Sunday, 29 February 2004 10:16 pm
Seeking attention, or not
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deckardcanineNow that I have friended a good number of you, here's an anecdote I've told to nearly all my RL friends and relatives, always to their great interest.
It happened in my junior year of college. I was in a single and continuing a habit I picked up in my first year: leaving the door unlocked when I went to sleep. (My roommate had thought it was safer, in case we were unconscious during a fire or something.) Anyway, one night I was on the verge of sleep when the light from an opening door roused me. "What do you think you're doing?" I groaned, but the next thing I knew, a woman in an undershirt and boxers was lying on the bed next to me, across my extended arm. ("Whoa!" says my most lascivious friend when he hears my account. "Normally I at least have to tell them my name before they come to bed with me!") Being rather sleepy, I assumed she was being a jerk, that maybe she had gotten locked out of her own room and was desperate for a bed. "Get out," I said, and she made the sound of an impatient sleepyhead. I tried again, "Do I have to carry you into the hall?" and prepared to pick her up, but she mumbled something like, "No, nothing physical."
It was then that I realized she must have been non compos mentis, probably on drugs. I left the room to get an RA. The hour was late enough that two RAs doors saying "On Duty" did not answer my knocks. When the third called campus security to the scene, we discovered she had wrapped herself haphazardly in my quilt, and it took a good minute of shaking to wake her up. As they helped her walk out of there, they asked if she'd been drinking and she responded, "A little."
Security determined that she had partly been sleepwalking and took the wrong turn from the bathroom to get back to her room. They admonished me for not locking the door, but my lascivious friend now claims an incentive otherwise.
I later looked at her door and saw two names, so I couldn't identify her after that. I might have seen her in the halls again, but she would look different with her eyes open, and more fully clad. Maybe it's just as well neither of us recognizes the other, as it would make further encounters awkward.
People laugh or at least grin at this story -- my grandmother really needed that at the time -- but we've also acknowledged the serious side. My campus is one of the worst in the nation for rape incidence, and this girl would have made a tempting and easy target. Not to claim moral greatness, I consider her fortunate to have landed in my room.
It happened in my junior year of college. I was in a single and continuing a habit I picked up in my first year: leaving the door unlocked when I went to sleep. (My roommate had thought it was safer, in case we were unconscious during a fire or something.) Anyway, one night I was on the verge of sleep when the light from an opening door roused me. "What do you think you're doing?" I groaned, but the next thing I knew, a woman in an undershirt and boxers was lying on the bed next to me, across my extended arm. ("Whoa!" says my most lascivious friend when he hears my account. "Normally I at least have to tell them my name before they come to bed with me!") Being rather sleepy, I assumed she was being a jerk, that maybe she had gotten locked out of her own room and was desperate for a bed. "Get out," I said, and she made the sound of an impatient sleepyhead. I tried again, "Do I have to carry you into the hall?" and prepared to pick her up, but she mumbled something like, "No, nothing physical."
It was then that I realized she must have been non compos mentis, probably on drugs. I left the room to get an RA. The hour was late enough that two RAs doors saying "On Duty" did not answer my knocks. When the third called campus security to the scene, we discovered she had wrapped herself haphazardly in my quilt, and it took a good minute of shaking to wake her up. As they helped her walk out of there, they asked if she'd been drinking and she responded, "A little."
Security determined that she had partly been sleepwalking and took the wrong turn from the bathroom to get back to her room. They admonished me for not locking the door, but my lascivious friend now claims an incentive otherwise.
I later looked at her door and saw two names, so I couldn't identify her after that. I might have seen her in the halls again, but she would look different with her eyes open, and more fully clad. Maybe it's just as well neither of us recognizes the other, as it would make further encounters awkward.
People laugh or at least grin at this story -- my grandmother really needed that at the time -- but we've also acknowledged the serious side. My campus is one of the worst in the nation for rape incidence, and this girl would have made a tempting and easy target. Not to claim moral greatness, I consider her fortunate to have landed in my room.
