University Library: The One Night Stand

This is a university library, but it is not THE University Library.  (image via wikimedia)

Even when I was a freshman in college, I was against one night stands.

I wasn’t prudish.  I simply thought one night stands were impractical.  It took a lot of work for an average boring guy like me to get a woman’s interest, and I didn’t want to work that hard for just a one night achievement.  If I was going to put effort into getting a woman’s attention, then I wanted her to stick around.

During my freshman year at the state school, I lived on the 8^th floor of a 12 level coed dorm with the women on the north end and the guys on the south.  The elevators were on the women’s side so guys had to trespass to get there, and the unwritten morning rule was not to make eye contact or start conversation with the females if they were just getting up.  Before noon, I’d just keep my eyes to the floor.  I don’t know what the morning coed etiquette is now.

My roommate Kirk was a one night stand junkie.  He didn’t want a girlfriend.  About twice a week, he’d come in drunk with a woman and would expect me to leave.

I’m not going to get into how we met or became friends.  We knew right away that we’d have to figure out some kind of arrangement.  I was a serious student, and he partied.  This was back in the 1980s, and having sex with drunk women was acceptable male behavior back then.

I’ve never liked drunk women, which was too bad because women liked me a lot better when they were inebriated.  And I really didn’t like them when Kirk brought them back to the dorm room after I’d already fallen asleep.  Kirk understood, but there was nowhere else for them to go.  The girls wouldn’t want to take him back to their place, and he didn’t have money for a hotel.

Just so you know, Kirk never slipped anything into a woman’s drink or anything like that, but there were some issues, and I’ll probably delve into those later.  I’m not trying to minimize or trivialize his behavior.  I’m just explaining my situation back in the 1980s when I was 18 and a lot of stuff was going on.

Kirk and I tried the standard communication systems of the time (before cellphones).  The rubber band on the door knob was too obvious.  One night some guy on our floor removed it and I walked in on Kirk in bed with some girl/woman.  I didn’t get a good look at her.  It was an awkward situation.  Next, some guy put a rubber band on the door when Kirk wasn’t even in the room.  When I found out that I had wasted a perfectly quiet night because of a false rubber band alert, I was pissed, and all the guys on the floor thought it was funny because I rarely expressed emotion.

It got a little frustrating.  If I went to bed early, I wondered if Kirk was going to burst in with his one night stand.  If I went to bed late and nothing happened, I felt almost cheated.  I needed to get my mind straight.

The dorms wouldn’t let us switch roommates (nobody would trade for Kirk anyway), so we were stuck until the next semester, so instead of arguing all the time with Kirk, I decided that I‘d just leave when he brought in his conquest.  I know this made me look like a chump, but I wasn’t.  I needed to keep my mind focused on school and work.  I didn’t have time and energy to get into the same argument twice a week.  Kirk was going to bring women into the room no matter what.  He never said that, but I could tell.  If he was going to do it anyway, I might as well get something out of it.

I got to use all of Kirk’s stuff, his stereo (it was a nice stereo), his television and VCR.  He was quiet during the day and wouldn’t bother me.  He had a lot more friends than I did, and he’d invite me whenever they went out, and we actually became pretty good friends for a long time, even after college.  He never gave me grief about my comic books or my bad taste in music (from his point of view) or my lack of a girlfriend.  He never bragged about how often he got laid, though he tried to give himself the nickname Sgt. Rock, but it never stuck.

In fact, the guys on the floor and I made of fun of Kirk’s promiscuous behavior.  We warned him that he’d get shot by an angry dad or beat up by a pissed off boyfriend.  We hung up posters of STD warnings on the wall next to his bed.   We told him that we had poked holes in his condoms (we never actually did it, though).  He took the razzing in a good-natured way, but I still had to leave the room when he brought in his female study partners.

Instead of slumming in a neighboring dorm room (I got offers from sympathetic friends), I spent my time at the University Library.  It was a perfect sanctuary for me while Kirk was doing his thing.  The University Library was open 24 hours, it was close to my dorm, and I could stay anonymous there.  I could study in peace, and when I fell asleep, nobody bothered me.

But something happened to me at that library, something that I’ve never heard happen to anybody else.  And I’m about to explain what it was.

*****

To be continued in University Library: Wear Jeans If You’re Gay Day!

You can start University Library at the beginning with University Library: State School.