One of our frequent visitors at our Southgate townhouse was Denny, the Vietnam vet from Lewistown that we had gotten to know in Mifflin Hall who was in his late 20s but looked 40. Denny was still rooming with Ken, the fundamentalist Christian, on the fifth floor of Mifflin Hall.

I don’t know if he had always been a science fiction fan, but I got him to read some of the books from my Isaac Asimov collection, and he enjoyed them as much as I did. He even came up with an intriguing theory about Asimov’s novel The End of Eternity, but it involved Isaac’s wife Gertrude from whom Isaac was recently separated, which neither of us knew at the time. It was around then, early 1971, that I sent that fan letter to Isaac in West Newton, Massachusetts, and received a slightly delayed reply from New York City, which was my first inking that something was going on.

I also lent Denny my copy of Philip K. Dick’s Ubik, probably my favorite Dick. One of Dick’s main themes throughout his work is the conflict between illusion and reality, and Ubik takes that to extremes. What I especially like about Dick’s work is that his characters don’t waste time bemoaning the fact that weird things can’t possibly be happening them. They simply act. It’s a lesson that the people who adapt his material for television haven’t always learned.

Anyway, as I’ve mentioned previously, Denny was one of the biggest potheads I’ve ever known, and he was usually stoned when he was reading Ubik, and frankly that’s one book that should not be read while stoned. But I think he enjoyed it anyway.

I also introduced Denny to the music of Elton John during this period. Elton John’s first hit in the US was “Your Song”, still my favorite of all of his songs, and when I played it for Denny, who was of course stoned at the time, I said something like, “Denny, you’ve got to hear this. This is ‘Your Song’.” 

But naturally he thought I was saying, “Denny, this is your song,” and he thought that was such a friendly thing for me to say, and he got even more confused when the lyrics kept repeating over and over “This is your song”. It required an explanation and a viewing of the album cover to sort it out.

Meanwhile, things were not always copacetic with my roommates.

For one thing I was still annoyed at Perry’s ignoring my preferences when he cooked the meals. That wasn’t all though.

By this time we were pretty well settled into the routine where I cooked at least four or five meals a week and Perry did the rest, depending on whether everyone was there on weekends. But Perry seemed to be getting all the attention.

That is, every time he tried to make a box cake or something similar, it turned into a big production, and he’d be kidded about it for days afterwards. They’d call him Perry Crocker or something like that. 

As I look back, I think I was feeling something like a housewife who wasn’t getting any credit for the work she was doing. So I became more resentful of Perry and I began to show it.

Most evenings after supper, Terry used to go upstairs to his room to study. Because of his disability, he didn’t like to come down the stairs, so once he was up there, he stayed up there until the following morning. What I hadn’t realized is that Perry had often followed him up and gotten into long conversations with him. While I can’t be absolutely positive, I believe that Perry was slowly working on Terry, because over time, I noticed a definite change in Terry’s attitude towards me. OK, call me paranoid.

As the spring term began, we needed to make plans for the summer, as our lease on the townhouse extended until September. We either had to keep it until the fall or find someone to sublet it from us. Neither Terry nor Carl had any plans to stay during the summer months, but Perry decided he was going to enroll in classes for the summer term. I had no plans to go anywhere. Assuming that I got a job, I planned to stay in State College indefinitely.

But that meant we needed at least one new roommate. Perry had a candidate in mind. A fellow I didn’t particularly care for. When Perry brought up his name, I immediately vetoed the idea. Carl asked why, and I stupidly replied that I didn’t need a reason. This was in the morning as the three were getting ready to go to class, and it was agreed we’d discuss it that evening.

That evening the three were unanimous. Perry’s friend was in. I was outvoted. Even though Terry and Carl wouldn’t even be there during the summer. Yeah, that was my own damn, dumb fault. If I had held my fire and waited to come up with a reasonable reason, perhaps I could have convinced at least one of the others. Then again, the only thing I really had against the fellow was I didn’t like his loud laugh. And he was a friend of Perry’s.

So the friend of Perry’s was set to be the third roommate over the summer. He’s another one whose name I’ve completely forgotten.