The Sound of Silence

Funny how you can get people to admit things they never really thought they'd admit if you just listen closely enough.

I once had a roommate in college. She was gorgeous. I tried to hate her, but she was really cool, too. Much, much cooler than our third roommate, the Stamp Nazi. She'd get pissed at my because I never bought stamps. I, of course, have now turned into the Stamp Nazi, so, Jennifer, I apologize to you, here and now, for my failure to adequately contribute to the household finances my junior year by failing to buy stamps for our monthly bills. Instead, I took them to the office where I worked and used the postage meter. I hope I haven't just committed mail fraud.

See what I mean. People just confess things sometimes.

Anyway. So my roommate, Denise, is gorgeous. I had a lot of guy friends then. And they all wanted to hang out at my house. Because they all loved her. I can't blame them. She was the coolest good-looking woman I have probably ever known.

So, my friend Mark. I used to have to rewrite his papers all the time. I can't remember what he was studying. Phys. Ed.? Recreational Studies? Something bizarre like that. He couldn't use grammar if his life depended on it. If he was stuck in a trash compactor and he had to correctly punctuate a sentence in order to keep the walls from smashing him and his walking carpet, they'd be dead.

Mark would come over all the time. Mark and Denise started hanging out all the time. Mark really liked Denise. Reaaaaallllly.

Denise eventually told me they had hooked up. She wasn't terribly specific about what they did. Just an off-the-cuff remark. She...wasn't terribly impressed, I don't think, by his prowess. It wasn't a big deal to her and the only reason it was a big deal to me was because he was usually so closed-mouthed about his relationships/hookups/whatevers that there was tremendous curiosity in our circle of friends as to what kind of women he liked. Or if he even liked women.

So I mentioned it to him. They had cooled off by that point. I think I just told him that she had told me they had hooked up once or twice.

"What exactly did she tell you?" he asked, with fear in his eyes.
"Pretty much everything," I replied.

Because I really thought she had told me pretty much everything.

"She told you about #*%$&?"

Had I known what was going to come out of his mouth, I would have stuck my fingers in my ears, closed my eyes and "la la la"ed myself into the next year. Permanent scarification of my brain, people. Permanent. To go from thinking a man might be gay to knowing that he performed an act like that upon my roommate was more than my fragile spirit could take.

"Um..." I didn't really ever answer him. And I never, ever, ever looked at him the same way again.

Perv.

Sometimes you get more out of people when you pretend to know what the hell they are talking about. I turned the lesson of Mark and Denise into a lesson for my daily life. When people think you know something, they're more likely to open up to you about it and tell you things you really didn't even actually know.

It is called "faking your way through life." I try to incorporate it into my life on a daily basis.

Mastery is my goal.