My Best Friend Emily Ch. 06

"So, any other stories to share?" Emily asked after a few moments, eager to change the subject. "Joe? Anything?"

"I'll tell you one story from my freshman year," I said.

"Oh, goodie!" Emily said, clapping her hands, "Joe has a story!"

"Well, it's not as great as you'd hope," I said, "But it's something... sexual. It was during my freshman year," I began, "And my roommate, well, he was kind of an ass. One weekend his girlfriend came up from whatever school she had gone to. Listening to his side of their phone conversations... was sickening," I added, "Bleh. But anyway, we were all underage but we were able to score a six pack and drank it in the room."

"The girl, she was, forgive me both of you, a hottie, long blonde hair, a tall, skinny girl with nice boobs. My roommate was able to get a girl like her because he had honed his 'nice guy' persona. That's what made listening to him talk to her on the phone so sickening. The way he talked to her... it wasn't the way he talked to anyone else. All sugary and baby this, baby that. What a phony. Anyway we didn't do anything much, just sat around drinking the beer and watching TV and talking until late, and then we went to sleep. And Drew, my roommate, the idiot knew I was a light sleeper and an insomniac, so god knows why he dared to do what he did next, but after half an hour or so I start to hear moaning."

"Oh man, you got to witness some roommate sex?" Emily all but shouted.

"Well, it was pitch black," I said, "And I was on the other side of the room. And I'm lying there pissed as hell, like, what was he thinking? What was the girl thinking?"

"Maybe they were hoping you'd join in," Emily cut in again.

I shushed her. "It's all the girl moaning, too, so I'm thinking he's getting her off. It certainly didn't sound like they were actually fucking. But it goes on, and on, and I'm lying there thinking I really want to get some fucking sleep, and I was a little buzzed... so..." I started giggling because even ten years later the thought of what I did cracked me up, "I got out of bed... and I went to the closet and found where I kept a bag of potato chips... and I pulled up a desk chair... right in front of their bed... and I just sat the fuck down... right by the bed... and I took a potato chip and... CRUNCH," by this point I was laughing so hard I couldn't speak.

Emily and Lisa were laughing too. "Oh my God," Emily said, "What did they do?"

It took me several seconds before I could pick up the story again. "They jumped! All of a sudden you see the sheets flying. Drew jumps out of the bed; he's still in his boxers, at least. The girl, whatever state of undress she was in, she was hidden under the sheets. I made a point of not looking too closely, damn my upbringing. And Drew, he's like, 'oh my God, I thought you were sleeping, I'm so sorry.' And I was just like, yeah whatever, and I put the chips away and went to bed. Needless to say," I added, "The girl never slept over in our room again."

"Oh my God, that was so funny," Emily said. "I would've tried to climb in bed with them, but that's me."

"I've got a roommate story too," Lisa suddenly said, and we turned to look at her. "Well, mine was kind of different. I told you my freshman roommate was an alcoholic, but when she went on her benders she stayed away. Well, one night right at the end of the school year, I mean, my last night on campus, because I had just finished my last final and was leaving in the morning, she suddenly stumbles in, and I can tell, she's wasted. I was still awake, packing, and I was startled to see her. And she kind of looks around the room, and focuses on me, and she shouts, 'hey, Lisa! How's school going?' And she staggers over to her bed and plops down, and she just starts talking."

"Her speech is slurred and I don't understand half of what she's saying to me. She's going on and on and... I'm thinking... I really wanted to have another sexual experience before I left school. And my roommate... she was... well... the opposite of Debbie. She was blonde and gorgeous. She was from Fargo, North Dakota, and when she was lucid she had the cutest accent. So I sat down on the bed next to her, and she just kept talking and talking. I don't know if she even knew what she was saying, but I pretended I was having a conversation with her, and I inched closer to her, and when she said something that she thought was funny, I laughed, and I used it as an excuse to put my hand on her knee."

"And she just kept going. She seemed totally oblivious to what I was trying to do. I ended up waiting for her to stop to take a breath, and I kissed her. And she... reeked of alcohol, but I didn't care. I thought she would push me away and freak out, but she didn't. I don't really know if she was into it or too drunk to realize what was happening, but she didn't try to stop me. So we were making out... and I was getting turned on, so I start playing with her boobs. And I pulled off her top... and her bra... and she kind of fell back onto the bed... and I took off the rest of her clothes... and I took off mine... and she... well... she was still awake... she was kind of mumbling."

"I started playing with her boobs... touching them and playing with her nipples... I was fascinated. I never played with myself. Masturbation is a sin, you know. And Debbie was basically flat-chested. These were real boobs. The first pair I ever played with. And it was... nice. And when I got my fill of her boobs... I went down to her... you know... and I played with that. And I think she was pretty much unconscious by then, but I didn't care. I explored with my fingers... all the different spots... and I got down there with my mouth... and she was... so sweet... but I was getting no response from her, so eventually I stopped. I pulled the sheets over her, put my nightgown on and went to bed. I cried myself to sleep, I was so frustrated."

"But masturbation was a sin," Lisa said again. She shifted uneasily in her seat, looking from me to Emily. We were both just staring at her. "In the morning she was still out cold. I checked to make sure she was still breathing, and I went down to breakfast. When I came back she was gone. My parents came and moved my stuff out and... well... I never saw or heard from her again. Sometimes I wonder if... she even knew... if she remembered anything that happened that night." Lisa blinked, and a tear rolled down her cheek. "I've never told anybody about that, not even in confession. I feel so horrible, like, I should look her up and apologize. But I never tried. So... that's my story. I'm no better than those disgusting frat boys I was so scared of. I took advantage of a drunk girl."

Lisa trailed off, and I realized that she was waiting for us to say something, to comfort her or condemn her. I glanced at Emily, and we made eye contact. I was speechless. I was hoping Emily would have something to say, and as usual she ended up doing something I didn't expect. She laughed. "You're lucky that girl didn't piss all over you when you were going down on her," she said.

"Wh... what?" Lisa asked. That wasn't the response she was expecting.

"And no... odds are she didn't remember a thing in the morning," Emily continued. "I'm sorry. I have no respect for girls like that. Those 'poor' girls that didn't know when to stop, who drank themselves into oblivion and put themselves in vulnerable positions. The ones that were naïve enough to or out of control enough to put themselves in those kinds of situations. I did some scary things, but I knew my limits. I never lost control of myself, not completely. I never woke up in the morning and didn't know where I was or what I did the night before. I always had kind of a sense about who I could trust, like that guy in New York. I knew, I just knew, that nothing bad would happen."

"So I have no sympathy for your roommate, I'm sorry," Emily said. "I have much more sympathy for you," Emily said, "That you felt like you had to resort to taking advantage of someone like that, that you didn't think you could get yourself off when you needed release."

Lisa was just staring at Emily. She couldn't believe her reaction. "Yeah, but, you know, she probably trusted me," Lisa said, "She probably thought, I drank too much, and I'll just go back to my room and sleep it off. What could happen to me there?"

"Do you want to see if we can look her up?" I asked. I was already on my feet, heading to go get my laptop. Lisa didn't believe in social media. She wasn't on Facebook or Twitter. She never cared to look up old friends and didn't care if anyone was looking for her. I fired up my laptop and went back to the living room. I sat back down; the laptop perched on my lap. I opened up Google. "Okay," I said to Lisa, "What's the girl's name?"

Lisa told me. Luckily it was a pretty long, distinctive Scandinavian name. It wouldn't be too hard to find her, if there was anything to find, I thought. Sure enough, the first hit on the page confirmed the worst thing imaginable:

WOMAN, 26, DIES OF DRUG OVERDOSE

The story was from four years ago, and it described Lisa's roommate's long battle with alcohol and drug addiction, how her family and friends tried to get her into rehab, how she finally overdosed on a combination of alcohol and painkillers she had stolen from her father's medicine cabinet.

"Oh my God!" Lisa wailed, and she burst into tears. Emily and I just let her cry it out. "It could be my fault," Lisa eventually said, "At least a little."

"Hey," Emily said to get Lisa's attention. "Whatever that girl was running from, the demons were inside her long before she ever met you. I'm sorry you won't get to talk to her, to find out if she remembered, to apologize, to get your closure, but you can't feel guilty. This wasn't about you."

Lisa sniffled. "I know you think so," Lisa said, "But I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive myself. Whether or not she remembered and whatever effect it may have had on her, I did a pretty horrible thing."

"All of us have done something horrible to someone else at some point in their lives," Emily said, "Lied to someone, cheated at cards, stole... well not necessarily stole... borrowed clothes and never gave it back... cut someone off in traffic..."

"You think what I did was the same as cutting somebody off in traffic?" Lisa asked incredulously. "I violated that poor girl." Emily looked like she was about to say something else, but Lisa cut her off. "Look, I appreciate your attempts to downplay it, but you're not making me feel any better. I have to live with it..." Lisa mumbled. She turned to look at me. I was still speechless. I had no idea what to say to her. Lisa rose to her feet. "Look, it's late, and I'm pretty tired. I just want to go to sleep." She looked at me, and she looked at Emily, and then she turned and headed to the bedroom.

After Lisa left Emily and I stared at each other for a few seconds. I wondered what Emily really thought about what Lisa did. As usual, what Emily said next was completely unexpected. "It kind of helps you understand priests, doesn't it?" Emily asked.

"What?" I asked. "Huh?"

"Well, sexual repression," Emily continued, "The things you end up doing. The things you tell yourself are okay. Sexuality is such a fundamental part of who we are. Denying it leads to all sorts of things. It's like Matt Damon said in Dogma, 'if only they'd let us jerk off every once in a while.'" Emily chuckled. "You haven't said anything," Emily added, "What do you think?"

I paused to collect my thoughts. "I think pretty much like you do," I said, "Poor Lisa. She did a horrible thing, and she's had to live with it. She's going to have to live with it. I mean, Lisa said that the girl was kissing her back," I added, "Maybe she really did want to, maybe if she wasn't so drunk..." I trailed off. "I don't know." I mumbled. "What I do think is that we shouldn't leave her alone right now."

"Okay," Emily said, and we stood up and went into the master bedroom. Lisa had changed into her nightgown and was climbing into bed.

"Leave me alone. I mean it," Lisa said threateningly.

"No," I said to her. "Not this time."

"We care about you," Emily said.

Lisa stared at us, her face inscrutable. "Fine," she finally said. "But I just want to sleep. I'm not in the mood for anything else." She slid under the sheets and closed her eyes.

Emily and I looked at each other. I could sense what she was thinking. All of the sexy stories we were telling was going to be foreplay. The sobering ending to the night killed the mood for me, but Emily's sex drive was stronger. She shrugged, and I nodded. She suddenly turned and walked back to her room, and I began to think that maybe I misread her intentions, that she intended to leave me alone with Lisa and sleep in the spare bedroom. I stripped to my boxers and climbed into bed. I put my arm around Lisa and kissed her cheek, but she didn't budge.

Just then Emily reemerged, wearing a long pink Victoria's Secret nightgown, not unlike the ones that Lisa liked. She moved silently around the room until she was on the far side of our king sized bed. I watched her move around the room. She stopped at the side of the bed, and glanced to make sure that Lisa was still facing the other way with her eyes closed. She took hold of the hem of the nightgown with both hands, slowly lifting it up until it was above her breasts, to show me that she was wearing nothing underneath. She let the nightgown fall back down, smiling at me. She climbed into bed, and we arranged ourselves so that I was in the middle, Lisa curled up on her usual side of the bed, and Emily on the other.

"Goodnight," Emily whispered, and I felt her brush her hand against my boxers. I felt myself growing hard at her touch. Damn her, I thought to myself, trying to will my arousal away. Turnabout is fair play, I thought to myself. "Goodnight," I whispered back, reaching around to caress her breast. Emily exhaled sharply and shifted in her place, and I smiled, knowing I had the same effect on her.

As usual, sleep did not come easily that night. The afternoon nap didn't help, but the events of the evening kept playing over and over in my mind. I thought about what Emily said, about people denying their sexuality and how it makes them crazy. Lisa was raised in a horrible environment. Keeping things to herself was the only way she knew how to deal with anything. In a way it was a big step that she was finally telling me her secrets. She shared the truth about her sexual preferences, her kinky side, and the horrible truth about what she did with her roommate.

I spent a long time trying to reconcile my feelings about that story. I felt like I should be been horrified, or outraged, but I wasn't. Did Lisa take advantage of her roommate? Yes. If the girl had woken up in the morning had remembered what had happened, had determined that she had been violated... had gone to tell someone about it... well obviously that didn't happen. Did she really not remember it at all? Did she wake up and simply not care? Did she chalk it up to just another in a long series of mornings of waking up and not knowing where she was, how she got there, or what had happened to her? Did she remember Lisa kissing her, touching her, and was simply too embarrassed to face her?

The different possibilities started going around and around in my mind, and I finally decided that I couldn't condemn Lisa for her actions, and pushed those thoughts from my mind. I thought about the events of the day, the angry sex I had with Emily in the morning, the muddy, rainy encounter I had with Lisa, and the role-playing adventure I walked in on and became a part of. I had to fight off another wave of arousal. After an hour or more of lying there thinking I finally felt exhaustion setting in, and drifted off to sleep, wondering what tomorrow would bring.

I hope you enjoyed this story. It was more about character development than sex, obviously, and I hope that nothing was too disturbing for anyone. I also hope that the fact that this story didn't focus completely on sex didn't bore you all, and lastly, in the words of Garth at the end of the Wayne's World movie, "I just hope you didn't think it sucked." As always, feedback is appreciated if not openly solicited.