Turned out my new roommate had a sexbot.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t mentioned it in the ad, or even when I moved in.\u00a0 It seemed like the sort of thing he should have.<\/p>\n
He turned her on so I could meet her.<\/p>\n
\u201cRoxy, this is Matt,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cHe\u2019s going to be living with us now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roxy said hello.\u00a0 She emphasized the hell<\/em> over the o<\/em>, and her mouth moved slightly out of rhythm with the word.\u00a0 D\u2014my roommate made me call him this, though I\u2019d have preferred to call him Alan, which was his name, and had not a single D in it\u2014had dressed her in one of his XL collared shirts, baby blue, halfway unbuttoned.\u00a0 She had dark hair and dark eyes.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d D said to her, but looking at me.\u00a0 \u201cHe\u2019ll keep to himself.\u201d<\/p>\n This was 2010.\u00a0 At this point the most a sexbot could do was swivel its head, talk, groan, and scream. That night while I was working on some tax forms in the kitchen I heard Roxy screaming my roommate\u2019s name over and over.\u00a0 She called him D, not Alan; apparently she knew what he preferred.<\/p>\n After she got quiet D came out in his boxers and went onto the balcony to smoke.<\/p>\n I peeked in on Roxy.\u00a0 She was naked, and still on.<\/p>\n Her head swiveled.<\/p>\n \u201cSorry,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s okay,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n I shut the door.<\/p>\n I went back to the kitchen to feed my fish.\u00a0 They were pinkish tropical ones that had belonged to my ex-girlfriend.\u00a0 She\u2019d dumped them off on me, but I didn\u2019t mind.\u00a0 When I\u2019d been living alone it helped to have other living things in the apartment\u2014swimming around, eating\u2014even if they weren\u2019t human.\u00a0 I had named them, though, which made them seem more so.<\/p>\n Out on the balcony D was shouting at someone on the other side of the courtyard.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t make out what he was saying, and the tone of his voice could have been anything from fuck-you-too <\/em>to sure-good-to-meet-you<\/em>.\u00a0 D spoke like that almost always.\u00a0 Anything he said, I couldn\u2019t tell if he hated my guts or was merely indifferent.\u00a0 Either way, it was clear he wasn\u2019t looking for a friend, just someone to split the rent.\u00a0 I guess I\u2019d been looking for both.<\/p>\n D was forty-something and divorced, a sports photographer with the local newspaper for over a decade.\u00a0 I\u2019d figured someone like that would have been all about grabbing a beer with his roommate, shooting the shit over the playoffs.\u00a0 That was not the case.<\/p>\n I sat back down to my taxes but after a second I heard Roxy call my name. At first I tried to ignore her.\u00a0 I\u2019d been living with D for only two days\u2014now was not the time to start fucking around with his stuff.\u00a0 I bent over the taxes, fingering some numbers into my calculator.<\/p>\n Roxy called my name again.\u00a0 Only it sounded like she was calling me \u201cMatty,\u201d as if she\u2019d already given me a pet name.\u00a0 I would have kept ignoring her but it felt sort of rude.<\/p>\n D was done shouting but still smoking on the balcony.<\/p>\n I opened the door to D\u2019s room.<\/p>\n \u201cRoxy?\u201d I said, trying hard to look her in the eyes, though I wasn\u2019t sure if she could even tell where I was looking, if she could even see at all.\u00a0 \u201cDo you need something, Roxy?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry?\u201d Roxy said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou said my name.\u00a0 You wanted me?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI said battery<\/em>,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cI say battery<\/em> when I\u2019m at less than 10%.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh,\u201d I said.\u00a0 There was a power adapter plugged into an outlet halfway up the wall, and the cord hung down like the tail of something D had caught and mounted.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you want me to plug you in?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n She said battery<\/em> again.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll just tell Alan,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cAlan?\u201d she said, but I had already shut the door.<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t even imagine what the electric bill would be like if D had to plug Roxy in all the time to recharge her.\u00a0 It seemed like we ought to split the rent and utilities three ways and D pay two of the three.\u00a0 But I already knew I was too much of a coward to bring it up.\u00a0 He\u2019d been here first: it was his radio in the bathroom, his loveseat in the living room, his ex-wife\u2019s photos hanging from the walls.<\/p>\n D flicked his cigarette over the railing and came back inside.<\/p>\n \u201cYou left Roxy on,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cI know.\u00a0 I keep her on while I sleep,\u201d D said.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to fall asleep without a warm body next to me.\u00a0 Roxy\u2019s not as warm as the real thing, but she\u2019s warmer than nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n He poured himself some orange juice.\u00a0 \u201cYou got a girl?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m going through kind of a mourning period.\u201d\u00a0 It turned out I was one of three boyfriends my ex-girlfriend had had while she was dating me: a rich one for gifts, a witty one for conversation, and an insecure one for cunnilingus.\u00a0 I\u2019d been the insecure one.\u00a0 She\u2019d chosen the witty one in the end.<\/p>\n D was rapping his knuckles on the aquarium, sending my fish scattering back and forth from one end to the other.\u00a0 \u201cCool,\u201d D said.\u00a0 He finished his juice and walked back toward his room.<\/p>\n \u201cDid you\u2014\u201d I said, but he\u2019d already shut the door.<\/p>\n He\u2019d left his dirty cup on the counter.\u00a0 I washed it and put it back in the cupboard.\u00a0 I turned out the lights in the kitchen, went into my room, and got into bed.\u00a0 When I woke up a couple hours later I could hear them talking through the wall.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t understand what D was saying\u2014the way his voice kept spiking he could have been laughing, or maybe sobbing into his pillow.\u00a0 But from what I could hear, it sounded like Roxy was doing what she could to calm him down again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Turned out my new roommate had a sexbot. He hadn\u2019t mentioned it in the ad, or even when I moved in. It seemed like the sort of thing he should have<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[30,48,47],"class_list":["post-946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-breakups","tag-robots","tag-roommates","writer-matthew-baker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=946"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14392,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions\/14392"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}