Housemate Soap Opera
Even though I'm not exactly
young anymore, my girlfriend and I still live like we're in college, basically, sharing a flat with 2 other unrelated people. One of them is an
asshole, who we were sort of friends with back in
Ann Arbor and then L.A., and so when we moved to
San Francisco he was one of the few people we knew (he having moved up from L.A. 6 months before we moved up from L.A.), and so he was a natural choice when desperately looking for a person to share a flat with (San Franicsco housing tends to encourage frantic behavior. If you find
one place that's actually available and affordable, you do almost
anything to get it). Anyway, after 5 years living in this flat with this guy, who we'll call "MK", i have gradually (actually after the 2nd year or so) concluded that he's an asshole.
But that's another story. Maybe I will at some later date make a node about him. Anyway The 4th housemate, who has been living here for 2 years now, is a woman who we'll call "Maiden". Maiden is 5 or 6 years younger than the rest of us, and when she moved in, she was actually still a virgin. It was kind of hard to believe when my girlfriend first told me that Maiden had told her of this. But they had started to develop a womanly rapport and so Maiden entrusted this fact. As I got to know her better I started to understand that this lack of experience was not really that suprising. Maiden lives in sort of post-ironic fantasy world of Fred Astaire films and Harlequin Romance novels, a sort of
state of knowing delusion, where she convinces herself that she is aware of how cheesy, innocent and naive she is, but on another level she is actually cheesy, innocent and naive. Oh, and also dumb.
Well, eventually the thing that should only happen in sitcoms and and soap operas happened, a totally fucked-up thing that made me almost ill when I realized it was happening - you guessed it, Maiden and MK were fucking. To know this naive little pretender girl was deflowered by this dickhead was really annoying enough. But then it was even more annoying knowing that this could not last. Sure enough, she was deliriously happy, like some 13 year old in some horrible trite afterschool special. Then after 2 months he of course grew tired of her, told her he "didn't have time for a relationship", and that was that.
But, no one moved out. Remember, this is San Francisco, where even 1996 rents are insane, but 1999 rents are even worse. No one moves out unless they're carried out, in handcuffs or a coffin. Good ol' rent control! Anyway, it gets worse. Then Maiden eventually got a new boyfriend, a real boyfriend with a sort of real, sweet idea of real, sweet courtship, etc etc blah blah. But, but, omigod this is the worst part - a few weeks ago, she apparently was bored with sweet boyfriend, and she went and slept with the jerk again! But she wasn't dumping sweet boyfriend, no, she just needed a little sympathy and commiseration from original number one man, and maybe a quick seeing-to also, eh, nudge nudge, wink wink... oh god i'm really stooping to a low level here.
Well, the latest episode in this sordid drama is that Maiden announced today that she is going on a trip to Colorado with sweet boyfriend, to visit his relatives!!! She pretty much knows she isn't really happy with him, but she just strings him along, meanwhile fucking the housemate on the side. eewww. it just makes me shiver with revulsion.
I wouldn't give a rat's ass about this normally, but this is all going on across the hall from my bedroom. And of course whenever i express to my girlfriend how repugnant I think the situation is, she goes on the defensive, sticking up for Maiden. I just don't want to live on the set of The Young and the Restless, okay? please?