roommates... teaching one, the hard way, not to act like a sodJul 13 '01 (Updated Jun 16 '05) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line learn tolerance; learn compromise; never room with me
Interesting question, this one about college roommates. What a gloriously topical excuse for me to tell old stories about my days as a loutish young sot. (I'm no longer a sot, nor young, but I treasure the remnants of my loutiness. Here, please let me drink right from your milk carton. *mmmm*) I have slightly modified some names in ways that will be apparent. In a few cases, they already had nicknames I could use. I'm sure that most of those mentioned would consider it libelous for me to even assert that they ever knew me (much less ralphed or slept with me). In the fall of 1981 I left a miserable lumber town (we graduated eleven; nine are still alive last I heard), population 750, for what was not yet Espressoville: Sodom on Lake Washington, aka Seattle, to attend a major university. I was only seventeen (due to long ago getting promoted out of kindergarten) and came from a very repressive family environment. (If you used the word 'fart', you were in trouble. If you implied that the paternal interpretation of the Bible was open to question, you were doing Satan's work.) Free at last to become a drunken bum whose whole psyche was focused on finding a landfill in which to bury his virginity for all time, that's precisely what I did. Even when sober, I wasn't much to write home about (unless your home was a drunk tank). Lesson: if your new roommate is from a repressed environment, look out. They will probably go completely hog wild. (Either that or remain a primly stuffed shirt.) My first roommate was Math, a brilliant mathematician from a conservative suburb (West Seattle) with a clutch of high school friends, all of whom were great people. He was the only roommate I'd never met before I moved in with him, and far and away the best one I ever had. He was in honours math--at our university, a punishingly difficult program--and moved out after two quarters to a single room in a quiet dorm. He promptly tried to kill himself. I may have been a flaming pain in the butt, but it turns out that my antics helped him deal with the pressure. Lesson: don't be too quick to judge a roommate. They may seem like a pig in some ways, or even be a pig, but they may also fill a need that you don't realize. Get to know them. After Math moved out, no one else wanted to room with me. Who says college kids have no wisdom? Lesson: unless the dorms are really crowded, if you get a reputation, people may steer clear. For my second year I stayed on the same floor (8th North, McMahon Hall, in case anyone cares), rooming with Markdove, a senior from Tukwila (a suburb of Seattle). We had set it up this way because we were both a) hardcore conservatives in the political sense (this was a long time ago, folks) and serious drunkards. I used to pour Everclear in Markdove's beer when he went to the can. One time he puked. Lesson: if you keep Everclear around your dorm room, it will ultimately be misused somehow. While in that living arrangement I had to get a handle on my drinking. As luck would have it, the night after I chose to hit the wagon for a month, the cluster decided to pitch a massive wingding. I stuck to my guns. In so doing, I gained the upper hand over alcohol. I still drank, but never as heavily or as out of control. Lesson: in the college dorm environment, you are in a sea of behaviours, attitudes and parties. Ultimately there will be a time at which you will have to choose to steer rather than drift. Know that the day will come, and know that a lot is riding on it. Markdove and I had an arrangement: lights and noise were allowed at all hours. We would use blindfolds and earplugs as necessary, and often did. Lesson: at some point the issue of room usage, noise, study and sleep will confront all roommates. It's probably the biggest bone of contention. If you want consideration, you have to give consideration. With many people gentle hints work better than open confrontation, especially with Young College Students who are Now Big Adults and who Can Now Totally Manage Their Own Lives Quite Nicely, Thank You. Soon I moved to a different dorm (5th North McCarty, in case you care). My roommate was Kenpeck, and it was a good thing that I spent most of my nights (ok, all of them) in my girlfriend's room because Kenpeck and I politely hated each other. He was a community college transfer to the business school from Aberdeen (coastal fishing and lumber town), and was actually there for the purposes of studying and learning (as opposed to drinking and screwing). My rowdiness somewhat cramped his style. In retrospect, we both judged each other quickly and unfairly. Lesson: rooming with someone is a total-immersion living experience. If you don't like each other, it is ok to move, and it's usually pretty easy. The dorm's staff doesn't want trouble any more than you do. However, if you never bother to get to know each other, your roomie relations will typically suck big time. I spent the next two years as an RA (Resident Advisor) in McMahon Hall, the A Shau Valley* of the UW dorm system. It was a little like the old show Welcome Back, Kotter. In those days, the RAs were hired from among the rowdiest souses in the dorm system, on the grounds that it was harder to put stuff over on us. (Stealing from a thief, etc.) I wasn't a very good RA--in fact, in my second year, I could have suck-started a Harley, I sucked so bad. But I witnessed a lot of roommate conflicts. Lesson: most of the conflicts I saw were really about one person being totally inconsiderate or the other person being totally anal. If you run to either extreme, you are going to have roommate conflicts. If you handle things mellowly, you will tend not to. Lesson: roommate relationships tend to be manic-depressive. "I love her." "I hate his guts." "She's such a snot." "He and I have become best friends." It's better to shoot for an even keel no matter how good or bad it seems at first, try not to peak or valley, expect strengths and weaknesses. They're there. Lesson: most high school friends who signed up as roommates ended up no longer friends. You're usually better off with someone you've never met. Lesson: being a roommmate is good training for someday living with a partner, so it is a good time to learn to do small acts of consideration. Pay for your share of the pizza, or don't eat it; try and pick up a little; bring a Coke back from the cafeteria. After two tours of duty in VietMcNam, I retired (read: I was rejected for further RAing employment for generally being an immature idiot; they had spent my entire second year kicking themselves for rehiring me) to the UW dorms' equivalent of a country gentleman's life: Hansee Hall. Hansee was the quiet dorm, and you had to have a lot of quarters of priority to get in. It was all single rooms, very tiny, and very quiet and mature. Not that you couldn't get drunk in Hansee; I proved conclusively and consistently that one could. But if you got raucous, the math wonks would narc on you yesterday and you'd be exiled to the Lower Planes of McMahon or someplace, right now. I had a weird adjoining room arrangement; there were only three like it. Two rooms sharing one bath. You had to go through my roommate's room to get to the throne room. You had to go through mine to get out. So it wasn't really private, but you didn't have to tramp around in other people's foot fungi in a communal shower. At first I was in with Raybird, a sourdough Alaskan and general screwoff. (By this time I was actually deigning to study and get decent grades, though obviously I still found time to act immaturely.) He was unmotivated and could dish it out but not take it, and soon quit school. I tried to encourage him not to fold the tent, but if anything I probably made it worse. If I'd had Raybird as my first roommate, though, it probably would have had an adverse effect. Lesson: the first thing people have to learn at college is that it's up to them. Also, you have to have enough distance to insulate yourself from soaking up your roommate's moods (or letting yours soak them). Then I had Frédéric, a Frenchman in the MBA program. We had a few cultural differences here and there, but for the short time we roomed together, we got along fine. He taught me a lot, especially bad words in French for which his girlfriend (also French) punished him roughly. Lesson: if your roommate is from a different country, while you are sure to have to make some adjustments, you have the opportunity of a lifetime. Not only can you learn to be an idiot in another language, but you can learn a lot about other cultures--including how to respect differences. If you were ever thinking of traveling abroad, having a foreign roommate is an ideal learning/warmup experience. Finally I had Harcourt, my final college roommate. This gives me the opportunity to tell the story of the funniest thing I ever did in college, and I've been a good boy and stayed on topic for the most part, so I count coup here and elect to get a little wordy. Those of you who think my stories are really stupid can now skip to the rating part, no hard feelings. Harcourt was a great big sucker from Spokane (a pleasant eastern Washington city which prides itself on being More Urban Than The Soporific Tri-Cities, and whose hockey team we of the Tri-Cities dislike early and often). He looked precisely, and I mean precisely, like the Abominable Snowman in that old Bugs Bunny cartoon. He was blond, about 6'5" and 270, and he had never played football (he hated it). He was a French major. Harcourt's pals were Connie and Pam. Connie, a petite blonde, liked to be called 'Commie' and was into left-wing politics. Pam was African American, was most assuredly not petite, and was comparatively sedate; I had been her RA the previous year. Pam and Commie had attended Holy Names Academy and were definitely in Young Catholic Women Busting The Chains mode. They were generally a kick. I liked them considerably better than I liked Harcourt, who quickly revealed himself as a prat of the first magnitude. The trouble with Harcourt was that he was offended by everything. He was also a slob and a sloth whose natural habitat was bed and who rarely attended morning classes at all. If you think my room was a sty, you should have seen Chez Harcourt, that's all I've got to say. Harcourt most certainly didn't drink (now you can see the root of his problems). Despite his size, he wasn't the athletic type, so I never worried about him belting me if I annoyed him too much. This was just as well because I'm sure he wished I'd go play in traffic on 45th. Knowing what I know now, I suspect that he was gay and still in the closet, but you couldn't ask Harcourt such questions--he would freak out. Not that it was any of my business; I'm just pointing out that I'm not even sure of his sexual orientation, though I lived with him. It becomes germane later. Anyhow, it was 3 AM on a Saturday night. From this simple statement, a knowing reader could ascertain precisely the situation in L112 Hansee, for it was always the same. Harcourt had been snoring away for about four hours in his room, bothering no one. I was dinking around with a massive board wargame and well into my cups, having polished off just enough of a quart of rum to be crocked (but not enough to be incoherent or hork up my cookies). All was right with the world. Now, when I'm in that state, I do not tend toward confrontationalism, which probably explains why I've never had a bar fight. On the contrary: I become more accepting and adventuresome. Therefore, when the telephone sounded, far from being grumpy, I was delighted. Ah! Just what I need to make my happiness complete: the milk of human companionship! Someone wants to talk with me! I cheerfully answered the telephone: "Hello?" Three things were immediately apparent: a) it was Pam. b) Pam, too, had taken a drink. c) Pam was in a bad state. To spell it out, Pam was in an advanced state of erotic need. This she made graphically clear. She was very specific about the regions of her body requiring stimulation, the type of contact she anticipated and desired in those regions, and the sentiments she expected to experience as a result. It was also clear that Pam had an adventuresome soul in ways I hadn't ever anticipated, touching on such topics as rope use, feathers, and mild flagellation. Pam's language was anything but clinical. Being somewhat of a pervert, I listened to Pam for a couple of minutes while she essentially recited to me a pornographic story in which she was the star (and in which I had a significant role). However, one fact about being fairly drunk is that sometimes we men find that even if the libido is active the flesh is monastic, if you know what I mean. As sorry as I felt for Pam, and as much as I might have wished to expend the considerable effort that would be required to correct her condition, it was clear that I couldn't help her. Now, while I make no claim to be a gentleman, I don't believe in being unkind with no good reason. If I couldn't satisfy Pam, to fail to at least offer the lady a potential option would be unkind, and Pam hadn't said anything I found objectionable. (I found (and find) almost nothing objectionable even cold sober, of course.) And, for once in my life, I thought quickly on my feet as she began to stop for air. I positively beamed into the phone. "Well, in that case, the person you need to speak with is right here. Please hold for a moment." Off I went to Harcourt's room. This was before the days of cordless phones. He was snoring quietly in a large puddle on the bed. _____I shook him. "Harcourt!" _____"Hwrmwhvn." _____Shook him harder. "Hey, Harcourt. Telephone." _____"Whaa." _____Spoke up a bit. "Get up, Harcourt. Someone's on the phone." Harcourt shambled to the phone in his undies. I sat down and took a drink to enjoy the spectacle. "Hllo," he said, eyes still half shut. I imbibed deeply and smirked. Harcourt's eyes went from sleep to awake to about this big in fifteen seconds. Remember, Harcourt had a cow about everything. Finally he bellowed into the phone: "I have never been so offended in my entire life!!" It pains me to report that Harcourt then ended the conversation without taking the time to lay the phone down gently nor to offer the lady a courteous parting salutation. He braced me with a gaze of the purest loathing. Were Harcourt a violent man, I very much think that he would have struck me. Luckily, though I was the smaller of the two of us, I was far and away the more physical. I replied by toasting him, upraised cup, silly soused smile. He stalked back to bed. Didn't speak to me for two weeks. He had no sense of humour. Lesson: in a roommate situation, never walk around as though you had a steel rod rammed far up your rear. It'll just get you mocked. ====================== This review, for once, is not part of any goddamn writeoffs. I just thought I would make that clear. (I like writeoffs, don't get me wrong.) The list of participants, therefore, is below: Please be sure and check out all their reviews, they suck less than me, etc., etc. *The A Shau ('ah-shaw') Valley, in the north part of the former Republic of Vietnam, was well known as one of the nastiest and most dangerous places in the entire country during the Vietnam War.  |
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