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Simmons looked nervously around the classroom. It was filled with guys he didn’t know sitting at rows of desks, who were probably freaks anyway because the only way they could get a boyfriend was by coming to this dumb speed dating thing. Although, to be fair, that was why Simmons himself was there.
Simmons had accidentally let it slip to Donut, his friend from Econ, that he hadn’t gotten laid since starting college. Donut immediately signed him up for the speed dating club he ran every other Saturday, and Simmons knew he could do nothing to stop him. Donut was a little like a tempest. You just had accept what was happening to you and hope you came out the other end without any major mangling of vital body parts.
And honestly, Simmons wasn’t at all surprised that Donut ran a gay speed dating group. It was actually something that he sort of expected.
“Oh heyyyy, Dick,” Donut sang as he spotted Simmons standing awkwardly in the doorway. Simmons hated it when people called him by his first name, and tried to keep it from as many people as he could, but Donut had taken exception to it. He used it as often as possible.
“Keep it down, will you?” Simmons hissed as Donut approached.
“Oh right, I forgot you don’t like Dick,” Donut said, though Simmons knew he hadn’t. “Well,” Donut added with a coy wink, “I forgot you don’t like the name.”
“Can we just get this over with already, Donut?” he asked angrily. He didn’t like strangers as a general principle, and the idea of talking to about fifty of them in the course of one night made him feel a bit queasy.
Donut smiled, and then turned to address the group of students amassed in the room. “Looks like everyone’s here, so let’s get started! Hello boys, my name is Franklin Delano Donut, and I’ll be your host this evening. Those of you already seated will stay where you are, and this group of lovely gentlemen,” he gestured to the group that Simmons assumed he was supposed to be part of, “will move one seat down every time I ring this bell.” He held it up and rang it to demonstrate, just in case the monstrously stupid in the room couldn’t figure out what a bell ringing would sound like. “You will have five minutes to get to know your partner and for the sparks to fly!” He looked around the room with a sappy smile on his face and sighed. Simmons thought that if this was a cartoon, there would be hearts in his eyes. Donut was just one of those people who was in love with love.
Donut rang the bell. “Happy matchmaking!”
There was a rush as the guys all took their place opposite someone at a desk. Simmons ended up across from a black guy with dreads, who leaned back in his chair like he was perfectly at ease with everything around him, like he owned the place. Simmons sat uncomfortably on the edge of his own chair, back straight, hands in his lap. He probably looked like he had a stick up his ass.
“Lavernius Tucker,” the guy said, nodding at Simmons with a smirk.
“Simmons,” he responded tersely, looking down.
“Just Simmons? Like Beyonce?” He raised an eyebrow.
“No. I mean, I have a first name, I just don’t like it,” Simmons explained, mouth twisting to the side.
The guy just waited for Simmons to go on.
“It’s Dick,” Simmons admitted.
The guy’s eyes went wide with excitement. “Dude, you shouldn’t hide you’re Dick.” He grinned widely, adding, “Bow chicka bow wow!”
The rest of the guys Simmons talked to were similarly intolerable. One of them only spoke Spanish. One seemed pissed off at everything. One was scarily tall and buff, but seemed like he had developed no more intellectually than a five year old. One turned out to be a chick who everyone had mistaken for a guy. One dude was a total hippie (vegan, pacifist, feminist) who was pre-med, and apparently not very good at what he wanted to do for a living and despite that insisted upon being called “Doc”.
Simmons shuffled on to the next table, relieved to escape Doc’s rant about how terrible swearing was. He was so relieved, in fact, that he didn’t look at the guy he was sitting across from until a familiar voice asked, “Simmons?”
Simmons’s eyes snapped up, landing on the familiar features of his roommate, Dexter Grif. “What the fuck?” Grif asked, incredulous, but smiling.
“I should ask you the same thing,” Simmons said, suddenly irritated. “Why are you here? Did you come to make fun of me because I can’t get laid or something?” He was flustered and probably making no sense, but Grif’s presence seemed like a personal attack.
“Dude, chill out,” Grif said, holding up his hands in defense, as though that’ll calm Simmons down, or at least prevent any bodily harm. “I don’t give a shit about your sex life.”
“That’s bullshit,” Simmons snapped. “You’re always making fun of my sex life. You’re always making fun of everything about me!”
“Shut the fuck up, Simmons!” Grif was getting visibly riled. “I’m just here because Donut fucking roped me into it. You think I would be here just to make fun of you? Well let me tell you something, I have better things to do than make fun of my loser roommate, okay?”
“Yeah, like lay around and get fat?” The bell rang, but they were both too angry to heed it. People were starting to look in their direction. The person who was supposed to go to Grif’s desk next just walked around to the next one on.
Grif fumed. “I’m just here because Donut—,”
“Hey guys?” Donut said softly, putting his hand down on the table between them. “You’re being really loud. Can you take this outside, please? You’re making the other guys uncomfortable. And you know me, I like my guys to be comfortable.” His weak attempt at a joke was his way of softening what he was really doing: kicking them out.
Grif and Simmons left the room together, feeling like chastised children. They stood in silence outside the classroom for a little while, before Grif said, “So, meet anyone good?”
“Honestly?” Simmons admitted. “I think you’re the only person I said more than a few sentences to. And I can’t even stand you.”
“You’re so picky,” Grif said, sighing.
“No, I know what I like,” Simmons countered.
“Oh yeah? And what do you like, huh?” Grif challenged, leaning in.
Simmons blushed and sputtered, seemingly not able to form a full sentence. Grif smiled and leaned back again. He’d won.
After a moment, Grif said. “Hey, you know what I like?”
“What?” Simmons asked begrudgingly.
“Ice cream. Wanna go get some ice cream?”
“Fatass,” Simmons said, rolling his eyes. But he went for ice cream anyway, because of all the guys he’d talked to that night, Grif was the most bearable.