Number Four Has A Secret

One of the biggest events in Santa Barbara is Halloween. The area adjacent to UCSB campus, Isla Vista (I.V. to locals) transforms into a six-block-long, three-street-wide, contiguous outdoor party. There are mounted police. The horses wear riot gear. It is, in a word, intense. And incredibly fun.

The year that we lived with Number Four we learned that she had never dressed up for Halloween past the age of ten or so (again, crazy mom). Since I had already been exposed to the horrors contained in her closet, I knew there was a gold mine in there for a classic "Fashion Victim" costume. I had her go throw on a bunch of random clothes and then did her hair and makeup. The results were fairly spectacular, but sort of...off course from the original goal.

Here, take a look:


The most common statement we heard about this costume was, "That is an awesome girl costume!" As in, they thought it was a guy, dressed up as a girl...yeah...

We sort of had a conspiracy theory about Number Four. For a long time we suspected that she was a hermaphrodite, or possibly transgendered. Did I mention that we are also kind of horrible people? The thing is, we had quite a bit of evidence. That photo is Exhibit One, if you will. There was also the fact that she told us she had to start taking birth control to induce her period, which was a rather strange thing to share with people she had only moved in with a week prior. Or to share at all, really. That seems to me like the kind of thing you keep to yourself.

Further evidence was that she never really seemed to enjoy the greatness that was The Mens Room. The Mens Room was Pamala and Number Four's bathroom. Since we only had one shower in the apartment, their bathroom consisted of a toilet in a room. By itself. Just a toilet. Weird, right? So we completely plastered the walls with pictures of hot men that we cut out of magazines. It was a very elaborate construction; there were little scenes throughout the room. I have no idea how there are no pictures of this, but alas, there are none. What can I say, sometimes college makes you dumb. But anyway, Pamala, Orly and I would constantly add to The Mens Room, but never once did Number Four clip out a picture of a hot man from a magazine. I'm not sure how that contributes to the Number-Four-is-a-hermaphrodite theory, but it does.

Another piece of pseudo-evidence was her mismatched brothers. Like you would expect, she had a weird brother (he of the sweet-potato-pie incident). But she also had a completely normal brother. Not the kind of guy I would personally be friends with, as he seemed more like the frat brother kind of guy, but far more normal than you would suspect. Also, her weird brother was not weird like she was, he was actually just normal-weird. The kind of weird that you are comfortable with. Sort of...late-bloomer, band-geek, video-gaming kind of weird. How is this evidence, you ask? Well, it is a bit of a stretch, but stay with me. It goes like this: if Number Four had two brothers, both relatively normal, then it stands to reason that she should fall within that same spectrum of relative normality. But that was not the case. So something must have been very different about Number Four that set her so far apart from her brothers. Add to that the fact that she was just, well, mannish, and presto! You have our Number Four is a Hermaphrodite Conspiracy Theory. It also fits in with her batshit crazy mom (yes, I'm going to continue to string that one out).

In closing, I leave you with this:

Number Four Is A Copycat

One of the most obnoxious things about Number Four was that she was a total copycat. I've already talked about how she would follow us into the kitchen and how she didn't take medicine because her friend was a Scientologist. But there was more. Much more.

In general, her slovenly ways were enough to creep us out, but this was amplified by the fact that she stared at us. All the time. If we were doing anything in the same room she was in, she would watch us like we were a tv show. Often this led to her doing the same thing we were doing. If we were reading, she picked up a book. If we got a snack, she got a snack. If we started watching tv and knitting, she grabbed her knitting too.

Oh, and that was a whole nuther kind of weirdness, her knitting. I learned how to knit from my previous roommate Nicole. I never got more advanced than a simple knit stitch, but I can make a pretty scarf for you. So I taught Pamala, Orly, and Number Four how to knit too, with varying degrees of success. Pamala gave up quickly because she can't sit still long enough to knit more than two rows at a time. Orly enjoyed it, but only if she could use oversized needles.

Number Four was a different story altogether. She learned quite well alright. She also purchased the most hideous color combinations of yarn you could imagine, and some you can't. There was a type of yarn she liked in particular that had gradations from one color to another. Most of those were very pretty, shades of blue and green, or pink. Number Four chose one that was brown and orange to make a scarf out of. And then she decided to use very small needles, which, whatever, if she wanted to spend six months making a scarf, that was her business. The problem was this. When she would knit, she would wrap the yarn really really tight around the needles and when she was rubbing the needles against each other to pick up a stitch, the needles would make this creaking noise, almost like a door hinge. It just added a new level of creepiness that she was that tense when using pointy objects.

Then there was the blanket. Oh God, the blanket. I need to take a minute.

The yarn she chose for the blanket was another of the color gradation type, but this time she pick one that changed from purple (again with the purple) to green, with shades of aqua thrown in for added hideousness. She got some sort of knitting needle wire circle contraption that looked like a torture device to make this blanket with, and of course the needles were small. So in addition to the creaking needles, there was this growing nebulous blob of purple shot through with green and aqua that lived under our coffee table. Just lurking under there, it's hideous colors pulsating, waiting to smother us.

Given her affection for horribly clashing colors, you would imagine that Number Four's side of the room would have been a sight to behold, but you would be mistaken. It was incredibly boring and unimaginative in a nearly monochromatic faded blue color scheme. Her sheets were blue. Her comforter was blue plaid. Her "decorations" consisted of a weird blue novelty lamp (think lava lamp but with blue glitter instead of lava) and a poster of Van Gogh's Starry Night. Which, I might add, she only purchased after she saw that Pamala had that exact same poster hanging in the living room. I'm still confused about that. I mean, we already had one poster of Starry Night, and yet she went out and purchased another one. On purpose. She did things like that with frightening regularity.

For example, I had a beta fish when I lived with them that just would not die. This fish was seriously seven years old. And it never ate it's food. I don't know how this thing lived. Anyway, somehow we learned that Number Four had never had a pet before. It always freaks me out when I learn that someone never had a pet as a child. I just don't understand it. So she was asking me all these questions about my fish, and I was telling her how the thing just wouldn't die, which made it really easy to take care of. Wouldn't you know that a few days later, Number Four bought herself a beta fish. She spent about a week trying to come up with a name for this new pet, finally settling on calling it Fish. Yeah.

The most bizarre copycat moment of all though was when she copied a behavior of Orly's. See, Pamala and Orly were like seven year olds sometimes. Orly is disgusted by feet, so Pamala would chase her around barefoot, trying to stick her feet on Orly. Pamala is something of a prude, so Orly would break into the bathroom when Pamala was showering, or wander around topless. One day Number Four was talking to Orly about how it would be really funny if she walked up to Pamala "and just went like this!" and then yanked her top up, flashing Orly from about two feet away. I saw it coming and was able to look away, but Orly had no chance. She got full on flashed by the one person she was grossed out by the most in the world. Did I mention that Number Four was wearing her Circus Pants? When I knew it was safe, I looked back over to check on Orly and she just looked stunned. You could have pushed her over with a feather.

Number Four Can't Take The Heat

Part of Number Four's amazing ability to irritate the crap out of us was her struggles with food. One of our main problems was that whenever one of us went into our tiny ass kitchen to get a snack or a drink, she would soon join us for a similar reason. This is somewhat linked into her copycat behaviour, but that is an entirely different post that I will need much more energy for. Her issues with food I can handle now.
It began seemingly innocent enough; she mentioned that she liked to bake rather than cook. At first we thought, "Great, she will be baking lovely things for us to eat!" However. We were soon to discover what exactly that entailed. The first thing that we noticed was that Number Four had a lot of cookbooks. A lot. We had quite a lot of space on the shelf unit thing outside our tiny kitchen, so it wasn't much of a problem. It was more just odd for Orly, Pamala and I to see so many cookbooks in the possession of someone our age. The three of us are much more throw-things-in-a-pan-at-random cookers. We had very little experience with recipe-followers. Over the course of the year, the number of cookbooks increased. Number Four continually lamented that she had all of these recipes that she never used. We continually wanted to punch her in the face. Maybe that was just me...
The next thing that happened was the gradual expansion of her designated area of the pantry. There were four separate shelves in the pantry. We originally designated them by height; Number Four being the tallest, she had the highest shelf. Then Pamala and Orly shared the next highest, and then me. We reserved the lowest shelf for larger community items or heavy things that needed to be accessed daily, like soda. Pamala and Orly were fine with sharing a shelf since neither of them kept a lot of things in there. I took up the majority of my shelf with various boxes of tea. I had a lot of tea. At first, Number Four didn't have that many things on her shelf. Then her crazy mom (again, an entirely different post) began to give her various item that had been purchased at Costco. Huge boxes of all manner of food, which she didn't even eat. They just stayed up there, taking up space. In spite of her protests, her crazy mom continued to foist huge boxes of things on her, so she ended up taking over the lowest shelf too, as well as a goodly portion of the floor. It was kind of hilarious to look in our pantry and see two shelves with hardly any edible items on them, and then the other two shelves overflowing with gigantic boxes cereal, granola bars, those 100 calorie pack things, I don't even know what all. At one point she was looking in the pantry and comparing how much she had to how little we had, and she said, "What do you guys eat? You don't have anything that is actual food!" (Looking back, what the hell did we eat? We never had our areas in the pantry or the fridge full, but we sure did eat a lot.)
This isn't to say that Number Four did not eat. She regularly cooked random slabs of meat by putting them in a pan until they were brown and tough. She never used any sort of seasoning or sauce, just meat cooked to death in a pan. She ate the meat by itself too, no side dishes whatsoever. It was baffling, as well as making the kitchen and living room smell gross. She would occasionally be struck with the urge to actually cook something, and this was almost worse. The most memorable of these times was after she somehow acquired a crock pot. I don't remember if she had it to begin with or if she got it while we lived together. Now, I love me some slow-cooked food, make no mistake. However, the things that came out of that crock pot were beyond disgusting. There was some sort of chicken vegetable stew thing she made once. It ended up just a big vat of multicolored mush. The carrots melted. Literally melted. Into liquid. And it tasted like cardboard soup. Nasty.
By far the worst thing though was when Number Four baked something. It never ended well. She would invariably leave the kitchen with a fine coating of flour, in addition to which it took her days to wash the dishes. She made cookies, but she didn't let them cool before she put them on a plate and they all stuck together to create this giant cookie mountain. Those actually tasted alright, but it was incredibly difficult to eat them. You could either break off tiny pieces, or a giant group of like five cookies that had been glued together by their chocolate chips. One time, her weird brother was coming to visit, so she decided to make him a sweet potato pie. I don't know if y'all've pick up on it, but I have certain Southern predilections. I know from sweet potato pie. So I was a little excited that she was making one, because I would get to eat some. Well, it turns out that Number Four doesn't know how to make sweet potato pie, per say, so much as mashed sweet potatoes in a pie. I was very disappointed. Then came the Worst of the Worst. Pamala and Orly would on occasion make cornbread from a box. Normally, I do not condone box-food, but real cornbread is damn hard to make and this was fast and still tasted good. One day Number Four decided that she needed to show us how cornbread-from-scratch was superior to box cornbread. Which was kind of a moot point with us, but whatever. So she made a huge pan of it. I tried it first, and I can honestly say that it was about the worst thing I've ever tasted in my life. I made Pamala eat some of it, because if I have to suffer, she does too. She put a tiny piece in her mouth and immediately spit it out, screaming "It tastes like Death just crawled in my mouth and laid eggs!" For about a week, we took turns cutting pieces off and throwing them in the trash until we finally dumped the whole thing.

Number Four Has Hygienic Issues

I have briefly touched on Number Four's lack of basic hygienic practices, in that she never washed her Circus Pants. But her battle against general cleanliness did not end there. There was a time when Number Four was struck ill. Now, Number Four had some interesting notions toward medications, but we will approach that nugget in a minute. For now, suffice it to say that she did not regularly take any medication for her illness. She eventually took enough of it to get rid of whatever was making her sick, or perhaps it abandoned her of its own volition, preferring suicide over living in such a host. But that's neither here nor there. My point of contention is that after this rather lengthy illness which involved a nasty cough and copious amounts of phlegm, Number Four did not wash her sheets that she had been sick all over. She didn't even change the pillowcase! Please note that I compulsively wash my sheets once a month. In fact, I need to wash them now, but I don't have enough quarters to do that and it is squigging me out something awful. And thinking about this is certainly not helping.

Another thing that was more evident than any of us were comfortable with (particularly Pamala) was the fact that Number Four had foot fungus. Her feet were covered in gross, black swollen blotches that she scratched red and raw. They were a testament to her summer in Costa Rica. She had various different medications for it, but she seemed to have some difficulty in actually taking them. When I was sick of hearing her whine about her feet itching (and no one can whine quite like Number Four), I told her to go put on the anti-itch cream her doctor had given her. (As yet another side note, of all the things that bother me, and there are many, the one thing that bothers me the most is when people complain about a problem they have when there is a readily available solution. "Ow, I have a headache." "Here, take an Excedrin." "I don't want to..." "Well then shut the fuck up about your headache.") She didn't want to use the medication because her friend (not even her mother/father/brother/cousin) was a Scientologist, and she told Number Four all about how taking medication is bad and wrong. I could barely contain myself. I believe I may have yelled something along the lines of "What kind of bullshit is this? You aren't even a Scientologist yourself, you're Jewish! Just take the fucking pills and you will get better!" And wouldn't you know it, she took them every day after that, because she has no actual personality or opinions of her own, she simply adopted the opinions of those around her. I think this was the root of our disdain for her. Yes, so she took the pills and applied her cream more regularly, not that it really made much of a difference in her disgusting habits with her feet. She would sit on the couch and scratch and pick at them, or rub them on the couch compulsively. And poor Pamala had to try to fall asleep every single night to the sound of Number Four raking away and her fungus-infested feet.

Number Four Wears Circus Pants

Did you just wonder to yourself "What the fuck are Circus Pants?" It will become clear. Read on to be enlightened.

One of the first things that we learned about Number Four was that she had an unusual collection of pants. Highly unusual. She actually owned a pair of red jeans. RED. Like blood. Those were probably the most disturbing. There was also a pair of jeans, or maybe they were corduroys, that were striped in various shades of blue, with the occasional yellow stripe. The thing about the weird pants was that she would wear them with, say, a bright purple hoodie. It was an assault on the eyes, really. You would see her and just wince and look away quickly. Now, this truly might not have been that bad, but Number Four was not a small, cute girl. I'm not a skinny girl myself, but I do not walk around with gigantic portions of my flesh exposed to the elements. Somehow, even while wearing pants and a sweatshirt, Number Four would manage to walk around with a slab of about six inches of blubber on her side flapping in the breeze. It was like her clothes conspired against the world. Her pants would creep down, but only on one side, usually the left. At the same time, whatever she was covering the top half of her carcass with would slowly inch upwards, also usually on the left side. And, in complete defiance of all that is right and good in the world, she would never, ever, ever fix either article of clothing. It was baffling.

But there was one pair of pants that Number Four loved above all others; loved beyond reason. These were a pair of pajama pants that had crazy combinations of colors in vertical, wavy stripes. Sort of like these, but much brighter and more glaring colors. And paired with a bright purple sweatshirt. And with six inches of side-slab exposed. It was truly a sight to behold. The pattern and the copious amount of material needed to fit her led us to determine that they resembled a circus tent. Hence, Circus Pants. Not Circus Tent Pants, like you could logically conclude. No, Pamala, Orly and I are not bounded by such trifles as logic. They were Circus Pants. The thing about these pants was that Number Four would sleep in them every night. Which is fine. Except for two things. First, she would come home from class at around noon, sometimes even as late at two, and immediately change into these eyesores. And wear them the rest of the day. For hours. Now, I have nothing against changing into your favorite comfy pajamas when you get home. But. And this is huge. She never washed them. Not once. She would wear them on laundry day when she washed every other piece of hideous clothing she owned. But the ones that she wore for hours and hours every day, and slept in every night? Those never saw one drop of soap.

How Number Four Got Her Name

Pamala's best guy friend is Dave. Dave lives with Mats (there are quite a few untold stories about these two that I've just realized should be written down for posterity. Bwahahaha...) and Jesse. One day Pamala was over at their house and she was complaining to Dave about Paula and how weird she was. Mats had only been half-paying attention when he suddenly perked up and said, "Wait, are you talking about Number Four?" Pamala was confused, but Mats often says odd things, so she was prepared to just continue. When Dave answered "Yes.", she became even more confused. And then it sunk in. "Oh my god, you named her Number Four?" They laughingly admitted that they had, in fact, christened Paula with the name Number Four.
Now, while this was initially amusing, Pamala quickly became a little worried about how extensive their numbering system was. After grilling them mercilessly, they were able to convince her that Paula was the only roommate with a number.
Apparently, Pamala, Orly and I all have some aspect of our selves that is memorable, that makes an impression that lasts past the first meeting. Paula...not so much. They could not remember much of anything about her, so they just started calling her "the fourth one", which quickly turned into Number Four.
Since Pamala, Orly and I had to live with her, we adopted this as a code name for her. We had many, many im conversations that consisted entirely of

Pamala: god i hate 4 soooooo much!!!
Sarah: i know shes so retarded!
Orly: At least she didn't flash you dorks!
All: shudder

Only with a lot more instances of how we hated her/how annoying she was/how weird she was. We even progressed so far as to refer to her by her code name in front of her. And her dumb ass never did figure it out. That we know of...

Evolution

It is most definitely a Friday. I've had two cups of coffee before ten, spilled said coffee on my hand and burnt it a little, done all manner of pretending to work, and rehashed the week's gossip. All before lunch. Lunch is, in fact, still a distant dream for two hours from now. A sad day indeed.
The most productive (depending on how you look at it) thing I've done today was to restyle my blog. You like?
One thing to note is that I've done some thinking regarding the Number Four post from yesterday. What I've decided is that there will be one post in the Number Four Series each week. I'm not setting aside a particular day for these, since I don't even know which day of the week I will have sufficient energy for that discussion. Each post in the Series will deal with a different topic in relation to Number Four. Some examples of these topics include, but are certainly not limited to: copycat behavior, her crazy mom, her pants (circus and otherwise), and the Crock Pot of Doom. If there is anything you would like me to write about with regard to Number Four, stick it in a comment and I'll see what I can do to satisfy you.

Number Four--Introduction

I've put this off for a long time now, mostly because I knew that it would take a great deal of time and energy to write this particular post. My intention is to explain, as much as one person ever can, the phenomenon that is Number Four. Sit back and get comfy, this is gonna take some doin'.
We begin at the beginning. Shortly after Pamala moved up here to go to UCSB (she and I were both transfers, so no dorms for us), she met Paula through Hillel. At first, Paula is nondescript and seems nice, if a bit slow. This is misleading, a trap if you will, because Pamala quickly realized that Paula is quite possibly insane. But not kill-you-in-your-sleep-insane. At some point, Pamala mentioned that she lived in Santa Ynez (campus owned apartments) and didn't know who she was going to live with the next year. Paula chimed in that they should live together. Pamala agreed, not knowing how deep the crazy went, and also because, in spite of herself, Pamala is just a nice person.
Flash forward about seven months. Pamala and Orly have met and become friends for life, and I have just met both of them through our mutual friend and my neighbor, Anna. Anna thought that Pamala, Orly and I, all living in Santa Ynez and wanting to continue living there the next year, might like to all move in together. We hung out a bit, liked each other, and it was settled. Pamala mentioned that her best friend from home would also be coming to UCSB the next year, and perhaps she could move in with us too. We agreed, seeing no problem with that.
Then one day Pamala came to us with the following problem. It turned out that Paula had taken that idea that wasn't really ever formalized at the beginning of the year and stuck with it, and would now be without a place to live if we chose Pamala's best friend from home over her. At this point, Orly and I had both met Paula and seen that she wasn't quite right. Having no desire to live with her, we told Pamala that we would prefer not to, but that it was ultimately up to her. In the end Pamala chickened out and caved in to Paula. Not what I would have done, but not everyone is a cold-hearted bitch like me.
This concludes Part One of the Number Four Saga. More to come.