My Roommate's Date!

So right now in the living room the sound of female giggles is floating into my room, through my closed door, and to my ears. The giggles belong to this goth-lite shoe store employee named Jenelle who's a giggling idiot for my usually shy roommate. Meanwhile, my roommate is actually keeping his shit together and sounding pretty confident out there.

Not that I'm eavesdropping or anything....

Anyway, this all starts roughly 24 hours ago when me, the roommate and our neighbor were pulled over by undercover police officers and being questioned about our activities that night. You see, we walked over from the apartments to a little cafe to get dinner, but upon finding the prices at the cafe to be too steep (18 dollars for aps?! Crazy!) we walked back to the apts. well, instead of walking ALL THE WAY around the fence that separates our property from .... the Mongols? I dunno, but we decided to hop this fence. Shortly after getting into the car to try someplace else for dinner, blue lights appear behind us.

Sweatshirt-clad UCs approached the vehicle, and while keeping my hands flat to the dashboard, wearing my Ray-Ban "Stunnas" at 9 at night, we answered questions relating to why we decided to be lazy and hop and fence, and what we were doing tonight and where we were going and where we lived and who we were, and so on.

Then they found out we were Coasties, and their attitudes completely changed. Seriously.

"Ok guys, well, if I see you guys out there this summer, I'll be sure to wave!" Said the overly friendly sergeant as he handed back our IDs and wished us a good evening. We would observe no less than four or five separate police incidents throughout the evening from there forward.

Anyway, we end up at this Mexican joint: Sam Diegos, which, aside from it's unappetizing name, is the shit. The girls working there are retardedly hot, the food is amazing, I could go on and gush about this place for the rest of the article but it would be doing a disservice to my roommate and his date in the other room.

So we're sitting around the dinner table and our friend John wants me to give his number to the waitress while he goes and gets the car. I have no problem with this, so as we pay our bill, I take the waitress aside and say "what'd you think of my friend sitting right there?"

"He was cute,"

"I know right? Listen, he wanted me to give you this," and in her hand I press this folded napkin with his number on it. She looks at it and smiles and says that she'll hold on to it.

As we're walking away, my roommate says "You're like the godfather and the Terminator rolled into one person," awestruck. And then it was my turn to be awestruck.

"So uh, I met this girl..." he drops on me. I stop in midstep.

"Really? Where? When?"

"Today," he says, "on myspace." I smile a little and shake my head.

"Ok, you're gonna have to show me her page when we get home..." And he does, and she wasn't that bad.

So fast forward to today. He says he's going to meet her at the mall, and for this article and my journalistic integrity, I tagged along. We went to the GAP, Best Buy, Banana Republic, etc, and the whole time he's text messaging her, getting more and more worked up and nervous. Twice he nearly called the thing off. It was so bad I had to take his cell phone from him and keep talking to her through text messaging.

"You need to slap me," he says.

"Slap you?"

"Yeah, like in the movies, when you slap someone to calm them down!"

"You want me to hit you?" And we stop in the middle of the walkway in the mall, looking at each other. My hand slowly forms into a fist at my side, my eyebrow coming up over my sunglasses.

"No," he says after a second, realizing I wasn't going to blow off his suggestion. He fidgets a lot and I can see him going more and more pale.

"Listen to me Ryan, you gotta relax and breathe here, ok? Slow down, she's just as nervous as you are and you're in a more advantageous position here. You're a good looking guy, she doesn't know you're nervous and don't know what you're doing. Worse case scenario, if she's totally busted, be polite, carry-on for a minute, and then say "hey, we gotta thing, I'll call you" and don't call her. You'll feel like shit for a day or two, and then you'll move on.... plus, you got me flying wingman for you."

"I dunno bro, I think I..."

"Shut up. You need to expand your comfort zone and the only way you can do that is by taking risks and stepping out of your tiny-ass comfort zone you have now. It's the only way you'll expand it and be comfortable doing these things. Be an adult, be a man, suck it up. You know what's considered a decent batting average in baseball? If you can hit .300 in a season, you're considered an All-Star. You know what that means? It means that for every three times you get up to hit, you strike out twice. And that's considered a success! The important thing is that you try, that you swing. You might hit it out of the park, but likely you'll take a big chop and land on your ass, and no one will care. Understand me?"

"Yeah," and the color returns to his face a little.

"Now who's in control here?" I ask him.

"Uh, you are." He looks at me uncomfortably.

"NO! ...well, yeah, but, no, you're in control here, with her. You need to make her realize that, that you're confident and in control. If you give her the idea that you're flying blind, she's going to fucking panic, you understand me?"

"Yeah."

"Ok, now get over there and be a man," and he looks over my shoulder and walks over towards the shop she works at. I hang back, watching everything from the pet store, making it look like I'm looking at puppies, but watching everything through the plate glass window outside of the pet store.

The two stand awkwardly in the middle of the mall, talking. The roommate's body language was closed and inward, where as the female was clearly physically smitten. I couldn't hide my smile. It was all very endearing.

So he ends up taking her to dinner, Sam Diego's ... again. And now, if I'm not mistaken, I just heard both of them crash into his bedroom.

Go get'em kid.