A Bad Idea I'm About to Do (18 page)

“Yo, cousin, you want to get some food?” he asked no one in particular as the assembled roommates hung out in our living room one afternoon.

“Nah, Nick,” Jesse said, “we all just ate. Sorry, man.”

“Yo, cousin,” Nick answered. “That's fine. Let's rock some Tecmo Bowl, yo.”

“Dude,” Eric said, “stop calling everyone ‘cousin.' And we're not gonna play Tecmo Bowl right now, you can see that we're all watching TV.”

“Whattup, cousin?” Nick replied. “You busy being a studio prankster?”

You have to realize that Nick was the most stiff, stuffy white guy I'd ever met. His natural voice sounded like the one every black stand-up comedian uses to mock white people. So to have him call us “cousin” or a “mark ass buster,” to have him throw fist pounds and talk like a '90s rap-era gangsta, was at first amusing, then confusing, and then, after a few days, deeply and profoundly irritating.

After his
Fight Club
–driven renaissance, Nick somehow managed to befriend a crew of guys from a nearby frat house. He was thrilled to hang out with these guys, though it was clear
from the outside perspective that they brought him around as a joke. Nick once regaled us with a tale of how he'd gotten into a “fight” alongside his new buddies.

“You go out and get in fights now?” Mark asked.

“Yeah, cousin,” Nick answered. “It's awesome. It's just like
Fight Club
. Fa' real.”

“What happened?” Anthony asked.

“Well, we were at a party,” Nick said. “And this guy stepped up. So I was like, ‘Yo cousin what's the problem?'”

“Stop saying ‘cousin,' ” Eric interjected.

“So he kept talking shit, like a punk,” Nick continued, “and my friends took him down. I ran up and kicked him a few times. It ruled.”

“So you just kicked a guy who was already beaten up?” Jesse asked.

“Yeah, cousin,” Nick answered. “No doubt.”

“You understand that's not being in a fight, right?” Mark asked. “That's just kicking a guy when he's down.”

“Word up,” Nick answered.

No one believed Nick's stories and he must have sensed that his phony posturing was annoying all of us. It was obvious no one wanted to hang out with him, and he began to realize that when he was home people found excuses to leave. So in what was a deviously clever move, he tried to win back favor with our housemates by targeting me.

Meanwhile, I'd also spent the semester slowly losing my mind due to the physical condition of our house. It was completely disgusting. We'd all moved in thinking we would live that fun Animal House archetype, an anything-goes, lovable lifestyle. But in reality, living in filth and mayhem is unsanitary at best and maddening at worst. The smells that emanated from
our kitchen didn't belong in first-world nations. I was the only roommate interested in cleaning and I once spent an hour searching our kitchen for the source of one foul stench, only to find a completely full gallon of milk under a pile of pizza boxes on the floor. Between the camel crickets and the stench, I was at my limit.

I begged my roommates to help me clean, and on a few occasions I lost it and yelled at them. Nick knew that the other roommates bristled at me for this. Nobody likes getting yelled at, especially when they're nineteen. Nick turned his insanity in my direction, and the other roommates egged him on, finding humor in how angry he could make me. If he couldn't get them to like him on his own he would try to bond with them by tormenting me.

I once came home to find Nick in my room, rifling through my mini-fridge. I'd wondered who'd been stealing my food for a while, and was glad to catch him in the act.

“Yo, cousin, you need to clean this thing out,” Nick told me, nonplussed at being caught. “This pasta's been in here for, like, a week.” He grinned and left. I became the butt of jokes about the incident for a full week or two.

On another occasion, I was alone in the living room watching television. Nick walked out of his bedroom and, for no reason, went up to the television and shut it off. Then he laughed at me and walked away.

“Yo, cousins,” Nick said to the rest of the roommates later that night, right in front of me. “You should have seen it. I bitched Chris hard and he didn't do shit.”

It was all beginning to add up, and the thing that finally pushed me over the edge was the infamous donut incident.

One night I came home from class and my roommates were sitting in our living room. I walked into the kitchen and saw a
ravaged box of Dunkin' Donuts on our table. Icing was smeared everywhere and the torn and empty box lay on its side.

I calmly walked back to the living room.

“Guys, I don't know whose donuts these were, but they should probably clean up that mess before the camel crickets descend upon us,” I said.

Some of my roommates snickered. Others looked awkward.

“Yeah,” Nick grinned. “The owner of those donuts should clean them up.”

Everybody laughed. I rolled my eyes and walked away. I wasn't going to play another one of Nick's weird games. The next day, Eric and I went out to lunch and he let me know that I had already been playing one unwittingly.

“Those were your donuts,” he told me. “Your brother dropped by the house in the afternoon. Your mom sent the donuts with him. Nick ate all of them to fuck with you.”

When I was in college, a dozen donuts were worth as much to me as roughly $4,000 cash would be today. I was heartbroken. My mom had sent them. And Forman had removed that act of goodwill from my life before I even knew about it. And eating twelve donuts in an hour isn't a pleasant experience. That can only be done as a malicious act. It's silly to say, but out of all the things Nick did to me, I don't think I would have hated him half as much if I'd been able to eat one measly donut.

It broke me. I spent as much time as possible outside of the house, and when I was home, I tended to sit in my room and avoid everyone. Nick had won.

T
hat year I had joined a comedy troupe that performed shows one weekend a semester. Looking back on it now, I'd have to say
the troupe wasn't at the cutting edge of comedy. We played those painful-to-watch improv games where you have to wear funny hats and shit, and where halfway through a scene you have to all of a sudden pretend you're Nicolas Cage, things like that. But it was my introduction to performing, the first comedy I'd done, and it was the only thing I cared about. I wanted it to go well. I needed to prove that I had what it took, and if I bombed I wouldn't be asked back.

As that semester's shows approached I told a few of my friends about it, and word spread to my roommates. Of course, Nick heard about it, too, and despite the fact that he and I never spoke anymore, he tagged along. The show was going along fine until about five minutes before intermission.

“Yo,” a voice shouted from the crowd. I froze as I recognized it was Nick.

“That girl,” he continued, “is not funny.”

The crowd gasped, and my friend Jill, who was in the middle of a scene, went white with embarrassment. A dark energy came over the room as Nick continued to heckle us intermittently.

After intermission, he launched into a full-on assault.

Among the many things he shouted were the phrases “Chris Gethard is a trick ass bitch,” “Fuck you studio pranksters,” and the one that he repeated over thirty times for no reason, “Free Mumia.” He was relentless.

Afterward, I was furious. The show had been ruined and since Nick was there because of me, I was responsible. The cast told me not to worry about it. We hung out that night and I didn't get home until late. The next morning, I wrapped a towel around my waist and headed upstairs to take a shower.

To my surprise, a dozen of my friends and roommates were gathered in our living room. Sitting in the middle, holding court, was Nick. When I entered, everyone stopped talking. I continued
toward the bathroom. I had no interest in reinitiating the drama from the previous night, but Nick had other plans.

“Yo, cousin,” he said, “you want to talk about what happened?”

“Nah, I'm good,” I replied, “let's just forget about it.” I smiled and kept going.

“I had one thing I wanted to say,” he yelled from behind me.

I stopped.

“At least one of us was funny last night.”

Everyone burst out laughing. I had officially reached my breaking point. Steal my food? Sure. Target me for the amusement of others? Why not? Insult my friends? You're pushing it, but if they manage to calm me down we'll be fine. Tell me I'm not funny? Apparently that's what it took to send me into an unrestrained blackout rage. I turned and sprinted into the room, holding my towel tightly around my waist.

“What the fuck is your problem, dude?” I screamed in Nick's face. “What are you going for? You want to fucking fight me? Let's fucking fight, then.”

Dumbfounded, Nick just stared at me. The room was completely silent.

“It's been all year with this fucking bullshit,” I shouted. “Why don't you fucking get up and fight me right now, motherfucker?”

There was a long pause. Nick was frozen with confusion, and the rest of the onlookers were horrified—either at my behavior or at the sight of my pale, spindly body. There was a long stretch of quiet as Nick stared at me. Finally, he realized I wasn't going to back down this time.

“Are you crazy?” he said, laughing. “I'm so much bigger than you. I'll kill you.”

“I don't fucking think so, man,” I shouted. “But fine, get up and fucking beat the shit out of me. That way we can all fucking move on.”

Nick sat still. He was no longer laughing. He looked scared. Scared of a pasty guy he outweighed by forty pounds, who was wearing nothing but a towel.

“Come on,” I said. “Let's fucking do it. Let's fucking fight, you pussy. Stand up.”

He remained frozen. He couldn't look anyone in the eye. He stared at the floor.

“You fucking pussy,
stand up
,” I screamed. “Are you just gonna sit there?”

Nick started to speak, then stopped. He cleared his throat.

“What, motherfucker?” I asked.

“Fine,” he said, his voice shaking. “Let me just put my contacts in.”

He sat still, staring at me.

“Did you just say . . . put your contacts in?” Jesse asked, shaking his head.

Eric started laughing.

“Dude . . . ,” he said, “you're a fucking pussy.”

“Put your contacts in?” our friend Sean echoed.

The room erupted in laughter. Nick had postured for a full year; then, when the moment of truth came, he buckled.

I, on the other hand, had shown I was willing to drop my towel and fight him, nude, in front of a dozen people. After a year of being Nick's whipping boy, I needed only five short minutes of crazy behavior to earn back the respect of my friends.

Nick finally got up and went into his room.

For a few minutes, we waited uncomfortably in the living room for him to reemerge, contacts applied, so that he and I could fight.

He never came back out.

There was a fresh round of comments regarding what a pussy Nick was, and a handful of apologies thrown in my direction.

Then I took a shower. I washed off not just the funk of the party the night before but a year's worth of being pushed around and insulted.

I saw Nick only three or four times after we stopped living together. Largely, we ignored each other. There wasn't any real closure. The closest we came was one night at a bar, years after we'd graduated, when he approached me.

“Yo,” he said. “I've always wanted to tell you something.”

“What's that?” I asked.

“I was a dick because I was jealous,” he said. “I always wanted to do comedy.”

The mutual misery of our situation hit me in the gut. It never even occurred to me that he might be jealous of me, because I was such a depressed person I never would have seen any aspect of my life as being worthy of jealousy. But I was pursuing comedy; he was a funny guy who never did anything with it. He desperately wanted to fight but didn't quite have it in him; I was begrudgingly willing to do so. It dawned on me that we were very similar people. Only I was proactive and he wasn't. I went through with things and he didn't. And it must have driven him crazy.

Since Nick left my life, I've become better about forgiving people who do bad things to me. Because I learned long ago from a former friend that you don't really have enemies; you only have people who are somehow more miserable than you are.