphic descriptions (things like "Works at MTV, big tits, gorgeous legs but has three cats...") and I was convinced that he had settled on me as the building was university-owned and I was a grad student. Perhaps he was required to give first dibs to a student, I reasoned. I hoped that the descriptions were just his way of keeping track of who had seen the apartment. And besides, Thomas was not at all my type and I was absorbed in my own relationship issues with an unstable Russian guy. Starting up a fling with my older, married roommate was the last thing on my mind. After speaking with Mary for a while she seemed to relax a bit, and I just chalked up the strange behavior to some idiosyncracy of hers.

Thomas began coming home earlier during the weeknights. I'd be typing away on my computer swigging a Brooklyn Pale Ale and he'd knock on my door to ask about my day. Thus began a series of innocent nightly roommate conversations. I was convinced he saw me as the ridiculous 23-year-old roommate who subsisted on frozen entrees, Snackwell cookies and takeout pizza and got into screaming phone fights with her psychotic boyfriend, who was given to showing up at 3 a.m., ringing the doorbell repeatedly and angering all of the neighbors. Nonetheless, we had some nice conversations and even went out to the movies with some other professor friends of his once or twice. I did sometimes get the sense that during our conversations, his gaze would linger on me a tad too long or that he'd intentionally try to brush my hand, but I assumed the guy was just lonely for his wife. I blew it off as I found him harmless and, anyway, most nights the crazy 6'2'', 210-pound Russian showed up. I figured the timid professor would do me no harm with a former Russian Olympic hockey hopeful in the house.

One night I was in my bedroom alone doing homework and watching David Letterman. Thomas knocked on my door and asked if he could watch it with me. He sat on the bed nursing a nightcap. I noticed that he began to slowly inch nearer to me. I was more annoyed than intimidated. One more inch, and I was going to tell the guy he was starting to make me feel uncomfortable and to get out of my room. And this is when he said the words that I will never forget because his prim New Zealand accent lent a bit of refinement to the smarminess of his gesture:

"Would you like to have a cuddle?" He asked. His breath stank of gin and his eyes were gleaming. He reached over and touched my leg with what I've come to describe in the repeated telling of this story as "a single palsied hand."

Surprisingly, I did not freak out. More than anything, I found the request pathetic. If this guy was a rapist (or even an aspiring adulterer, for that matter), I could tell he was an amateur and I felt I had enough self-defense training to take him down if need be. I removed his hand from my leg, looked him dead in the eye and firmly told him there'd be no cuddling going on, not now, not ever. He got the point, picked up his drink and wished me goodnight as he scurried out of the room.

I had so much going on with school and my relationship that I had no time or energy to be looking for a new apartment. Perverted roommate or not, I was happy where I was and there was no way I was moving (the impossible New York housing market makes you start rationalizing this way). On the nights the Russian was not there, I pushed a huge box of books in front of the French doors to keep them closed. One weekend night Mary was over and the two of them were in the kitchen getting drunk and being uncharacteristically loud. I went to bed early as I had to be at school in the morning to work on a group project, and with Mary there, I didn't feel the need to barricade myself in with the box of books. At some point in the night I felt someone trying to get into bed with me and I quickly sat up. The person trying to fumble his way into my bed was Thomas. His wife Mary was looking meekly on from my bedroom doorway.

In that exact moment, it all made sense: Thomas had advertised for a female roommate when what he really wanted was a sex partner during the week and a menage a trois situation for the weekends. Mary was going along with it to please her husband but was obviously an unwilling or merely inexperienced participant. These two were apparently looking to spice up their marriage and I was meant to be the guinea pig for their awkward first extramarital encounters. I ordered them out of my room and told them I'd see them in the kitchen in two minutes. I was sleeping in boxer shorts and a college sweatshirt but I wanted to be more fully clothed to tackle this conversation. In the kitchen, the whole story came out and it was as I had thought. I told them in no uncertain terms that I was neither going to have sex with them nor move out. We agreed that I'd continue living there until school finished in May. In the meantime, they would hone their "couple-seeking-third" skills and find a suitable roommate/partner.

After that there were no further problems in the house and they even kept me abreast of the progress of their female search, which seemed to span several continents. When I moved out, I was told they had found an Australian girl to move in and that she had agreed to the living arrangements.

About a month after I had moved out, I went over to pick up my mail on a Saturday morning. An ebullient Thomas answered the door, and as we walked down the long hallway leading to the kitchen, I noticed that my bedroom had been turned into a TV room and that an enormous bed now dominated his room. In the kitchen, I found Mary and the Australian girl both wearing kimonos and serving breakfast. Everyone seemed happy and relaxed and we all exchanged pleasantries. I left the satisfied trio and walked out into the sunny summer New York morning, smiling to myself and thinking “Hey, if it works for them..."

That, my friends, is one of dozens of crazy living situations I've found myself in. To think that in his lifetime, poor Cristiano has only lived with his parents and me. Oh, the stories he's missed out on.