I have absolutely nothing negative to say about my roommate. He’s a really cool guy. That’s the problem. He’s the coolest guy I know. He plays soccer, He goes to parties every weekend, female friends of mine have pointed out his attractiveness to me. His speech oozes self-assuredness. His wardrobe is full of clothing I couldn’t even begin to pull off. He is everything I want to be. And despite this all, he’s still a really nice person that I can’t hate for being better than me. Rather, it intimidates me, so much that I have to put on sort of “Hey I’m pretty cool too!” façade when I’m around him. When we talk we talk about sports or The Walking Dead. When we sit in silence, I avoid going to browse webcomics or quizzing myself on Sporcle. I took the Thinkgeek T-shirts I had at the beginning of the year back home. I feel absolutely petrified to be myself around him, through no fault of his own, which leads to the biggest dilemma I’ve had all year.
Recently I’ve felt a little nostalgia toward my younger days, particularly toward the best game series ever: Pokemon. While he was off at a Lumberjack competition, I downloaded a copy of Pokemon Crystal to my computer, and yet, there it stays. I want him to think I’m a cool guy, and Pokemon, no matter how much I love it, was originally made for elementary-age children. I really don’t want to appear as anything less than a cool, normal person to him, who’s basically Tyler Durden minus the entire batshit insane thing. I don’t want him to walk in on me and say “Wait, you’re playing Pokemon? Eww. I don’t want you mucking up my vibes, bro.”
I’m absolutely positive this won’t actually happen. My roommate is far too nice of a guy to say something like that. What I’m really afraid of is that when he’s at Gator Wranglin’ Club, he’ll talk to them and say something along the lines of “Yeah, I walked on my roommate playing Pokemon yesterday, that’s kind of weird.” But I can’t let this stew inside me any longer. I have to tell him. I look over to his side of the room.
“Ross?”
“Yeah man?”
“Did you ever play Pokemon as a kid?”
“I still do, man.”
“Yeah I know it – Wait what.”
“Yeah, me and a couple of my soccer buddies are playing through X and Y.”
“Aren’t you afraid of looking nerdy or something though?”
“Dude, who gives a shit? It’s fun.”
And just like that it was gone. The entire dilemma was gone. Ross wouldn’t judge me whatsoever for playing Pokemon in front of him. As I slowly turned around, the relief started turning into something wholly different. Dammit, Ross is literally the perfect roommate. Now what am I going to complain about to my other slightly nerdy friends? The fact that standing next to him I look bad? It’s not his fault at all. But I’m beginning to hate Ross. Now I’ll just have to hate him while playing Pokemon.
-Allan, Contributor