Thursday, 01 May 2003 | Girls I knew

We met in her apartment. I had answered a roommate ad, my second. The first was a woman in her late thirties who chain-smoked toothpick cigarettes and decorated her bathroom with fishnet and starfish. The second was an art student, and I moved in about a week after meeting her. She talked with her hands a lot, moving them in wispy, flowing swoops, and she rambled along in a soft voice, unless she was angry. Her dog liked to whip the trash around in its mouth; his head would shake violently back and forth while spit and paper would fly out of the corners. We worked together at a screen printing company after we no longer lived together. The last time I saw her she was sitting in a pile of boxes and t-shirts, on my last day there.

We met in French class. I'm not sure how we actually started talking; I think it had something to do with an assignment, the way you often meet people in college. Pretty soon three of us (me, her, and a third, a guy from the Basque country) were hanging out in the library an hour before class, in a rush to finish our homework, an effort that would turn into talk and abandoned conjugations. She introduced me to a proper camera, a string of her friends, and a job waiting tables at a B-grade pizza place, and eventually we became roommates. Two years. The last time I saw her was the day she moved away.

We met in a journalism class. She and the boy beside her both worked at the newspaper and were by far the loudest and most obnoxious in the room, though somehow in a charming sort of way. I never trusted her completely, but we got along well enough, having similar interests and (I suppose) similar weaknesses. She had long blond hair that she babied, a mischievous smile, and a breathy laugh (she'd noisily suck in a backward sigh after delivering it). We kept running into each other in hostels in different parts of the UK; we'd hang out for about two weeks each time, and then we'd part ways. The last time I saw her was in a bar in London where I'd helped get her a job.

All girls and no boys. What does that mean?