Coming Clean

My sophomore year in college I roomed with a Crazy Cajun named Michelle. A dark, swarthy, greasy-haired bobblehead, she drawled, blowjobbed and shit-talked like no one I’d ever met. She hated my innards. I don’t know if it were because I transferred mid-year and ruined her solo dorm vibe, or if she thought I were too naive and fresh about the ears. But she’da killed me in my sleep if she thought she’d get away with it. Her friends, a gaggle of Amazons who despised me for being too girly, regularly stole my clothes and made fun of my crimper iron. Rumor had it, one of the Amazons, ironically named “Katie,” beat chicks up in high school, and after evaluating her pecs and mannish face, I knew it must be true. So most days, I sought refuge on another dorm floor and avoided the Crazy Cajun and her Amazon Gaggle at all costs.

 

But there was this one time…

 

I suppose I was feeling gutsy. Also, I was late to “JigglesFest,” the Woodstockish booze picnic held each spring on my campus, and when I realized all my underwear was dirty, I did what any dumb coed would do: I stole a pair of my roommate’s skivs. Now the thing was, this pair of underwear was the last in her drawer. Navy blue, nylon, hefty and ripped, I could see what it lay there alone. But I was desperate. I needed some underwear and I needed it fast. So I took it and scrambled to the showers.

 

I hung the large garbage-sack butt saggers on the robe hook outside one of the showers and scrubbed away. All was peaceful and sudsy…until I heard a bellow barrel down the dorm hall.

 

“DEEEEEEBBBBBBBIIIIEEEEEEEE!”

 

This didn’t sound promising.

 

She bansheed all the way down the hall to the shower room where I stood naked and alone. With her underwear.

 

“DEBBBBIIIIIIEEEEEE! Did you take my underwear????!”

 

I couldn’t hide it. I mean, it hung right outside the shower, prominently waving in the wind like an enormous blue flag. Still, I ignored her screams. That’s right, I pretended I wasn’t there.

 

She tapped her Cajun feet but inches from me, continuing to shout my name and accuse me of underwear theft.

 

Still, I didn’t answer.

 

Many more minutes and voluminous threats later, she took off. Why she didn’t take the underwear back or rip the shower curtain aside and throw Katie in there to rip my boobs off, I’ll never know.

 

I stayed in that shower for a good hour, scared to crap of emerging into the Amazon Gaggle Posse of Death. Then, I slunk out of the bathroom, towel on my head, huge underwear on my butt, and scrammed to a friend’s room to borrow some clothes and a new identity.

 

When I returned finally to our shared down for a toothbrush or some such, she confronted me, dragged me outside into the hall and made me publicly admit that I’d stolen — and worn — her underwear. Even then, I maintained that the underwear were mine. That I wore a size majillion too, that I had a navy blue pair, that it were ripped in the exact same place.

 

I don’t know what came over me. She terrified every last inch of my being and I thought if I pretended to be a clueless lying idiot, she’d show mercy.

 

Not to be, not to be. We didn’t talk after that, but when I moved out for the summer, I saw that all of my clothes were gone from the closet except for a pink sweatshirt and a pair of ripped navy blue underwear.

 

I’m just glad Katie never found me and I got to keep my boobs.