Note: For confidentiality reasons I am choosing not to mention anyone's real name, so for now I am going to give the characters of this post pseudonyms (which in this case will just be the first letter of their first name...ha). And I'm also not going to tell everything in its correct order, just to be tricky and mix things up a bit. Because it really is important that you not know who this person is; the point of this entry is not to patronize, rather it's to express my fascination with someone who is...a little different from the rest of us.
So I have this good friend here at school, A, a sophomore like me, and this year is his first year living away from home and in the dorms. Everything about A is totally normal - good student, really involved on campus, working part-time, etc etc etc. Everything except, his roommate, J. Now, I'm not going to fly off the handle here and say that J is a particularly bad person, because he's not at all. He's actually a very quiet, sweet individual; let's just say he has a few, to put it in a nice way, "quirks," about him that make him a little different. Granted, some of these "quirks" are due to an undiagnosed case of OCD, but there are definitely others that go way, way deeper than that (deeper as in a potential case of Asperger's). You see, J hasn't had much experience with life in the real world, which may sound interesting to you because obviously, since he's in college (and took boatloads of AP classes in high school), he must possess some sort of cognition. Well to tell you the truth, that's where I'm a little fuzzy too, because the only real knowledge J seems to present us with is that of the video game, Final Fantasy. He's constantly telling us that he wishes he could get out of "this world," and live among the world of Final Fantasy, however impossible that may be. Basically all that goes on in the world around him here and the way actual people live their lives, he pays no attention to; rather he focuses very intently on that game, the characters inside it, and the way they live their lives. And thus, because he focuses so intently on this game world, he really has no idea what's going on in "this world" around him - like he doesn't understand the characteristics/reasoning behind most human relationships, or why people go out at night, or even the general knowledge that most people learn in their pre-teens, for example that Washington DC is the capital of the United States. Some of his "quirks" also include: the need to work out for three hours a day, seven days a week, never eating anything that could in any way be deemed "unhealthy," brushing his teeth four times a day, and lastly, using hand sanitizer instead of actual soap and water (he doesn't believe that soap and water will actually get rid of all germs, because of the chemicals within the tap water). Just refer back to the aforementioned undiagnosed OCD, and these will all make more sense. But honestly, despite everything I just mentioned, I find J not weird at all, I actually find him extremely fascinating. I love being around him, because honestly although I and my friends are constantly teaching him the ways of the world, I feel as though he is also teaching me, but instead the ways of his world.
Anyway, now to last Saturday night. J decided that he wanted to hang out with my friends (which included A) and me, which was totally fine, but little did we know that this little hanging out session was actually J's first time ever going out late in the evening. (Late being relative, it was like 11pm-midnight). We didn't take him anywhere too exciting at first, no need to give the kid a coronary, we just wandered about 7ish blocks down Broadway to Dick's Drive-In (oh please, it's a hamburger place) since it was open until 2am. However, for those of you who live around or on Capitol Hill, you would know that it's anything if not exciting at midnight on a Saturday night (or Sunday morning..), no matter where you go. Needless to say, despite our most valiant of efforts, we were not able to shield J from all of the cigarette (or God knows what else) smokers, drunken assholes, or cross-dressers. (For the record, I take no issue with cross-dressers, what you do with your clothes is your business, but J is a very conservative Catholic so uhh...yeah you do the math). So as we were walking we dealt with questions such as "Why are people doing this?!," "Isn't that a sin??," and "If I am seen around these people, does that mean I'm smoking [drinking, doing drungs, insert word here] too??" more than once. And our answers were pretty much the same every time: "How the hell should I know," "No I don't think that's a sin, they're over 21 and adults," and "No you are not sinning!"
When we eventually got to Dick's and somehow managed to dodge the gaggle of oddly-dressed party-going teenagers (aka. high schoolers), it was time to take the next step in getting J out of his box; getting him to eat a french fry. Now normally when people are health nuts, they sometimes allow themselves to splurge and eat something unbelievably unhealthy, but J, not so much. He's constantly telling me, whether that night at Dick's or really any night when we have dinner together, that "everything counts...everything you eat is supposed to count...you can't let yourself eat that stuff." And not to mention he spent a decent amount of time questioning how we could all eat something that was so harmful to our bodies (to which I responded "I'm already overweight, so why not clog my arteries a little bit more?!") So needless to say getting him to eat a french fry was a bust, but still...shit I really wish I had his kind of willpower. I mean, if I was never faced with the temptation of eating like, pizza or (my ultimate weakness) Ben & Jerry's ice cream, then I would be rail-fucking-thin. Or okay maybe not rail-fucking thin, but at least rail-fucking-thinner. But at least we got him out and witnessing other people eating late at night. And believe it or not, by the end of our little escapade, he did relax a little bit. He's not really one who becomes comfortable around others very easily, so it was kind of a blessing in disguise.
Cut to another portion of the evening. J was hanging out in my room with my roommate L, our friend S (first letter of last name) and me. There we also taught him many things. Such as the art of hand-washing. Now I know that may sound gross, but the truth is, J is actually very sanitary, despite his lack of knowledge on soap. He just believes that hand-sanitizer cleans better is all. Now, I don't know how long he's been living with that belief, but if I had to guess I would say for a very long time. I had never in my life given someone a hand-washing tutorial before Saturday night, which is actually strange considering I spend 10-15 hours per week working with three to five year olds, but I can now officially cross it off of my very extensive bucket list. You see J is one of those people who really loves to ask us questions about life, and in so doing that night, he asked us about the issue of sanitation. Once L and S emphasized greatly how important hand-washing is, and J then proceeded to refute (or rather question) their arguments, I commenced my tutorial. He asked me how much soap to use, I said one full squirt, so he did, and then I showed him the proper hand motions for scrubbing with the soap, he mimicked, and then rinsed. What was really interesting during the rinsing process though was his question of whether or not he should trust the water - when he turned on the water for the first time, it was cold because he turned the nozzle to the right. He asked if the water should be hot or cold, I said hot water kills germs better, but so long as you use soap, you'll be fine. He then asked "but what if the water isn't really hot or cold and my brain is just deceiving me?" How do I really answer that? I just said "well, J, you're just going to have to trust yourself." When he was done rinsing and asking me if his hands were free of soap remnants, I proceeded to hand him the drying towel, to which I received a look of utter horror and disgust. I just ignored it and emphasized again the towel. Look still withstanding, he used it. End hand-washing tutorial and commence J's looks of surprise and fascination; his next question after that was, "but how can I know if my hands are really truly clean?? Do I have to wash them again??"
I guess what I really wanted to get out of writing this (apparently very long) post was again not to patronize, but to emphasize my fascination with J and his lifestyle. One of the things I remember him saying to me during our walk from Dick's back to campus was this: "This world is so twisted." This world is so twisted. This world is so twisted. Despite all of J's "quirks," obsessions, and naivete, is he right? I mean really, he goes out late at night for the first time in his life, he sees people high and drunk on the streets, and then just says "this world is so twisted." I actually think, in my very heart of hearts, that he might actually be right. I mean hell, in the the real world we go out of our way to feed addictions and bad habits, be cruel to others, and make all kinds of cracked decisions; whereas in J's desired world (Final Fantasy), people are heroes, destined to defeat the evil that plagues the world. They live to help one another survive. What could be so wrong with wanting to live in a world like that? You tell me. As for the other stuff, like the "quirks," I don't think it's just OCD or Asperger's or whatever you want to call it. I mean I know I said earlier that those are possibilities, but just with the way his mind works, there's got to be something else going on up there, something that can't really be defined, but I find kind of amazing. And while sometimes it can be tough facing the kinds of questions J asks, and I'm sure will ask in the future, I know he asks them with a good-natured and curious heart. I am curious, as this year continues, how his friendship with us will play out. A is such a good roommate to him, which is good, but it also means that J will probably be spending quite a bit of time with us, since A is in our group of friends. But that's okay, we all could use a little Final Fantasy in our lives.
~Erin
P.S. Listen to this song. Because you can. It has absolutely nothing to do with my post, but for some reason I have developed a new obsession with French techno.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHoT4N43jK8&ob=av3e
Alors on danse - Stromae
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