“Well, go ahead and fucking tell me, man. You think I can’t handle it? What? Are you having regular wet dreams about my girlfriend? You think I don’t know you have a hard-on five miles long for Nicole?”
“Fuck you, Craig.”
“No, fuck you, Perry. Just tell me. You know you’ve been just shitting your pants and swimming in your own piss since I started dating Nicole, so why don’t you just get it over with, you jealous fuck? Spew your guts. You and your fucking Boy Scouts back in Bad Ass—did you used to sit around in your tents and jerk off to her yearbook picture or something? Nicole told me all about how some other dude knocked up your hometown girlfriend, so maybe you couldn’t get it up, or—”
Perry shoved the table into Craig, and the salad he’d been eating and the manicotti that had been congealing on Craig’s plate splashed over the edge of the table, splattering onto the linoleum with a sick wet-crap sound, and then Perry was over the table, not knowing how he’d gotten there, and his left hand was full of Craig’s T-shirt and the other one was a fist making contact with Craig’s nose, and then they were down on the ground, Craig’s back slapping onto the manicotti and salad, and then Perry was staring into his roommate’s bloody nose and hearing himself shout, “I’ve fucked Nicole, you fucking fool. Half of fucking Godwin Hall has fucked your virgin girlfriend, you stupid, stupid, deaf, blind, fucking idiot.”
With each of the last six words, Perry lifted Craig off the floor by his T-shirt and pushed him back down, and then they were panting and bleeding and staring into one another’s eyes, and something so horrible and honest and intimate passed between them at that moment (even worse than Perry’s sudden realization that they had become, somehow, at some point, friends) that, for a horrible moment Perry felt that he was Craig, looking up, seeing his own face looking down—that they had switched places, switched faces, and bodies, and selves, and become each other.
Then some beefy guy in a steamy white apron hauled Perry up by the back of his shirt and shoved him toward the cafeteria exit.