The past few days are nothing but a blur. Boredom, parties, drinking and smoking. Strangers becoming friends and friends becoming distant, home fading from memory and sleep made the last priority. Tiny roommates straining to be 5’3”, hitting my head on doorways at old houses when going into the basement. Owls hiding in corners. The explosion of poo, locked bathrooms, kicking in a brand new door and splitting the frame. Old boy on the couch, drums upstairs, Hippie Hash in the early hours of the morning. A sea of tank tops and tight pants, sororities climbing out of the shadows to work their magic on the freshmen. There’s some hoes in this house, that’s for sure.
I woke up at six in the morning on August 30, and made the 2.5 hour drive to Ann Arbor with my parents. It was boring and long, but I was excited to move into my dorm and meet my roommates. Little did I know they would be binge drinkers while managing to fit into a size zero.
The room is tiny, things are crowded, but my roommates are small and do not take up too much space. I am the largest of the three, weighing in at a whole 130 pounds and towering over their sad attempts to break the five foot barrier. I just rest my elbows comfortably on the tops of their heads and continue as if all was well. When we walk to meals together I feel like the mother shepherding two little ducklings off to find food. I am not used to being tall. I only want my tall friends back. Looking at someone’s face at eye-level has become a few and far between luxury.
We managed to carry a freezer/fridge/microwave combination up four floors with the aid of only one other person. That one other person happened to be doing most of the work. We wimped out after the first two flights of stairs. However, having appliances in the room makes for ultimate laziness.
The showers on the forth floor have been out of order, so we have been forced to travel to the next floor in order to clean ourselves. Our bathroom door is permanently locked. We have a key for it. Having to go through the trouble of finding your keys in order to enter the bathroom, after which you must open several more doors in order to make it to the actual bathroom area does not conduce healthy bladder control. Especially when you forgot your keys and have to run back to your room all the way on the other end of the hall.
All the parties are located in old town houses, with ceilings made for a shrunken generation. It’s dark, there’s alcohol, it hard to remember to duck every time you go down the stairs or through a doorway. I lost track of how many houses we’ve gone to in the past couple nights. My roommates love to party and enjoy taking me with. The first night we were here, they convinced me to drink one little bottle of Smirnoff Ice. I drank about half of it and was so dizzy I couldn’t move. Of course, I had given blood the afternoon before, but I forgot to mention that. The buzz wore off after an hour or two and I was ready to move on.
There was a bat in our dorm. Not in our room, but in our hall. Pest Control and the police were called in. The little bat was flying up and down the hall like it actually had somewhere to go. Megan (a roommate) and I grabbed two of the nearest boxes left over from unpacking and started chasing it. Between us two and a police officer, we caught it in a shoebox with much squealing (from us girls and the officer) and waving of arms. The bat was a tricky little rodent though, and managed to squeeze through a small hole in the side of the box. It was loose once again. We managed to catch it one more time, and it got out again. The poor little guy then flew straight into a dorm room and refused to come out. The pest control had arrived by then, so Megan and I headed back to our room to rest.
Aaron hooked up the Ethernet connection deal on my notebook. I have so many wires coming to and from my computer that it may as well be a desktop. Mobility is limited when there’s an Ethernet cable, power supply, security lock and a nifty miniature mouse all hooked in. I think I can manage, however. Our room is a measly 11x17 feet, so the cords are long enough to go almost everywhere within those four walls. What a comfort.
Some mutual friends were throwing a party on State street, so we went over there, picking up Nick on the way. His house is small and full of strange women, but it seems to be a friendly place. After making our way back down thirty-some stairs, we were off to the party. I remember parking myself on a couch amidst dozens of old friends, having someone pour me a glass of jungle juice from the trash can in the hall, and zoning out for a few hours. I vaguely remember hearing Nick and Chris talk about their engineering computer science stuff. Something about shell script and Perl 4 being useless. It was not worth paying closer attention to. After all, I only know html.
Last night, Aaron and I went to Jon’s house over in Ypsilanti. He was having some sort of party through by six of his roommates involving too many kegs and drugs to keep track of. I took a seat on the futon between a drunken Jon and a sober Aaron and fixed the controller for the TV. For the first time in my life, I was offered the privilege of changing channels without harassment because I was the hero of the evening. I was touched by their generosity. The music was just a tad to loud to hear anything, so we watched a silent movie while mischief brewed. I was not interested in taking part, although I did get to participate in the drum circle. I am known to have a reputation, after all. Not every girl understands the art of subdividing and time signatures.
There was a DJ in the basement spinning some random shit. I went down there to check out the setup, and nearly peed myself when I saw the gigantic stuffed owl sitting in the corner above the stairs. After I recovered from the shock, I walked the rest of the way downstairs and was stunned to see a puddle forming behind a water heater. I ran and got Jon, then he tried to run to get Greg (the resident technician of such things) but was unable to hold himself up. Greg eventually arrived nonetheless, and it was decided that the sewers had been clogged. I ran back upstairs before anything else was said.
When we all got back upstairs, we discovered that the door to Jon’s room had been locked. His keys were inside the room. Without hesitation, Jon kicked in the door. Two kicks placed just above the door knob, and the door was wide open. Sadly enough, the frame around it and the lock were mangled. This seemed hilarious at the time, so we all sat around and laughed for a while.
Upon reemerging into the emptying house, we discovered a dude passed out on the couch. He became known as Old Boy. We searched the house for a permanent marker, but there were none to be found. After being sure that he was not going to puke and had been doing no K, we left him for gone and returned downstairs to assess the damage.
I ended up getting home at about seven in the morning. I should not be awake.