Partly Cloudy, 64°
"I know it sounds crazy, but just hear me out," Peter Walsh '12 pleads. "I am 50-70% sure that my roommate is masturbating."
Walsh, an only child who has never shared living quarters prior to his first semester at Brown, first suspected that his roommate Aniket began, "giving himself hand jobs" a mere two weeks after they moved in together.
Walsh's suspicions were initially aroused by Aniket's choice of dorm room posters, one of which includes a woman in a bathing suit exposing her bare shoulders, neck, abdomen, and a scintillating majority of her legs.
Walsh considered asking Aniket to take down the poster due to its lewd nature, but eventually concluded that "it might be good for me to live life on the wild side. That's what college is for, right?"
"If I had known, however, that such a poster could encourage onanistic behavior, I would have taken a stand."
Overall, Walsh admits that he is content with his roommate. During orientation, the two participated in several group activities together and occasionally "hung out" in their room and discussed their backgrounds, their potential concentrations, and occasionally, as Walsh admits with a sheepish grin, the young co-eds in their advisor group.
It wasn't until the first week of classes that Walsh realized he may have been housed with a sexual deviant. In a hushed tone, Walsh describes an incident in which he nearly witnessed first-hand his roommate's hedonistic capers.
"So I got out of my Greek class a little early, and went back to my room. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. Why would the door be locked if he was in there? So I'm getting out my keys and from inside I hear all this, like, frantic movement and stuff. I open the door and Aniket's just sitting at his desk with his laptop closed in front of him and he's wearing his boxers but his pants are on the floor right next to him. He said something like 'Oh hey man I was just about to get changed,' but I don't believe him. I think he was masturbating."
After that harrowing incident, Walsh decided to collect more evidence. He failed to find any pornographic materials stashed under Aniket's mattress or slipped between the pages of his textbooks, yet Walsh still refuses to rule out the possibility that his roommate has access to photographs of naked women.
"I have heard from reliable sources that some depraved segments of the population have made it possible to acquire pornography on the internets."
Walsh also notes that Aniket's trash bin occasionally contains crumpled tissues, often concealed beneath pizza boxes or other papers.
"I've seen him every day since we moved in, and I can tell you for sure that he has not had a cold yet, nor blown his nose even once. Add to that the fact that Aniket was suspiciously adamant that I print out a copy of my class schedule, and it's pretty much a no-brainer that he's, well," Walsh pauses, leans forward, and whispers, "whacking off."
Asked if he had contacted school authorities with his concerns, Walsh explains. "Well, I called DPS once and explained the situation, but the dispatcher just laughed at me and hung up. I can understand why. the whole thing would seem absurd to an outsider."
"All the evidence suggests that he's, uh, you-know-what-ing, but he hasn't gone blind yet and I'm pretty sure that his penis hasn't fallen off, so I just don't know."
