Andy sees boobs.

The semester is over, and instead of heading straight back home I'm staying for senior week (the week between the end of finals and graduation). I'm living in an apartment with two gay guys and two girls. Anyway, I rolled out of bed around 10:30 this morning to find them all sunbathing in the backyard, the girls in bikinis, the guys in swim trunks. They invited me out, but I had a few other things I had to do, so I turned them down. I took a shower, shaved, brushed my teeth, and got some breakfast. I sat down on the couch in the living room, intending to eat my banana and bowl of cereal and then play a round or two of Mario Kart before attending to my rounds. I took a brief glance outside.

I expected to see two bikini clad women and two shirtless guys lying out on the grass. Instead, my eyes zoomed right in on this big, fleshy, globular thing.
Uhhhh, what? Thats not Joe's chest, but it has a nipple on it....
And then it struck me. Inside my mind the thing that controls my "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!" reaction started working on overdrive.
The girls had taken their tops off. Beforehand I couldn't even identify what I was looking at, but the pieces fell together, and I realized that I was staring at the unclothed breast of one of Joe's housemates.

I was thunderstruck.
I couldn't even think.
I stood there transfixed for a second and then tore my eyes away.
What the hell do you do in a situation like this?
I took a double take, and then a triple take. The other girl had taken her top off as well. I met her last night. I stared helplessly for a moment and then walked back into the kitchen, completely unsure of what I should do next.

"I really want to play Mario Kart." I thought, "But.... but they're just... out there!"
"They must have known that I'd see them. How the hell not? The backyard is right there, and I have to go through the living room to leave the house."
"But can they even see me? They're lying on their backs, and it's dark inside the house."
"Jesus H. Christ! Now they're taking photos of each other!"
It was like I was an extra in a badly written porn movie.

A million different thoughts ran through my head as I alternated between gawking in dumbstruck wonder and looking away out of shame. Joe had invited me to have a beer earlier, I turned him down initially, but I now reached into the fridge, grabbed a Magic Hat, and popped the cap off.

After a few minutes and a few desperate gulps from my beer I decided that it was impossible that they wouldn't expect me to see them. It made no damn sense that they'd get naked around someone they'd only known for a few days, but apparently they didn't mind. I sat down on the couch and fired up the Gamecube.

Many, many times throughout the first round I went back and forth between thinking this was ridiculous and thinking this was completely awesome. There I was, sitting on the couch, playing video games with two nude sunbathers in plain view. How many times in your life do you get the opportunity to say that? Eventually I decided it was just too much, and went to close the shades. I paced around in front of the screen door for a minute, looking for the string to draw the blinds, and saw that there was none. I slid them left to right by hand, and then looked for the string to rotate them shut. There was none.

The four lying outside were all staring at me in silence, the awkward tension was building by the moment. Trying to justify myself, I muttered something along the lines of "Somehow I don't think I should be looking at this." They all laughed. I tried twisting the blinds by hand, but they wouldn't budge. I never got them closed. I sat around on the couch for another fifteen minutes or so before leaving.

I often reflect on the absurd coincidences that have brought me to where I am, on the ridiculous things I've done and experienced here, but I think this little experience has been the height of ridiculous things I've experienced in Ithaca. You grow up in Salt Lake City, and then find yourself in upstate New York a few years later, playing Mario Kart and eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch with two naked girls 15 feet away in the sun. It's now 7:30 and we have yet to discuss the incident.

Ridiculous indeed...