A Boy Named Roy

Last week, I relayed the events of a very surreal night and the strange disappearance of my wife that left us both standing squarely in the Twilight Zone.

Today, perhaps because we're still both a little shaken by the weirdness of that evening, I'm going to tear a few more pages from the book of the paranormal.

This story begins many years ago.

With a fresh sheepskin from Syracuse University in my hand and no apparent job offers or plans in my future, I snatched up a $99 one way airline ticket from Newark, NJ to Los Angeles, CA.

Didn't know a soul here.
Hadn't even booked a hotel room.
I simply got off the plane at LAX, hopped a bus towards UCLA and dragged a 40 lbs. duffel bag up and down Gayley Ave. hoping to rent a room from one of the frat houses.

I detested frat boys but knew the houses rented out rooms to boarders for the summer. I got lucky and landed a large room at a house near Westwood Village, Alpha Epsilon Gamma Who Gives A Fuck.

The house quickly filled up with guys who, like myself had come from all areas of the country.

There was Bruce, an aspiring actor from NYC. He had an acerbic tone and we made quick friends.

Marshall, a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jew from Colorado who looked like the unlikely poster boy for the How To Build the Master Race Manual. We never saw too much of Marshall, he was always getting laid.

There was Adam from Chicago, a sax-playing nerd who seemed happy to hanging around guys who weren't bullying him for the first time in his life.

And there was Justin Weiner. He had the thickest stutter I've ever heard. Words turned into sentences. Sentences turned into paragraphs. And paragraphs…I never stuck around long enough to see how those ended.

Justin made it known he had appeared in PlayGirl magazine. He also made it a point to parade around the house in the nude to show off his appp-pppp--pppp-endage. None of us were impressed. In fact, we gave him a new middle name, Justin Ordinary Weiner.

There was also a strange guy named Roy.

He lived up on the third floor, in a single room. He came from Wyoming or Montana, one of the sparsely populated square states now inhabited by open carry gun nuts and Illuminati conspiracists.

Roy never drank beer with us. Never smoked dope with us. Never went into Westwood Village to scarf up half eaten pizzas left on the tray at Jack Straw Pizza. There's an art to living cheaply.

Roy, a stocky, barrel chested, crew cut fireplug of a man, often stood on the corner somewhere and stared off into the distance. If ever I met someone with a Ted Kazinsky/John Gacey/Sam Berkowitz demeanor it was Roy.

The summer at that frat house remains one of the best in my life. My neck muscles are still aching from laughing so hard. Sadly, I've lost touch with all the guys who were part of that colorful adventure.

All but one.

A year after that memorable summer I was driving to job as an Assistant Kitchen Manager and saw Roy standing at the corner of Sawtelle and Santa Monica Blvd.

Three years later, while going to the movies with my girlfriend at the mall in Century City, I saw Roy leaning against street lamp.

Five years later I saw him again while running on San Vicente Blvd.

Los Angeles is a huge city and I can go years without running into friends or a familiar face, but like the Hitchhiker in Rod Sterling's Twilight Zone, Roy keeps on popping up.

I know this all sounds strange, but I would swear on a stack of Bibles/Koran/or Torah scrolls, that this phenomena is completely true.

I haven't seen him in awhile and maybe his decades-long stalking is about to reach its conclusion. If something should ever happen to me please tell the police to search for Roy from Wyoming. A husky, crew-cut guy with a thousand yard stare.

Oh and he's about the same age as me, 44.