University Library: The Naked Woman in my Dorm Room

(image via wikimedia)

One morning I walked into my dorm room after I’d spent the night at the University Library, and a naked woman was sitting up hunched on my roommate’s bed.  Since it’s been over 30 years, I don’t remember much about what she looked like, except she was very pale, very naked, with blonde hair, head leaning forward like she was about to throw up, and she was smoking a cigarette.  I figured she wasn’t really going to throw up if she was still smoking a cigarette; that takes a skill that few people have.  When she glanced up, her face was kind of rough in a tired (but not necessarily ugly) way.

“Where’s Kirk?” I asked.

“Breakfast.”

“You aren’t hungry?”

She eyed her cigarette.  I threw my backpack onto my bed and began emptying the contents.  I was hungry and wanted to get to breakfast as well, but I felt funny with a naked stranger in my room.  I was in a social bind.  If I stuck around, it would look creepy, like I was trying to stare at a naked chick.  Then again, it was my own room.  If a naked chick wanted to sit on a bed and smoke a cigarette in my room, that was her fault, not mine.

“You okay?” I finally asked.

“Hungover,” she said.  “I could use a beer.”

I opened Kirk’s mini-fridge and pulled out a bottle.  He still had a few left.

“Thanks,” she said.  She drank and smoked and then drank and smoked.

“I’m the roommate,” I said, trying not to look at her without acting like I was trying.  “Where are your clothes?”

She shrugged and worked on her cigarette some more.  I looked at my bed and pulled the sheets up.

“We didn’t use your bed,” she said.

“Thanks, but I have to make sure,” I said.  “Kirk left a gift for me once, so now I always check.”

The woman laughed and then stopped herself.  It was a lie, that Kirk left me a “gift” on the pillow, but I told the story anyway, and everybody believed me because it sounded like something Kirk would do.  Kirk never corrected me, even when he’d been there as I told the story.  He liked the story.

“Don’t make me laugh,” the woman said.  “It hurts.”

“I almost put my face on it,” I said.  I have a bad habit of making one comment too many.

“I heard it’s good for your complexion,” she said with a straight face that threw me off.

I was going through a zit breakout, and even though it wasn’t as bad as some of the bursts I’d had in high school, I was still self-conscious of it.  I was tempted to make a remark about her being an expert because of her flawless skin, but she was smoking and holding a beer bottle and was naked, and if she got mad at me and things got loud, it wouldn’t look good.  Women weren’t even allowed on our side of the floor until noon.

“I’m going to get breakfast,” I said.  I felt weird leaving a naked stranger alone in my room, but she had been there when I arrived, so I guess I wasn’t making the situation any worse by leaving than it already had been.  Besides, everything valuable in that room, except for a bunch of overpriced textbooks, belonged to Kirk.  If she stole his stuff, it would be his fault anyway.

I found a spot at the cool guys’ table in the cafeteria before everybody had left.  The cool group was a bunch of guys, maybe 30-40 (I never counted), who lived on several floors but hung out together.  They ate meals in the dorm cafeteria at the same time, they knew where the parties were, and they’d hang out in each other’s rooms in groups of 5-10.  My roommate Kirk was one of the cool guys, so I was given unofficial temporary cool guy status.  Having a car helped, and since I didn’t drink much, they could count on me to be a sober driver.  That meant I was welcome to sit with them in the cafeteria.  They never stopped outsiders from sitting with them, but they could make outsiders feel unwelcome, and they were usually nice enough to me.

“Where’s Kirk?” I asked as I set my tray on the table.  A bunch of guys stared at my overloaded plate.

“Just left,” some guy said.

“There’s a naked chick in our room,” I said.  “Smoking a beer and drinking a cigarette.”

A bunch of guys got up like I was the plague.  For a second, I thought I was in high school again, but then I remembered what I’d just told them.

“The door’s locked,” I said.  “She’s not the type to just let you in.”

“Hurry up and eat,” some guy demanded.

“Why?” I said.  “I’ve already seen her.”

“Then let’s go see her again.”

“She’s not that great.”

“Is she naked?” one guy asked.  “Like full… up top?”

“She was R-rated naked,” I said.

“Hurry up!” a couple guys insisted.

I didn’t make myself any more popular that morning.  A couple guys were actually ticked off that I wouldn’t let them in to see the naked chick.  To make things worse, I deliberately ate slowly and read the morning newspaper.  They knew once I started reading the paper that I wasn’t going to budge, so they left me alone.  A few guys even went up to my room and pounded on the door, but nobody answered.  When I went back to my room a few hours later after class, she was gone.

This incident alone didn’t affect my life or my reputation in the dorm, but when that crazy thing happened at the University Library (and I’ll get around to explaining it later), this didn’t help me one bit.

*****

To be continued!  In the meantime, start at the beginning with University Library: State School.