In my first year of college, my dorm was configured as a suite, with five rooms around a common living area. One of my suite mates was a fellow named John whose primary motivation in all activities was to bring ladies to his room to “rub”.

“I’m goin’ out with this lady tonight, then we gonna’ come back to my room an’ rub,” he’d say. Except he never said “rub” as a normal person would say “rub” (fittingly enough). He would always elongate the “u”. Ruuuuuuuuuuuub. As in, We gonna’ ruuuuuuuuub.

John was always a great source of amusement to me. He could easily have crossed the line of creepiness, but he seemed to be able to stay on the right side of that divide (barely) by becoming a sort of caricature of himself.

His term of choice—ruuuuuuuuub—was part of his charm. It’s meaning in the given context was clear. Yet, by itself—rub, without the elongated vowel—it’s a fairly innocuous word. I decided one day that I was interested in learning more about what was involved in John’s favorite pastime.

“I’m goin’ out with this lady tonight, then we gonna’ come back to my room an’ ruuuuuuuuub.”

“John, man,” I said, “how does one ‘ruuuuuuuuub’?”

“C’mere, lemme show you somethin’.” He gestured for me to come to his room. Aside from the lamp draped with a sheer piece of fabric to add a slight red tint to the light of the fluorescent bulbs above, nothing about the room struck me as particularly conducive to what I had interpreted ruuuuuubbing to involve. I looked around the room, then stared at him blankly. He smiled at me. “Hold on,” he said as he walked to the light switch, and flipped off the lights above. We were now staring at each other in the dim, red light of the incandescent lamp. “Check it,” and he pointed at the ceiling.

His ceiling was covered with the sort of adhesive, glow-in-the-dark stars that a fifth-grader might use to decorate his room. But that wasn’t what he was pointing to. He was pointing to the spot directly above the head of his bed. He had taken a sheet of the same material used for the stars, and with the skill and accuracy of a young child, cut out letters to form the word RELAX. I can’t say for certain, but I would imagine that if I were a female, and some fellow had flipped off the lights to reveal a sloppily cut, glow in the dark RELAX on the ceiling, I would do anything but.

Now, like John, I was smiling—but for a different reason. “So this is part of ruuuuuuubbing?”

“First, you set the mood.” He paused and smiled even more broadly. “Then you let it marinate.”

In my entire college experience, I attended many lectures. In each of those lectures, a professor hoped to teach some lesson that would, at least in some small way, shape the minds of the students in the class. Yet I would be hard pressed to provide an example of a lesson that made more of an impact on me than what John taught me that day. First, you set the mood. Then you let it marinate. True, dat.