Politics Makes Great Bedfellows
- 2 years ago
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Compatible Bedfellows free porn video
A guy and a girl share a studio apartment.
I’d been apartment hunting in a half-hearted way for a couple of weeks without any luck. So now I had to go at it more seriously. I took the afternoon off and looked at five places. The last one was only a studio, but it was in a pretty good location, just three blocks from work. A girl had come to see it too, and the manager showed it to both of us at the same time.
What can you say about a studio apartment? It had a bathroom, a kitchenette, a living/bedroom. Nothing special about it except its location. He wanted twelve hundred a month. That was considerably more than I wanted to pay. Same for the girl.
We walked out together. She looked like she was going to cry.
‘I know how you feel,’ I said. ‘This was my fifth place today.’
She snuffled, trying to hold back her tears. ‘I’ve been looking for a month.’ She looked dejected, on the verge of utter defeat.
All of a sudden I was just tired of things always going wrong. I wanted, just for once, for things to go right. ‘Can you go six?’ I asked.
She just looked at me.
‘We could go back up there and get this place right now.’
She still didn’t say anything.
‘Here’s the way I see it,’ I said, in a burst of manic frustration. ‘This place isn’t perfect. We can go on with our searching. Maybe we’ll find something better, maybe we won’t. This place is pretty small for two people. It’s not worth what he’s asking. But it’s got a roof. It’s in a decent location. It’s available. We’ll probably end up having to get roommates anyway. Why not you and me? We can go back up there and get this place right now. Get all this searching and uncertainty over and done with.’
She just looked at me for the longest time. ‘It’s a studio,’ she said, finally.
I was already beginning to lose steam. ‘I know. It’s suboptimal. It probably doesn’t make any sense.’
‘I don’t even know you.’
‘I know. Like I said. Suboptimal.’
‘Are you serious though?’
I didn’t really know if I was serious or not. I was mostly just venting. Was it something to actually consider?
‘Let me see your hand,’ she said.
She took my palm and studied it intently, like it was a bus schedule and she wanted to be sure she would get where she needed to go. It felt slightly weird that she was touching me. But, at the same time, I felt a zing dance up my spine.
She let go of my hand and looked me in the eyes.’ Look,’ she said, ‘I’m kind of desperate. Are you serious or not?’
‘Come on. You don’t want to do something dumb out of desperation.’
‘Maybe I haven’t got much choice.’
‘It can’t be that bad.’
‘I’ve got to move out of the place I’m at.’
‘Can’t you stay with someone for a while while you keep on looking?’
‘That’s what I’m doing now. I’ve way overstayed my welcome.’
‘Like you said, we don’t even know each other.’
‘You need a place, I need a place. We’re in the same boat.’
‘People don’t just meet on the street and move in together.’
‘It was your idea. I bet it happens all the time.’
I couldn’t believe that we were seriously talking about it. ‘What did you see when you looked at my palm?’ My spine hadn’t stopped tingling.
‘Nothing bad.’
‘And that’s good enough for you?’
‘Look. It’s like you said. We can go back up there and get this place right now. I’m willing to trust you. What do you say?’
So we went back up and told the manager. He asked if we were a couple. We told him we were. We gave him the first and last month’s rent and signed the lease. He gave us the keys.
—
It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon that I got things finished up at my old place. There hadn’t been any way to get in touch with the girl. We hadn’t exchanged phone numbers. I couldn’t remember her name. Megan? Something like that. I wasn’t even sure I’d recognize her if I passed her on the street. Brownish hair. Kind of plain.
Christ, what had I been thinking? I’m a pushover for crying girls. I go all knight-in-shining-armor. Now we were going to be living together! In a one-room studio apartment! With my name on a six-month lease!
What was all that crying about, anyway? Why was she so desperate to get out of her old place? And what about that palm reading business? Did I really want to be living with someone who had so easily thrown in her lot with a complete stranger? Did the fact that we told the manager that we were a couple somehow make us one in her mind? Would it have killed me to go out to dinner with her, or even just out for coffee, to get to know her just a tiny bit before signing my name on a six month lease? What in the world had I been thinking?
I knocked on the door of the apartment. No answer. I let myself in.
There were some jeans and blouses hanging in the closet, a couple of boxes on the shelf. A few jars and bottles on the bathroom counter. The living/bedroom was bare except for a thin yoga mat with a blanket and a pillow that lay in one corner like an unassuming beggar. You could still see the cleaning pattern on the carpet. She’d moved in, but with such a small footprint that you could barely tell.
It took me a few trips to haul up my stuff. The last item was my futon—just the mattress, queen size, no frame. It folds up into three sections, and I’m just able to manhandle it up and down stairs by myself. I put it in the opposite corner of the room from her little mat. It gave at least the impression of there being some furniture in the place.
I’d brought a few groceries. There was already some fruit and cheese in the fridge, a lonely box of tea in the cupboard, a couple pots and pans in the cabinet. I put my stuff along side. It was getting toward six. I sauteed some onions with turmeric and threw in some eggplant and tomatoes. I figured that would be OK whether she was vegetarian or not.
I was just fluffing the rice when there was a click in the lock. She came in. She had her hair tied back. I probably wouldn’t have recognized her. She was startled to see me. She’d gotten used to being there alone.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Hi,’ she said. She’d probably forgotten what I looked like too.
‘I would have called to let you know I was coming, but I didn’t have your number.’
‘It’s all right. Um, just a minute. I’ve really got to . . .’
The bathroom was right next to the front door. The walls weren’t very thick.
She came out. Neither of us knew what to say.
‘I made some rice and vegetables.’
‘I already ate. But thanks.’
‘So, how’s it going?’
‘So far so good.’
‘You’re all moved in?’
She looked around. You couldn’t see much that belonged to either one of us. Except for the futon and the mat, the living/bedroom was still completely empty.
‘Pretty much,’ she said.
—
So there we were. Roommates. The two of us now living together in this one little room.
It was a pretty awkward evening. I had to stand at the counter to eat my rice. She (I still couldn’t remember her name) sat down on her mat to read. I sat on the futon and fiddled with my computer for a bit, but my clicking made too much racket. I went out, walked the three blocks to work, scouted out a couple fast food places, strolled a bit in the other direction. Finally I came back to the apartment. She was still on her mat, still reading. She looked up when I came in.
‘Checking out the neighborhood,’ I said.
‘There’s a Safeway not too far.’
‘Yeah, I found it.’
She yawned. ‘I’m probably going to go to bed pretty soon.’
‘I should too. I usually get up at seven.’
‘OK, I can get up then too.’
‘I’ll try not to make any noise.’
‘It’s all right. I don’t mind getting up then.’
I unfolded the futon and spread a sheet over it. It didn’t seem right that I got to sl
eep on the futon and she had to sleep on her little mat.
‘I, um, noticed that your mat is pretty thin,’ I said. ‘What I do sometimes when I have people over is sleep cross-ways like this.’ I rolled out my sleeping bag perpendicular to the way you usually sleep. The foot of the bag went off the edge, but I put a pillow on the floor underneath to support it. The bag only took up one section of the futon, leaving the other two sections free.
‘There’s plenty of room for another person this way,’ I said. ‘If your pad is too thin, I mean.’
‘I’ll be all right,’ she said. She’d gotten up and was getting some things from the closet. ‘Do you mind if I . . . get ready first?’
‘Sure. Go ahead.’
She went into the bathroom. I heard the water running. After a few minutes she came out in a kimono-type robe. She knelt down on her mat, kind of geisha-like, and just knelt there, waiting, I guess, for me to leave the room.
So I went to take my turn in the bathroom. It looked like that’s where we’d be getting dressed and undressed. I used the toilet, brushed my teeth. I usually slept in my briefs, but I didn’t have a bathrobe, so I just kept my pants and tee shirt on.
When I came out, she was laying on her mat under the blankets, her robe neatly folded on the floor beside her.
‘OK to turn off the lights?’ I asked.
‘Mm-hmm,’ she replied.
I turned them off, took off my pants and tee shirt, and got under my sleeping bag.
‘Um,’ I said, across the room, ‘this is terrible, but I don’t remember your name.’
‘Magda,’ she said.
‘Right. Magda. Well. OK then. Good night.’
‘Night,’ she said.
What in the hell had I been thinking?
—
That first week was like walking on pins and needles. We were courteous and polite, like strangers at a mixer. After work on Thursday we went to IKEA and we each bought a stool for the counter and an easy chair. The chairs were pretty basic, but at least they were better than sitting on the floor.
By the weekend we were starting to get used to being in the same room together. She’d go about her business, I’d go about mine. The apartment was small, but it was bigger than a college dorm room and not that much worse than other places I’d lived.
We both tended vegetarian, although neither of us was really strict. She had a part time job during the day. She didn’t have a car, but she had a clunker bike and a bus pass. She didn’t go out much, spent most of her evenings home reading.
She was a pretty decent roommate, though, all things considered. She was considerate, responsible, quiet. Not too hard to be around. It was the first time I’d ever lived with a girl, but we went way out of our way to fend off any possibility of friction in that regard. If either of us needed privacy, we’d go into the bathroom. Otherwise we co-existed. To the casual observer we must have seemed like a couple of fairly bland, uninteresting asexuals.
That’s not to say that that’s the way I felt on the inside. My first impression of her had been that she was plain and a bit mousy, with her not-quite-shoulder-length brown hair and her quiet, round face. But as we got to know each other, I began to see that what I’d taken for plainness was really a subtle prettiness, and what I’d taken for blandness was really a gentle composure.
I kept sleeping sideways so it would be clear that the offer to share the futon was still in effect. One evening she asked if I was sure it would be all right. I guess she’d had enough of the mat. ‘I should get a futon of my own,’ she said. ‘But it would make the room so crowded.’
So while I arranged my sleeping bag, she moved her bedding over to the third section of the futon. Our two sections were far enough apart that we weren’t really that much closer than we had been before. The first couple nights we faced away from each other, but after that we got used to just ignoring each other and facing whichever way we wanted.
I wondered what she slept in. She was always very modest in her robe, and she always made a point to get under the blankets while I was in the bathroom, so I never got to see what she had on underneath. One morning, I woke up before the alarm went off. Her blanket was a bit askew, and I caught a glimpse of her naked back almost down to her waist. Did she sleep in the nude? I couldn’t imagine that she would sleep in the nude in the same bed with somebody of the opposite sex. Probably she wore panties but went topless, like me in my briefs. It wasn’t really any of my business, but it was pretty titillating to think of her lying right there beside me with hardly anything on.
—
One evening Magda had hay fever and was wheezing like a water buffalo.
‘I’m going to the store,’ I said. ‘Is there anything you need?’ I didn’t really need anything myself, but I thought she might need some tissue or something.
‘I’m OK,’ she sniffed.
‘Seriously, I’m just going to run over and come right back. So if there’s anything I can get you . . . ‘
She hesitated, then blushed. ‘I’m out of tampons,’ she sniffed.
Jeez! I hadn’t seen that coming.
She must have read the look on my face. ‘It’s OK,’ she sniffed, ‘I’ll go later.’
‘No, no, it’s all right. I don’t mind.’ Jeez! Would they even let me buy them? I could sort of picture what aisle they were on. But, Jeez! ‘Um, what kind . . .’
‘Here,’ she sniffed. She went into the bathroom and came back with an empty box.
Jeez! I took the box, steeling myself against cooties. I tried to memorize it so I wouldn’t have to actually take it with me. ‘Anything else?’
She shook her head. ‘Thanks,’ she sniffed.
Jeez! Well, I’d made the offer. It probably wasn’t the first time a guy had had to buy tampons. Had had to search for the right ones on the shelf. Had had to wheel them around in his cart. Had had to stand there while the cashier rang them up. I’d just pretend I was somebody else.
—
One evening, Magda was really nervous about something. Finally she brought it up. A friend of hers had broken up with her boyfriend. They’d been living together, but their relationship had been on the ropes. There’d been some kind of flareup, he’d hit her, she’d stormed out. She had someplace to stay for tonight, but needed someplace to stay tomorrow.
‘I really, really wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t kind of an emergency, but do you think we could we put her up here? Just for a couple of nights? I know it will be crowded, but I promise she won’t be any trouble. I know it’s asking a lot, but, please, do you think it would be all right?’
At first I was a bit ticked off. Our place was already pretty crowded. It would be a major inconvenience. Why couldn’t she go somewhere else? But the way that Magda was asking was so sincere that I could tell it was really important to her. If it had been a friend of mine, I probably would have expected her to understand. It probably wouldn’t really be that much of an inconvenience. I thought of the untold number of random people who had spent an untold number of nights at other places I’d lived. So I grumblingly told her OK.
The next evening the two of them were there when I got home from work. Alona was tall and dark, relatively pretty, especially from certain angles. She did her best to be an affable house guest, but she didn’t always manage to disguise her disdain for the male gender. It was hard to tell whether this was just related to recent events or whether it was more deep seated. We didn’t mention her situation, but it was pretty clear she thought I was judging every little thing she said and did.
Magda and I hadn’t had a chance to discuss the sleeping arrangements. I had no idea what she’d told Alona about the two of us, but I guess it kind of hurt my pride to think about having to sleep crossways with Magda in front of her. So when it was getting toward bed time, I got Magda’s mat and put it in its old corn
er and spread my sleeping bag out on top of it.
‘I was thinking maybe we could all three fit crossways on the futon,’ Magda said.
‘This will be more comfortable,’ I replied, in my father-knows-best voice.
Magda gave me a look that only a roommate could give.
It was a little complicated orchestrating the bathroom. Magda came out in a pair of pajamas that I didn’t even know she owned. Alona came out in a long tee shirt that I didn’t dare check too closely. Magda arranged her sheet and blanket for the two of them to sleep beside each other the normal way. I hadn’t even thought of that. I did my usual slip-out-of-my-jeans routine once the lights were out. The mat wasn’t very comfortable at all.
The next night was a little more relaxed. Magda made macaroni and cheese. We had a nice discussion about a couple of recent movies. Alona came to the realization that I was a real person and not just a stereotype. She suddenly became interested in Magda’s and my relationship. Only one futon, and it queen size. She fished, but we were elusive. She flirted, subtly, but I let her know, subtly, that her flirtations, while appreciated, were misdirected. This intrigued her no end, and she was still trying to puzzle it all out when we all went to bed.
The next night she wasn’t there.
‘A friend of a friend of a friend,’ said Magda. ‘A house with five other people, but at least she’s got a room of her own.’
‘Doing better than we are.’
‘Listen, thanks for letting her stay. Really. I owe you big time.’
‘Don’t mention it. Seriously. Any friend of yours . . .’
—
The nights were getting warmer, to the point that it was starting to get uncomfortable sleeping under my sleeping bag. One morning I mentioned that I was going to switch back to sleeping the normal way, with just a sheet and a blanket.
When I came home that evening, I was surprised to find the futon folded out and made up like a real bed. There were new sheets, put on the right way, a blanket, and our two pillows side by side. The futon had been rotated out from the wall so that we would still be facing the same direction as before, but now we’d be sleeping the normal way, her on one side, me on the other.
I was kind of irked that she would do this without asking. Kind of surprised too, because it seemed so brazen. At the same time, the new arrangement did look pleasantly homey. And the sight of our two pillows laying there side by side brought back the tingles to my spine.
Magda was quite pleased with herself. ‘I stopped at Target,’ she said. ‘The sheets weren’t really that expensive. Maybe you can buy a set too, for when we need to change them.’
I couldn’t figure out why she was so pleased and why she thought I would go along with it. ‘Um, this morning when I said I was going to change to a sheet and a blanket I just meant instead of my sleeping bag. I didn’t mean we should stop sleeping sideways.’
Her face reddened. She shut up like a clam.
‘I guess there was a misunderstanding,’ I said.
‘I’ll put things back,’ she said.
‘What did you think I meant?’
‘I thought you meant like this.’
‘I mean, we’d basically be sleeping together.’
She reddened further. ‘That’s what I thought too. But when Alona was here, it seemed a lot wider than I thought. So I thought maybe that’s why you thought it would be OK.’
‘I mean, do you really think we’d be able to sleep this way without . . . bothering each other?’
She went over and lay down on her side, putting her head on the pillow and crossing her hands over her stomach. There did seem to be a fair amount of space. I lay down on my side, then turned to face her. She was definitely within arm’s reach, but if I kept my arms to myself we were reasonably separated.
‘What do you think?’ I asked.
She blushed. ‘I just misunderstood. I’ll put things back the way they were.’
‘It does make it look more like a real room.’
She didn’t say anything, leaving it up to me to make the final decision. There was that tingle again.
‘I’d just want to be sure that . . . we each had enough privacy,’ I said.
She still didn’t say anything.
‘Well, it is already set up this way,’ I said. ‘I guess we can try it tonight to see how it goes.’
When I came out of the bathroom she was lying with her back to me, as close to the edge as she could get. I got in in the mirror position on my side. You could have driven a city bus between us, but we made it through the night without incident. By the next evening this new arrangement no longer seemed like all that big a deal.
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