Important to note: THIS STORY IS NOT ABOUT THE DAVER. I JUST HAPPENED TO KNOW TOO MANY DAVE’S.

Back before the Internet, before I had crotch parasites, during the age Jesus copied my Bio/Chem 216 notes off me, I went off to college in the city. I wasn’t particularly excited to be going off to college, unlike my roommate, who told me, at one point that her name meant, “It Means Butterfly,” which is why, she explained, our room was covered in motherfucking butterflies and filled with her crap.

I’d always lived alone – my brother a full 10 years my senior – which meant that I wasn’t used to sharing my space with anyone, let alone a cell with electric pink carpeting I called the Maxi-Pad.

It Means Butterfly wasn’t, either.

I can’t recall if she had siblings or not, but I do remember that on certain days, she’d lovingly invite me to use anything from her razor to her underwear (which I did not), and others, she’d toss my bed, swearing I’d stolen the TV remote, even though I never touched the TV, which got a half a station if you considered watching television to be an act of trying to understand what one pixelated person? was saying to another? It could’ve been Animal Planet that I was mistaking for a sitcom for all I could tell as we did live on the 17th floor of a 17th floor building, that building was composed entirely of cinder-blocks.

Unstable? I’d say so.

(It Means Butterfly, not the building)

One day, as I tried to slip in and out of our doom room unnoticed by her (she was busily chomping down a salad dripping with ranch dressing – which I noted because she chewed with her mouth almost entirely open – and squawking at the hilarious things her boyfriend, Dave, said to her via instant messenger) she caught me.

“Becky,” she said. “Dave is coming to stay with us for a week. They close campus at SIU on Halloween because there were riots and he’s coming up to stay.”

I looked around our room, no bigger than a jail cell, that was overflowing with Precious Moments figurines, and shrugged. “Uh, okay?” I replied, trying to get out of the room before she could corner me – It Means Butterfly wasn’t overweight, but she was one of those girls built to plow the fields of corn or soybeans or whatever, whereas I was nearly a foot shorter and built like a bird, bones ready to snap if the crosswinds happened to be blowing the wrong way.

Dave arrived the next night while I was carousing about the town with my friends, eating delicious Thai food that cost (mostly) pennies, while plotting adventures and scheming our way into Gold Coast parties. I didn’t see him until I woke the following morning, my head thudding from too many Long Island Ice Tea’s the night before. Groggily, I noted from the bottom bunk, that there was a dude scratching his bung mere inches from my face. If I looked the right way, I could see into his boxer shorts.

(SPOILER ALERT! I didn’t look.)

I shuddered, rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, while It Means Butterfly’s stupid seagull alarm clock went off, as I reminded myself that I did not, in fact, want to commit murder before I hit my 19th birthday.

Slowly, It Means Butterfly got dressed and made her way to her 8AM class, while I rolled over, trying to tune out the kissy-face noises she and Dave were making at each other. Finally, she left, and I got up ready to kick the ass of anyone who tried to elbow me in the elevator on the way down to campus.

It wasn’t until I came back in from changing in the bathroom and washing my face that I realized that yes, in fact, there was a dude in my room.

“HI,” he said, as I walked back into my room. “I’m Dave!” He reached out his hand for a shake and I took it, shaking it, shocked by It Means Butterfly’s boyfriend. He was kinda cute. And a metal head. This did simply not compute with everything I knew about It Means Butterfly and her Precious Moments Collection.

“Hi Dave,” I said warily, wondering if this was a trick. “I’m Becky. Nice to meet you.”

I went off to class, only to stop by Pashmina’s room to quickly tell her, “PSST – Check out It Means Butterfly’s boyfriend, dude. He’s not…he’s not gross!”

Pashmina, no friend of It Means Butterfly, as she’d not once, but twice, broken Pashmina’s precious bubble chair, which inducted her squarely into Pashmina’s Archenemy Hall ‘o’ Fame, was still half-asleep but managed to squeak a note of surprise behind me as I left for class.

As all good things do, eventually come to an end, I had to return my dorm room, where It Means Butterfly was sitting squarely on Dave’s lap, all but dry-humping.

Now, I’d just broken up with my long-term boyfriend, and if there’s one thing that people who have freshly broken up with their long-term boyfriends DO NOT need to see, it’s other happy couples cooing and humping each other. Especially if it’s on your desk chair.

I snuggled up in my cloud sheets for the night, wrapped up tight as a tick and listening to something vaguely depressing on my discman, because, well, I WAS MOURNING A BREAKUP and when you’re 18 A BREAKUP IS FOREVER WAH, WAH, WAH, even if your former boyfriend had a small penis, you get to be all emo about it. It’s written somewhere in the 18-year old guidebook.

Breakups = forever lost love (with a small wang) = emo time.

Just as I was falling asleep, I felt the bed begin to…shake a little. The bunk-beds we used were so unsturdy that if you breathed near them, it would set off an hour’s worth of rocking back and forth. This rocking, though, it was…rhythmic and OH MY FUCKING GOOD LORD OF BUTTER THEY WERE HAVING SEX. GROSS GROSS GROSS.

I practically levitated out of bed down the hall into Pashmina’s room where I began spitting out the story, It Means Butterfly trailing behind me, trying to explain herself. I’d been clear: no sex while I was in the room; the room was so small that there was a great likelihood that simply by being near two people humping, I’d get a penis put somewhere I wasn’t expecting.

By chance, a friend, Derek, an RA from floor 4, happened to be in the room hanging with Pashmina and her roommate at the time. “Oh poor Becky!” he said, accent dripping of California. “Come on down and stay on my floor,” he said. “I promise my guys will treat you well.”

I dragged my cloud blanket and tired ass down the stairs and onto the elevator. Finally, ensconced in Derek’s room, after he received several high-fives from his “guys” for having a girl in his room, I snuggled up to eat a peanut butter sandwich with James before we slumbered off into the Land of Nod.

“Night Derek,” I said, after we turned off the lights. “Thanks for letting me stay.”

I laid down on the concrete floor, covered thinly by a thready blue-carpet and tried to go to sleep. Was nearly there when I heard that old familiar squeak-squeak-squeak of the bed. Holy motherfucker, I thought as I sat upright. He’s fucking beating his meat.

I made up some excuse about having to “get back upstairs for something or another,” and made my exit as quickly as I could, leaving a baffled Derek in my wake.

I climbed, once more, back into my bed, before yelling, “You guys start fucking again, Imma make a porno of it.”

They were mysteriously quiet for the rest of the night.