02.26.04

All about Rob and I

I feel I should explain my relationship with my roommate Rob. I know I say I hate him� but I don�t really� at least, not always. He can be a real sweetie sometimes, but other times he can be a real asshole. Here is the story of how we met and stuff.

I was a freshman in college when I first met Robbie. It was a week or two after Labor Day, and I was in the cafeteria eating a late dinner alone. This guy came up and asked if he could sit down with me. He was wearing a shirt that had the name of a high school near where I live. The two of us talked for a while and discovered that we were from the same area, and that he was also in the honors program at our school. When we finished our dinners, we both went off to do whatever, and that was it.

A week or so later, there was a hurricane heading towards the area the school is in. I spent most of the day before we had to get evacuated in my room trying to figure out what to do. I didn�t want to go to the shelter, call me odd. Anyways, by about dinner time, I had just given up on the idea of finding something else to do, so I was in the courtyard of my dorm, talking to various people that lived in it, including my RA. We wound up talking for ages about many things until finally everyone decided to go to bed. I decided to follow them, even though I wasn�t really tired. I was headed towards my room, talking to some girl, and when we were almost at my door, a few doors down, a head popped out of a room. Believe it or not, it was this guy I had been talking to a week or so before! I was rather surprised, and so was he, I think. Somehow I got invited into his dorm room, met his roommate, Chris, and was invited over to Chris�s parent�s place for the duration of the evacuation. I wound up spending 3 or 4 days with them, and we all sort of became friends.

From about that point on, I started hanging out in their room, because then I wouldn�t be alone. Right before I met Rob the first time, my roommate (who was my best friend from back home) had decided to not go to UNF and to go to Embry-Riddle instead, so my room was lonely to sit around in after classes, and I had no car to get myself anywhere. It sucked before we became friends. Rob had a girlfriend at that time, so it was pointless to even think of him that way, so things were cool. Sometimes I�d even sleep in their room because it was late and I didn�t care. Up until about Valentine�s Day, life was groovy. Rob is charismatic, as I�ve said before, so he was friends with lots of people, and I met many of them. T.J., who was in my honors class was friends with him, as was his roommate. Through Rob and Chris I met Rex, Logan, Renee, Heather, Jewish Mike and lots of other people that I wouldn�t have met otherwise. Rob got me and Chris playing on a mud, and he got Chris, Logan, TJ and I all playing D&D regularly. Life was groovy.

Valentine�s Day is a reference for when things changed. Rob had gone home the weekend before to do something incredibly romantic for his girlfriend, and she had broken up with him. He was very upset. Not that long after, I was doing what was a standard thing at that time, and sleeping in Rob�s bed with him, and when I was half-asleep (and thought he was too�) he started rubbing my back and, well, there was touching and, I wound up giving him a blow job. I feel really uncomfortable discussing this so... deal with me as I say that basically... beyond some oral sex nothing ever really happened with him, I still haven�t had sex. This was the first time something sexual had ever happened with me. I have never had a boyfriend, and this just screwed with my head a bit. I remember for the first week, just.. writing down all of my agonies during math class (it was Calc 2, and I would�ve passed it if I hadn�t slept through the final�), actually staying in my own room and trying to figure out how I felt about Rob and since I had felt the same way about him as I did all my other male friends� did I want to do that with them too? It truly screwed with my head a bit. Eventually, I mentally decided �if it feels good, do it,� but some things had occurred to me by then.

What had occurred to me? Well, due to some friendly influence.. I think someone tried to subtly warn me off so that Logan could have Rob. When she did that, I already had my suspicions, but she pretty much confirmed them all. Logan spent as many, if not more nights with Rob as I did. I remember, that first night, thinking �does he think I�m Logan? Do they do this??� A question that was finally answered� well, the latter one was, at least. Thing is, even with the warning I didn�t stop. I don�t know if it was that I felt I couldn�t be friends with them if I didn�t do stuff with him or what. It just� happened. And then when we went home for the summer, Rob and I lived closer than he and Logan. We were almost caught by his mom more than once; and I had better sense than to try it in my house, where guys weren�t allowed down the hall (a rule I broke once, because I had forgotten it�), so we spent a lot of time together, and Logan came down to visit a few times. I have since talked to Logan about this later period, and found out both of us knew about each other, but were still OK with each other.

It eventually wound up that I wasn�t going back to UNF that next fall. I had screwed up hugely that spring semester, and my parents made me stay home. Probably the smartest thing I did that year. So, Rob and Logan went off to school together, and wound up dating. I was home, and when I heard that� she�d won. I pretty much stopped talking to everyone up here in Jacksonville. It was halfway through anger, halfway to help me deal with the Rob issue. We still talked on the mud, whenever I got on, and Logan got on the mud too. The two of us became more friends with each other during this time.. and I went to community college at home. This went on for two years until I graduated from BCC. Throughout this period, they came down a lot, but I was always working. I never intentionally missed any visits; they visited over the weekends when I was busy with work. They broke up at the beginning of the second year, and Logan got an online boy she liked, who is now my friend as well (hey Aggie!), but eventually she went back to Rob. By the time I moved up here again in October of 2002, they had broken up again. They were skipping lots of school and I had no job so.. I had time to talk to both of them to discover stuff. One night, Logan and I got shit-faced drunk (made our own �four horsemen��) and she told me something that shocked me. It was apparently the first time they broke up� why they broke up� brought me to a screeching halt. I couldn�t believe my ears. The news wasn�t against my beliefs, so I accepted and continued on with life. Other things I got told that I later noticed that drive me nuts about Rob: he doesn�t believe that one can be depressed and not be able to do anything about it. He feels that to cheer up, one just has to think happy thoughts. He�s a slob. He says he insults me because he likes me.

Ok, so now y�all are wondering what the hell I�m doing here with a guy who screwed me over and I seem to hate for various reasons. The answer is that I don�t hate him. He really gets to me from time to time, but I deal with that. I�ve learned to live with the fact that he�s a serial flirt (all of his stories from school involve a �hot girl�), and deal with the fact that he flirts with me too. I just know that I�m not going to make a mistake and even think about dating the boy. He�s not for me. When he and Logan get together, they annoy the fuck out of me, because� well, its hard to describe. Right now Logan is dating someone living with his aunt, and he doesn�t feel happy about it at all.

So, that�s it. How I met Rob, and sort of how we wound up where we are now. I keep my distance, and he flirts with all the girls we see. As for the effect he had on me� this is probably the first time I�ve told most, if not all of the story to anyone. I lost my ability to trust my instincts on stuff. I second-guess all my decisions regarding guys. My male friends now get less trust than they did before. Huh. One could almost say I�ve grown up.