Hey WATGMA, long-time-lurker, first-time-poster, yadda yadda yadda. I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing this story, only that there’s something inside me that says I need to write it down somewhere because it sure as hell isn’t the kind of story I can tell my friends. Don’t get me wrong, I love my friends. They’re the best friends a guy could ask for. But they, like me, are in their early 20s. I don’t know if any of them have the emotional maturity necessary to understand what I’m going through, and I can’t put this burden on them. I think I’m really just terrified that if I tell them this story their perceptions of me will change. I’ll go from being the slightly more mature easy-going guy to… I don’t even know. Damaged? I don’t know. I feel damaged. Not in a “waah woe is me nobody will ever love me” way, but in a something inside me has irrevocably changed and I don’t think it’s for the better way. I can’t tell my parents because I love them too much. I would hate myself for making them bear any of my pain.

Whatever. Enough bitching, here’s the story.

So as the title says, this story is about me having sex with my roommate, who happens to be a stripper. I moved to New York City about 5 months ago for a 6 month internship. For those of you that can do the math, that does mean that I’m still in the city, and in fact still rooming with this girl. Anyway. About, I want to say maybe 3 months ago, Crazy Stripper (CS) moved into the apartment. Since I’m only here for 6 months I signed a lease on a bedroom in a larger apartment instead of getting a lease on an apartment. So she moves in, we say hi, she makes pretty much no secret of her profession, I don’t really give a shit. Her life, her choices to make right? It doesn’t take long for her to start roping me in to being her Nice Guy^(TM). At that point in my life, and hell still kinda this point in my life, I’m just that kind of guy. If you ask me to help I probably will. It’s how I was raised. It’s not about feminism or whatever, it’s just the right thing to do. Well she starts to take advantage of that. Oh Magos (big WH40K nerd here) can you help me set up my computer? Can you help me with a virus I got on my brand new computer? Can you help me decide what college to go to? I know it’s a cliché, “I’m only stripping to pay for college”, but she actually was going to college. Then things start to progress. I (like the hormonal young idiot I am) start to flirt, and surprisingly she reciprocates. Honestly I am shocked. I am by no means chad. I’m tall, but have a bit of a gut and a crooked nose that keeps my face… let’s say rugged. Not ruggedly good looking, just rugged. But whatever. Things move apace, we fool around a bit, sleep together a few times. She gets drunk and breaks down sobbing a few times about how her daddy over in [Eastern European country] left her and her mother. Yeah, stripper with daddy issues. Shocker I know. Then a week or two after my second or third time comforting her through a breakdown, she tells me she wants to find a boyfriend or a husband. HUGE red flags go off. Even I’m not that stupid. I tell her straight up, I’m sure you’ll find someone but I am not interested. Full stop.

Well then things start to take a turn from the worst. She sort-of scoffs at me and goes “my mother would never let me marry a Jew.” That’s a direct quote. As you can probably tell, I’m Jewish and she knows it. Well for me that’s it. We stop sleeping together, I barely acknowledge her for a few weeks. Then one day, about 2am, I wake up to a banging on my door. I yell out something to the tune of “what the fuck?” She replies something along the lines of “Magos open the dooooor”. I tell her to fuck off it’s 2 in the morning, she keeps hammering on my door. Eventually I open the door and ask her what the fuck she wants. She tries to kiss me (I can smell the alcohol on her from two feet away), I rebuff her, she starts crying, I close the door and go back to my bed. Not my proudest moment but frankly I was sick of her shit, tired, and had work in the morning. She screams out something along the lines of “I’m going to kill you!” I ignore her and go to sleep. A couple of weeks later, same thing happens. This time I’m smarter. I ignore her initial knocking. Don’t say a word. She keeps at it for half an hour. Eventually I open the door and tell her “someone had better be fucking dying”. She babbles something incoherent, she’s drunk again. I realize now that she’s an alcoholic, but at the time I just assumed she drank a bit after work. No big deal, something we all do sometimes right? Anyway. I close the door, go back to my bed, and ignore the next 30 minutes of screams shouts and banging on my door. I thank God that I put a strong lock on the door.

Eventually she apologizes and while I don’t sleep with her again (see, not that stupid), I don’t completely ignore her either. Mistake. Things continue for, about a month, maybe a month and a half in this sort of détente. Then one day she gets locked out of her room. Like, the code (electronic lock) isn’t working, can’t get in. I leave for the day (Saturday the 27th, two weeks ago), to meet a friend. I get back around 7pm and she’s still locked out. At this point despite the fact I am incredibly leery of her, I agree to help because, you know, nice guy. So I make a call to maintenance for her since her phone is dead and her charger is in her room. Maintenance is unhelpful (our building management sucks). I make two or three phone calls to various people, nada. She starts swearing, calling them all “fucking Jews”. I snap at her, tell her to “stop saying that right the fuck now.” She apologizes, then tries to kiss me. I rebuff her. I realize she’s drunk, again. I tell her I’m not interested in her like that. She pouts, leaves for 30 minutes or so. She comes back, tells me that there’s a couple she met at the bar that she wants me to come get with her. I ask her why, she says because she doesn’t have her key because it was in her room. I offer her a copy of my key (just gets her into the building, not my room) she refuses and begs me to go with her. I’m caved. I’m not proud of it, but the kind of guy I was raised to be says go with her. Girl is asking for help. Lizard brain says help. So I walk out of the building with her. She tries to hold my hand a few times, each time I pull it away and tell her to stop. She gets pissed, I ignore her. Reasserting control over lizard brain. We walk to the bar, the couple “isn’t there”. I don’t know if she lied to get me out with her, or they honestly just left. Probably never will. I start walking back to the apartment, she gets pissed and starts yelling about something. I’m not sure what. Her accent gets pretty strong when she’s pissed.

I get into the apartment building and start walking up the stairs. She follows behind me “why are you being so mean! What’s wrong with you?” etc, etc.

“Because CS, I told you I didn’t want to go out! I came out as a favor to you, the people weren’t there, so I’m going back to the apartment.”

“But whyyyyyyy?”

I finally snap.

“Because you are such an ungrateful bitch! You ask me for favors all the goddamn time and never show me a modicum of appreciation! Not one! You just ask for something else! You say you want to “be my friend” but only ever speak to me when you want something! I told you I didn’t want to go out, and you dragged me out of the building! I’m sick of your shit!” I finally make it back to the apartment, go into my room. She follows me in. I don’t remember exactly how this part of the conversation goes, but I remember this sequence of events vividly.

“CS, I don’t want to be in a relationship with you. At all.”

That’s when she hits me. Slap on the face. She really put her body into it. Hits me on the beard which cushions some of the force. Honestly, it doesn’t hurt that badly. She’s a pretty small woman, I’m a pretty big dude. But that’s when I froze, because I realized something. Despite all of that. Despite the fact that she is totally in the wrong here, I can’t touch her. If I raise a hand to her, even just to push her out of my room which I have now twice asked her to leave, she can call the cops and have me arrested. In this moment I was utterly and totally impotent. I’m sure some of you have had the same feeling, that feeling of utter powerlessness. The realization that she can hit me, shove me, do anything short of stabbing me, and I can’t touch her. That terrified me to my core. I had known this before, intellectually. But it’s radically different when the reality of a situation is staring you point-blank in the face. All of this flashes through my mind in about 5 seconds. I tell her not to hit me again, and tell her to leave. She says no, and tries to hit me again. This one I pull back from and she (mostly) misses. I make the only decision I can live with and I call the cops. She calls me a pussy and leaves. That’s her favorite insult. Any time I ignored her or wouldn’t cater to her every whim, “pussy!”

Eventually the cops arrive. They take my statement, file a report. It’s domestic violence, the cops say so, but since she didn’t “really hurt me” they can’t arrest her. One of the cops, a woman, takes some sympathy on me. She tells me not to get in a fight with CS no matter what, or if the cops come they’ll arrest me. I thank her for telling me. It’s something I’d already known of course, but it was still horrifying to hear it from the mouth of a cop.

That was two weeks ago. She’s still in the apartment. I lock my door and have a security camera recording my room 24/7.

I’m still afraid of her. I’m afraid that one of these days she’s going to get drunk and start hammering on my door again, and all I can do is cower behind my lock and pray that the police get there before she breaks it. I’m afraid she’s going to ambush me when I’m coming out of the shower and get in my face and hit me or try to get me to hit her.

I move out at the beginning of the last week of June. A month and a half or thereabouts.

Anyway. Thanks for reading. I don’t know if this totally fits the theme of the sub, but I just needed to write this. I’m just counting down the days until I leave now.