‘Twas the beginning the second semester of my Sophomore year at JMU, and once again, I had decided to go with the random freakshow lottery method of roommate selection. I was not to be disappointed. For you see, my roommate from the Fall had found life with me to be not nearly enough of a haze of drugs, skanks, and alcohol, and had therefore been so very kind as to join a frat a week into the year. Upon my return to school after Kwanzaa break, therefore, I found that I had been given a new roommate. His name was Kevin (really), and he was the very image of Kevin from the Wonder Years, with one horrible difference.
You know that episode of Star Trek where they go to the mirror universe? And everybody from this universe lives there too, only everyone is evil and skanky and violently insane and Spock had a goatee (this, by the way, was back when a goatee made you look diabolical, rather than making you look like Comic Book Guy)? It was as if, through some terribly act of interdimensional juxtaposition, Fred Savage from the evil universe had come to live with me.
I think I first began to realize that things weren’t going to go well, when I overheard a phone call that he was having with one of his frat homies (Kevin, you see, wanted to join a frat too, he was merely very bad at it). Though I could hear but one side of the conversation, it was both extremely disturbing and ridiculous. Here then, are a few of the lines I yet remember:
“All I want to know is why every time I pass out at a party, I wake up covered in peanut butter!”
“I told you guys all not to write on me, especially when I’ve got alcohol poisoning!”
“And don’t think I don’t know it’s you who got everybody calling me Mr. Frosty!”
Something, it seemed, was delightfully awry. And so the madness began. I myself speculate that much like Wonder Years Kevin, he had a persistent internal monologue (I didn’t know it at the time, but I was about to learn an important lesson about growing up), which ultimately played a major part in his eventual loopiness. He would return most nights at about four in the morning, reeking of peanut butter and Incredible Hulk flavored Slurpees. Upon getting his bearings, he would usually hold a heated and angry dialogue with all the invisible people who, it seemed, lived in his closet (I checked once, quite thoroughly, and there was no one there. Also, the entrance to Narnia wasn’t even there). I suspect that they were the lost souls of Winnie and that guy who grew up to be Marilyn Manson, come back to haunt him for having killed them both in his home universe, but I can’t be sure. What was clear though, was that he and the closet voices frequently disagreed, but they held some strange power over him. “Our unholy hatred for all things living can only be appeased by you playing Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” a hundred times!” they must have said, for with many profane protests, Kevin invariably did just that, usually singing along to better sate their lust for weepy drunk music. Alas, even his computer must have mocked him, for he would often kick and curse it for not being a Mac. “Remember when I told you I was a Mac Kevy-Poo? I lied, you fool! Mwahahahaha!” It seemed to say, delighting in the torment it heaped upon his fevered brow.
Near the end, the madness overtook him. He began to freak out more and more because I was always building swords out in the suite. And the popcorn bags I left sitting on my desk seemed to deal with him far more harshly than did any of his own possessions, “Haha, Ben left us here on his desk because he knew we would make your life a living Hell while, even while he’s out at class! Bleughrrrrgh!” they must have roared at him in my absence. And so it came to pass, that one night as I returned from my nightly ramble around campus, I found a note awaiting me. “You Win!” it said, and I took it to mean that he had decided to take his leave of me. The next two weeks passed in a curious silence, as we neither of us had anything to say to the other. The one break in quietude came one night as I was busy reading up on Dick Cheney online. Kevin dragged himself from bed and left the room, but upon his return he came over and fixed his baleful eye upon me. “Can you, without being too self-righteous, tell me what exactly you think you’re doing,” quoth he. “I’m surfin’ the Web!” was my gleeful reply; and with that, he spake no more.
The rest of the year passed well enough, but the end of my tale comes not until the Fall of the next year. Now, it is that case that while every issue of the JMU paper contains a crime log, the first issue after Summer Vacation is invariably the most interesting, for it includes all the crimes that transpired over the break (I myself never graced this most august of crime logs, my exploits taking place mostly during the Winter months). It was there though, that I read of Kevin’s end.
“Krazy Wonder Years Kevin, Ben’s old roommate, was arrested by campus police June 23, when he was found hiding behind a convertible in Z lot. Upon further inspection, it was discovered he had been throwing sand from a nearby construction site into the car. He was expelled.”
And so it came to pass that Kevin was banished from the sunny
(If this one goes over well, I’ve got at least three other roommates of notable strangeness to relate the sad tales of, if anyone is interested)
