one night, two posts. blog heaven

i've told this story to every person i've seen in the last three days. might as well put it on the internet. it's about how gross and creepy ben is and how women should never give him their phone numbers.

ben met a girl at murphy's thursday night and got her number at closing time as she was leaving. five minutes later he walked out and we lost track of him, thinking he'd gone home with her. he hadn't. he just left us, walked out of the bar, and called his new number. he said "hey this is ben. you want to come over and make out?" the girl declined and said that was an inappropriate thing to say. he said "no, i think it's very appropriate. you should do it." she told him no but said to call her the next day and they'd hang out. which makes her patient, cool, and desperate, which is exactly what ben needs.

of course he didn't call her the next day. he waited until about midnight when he was drunk and suggested somebody else call her and say something inappropriate. matt said he didn't know the girl, so why the hell not. but he was going to pretend to be ben. deal. matt called the number and left a message. didn't even fake a german accent. he said "hi this is ben again. i was hoping you'd come over and i could make your labia sing." great! so then everybody's laughing at matt and ben feels mad brave and wants to leave a funny message too and he calls and says "hey, this is ben. sorry, that wasn't me earlier, that was matt joking around. so i was hoping you'd come over and i could make your ass boil."

ben hung up and smiled all smug feeling clever, and matt and i stared at him mortified, slackjawed. he had obviously crossed the line, and we told him so. "oh come on, i was just having some fun." we had to explain to him that not only had he been vaguely threatening and explicitly creepy, he had also implicated matt. the girl had been with the british illini girls (not true, but don't tell him), who we drink with almost every night. (they hadn't heard, actually. i told them the story last night.) we even convinced him she might call the cops if he didn't apologize. he did, the next morning, when she finally picked up. which only took four tries.

like i said, i told everybody this story. later that night i saw the new kid in our research group, and after he reminded me what his name was, i told him the whole thing, then immediately forgot i'd done it because there was a dog running around with a cigarette in its mouth (sad) and the cops came (funny).

the next night ben and i went to our adviser's house for a party (weird) and deepak (real-life genius, pretty much guaranteed to be famous in ten years, doesn't get out much) met us at the door and asked if it was true that ben asked a girl to come over and make out with him. we said yes, it's true, but however he heard the story, thank god he didn't know the whole thing. oh, but he did. and so did everyone else. adam had remembered every detail and relayed it faithfully to our whole group. even hannaneh knew. sweet quiet iranian hannaneh was giggling. i wouldn't even say "pee" in front of her, let alone "labia". that's when ben turned to me and said, in all seriousness, "phil, i don't know how or when, but i'm going to get you for this." and you know what? he never will. because i own him now. my very own german.