Flanagan\u2019s rabbit hole<\/a>. But I managed because I was entering my \u201cworking six jobs seems like a good idea\u201d mode. I picked up jobs on the weekends, and at nights, and on holidays\u2026 Someone very close to my life story, editorially-speaking, recently dropped a revelatory bombshell on me. He said, \u201cSo all of this working was how you avoided contemplating suicide, right?\u201d And, yes! Of course. The busier I was, the less I was thinking about how much the world sucks \u2013 something taught to me early on, administered by the original parents from hell. But that understanding of the world was somewhat lost on my roommate. <\/p>\nHe was some sort of low rent engineer working for a company way down in southern Maryland and had to drive nearly two hours each way. This job (and the commute) was just about the uppermost limit of stress he was capable of processing rationally. Finally, one day, he came home with a large bottle of Jagermeister and put it in the fridge. He wasn\u2019t normally a drinker, so this seemed odd to me, but, being a drinker, I knew not to ask questions. <\/p>\n
The next morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table eating my oatmeal and reading something I\u2019ve long forgotten when he stormed in and ripped open the fridge. He sat down across from me, not saying a word, and poured himself an eight ounce glass of Jager. He drank it with these huge guzzling gulps, like a kid drinking milk. Then he filled the glass again and repeated this procedure till half the bottle was gone. <\/p>\n
Still not speaking, he stood up and left for work. <\/p>\n
When he got home that night, he made a bee-line for the fridge and finished the bottle \u2013 not even bothering with a glass — with a shuddering, shaking frenzy. He also brought another bottle home with him.<\/p>\n
Every day \u2013 one bottle. Half in the morning, half as soon as he got home. So, finally, I just had to ask.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the only way I can handle the commute.\u201d He told me, his eyes haunted. At this point, there was a constant reek of Jagermeister that seemed to ooze out of his skin and clothes.<\/p>\n
I clucked my tongue and shook my head \u2013 \u201cWhy Jagermeister?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s healthy for you.\u201d He paused, rocked back and forth, and I seriously started to wonder if I was sharing an apartment with a serial killer. Then, slowly, he added: \u201cIt\u2019s a digestif.\u201d<\/p>\n
Around this same time, he fell in love with a 17 year old girl. And then things got complicated after the first gangbang.<\/p>\n
When I first met this girl \u2013 we worked together at a bookstore while I was in college \u2013 she was 15 and very proud of how many men she\u2019d had sex with. She threw herself at everyone and, really, it was slightly comical. (In hindsight. At the time, I was confused and frustrated.) You\u2019d turn away for a second, then turn back and she\u2019d be in her underwear. Like that chick in Star Trek: Into Darkness<\/em>. On an alien planet about to defuse what you think is a mega missile? Get into your slinky Victoria\u2019s Secret gear and\u2026pose! <\/p>\nSo it\u2019s one thing to have this girl that\u2019s been handed around to everyone, but it\u2019s another to decide that the thing to do is enter into a committed relationship with her and have her over at the apartment all the time.<\/p>\n
My roommate and I double-teamed her one night at his childhood house in his parent\u2019s bedroom. (She swore it was her 18th birthday, ha ha.) I was drunk and angry and finished quickly and, when his turn came, he took hours. I watched the entirety of The Keep<\/em> because I love Nazis and ghosts and then I went to check on them. She was sitting in the bathtub, in about five inches of water, shivering and facing the wall. He was sponging her down, fully clothed and crouched on the floor next to the tub. He swiveled his head to me and mumbled, \u201cI\u2026like\u2026bathing\u2026her\u2026\u201d<\/p>\nI\u2019ve always been an advocate of the old rule — gangbang girls aren\u2019t really part of the gang. So everyone was understandably awkward when she became a fixture in our group. With the Jager-fueled lifestyle and the creepy shit with this girl going on, a little part of me felt that things were\u2026wrong. I think the wrongness was because, suddenly, I was the fucking moral compass. And when I\u2019m the moral compass\u2026then all is not right in the world. If I\u2019m the voice of reason, then it\u2019s really not a leap to assume that the angels are about to start opening the seven seals.<\/p>\n
She, of course, did what most young women in her position would do and started quietly driving wedges. This anxiety quickly started to break up our group and one of our mutual friends \u2013 my roommate\u2019s alleged best friend \u2013 decided to execute a series of particularly disruptive pranks. He\u2019d go through the dumpster and bring weird trash to my roommate\u2019s bedroom \u2013 like junk lawn mowers, railroad ties, and other bizarre shit. Then he\u2019d lay them out as sort of strange exhibit pieces. When my roommate came home, guzzled his Jager, and stumbled to his room, he\u2019d open the door to find something crazy laid out for him. Once, this best friend took all of my roommate\u2019s weird outdoor wicker furniture out of his bedroom and piled it up poltergeist-style in the living room. <\/p>\n
Perhaps not aware of the severity of these pranks, or my roommate\u2019s fragile state of mind, this guy was stunned when things came to a head. My roommate finally slipped over the precipice into a screaming rage and what\u2019s the first thing the so-called best friend does? He says everything was my idea and I goaded him into it. <\/p>\n
Now, of course, I had been sitting there watching as all this stuff happened. But, as one does when they share a space with someone who\u2019s not a family member, I didn\u2019t pay much attention to the goings on. I watched repeats of Highlander: The Series<\/em> and just turned up the volume whenever the best friend would come in \u2013 using a spare key given to him by my roommate \u2013 wheeling a baby carriage full of old lettuce heads or something.<\/p>\nWhen the finger got pointed at me, I had one of those wide-eyed, \u201cHuh?\u201d reactions which the best friend jumped on right away \u2013 see how duplicitous he is! You can\u2019t fool us, Nacho! <\/p>\n
All of this, of course, was fuel for a 17 year old gangbang girl trying to change her station in life. I was public enemy #1. Within weeks, the lease was broken and my roommate was moving out. This, of course, was a relief. I was pretty sure he was about to start stalking around with an axe. <\/p>\n
When he moved out the last load of his shit, he walked over to where I was sitting on the arm of the couch and he looked at me with a flat, expressionless face. Then he said: \u201cWhy\u2019d you do this to me?\u201d<\/p>\n
I shrugged. \u201cI didn\u2019t do anything,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n
He shook his head, looked at his shoes for a full, silent minute, then he looked up again and fixed me with a stare. \u201cIf we were a man and a woman, we\u2019d be man and wife by now. I\u2019ve always loved you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speechless, I watched as he spun on his heel and marched out the door. That was the last I ever saw of him.<\/p>\n
I think I\u2019ve spent most of the last 18 years trying to parse that statement. There\u2019s a whole lot that\u2019s wrong with it. But one thing I do know \u2013 he married that gangbang girl, and they\u2019re both still alive. I ran into her once on the Metro and she hung from the handholds, swinging with the movement of the train, and grinned devilishly at me. Almost as if it were a prepared speech, she said, \u201cWe\u2019ve been watching you, Mr. Sasha. We know everything about you. We know where you work, and what you do, and everything you write and say.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was in 2005 or so. I think she was trying to scare me but, of course, by 2005 I had been writing about every facet of my life on this blog for nearly 5 years. So, if they wanted to, everyone in the world<\/em> could have watched me and learned everything about me.<\/p>\nWhen she got off at her stop, she slipped me her number. Ah, my. You can take the girl out of the gangbang, but you can\u2019t take the gangbang out of the girl. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1997, after graduating college, I got my first apartment in Bethesda, MD. It was in what my grandfather called \u201cthe old hotboxes\u201d on Battery Lane, and it was pretty cool for a first apartment. Big, bright, and not a …<\/p>\n
The Gangbang Girl<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[397],"class_list":["post-3875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","tag-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3876,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3875\/revisions\/3876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}