Hmmmm

I have my roommate, the sometimes sci-fi fan, proper English girl, junior in college. And there's my next door neighbor, who likes to spin stories and freak people out by relating everything to sex, much like an overexcited twelve year old who's just discovered masturbation, only with a larger vocabulary. Or, at least, that's what my roommate sees.

Except she's wrong. Because he's performing. It's not out of some need to hide himself, I think. He does genuinely enjoy performing. I wouldn't even say it's an act so much as an exaggeration of himself. Or something. It gets more exaggerated when she's around.

But, see, I detect in the tone of her voice when she refers to him that she's thinking, "Oh, he's at it again, the cute kid." And it's something indefineable. I can't exactly point my finger on it. But I know, when I look at their interactions, that he is more of a grown up than she is. Not a total grown up, mind you, but more of one than she is. And he's letting her think that. Or, no, he's maybe waiting for her to figure it out herself.

I remember when we were first introduced and she saw the hole that was my room. She was ever so slightly judgemental in our interactions then. Not, like, maliciously judgemental. It's the same way the average person from the dorms or the fraternities tends to look at our co-op when they come in the door. Nothing malicious, really. Just -- "Oh, this is weird interesting." And you can hear the omission. And exactly how loudly that omission is heard varies from person to person. On rare occasions it's not heard at all. Which is always nice.

I remember when I told my roommate, "Oh, I was thinking about being a physics major at one point." I probably would have become a physics major if I hadn't discovered fandom. She said, "I don't see that about you," and I wondered if my new life decision to be a film editor was that obvious to her. Only then I realized that I had introduced myself as an arts major and she had looked around my room and seen what a horrendous hole it was and thought, "Oh, this is what a flighty art student looks like." And again, I don't think there was anything particularly malicious about it, but rather, something completely automatic in how she deals with people.

And maybe that's what strikes me as immature about her. Still not really defineable, but hmmmm.

I remember walking back into my room one day to be greeted by a, "So, you went to MIT then?" I remembered that I had left an old transcript lying out next to my desk as I was stressing over application forms the night before. It was kind of like in the movies when someone realizes the person she just inadvertently insulted was her boss. Okay, situationally that's a terrible metaphor, but in terms of reactions, it works.

Or.

It was like this lightbulb went off in her head and she realized, "Oh, my roommate is not a dumb artist. She is as smart as me. She might actually be smarter. Now I'm going to have to reintroduce myself to her when she walks in the door and figure out how to interact with her all over again."

Tangent.

I realized that there are at least two levels of humor to any show. I realized this after watching BSG and Firefly with my roommate and realizing that she either found different things funny or found things funny for different reasons. Well, my first thougth was actually "Ick, she's laughing at all the *wrong* things." Not true, really. I suspect her reaction may actually have been closer to what the writers intended, considering most writers don't exaclty cater to my little corner of fandom.

And, of coruse, I'm feeling awfully pretentious and probably a little hostile when I think to myself that all she knows of fanfiction is ff.net *after* the NC-17 ban was in place and 1) I read better fic than she does, 2) I'm looking deeper beneath the surface of my tv shows than she is 3) I am rubber 4) she is glue, 5) I'm being a pretentious immature bitch thinking I am fandom elite. Of course I'm full of shit -- aren't we all? -- but at least I'm not being obvious about it. Hopefully. She doesn't seem like she's noticed, in any case.

This realization about myself was really brought home when I had a fairly drawn out conversation w/ adrienne2 about SGA using a load of fandom in-jokes and abbreviated lingo and my roommate said, "I have no idea what you two were talking about" and I *didn't* say "Yes, that was the point."

That's the last time I'm ever doing that in front of her, if I can help it. It's kind of rude, and I don't like not liking myself.

End tangent.

See, I realize that I was doing exactly what the guy next door is doing. There's no real way I can explain who I am to her. I'm waiting for her to figure me out herself. I'm not performing for her. I'm not telling her everything either. She's seen the MIT transcript and the Eminem calendar and the nine volumes of manga and the first season of the OC and the clothes strewn across the floor and the orange cream soda bottle sitting next to the unfinished bottle of guiness on my desk and at this point she has no idea what assumptions to make about me. I don't think telling her about the bisexuality and the gay porn would help any.

Which is the point, really. That she's not making assumptions about me now because she *can't* and she hasn't yet realized that she *shouldn't.* Anything you learn about anyone by putting them into a category is going to be very limited knowledge, and always with a "maybe" sitting next to whatever conclusion you think you've drawn.



I try to avoid the amateur psychology usually. It makes me like people less, myself included.