Cowboy Baby Daddy

“Have you ever gotten through a conversation without pumping it full of obscenity?”

“All the time,” he says. “If you need to go lie down now, I can fix you up something to drink. Just tell me what you like.”

“That’s okay,” I tell him. “I think that would just make me puke right now.”

“Oh, yeah,” he says, “you’re going to need a vomit can. I’ll get one for you, roomie.”

I’m done listening to him. That is, until I get to the door to my room and realize that I’m about to pop.

“You look like shit,” he says. “Think you can make it to the bathroom, or are we about to get to know each other in a very new and disgusting way?”

“Just grab me a ‘vomit can’, will you?” I ask, only hoping the phrase means what it sounds like it means.

“All right,” he says. “Go sit on your bed and I’ll bring something in for you.”

I sit on the edge of my bed for about 12 seconds before I give up and lie down flat on my back. It’s a long time before I move again.

Whether I actually fall asleep at one point or another is hard to say, but the next thing I know, I’m hearing what sounds like someone hammering a nail into the drywall in the other room.

I’m about to get up and tell my new and very temporary roommate to “knock it off and, oh, by the way, get out, you’re not moving in here” when I hear a woman’s voice punctuating the same rhythm as the banging noise.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I exhale.

I would love to go in there and throw him out right now, but I’m really not willing to see whatever it is that he’s doing to that poor woman. Either he’s killing her or they’re having sex. Either way, I don’t want to be a witness.

Sure, I could knock and call through the door, but it’s so much easier to just bury my head between two pillows and wish for death. His or mine: it doesn’t really matter.

Even through the pillows, though, I can hear the woman’s screaming moans, or whatever you’d call that noise.

To me, it sounds like a cat being nailed to a board. It’d almost be sad if it weren’t so infuriating.

“Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck!” the woman is screaming, and I’ve got to get the hell out of here.

The man’s only been in my apartment a couple of hours, and he’s already driving me out of it. If I had any residual guilt about going back on my offer for him to move in, it’s being drowned out by the woman’s howling.

She’s got to be faking it. I wonder if he knows.

He probably doesn’t care.

I’ve had sex before, and at no point did I feel the need to start making noises like a tortured rabbit.

Real or not, I’m done. I start to think that I might not hear them if I get in the shower—a necessity at the moment, I assure you—but the squealing is way too loud for me to hang onto that illusion for long.

Luckily, I find my phone and call Mike.

“Hello?”

“Mike, I’ve got to get the hell out of here. Remember that idiot I told you about—the one who went through my newspaper?”

“Yeah?”

“I called him last night and told him that the room is his. Now, he’s in the other room, doing unspeakable things to a poor woman, and I can’t even—”

“Is he hurting her, or are they having sex?” Mike asks.

“Probably the latter, but I have no way of knowing. You’ve got to get me out of here.”

“Just go for a walk or something. When you come back, tell him that you made a mistake and that he’s got to go. Wait, you didn’t sign a contract with him or anything, did you?”