Tonight, the reek of cigarette smoke was particularly obnoxious, so I wedged our door open. It comes in from the vent in our kitchen, and unless it has somewhere else to go, it makes a beeline for my desk and hovers about me in a toxic cloud. In a nice twist, our open door served as an encouragement for people to hang out with us. First M (Ko’s roommate freshman year) came by, then Alex. M, who had declared last year that she was a lesbian, told us that she was getting back together with her 38-year-old ex-boyfriend, and Alex, our beloved gayboy, told us that he was going to come out to his parents this Friday.

“It’s just our night to be visited by gay people!” Ko observed.
“First it was gayness past, then gayness present… will the next person be gayness future?” I pondered.

The next people to come by were Deep and Nikki, whom we decided will totally turn gay for each other, despite displaying nothing but heterosexual tendencies. “Maybe they’ll pull a Willow!” I suggested. But then their heterosexuality was spared when Lisa (also gay) came by, and we decided that because she had not had sex yet, she could be our individual of Gayness Yet To Be. And all this was triggered by the visitation, not of the ghost of Marley, but of the smoky presence of what X-Files fans know as Morleys: the Cigarette Smoking Man’s preferred brand.

And now that Ko and I have had our Final Exam Eve visitation of homosexuals, we’ll grab a Christmas goose (actually chicken flavored Ramen), plum pudding (actually Izzy & Zoe’s apple crumble), and a new crutch for Tiny Tim.

God Bless Us, Every One!