You don't know me but I've been in your bedroom.

The other day at a party I met somebody new. I shook his hand as we both assured each other that it was lovely to meet, and suddenly a horrifying wave of realization came over me.

I’ve been in this guy’s house. And he has no idea.

I’ll spare you the details so as not to incriminate anybody, but let me just assure you that I was there legally, with a few other friends who were there legally. We needed air conditioning as it was the middle of summer, this guy’s house had it. Beyond that I won’t say anything.

Normally the first few sentences with new people are totally easy. You can ask about where they live or what they do, a simple exchange of facts before the difficult task of meaningful conversation needs to start. I wondered if he wondered why I was so rude and didn’t ask him these things, but then I thought it was probably infinitely ruder of me a few months ago when I read through his job’s paperwork that was sitting on his kitchen table. And no one wants to hear a stranger say, “I live in Cheviot Hills, but I won’t ask you where you live because I already know. And I love what you’ve done with the place!”

I had genuinely no idea how much information I could politely be assumed to know about this guy, who was after all a friend of a friend. Normally friends talk about their other friends, but I was so paranoid about the fact that I had been in this guy’s house that I made a mental note to just pretend like his name had never been uttered by our mutual friend. It reminded me of being a freshman in college, when overly enthusiastic dorm mates friended each other on facebook before we even arrived and when we met in person we had to awkwardly pretend like we hadn’t studied each other’s facebook pages. “Oh, wow, I didn’t know you also liked Liverpool FC,” you’d recite after someone responded well to your very obvious and awkward attempts to get the conversation to turn to this mutual love. Except knowing things about a stranger because you’ve been in their house without them knowing is less socially acceptable and exponentially creepier.

The conversation was very interesting. We talked about something I knew we would talk about, because I already leafed through books on it from his personal library. And as eager as I was to continue the conversation, I found eye contact near impossible because I knew that he didn’t know that I knew what level of grime he has in his bathroom (relatively minimal for a guy). God help me, I know where he keeps his shampoo. I wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him while screaming, “I HAVE PEED IN YOUR TOILET! ARE YOU OKAY WITH THAT?!”

This was definitely some kind of punishment for my trespassing. I had literally no idea what to do with my eyes or my hands or indeed any other part of my body. I wanted to drown myself in the party’s sea of Harvard graduates. I wanted to tear off all my clothing in repentance while screaming, “I HAVE BEEN IN YOUR HOUSE—AND I AM SO SORRY!!!!!” But instead I just stood there hiding behind a red solo cup of Coke.

I am wondering, should our paths ever cross again in the small town that is Los Angeles, at what point I am required to disclose this information. But I’m kind of hoping I’ll die before it comes to that.