so I was walking back from work around nineish and my neighbor/seminar classmate is in the hallway talking to his girlfriend. he sees me and he’s like “hey!! hey classmate whose name I don’t know” so I turned around and was like “it’s Hayley.”
and he apologized for not knowing (I didn’t know his name either so I wasn’t mad) and asked if I’d started my first paper for seminar. he asked me what it was on so I told him and he was like “I’m so stuck I have no idea what to do,” so clearly the natural response for my stupid ass to make is to offer him help – I told him to knock on our door and ask for me if he needed help.
maybe I did this because I was still in tutor mode from work. maybe I did it because no one takes those offers up anyway, right?
wrong! a half an hour later, as I’m getting ready to shower, he knocks for the door and asks for me, and all my roommates don’t believe him bc he’s this dude bro who clearly works out and is wearing a johnny cash tshirt. like how fake deep is that. i would never associate with a dude bro
so he invites me back to his place and as I’m walking there I’m like “this could very possibly be a bad idea,” but I go anyway bc I’m a dumbass with no sense of self preservation.
he lets me into his apartment and I’m immediately hit with the bro-ness of it all: a sports illustrated poster on the wall, protein powder EVERYWHERE, posters of beer, snap backs, flasks, and a guitar because of course there is.
his room is no better, and alarm bells are just fucking going off and I’m trying to think of a quick exit. then he tries to close his damn door to his own room and I’m like “hold up that stays open” and he was like “oh yeah I’m sorry I didn’t think about that,” which was….considerate.
two hours, two cigarette breaks later, one opening paragraph later, and one of his roommates trying to hit on me later, he starts talking about intersectionality and my mind goes ?????????????? and we legit talked about rape culture and trump and how fucked we all are. eventually we started talking about the law and feminism so then I tell him I’m gay and his immediate response is “do you get those stupid microagressions from guys who say they can turn you straight?” and it took me a minute to respond bc the fact he even knew that word was so bizarre it was like worlds colliding.
he then tells me he thinks his little sister might be gay because he thinks she told him while he was drunk one night but he couldn’t remember so he asks for advice because he doesn’t want to upset her because, in his words, “I’m not gay so you know I don’t understand it like you do.”
then, because the night of course could get weirder, he tells me he writes poetry but doesn’t tell anyone because he’ll get shit for it bc he’s supposed to be a “tough guy” and masculine and shit and I just feel Jesus sending me a message through this kid that I shouldn’t judge all dude bros by the bro-ness of their looks but I also wanna stay sexy and not get murdered so I’m gonna keep doing that. sorry jesus.
finally I left because I was tired and also I had to wash the smell of bad cologne off of me but guys this was an experience please believe me. i was standing in the shower before just letting the water wash over me as the whole two hour ordeal played over in my head because we laughed, we talked. he told me something about himself no one else knows, we exchanged political ideas and fist bumps. we bonded over the stress of a seminar paper and now we are forever changed by this event.
so that was how my dumb lesbian ass willingly walked into a room with four dudebros in it.
