Want a Grape?
I’ll preface this by saying that my roommate Chris, despite having some pretty damned close and fierce competition, was probably the strangest human being I have ever lived with. To understand the grape story, you need to appreciate why I feel justified in saying this. So bear with a few paragraphs of details.
Chris was from the Lake Country of New York State, and was 27 when he roomed with me. He had just graduated with a 4-year degree in biology, and had taken a job with the same company I worked for. He moved in with a suitcase, a computer, and two cages of pets. His first week living with me, I took him out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant in town, as a friendly gesture. He was amazed when the waiter brought us a dish of fried noodles and dipping sauce. It turned out, this was his first experience in a restaurant of any kind that wasn’t fast food, pizza, or take-out. It was immediately apparent he had very limited social skills, although he was a nice enough guy.
I’m pretty sure Chris was not just anti-social but also asexual. He had no contacts I knew about, talked to no one at work, and made no mention, during the 8 months we lived together, of ever being friends or otherwise with either a man or a woman. His only three interests were geology, his animals, and Anime. Aha, I thought to myself- this must be his outlet. After all, he was a good-looking young fellow in what should have been his prime, and Anime is renowned for its creative depictions of females enjoying themselves naked, or not enjoying, as the case may be. A perfect outlet for a frustrated young man. I thought I had this part figured out at least.
But no, this was not the case for Chris. He downloaded hours worth of G-rated Japanese cartoons, blushing if a cartoon girl wore so much as a low cut top. There was never even a hint of immodesty in anything he watched, said or did. We won’t even get into his reaction if I happened to be dressing up to go out for the evening, and he saw me. I am pretty sure he had never been on a date, let alone had any other types of romantic interactions with persons of either gender. His only human interactions outside of work were with me, and on-line. He stayed up until 1:00 every morning, sitting at his computer, then went to bed and awoke for work 3 hours later. I may actually have been the only female he ever had a prolonged conversation with, and it’s because I happen to love geology and animals.
Chris subsisted on milk, cereal, and McDonald’s. He would come home from work, take my large mixing bowl, and fill it with an entire box of cereal. After adding ¾ a gallon of milk, he would eat that for dinner. He then repeated the pattern for breakfast. McDonald's was reserved for his off-days. When he went to the doctor for a routine physical, he was surprised to learn he had a heart condition, but I wasn’t. Human beings aren’t meant to intake this much calcium and potassium! His cholesterol was also through the roof. Remember, he was 27.
The strangest part about all of this was his pets, though. The animals themselves were fantastic. He owned two pairs of sugar gliders- little gray marsupials from Australia that looked like big-eyed flying squirrels with black stripes and tiny white paws like hands. They glided around the house and were very friendly. He’d been meticulously breeding them and raising them for years, and was a wealth of information on the subject of their care. They had very precise nutritional requirements and had to be fed a combination of fresh cut fruits and vegetables, apple juice, wheat germ, and nectar every day. In other words, a very healthy diet, with strict attention to composition and nature of their food. They were fun to watch, too, as they used their little paws like gloved hands, daintily holding their food and eating it an eerily human-like manner.
The fact he was successful in breeding these little guys told me that he understood both their dietary needs, and enough of their complex mating behavior, to at least succeed at this endeavour. He meticulously prepared carefully balanced formulas for them every morning, based on nutritional calculations he had designed himself. He was simply seemed unable to associate or apply any of these details about physiology to himself, either from a dietary perspective or from a place that would have permitted him to seek intimacy with his own kind. Which led to some hilarious situations.
So, now to the infamous grape story.
My boyfriend was visiting one day, and Chris wanted to show both of us his newly acquired female sugar glider. We walked into his bedroom, where the cages were, and found his male on the new female’s back, little arms firmly gripping around her neck, and his teeth buried in her nape. It was pretty obvious even to an amateur sugar glider aficionado like myself what was going down.
“Seems like they’re getting along ok”, my boyfriend cautiously pointed out, knowing Chris’s intense shyness about male-female interactions of any nature.
Chris looked at his animals with complete puzzlement. He seemed to be deep in thought. He looked up, said “Aha! I know!” and promptly disappeared into the kitchen. Leaving my boyfriend and I, of course, to wonder where on earth this was going to lead.
Chris came back in holding something in his hand. His animals had not moved in his absence, and were still locked together. I might add that sugar gliders are tree and branch clingers, and have, for their size, extremely powerful little leg muscles for gripping. Imagine our surprise, then, when Chris reached into the cage and forcibly pried his male off the female’s back, effectively separating them.
“He just wants a grape when he gets like this, “ Chris said mysteriously, indeed handing the animal a fresh grape from the refrigerator.
I swear the sugar glider made a face that said, “Oh Christ, not AGAIN!!”. It sniffed the grape, licked it once, forcibly threw it to the ground with its little hands, and promptly climbed back on top of the female. At which point Chris repeated his actions, to the same result. How he was not bitten I am unsure. Remember, too, this guy had a Bachelor’s degree in biology. I finally carefully suggested that the animal didn’t look all that hungry to me, which seemed to puzzle Chris even more.He even started trying to offer the meal to the female instead!
My boyfriend and I practically ran out of the room, as, not wanting to offend Chris, we were trying hard not to crack up in front of him. We escaped to my room and let loose. Of course, later that night, during a seduction scene you don’t get any more details about, I stopped what my boyfriend was doing, and breathlessly asked him, “Dear, are you sure you don’t just want a grape?” as I handed him a small bunch of red globes.
Temporarily ruining a perfectly good intimate experience was worth it for the peals of laughter that have us in tears any time we reminisce on this story.
Grapes will just never be quite the same.
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