Going to church at lunch.

"You know," I started as we were chowing down our delicious chicken quesadilla. "I envy you."

"Me?" Her eyes widened. She was incredulous. "Why?"

"Because your life seems so simple." I told her.

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah. You have everything going for you. It's like your life is set. You got nothing to worry about. Well, besides school." It's the truth, at least from my point of view.

"Well my living situation hasn't been very good since a week ago." She lives in a sorority house and a couple of her 55 roommates have starting talking shit behind her back. "I'm not a confrontational person, you know. But some of these things that I hear drives me mad."

"Do you think one of the reasons they are doing that is because you're such a nice person, like they know they can take advantage of you and you won't fight back?"

"Well, maybe."

"So just move out, go live with your boyfriend. You want to anyway. Get away from those bitches," I said.

"Yeah I'm thinking about it. Besides this, my mom is sick."

"What's wrong?"

"Cancer."

"Oh I'm sorry. What kind of cancer?"

"Breasts. But it kinda spreaded around. She's OK now. She just needs to get some more test to make sure they're all gone." A picture of a bald lady flashed into my mind. I quickly shoved that image away. "So," she continues. "That is putting alot of stress on me too."

"Okay, so I might be wrong. But from the outside, your life looks simple."

"Yeah, well I try not to get too stressed out about things, you know?"

"Yeah." We were silent for a minute or so. "My roommate is driving me nuts."

"Why?"

"Yesterday, I was home the whole day, procrastinating. And he had the TV on all day, and it's nothing but football. Football 24/7. Everytime I walked into the living room, football is on. I don't even know what the hell he's watching anymore. It's like there's 300 games on yesterday or something. And this morning, guess what I saw when I walked into the living room?"

"What?" She asked.

"Sports Center. Seriously, dude! I mean I don't hate football, you know. Football once in a while is cool. But 24/7? C'mon! And you know what else about him is driving me crazy?"

"What?" She asked, again.

"He's like a little kid. He walks around all day with these glasses of water. And when he's done drinking, he'll just leave the glasses wherever they are. He never picks up after himself." My voice is getting louder and louder. "And when I ask him whose glasses are those, he said he doesn't know! He freaking said he doesn't know! Like a little kid!"

"Haha. I do that sometimes to my mom too. She'll ask me whose dishes are those in the sink and I'll say I don't know."

"Yeah, exactly. It's not like we don't know those are his glasses. I know it, he knows it, everybody knows it. But he still denies it. Goddamnit!" Man, I'm seriously getting worked up over this. The salsa is not spicy enough.

"And you know what else?" I continued. "We have this beach ball in our house. Then one day, it disappeared, so I asked him where it was. He said he didn't know, but it turns out it's in his room. He's playing with it in his room! It's not even his beach ball!"

"Yeah. I'm having some problem with my boyfriend too."

"Why, what's wrong?"

"He's such a mess! It's like I have to take care of him all the time. I spent Friday cleaning up his apartment. I cleaned his kitchen, vacuum his carpet, washed his bathroom, made his bed for the first time in like a week!" Now she's getting louder. "But if he knows that I'm stressed out, he'll pull himself together. Like during finals, he'll bring me food at the library. I think that's very sweet."

"Well, you gotta compromise. Give and take. I don't know how to do that. Seriously. When I was with my ex-boyfriend...."

"Wait, you had a boyfriend? I thought you said you've never been in a relationship?" She interrupted me.

"It was only 3 weeks. I don't consider it a relationship. Plus that was long long time ago."

"3 weeks is quite a long time." She speculated.

"You wanna know what happened? He said 'I love you' the 2nd week we were seeing each other." I made a WTF? gesture with my hand.

"I have a theory about that." She said. "If you really like someone, it doesn't matter when they say it. Did you like him?"

I shook my head.

"See? That's the problem."

"So I was saying," I picked up where I left off. "Everytime he calls, and if I'm watching TV, I'll ask him to call me back."

"That's because you don't like him enough."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. But I've not had a crush on anybody in a long long long time! Sometimes I wonder if there's something wrong with me."

"Well you haven't met someone that you really like."

"Yeah but how do I meet people?"

"Besides bars."

"Besides bars." I repeated. "This is San Francisco, but it's quantity here, not quality. I don't want to meet guys at bars. I mean, I usually score..."

She started laughing.

"Really. I'm not blowing my own horn or anything, but I usually score whenever I go out, but that doesn't mean anything. Have I told you about the last guy I slept with?"

"Yeah, you did." She started laughing again. "The one where you had to drug yourself to go to sleep. Hahaha... That was so funny. It should be on Sex and the City or something."

"Yeah, see what I mean? It was that bad." The sex wasn't bad. It's just the wrong person.

"I don't know. I think it's a Californian thing." She's from Maine. "People here seems more self centered. They only come to you when they need something. Not like the east coast. People there are more friendly."

"Really? I would think it's the opposite."

"No. I don't know. That's just my theory. 'Cause growing up there, I have 6 or 7 best friends that I can talk about anything with. But I have like 1 here, you know?"

"That's still better than me. I know a lot of people, but not many friends. They only come to me when they want something."

She nodded in agreement.

"Sometimes I think I'll be happier if I'm in a relationship." I said.

"I think so too."

"But what about those people who are in a relationship that hope that they are single?"

"That's because they haven't someone they're compatible with." She said.

"Exactly. And there is only 1 person like that in the whole world."

"No, I don't think so." She disagreed. "There's more than that."

"I hope you're right. Otherwise I'm gonna be an old man who has like 16 cats."

We both cracked up.

"So do you think my life seems simple?"

"Well, I don't know about that. But I do know that you're very successful at school..."

"You think I'm very successful at school?" I interrupted her. I will never in a million years use the term "successful" to desribe my school life.

"Yeah, you're smart. You can think on your own two feet better than I can. I think you'll do better at GRE than any one of us." By us she meant our study group.

"Well thank you." I'm flattered. "Are you gonna eat those quesadilla?"

"I don't know. Why? Do you want them?"

"I'll eat them if you don't want them. Don't waste food."

"Ok. I'll take half, you take half."

"Man this is so good!"

"I know. I'm so stuffed though. What time is it? I gotta go to class at 12." She said.

I looked at my cell phone. It's 3 minutes to 12.

"I guess we better get going."

We got up, bused our tables.

"That was a nice talk," I said as we were getting out of the restaurant.

"Yeah, like going to church," was her reply.

"What?!"

"Yeah, it was very spiritual. Talking about life and future. It's like going to church. Which way are you headed?"

"That way."

"Ok. I'll go this way. Bye Snakehead."

"Bye. Thanks for the lunch!"

I walked away feeling something that I couldn't exactly put in words. I went home and took a big fat post-lunch nap.

It was awesome.