Wednesday, November 27, 2013

The Black Ring: Chapter 2, Part 10

Unfortunately, he hadn’t really done much in the way of savings, and Circuit City didn’t necessarily pay the bills as it was, let alone the bills he would have to take on if he got his own place. He started asking coworkers and barroom friends if they knew anyone looking for a roommate, but most of the people he knew lived in the dorms at UW-GB or were shacked up with their significant others, and naturally three was a crowd. Weeks went by and Bryson wasn’t having any luck finding a roommate or a cheap out, and both Mike and Melanie were starting to lean on him harder and harder to get out.
That was when salvation came in the form of a mousy brown haired beauty named Monica. As it turned out Monica was getting tired of living in the dorms where the girls acted like they were still in junior year of high school and was looking to find a place of her own. She didn’t mind having a roommate as long as they were adult about the situation, and since they had practically become best friends she figured they should try to become roomies. He, of course, wasn’t going to turn her down on her offer. After all, didn’t most guys and girls who started out as friends and roommates typically end up as lovers? Probably not, but that didn’t stop him from dreaming of catching a quick peak here and a fast glimpse there of perfection in its raw form.
They started browsing through places online and in apartment guides they found at gas stations around town. Bryson was partial to the west side, as the east side always appeared to him to be filled with wolves ready to pounce on unsuspecting victims so they could tear the flesh off their bones. Monica was partial to the east side because it was closer to campus, and if you went far enough east you could find fairly affluent neighborhoods with quick access to the highway to help you avoid the wolves who resided closer to the Fox River. In the end they settled on a fairly large apartment on Humboldt Avenue which was close enough to Highway 43 for easy access to everything, yet far enough away where you could hear the traffic. Monica also remained a stone’s throw away from campus there. They signed the lease early in the month prior to their move to give them a few weeks to make sure they had the money for utilities and other necessities. Everything was running smoothly, that is, until the visit.
Monica spend a lot of time joking with Bryson about the sexual tension that was sure to rise up between them when they moved in together, and how they should each release some steam before they decided to move in together. Bryson always laughed it off as a joke, even when she was standing too close to him and he felt a bit flushed and a tad too big for his britches; he just hoped in that moment she wasn’t looking down. With each visit and with each meeting about a new place she seemed to become more aggressive with the jokes, and Bryson began to wonder if they really were jokes or if the tension she kept speaking of was turning into her own frustration. When they parted ways after each rendezvous, though, he took his thoughts to be a mirage of his own growing frustrations. Her words loomed large in his mind in the nights before he fell asleep after their visits.
 “You know, we’re both going to wonder what the other is like in bed when we move in together. It could ruin our dynamic if we let it get in the way, maybe we should just get it out of the way,” she once said with a smile and a hand on his leg as they sat in Perkins eating omelets and looking over rental guides. A mental picture popped in his head and he thought he would save that for the swelling in his loins and let out a nervous laugh at the thought of himself saying loins more so than for her suggestion.

Now, sitting in his room, sipping on his beer debating whether to watch TV or surf the net (or both) he thought back to the visit. He always held it in an esteemed place in his mind, one of the finest moments of his life. His graduation from boot camp was his most proud moment, but the visit was by far his most prized memory. In his mind he could imagine that it lasted for all eternity, even if the moment itself only last for fifteen, maybe thirty minutes tops. Sometimes, only the middle played through in his mind. Other times he viewed the whole video in his mind’s projector like watching a home movie. How it ended never escaped his mind’s eye though, and that was the moment he fell in love.

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