They Came From Different Worlds

September 1996

Once, at a college in Ann Arbor, Michigan, there lived a boy who was quite fond of his bicycle. It was something to take pride in, to be sure, a well-built eighteen-speed mountain bicycle with a front shock, lights, a speedometer – everything a bicycle could ever want. The boy even constructed a special rack for the bicycle, and it hung at the foot of his bed. All the other kids in the hall, though, made fun of the boy’s affection. Some said he liked the bike better than his girlfriend; others asserted that it was his girlfriend. But I was the boy’s roommate, and let me wield all the authority of my position in assuring the reader that I never observed any impropriety on his part, or on the part of the bicycle, for that matter.

Of course there were always times when I was away, people were quick to point out, and I couldn’t logically counter the innuendo. I resorted instead to telling such people that they were sick-minded to even imagine something of the sort. The same goes for all the nasty rumors which were constantly circulating about him, such as the one about him ‘neutralizing’ a fellow who had taken a spin on his bicycle while the boy was unaware. I won’t even dignify such malicious gossip with a response, for it might lend credence to such unfounded defamation. The reader knows how viciously people can talk.

It is undeniable, however, that the boy was overprotective of his bicycle. For the first few weeks of school, for example, the boy even skipped his chemistry lab because he refused to leave me alone with it. And, risking a stereotype, bicycles normally aren’t all that sensitive, at least the ones that I’ve known. Yet his overprotective tendencies could hardly be considered a damning flaw in character or mores. Not all people shared my view of tolerance though, and they made light of his attachment. They made jokes and sometimes just laughed, but the favorite mode of teasing was singing love songs about the boy and his bicycle. Whenever any of the guys from our hall spotted the two of them together, they would call out in the theatrically musical voice in which old-time love songs were perpetually sung: "They came from different worlds…." But the boy just ignored them and the bicycle appeared never to notice either, and the days passed thus onward.

From time to time, when the weather was suitable for the bicycle, the boy would take it out for a ride. Upon returning, he would invariably bathe his bicycle in the utility closet down the hall. Hallmates gawked at the sight of him wiping down the cold metal frame a little bit too caressingly, but I saw nothing wrong with a man keeping his bicycle clean, even if he is taking perhaps a little too much pleasure in it. And who am I to judge another man’s behavior?

So I once again disregarded the popular opinion and did my best to shield my roommate from the cruel pranks it encouraged. There was the time when a bunch of guys collected all of the bicycles in the hall and put them in Billy’s room. They were going to call my roommate into the room and when he would incredulously inquire, "What’s all this?", they planned to yell the answer, "Don’t you see, it’s a harem!" Luckily though, I got wind of the plot just in time. As the guys were excitedly walking to our door, in a flash, I picked up the most massive object readily available (which happened to be my roommate’s physics book) and bashed him on the head with all my might. When I opened the door for the guys, they saw my roommate slumped unconsciously at his desk and wondered how he could be sleeping in the middle of the afternoon. So they turned away disappointedly, for, heartless as they were, they at least had the decency not to disturb a sleeping man. They didn’t give up so easily, though, and it’s fortunate that my roommate has no recollection, because he would probably have been upset with me had he known that I smashed him on the noggin every day for a week. I guess he never connected his daily headache with the increasingly concave front cover of his Physics book! The guys always went away scratching their heads, wondering how anybody could sleep so much. Usually, they seemed a bit curious, especially the time when the boy lay sprawled in a heap on the floor, with his bed but two feet away. But as far as I know, however, they never suspected my perfidy.

Then one day I had to go to the bathroom, and I think that I shall let it suffice to say that my business was a little bit more extensive than I had originally anticipated. In those lame orientation videos they always warn the incoming freshmen never to leave their rooms unlocked in moments (or hours) such as these, but I never thought it could happen to me – not on a Tuesday. But when I came back to the room, the door had been flung wide open and I nearly dropped dead in horror. I knew my roommate must still be at class, and that our room had been broken into. In split seconds, I had entered the mental process of assessing whether I would be safer from my roommate’s wrath by booking plane tickets to Abu Dhabi or Tasmania in case his valuable bicycle was missing (I suddenly seemed to be swaying more to public opinion), but upon entering the room, I noticed, to my immense relief, that my roommate’s bike rested undisturbed on its special rack. My bike, however, was nowhere to be seen!

I was, of course, miffed that I would now be forced to ride the bus every day, but was quite relieved that it was my bike that was stolen and not his, just in case what everybody thought was true. I had no overwhelming desire to be ‘neutralized’ or worse. A few hours later, when the boy returned from chem lab, I related to him how my bike had been taken. An incredulous look which rapidly turned to unabated anger spread across his face.

"What the f___?!," he screamed, "I don’t believe this s__t! How could anybody pass over my bicycle to rip off yours? That’s bulls__t!" I detected jealous tones in his angry voice as he moved menacingly closer to me. Suddenly, I realized the implicit insult to the boy, in that the thief had chosen to steal my bicycle over his! Expecting my report to elicit gratitude, I was quite unprepared for the explosive reaction which I was receiving.

"Wait!" I pleaded, "this wasn’t meant as a slap in your face! Besides, I had nothing to do with it!" But talk was no use, and my roommate was between me and the door, so I backpedaled to the opened but screened window, where I stopped, perplexed. I was unsure how to proceed, for though it might have slipped my mind to lock the door at times, there are two rules that anybody who was lived in a University dormitory can never forget. The first is that it is prohibited to remove the screen, and the second is that the screen must remain intact. I knew that such infractions could get me in trouble with the residence authorities, and trust me, I certainly didn’t want to annoy them. It is no good to provoke the people who have the power to transfer student leases to Bursley (or, if the violator lives in Bursley, he gets transferred to the next-closest place to campus, Siberia). And so I found myself trapped between a window screen and a jealous man. These thoughts passed through my brain in an instant, and as my roommate lunged towards me, I remembered the authorities never emphasized anything about the condition of the windows. So gracefully I leapt, in the nick of time, through the two sheets of glass which were to the left of the screen and onto the soft grass below, which broke my fall. I wasn’t bleeding too badly, and happily, the screen received no damage.

‘It’s a good thing my room is on the ground floor,’ I thought to myself as I got up and ran with all the speed I could muster. ‘It probably would have hurt a lot more if I would have gotten that room on the fifth floor like I wanted.’ And thus I escaped my roommate’s jealous rage. For the remainder of that year, and for the rest of my many years at the University, I was forced to live in hiding for fear of my ex-roommate's vengeance. So, perforce, I dwelt with some generous co-op residents who graciously took me in, posing as a hardcore female with a meticulously shaven head and quite unshaven legs. I didn’t particularly enjoy the guise, especially the part about having to wear a dog collar, but it kept me alive. Besides, I knew it was the only way people would actually believe that I lived in a co-operative. And so I lived, happily and intactedly ever after. I never did find out what ever happened to my old roommate and his bicycle. For all I know, they are still together, and every once in a great while, when the moonlight falls down in that special way, and the stars seem to twinkle just a little bit brighter than usual, I find myself singing the old, familiar refrain, "They came from different worlds…"