The air was tense and brittle, like a saltine cracker. Beads of sweat trickled down my face, alighting on my cashmere sweater, staying as long as they could before the soft fabric enveloped them in a bittersweet embrace.

The room was red hot, but my chair was ice-cold. And I found the words escaping from my lips: “We need to talk.”

Of course, I was speaking in that code that all dejected lovers know, that euphemistic softening that marks an attempt at delicacy at the end of something beautiful. I was overcome by a wave of melancholy, and could not raise my eyes.

“I...I just...I just don’t think it can work out,” I burst forth.

He sat silently. I saw the hint of a tear in the corner of his bright blue eyes.

“I just think we should keep our options open,” I continued, sheepishly digging the toe of my shoe into the carpet. The tear leaked from the piping of his brow.

“So,” I said, “do you want to tell everyone, or should I?”

After a prolonged and painful silence, pregnant with unspoken meaning, he mumbled, “Well, it’s probably best if I told them myself.”

And it was decided: we would both be OK with a triple next year.

“Drawma,” they call it: drama resulting directly from the awkwardness of choosing a draw group. I had had my first taste, and it felt remarkably similar to a rather uncomfortable lovers’ spat.

Who would have thought I would be saying these things in a room filled with nine guys, looking at the ground and talking about housing options?

Yes, there were nine of us, and there are eight spots in the typical group. We had to let someone go, but we had to make sure we could “just be friends” afterwards.

This had gone beyond the level of “Survivor.” We couldn’t just vote someone off, putting a piece of paper into a totem-pole-turned-ballot box. And I couldn’t be the crafty naked guy, the only reference to the show I remember.

This was serious. This was dire. The fate of the world rested on our shoulders. Feelings would be hurt. But we had to do the right thing, what felt best in our hearts.

No matter that we could probably just ride our bikes over to see each other next year without much trouble (unless, for some reason, one of us wanted to live in FroSoCo). No matter that we would be friends anyway, or that we would still have a chance of being together in classes.

We needed to figure this out, we needed to find out immediately how we would split this monster of a draw group. Someone had the idea of splitting up into roommate pairs, and we seized on it. But oh, cruel fate, you knew all too well the disastrous path down which we were heading at this point.

We decided to categorize our music tastes, our sleeping habits, and our girlfriend situations. I needed someone who shares my somewhat sarcastic passion for 1980s glam rock, who understands that occasionally, a man must wake up at 4 a.m. (to do DDR, of course) and go to bed at 10 a.m. I needed a roommate who would be up for a bit of wife swapping, perhaps. I needed a roommate who liked me for me, who could support me in whatever I wanted to do. A bit of money wouldn’t hurt either, for him to support my tendency towards bling.

Everyone became devoutly attached to our habits as we listed the ones that simply could not be violated. When asked about the most important quality in a roommate, I had to narrow it down to the wife swapping.

The pairings began: the group of nine was whittled by twos, down to five singles and two pairs. We had a series of awkward conversations about what we wanted to get out of the roommate relationship, how we didn’t want it to feel like a ball and chain and, at least on my part, about how we were open to trying new things.

And, well....the situation never got resolved. We’re having another meeting tonight. I can only hope that whoever I end up sleeping with can see me for me, can see the beauty that’s inside, not just the beauty on the outside.

Hopefully, in reading my words, in seeing that there’s someone else out there who is going through the same thing, we can get through this together. We can get over the drawma, and we can move on.

Nat is very concerned that his roommate will care for him next year. Offer him encouragement at nat.hillard@stanford.edu.