by Stephanie Wu
On Sundays, anyone with family nearby went home. The rest of us kicked around with nothing to do—the school didn’t organize anything, so that meant many students got blind drunk every weekend without fail. It was a Christian school, so we had to go to chapel, but half the guys were swaying around, desperately trying not to fall over. A teacher always smelled people’s breath to see if they were drunk.
Academically speaking, the school was great. After I graduated, I went to a university where you didn’t have to have roommates. I was always very thankful not to go to an American university where you have to put a sock on the door if you have your girlfriend over. But there is something to be said about friendships like this, where I know everything about these guys. They’re not necessarily my closest friends, but it’s with them that I’m least on my guard, and most naturally myself—mainly because we know tons of hideously embarrassing things about one another.
—A, 30 (M)
THE TWENTY-YEAR FRIENDSHIP
THE FIRST TIME I LIVED AWAY from home was at a summer camp for gifted kids, also known as nerd camp. My first summer at camp was rough—I went from a public school that wasn’t exactly known for its academics to an environment where I was no longer the smart kid—but my parents convinced me to go back. I met Dave my third summer at camp, and we hit it off immediately. I had shelves of comic books and he had shelves of Japanese manga, even though this was the mid-90s and manga hadn’t taken off yet. Dave had lived in Japan for a couple of years, so we read each other’s comic books—or at least, I read the ones that were translated after he explained that I should be reading them from the back forward. We convinced our RA, who was also a comic book fan, to organize a field trip to a local comic book store that wasn’t too far from the campus. We also both loved Magic cards, which we weren’t allowed to have on campus, so we hid them under our bed frames. And the two of us performed together in the annual talent show by acting out Weird Al songs with costumes and props.
Friendships among teenage boys are less sentimental and more, “Hey, let’s do these things together.” You spend a lot of time together because you want to do the same things. We had a running joke with this awful comic book I had that we were trying to get rid of. During the last week of one session, we kept stashing it in other people’s rooms so they would have to take it home—it traveled from room to room, from floor mat to bed, and it was hilarious to see how widespread our joke became.
Dave and I saw each other for three weeks a year during camp for three summers straight. Our summer camp had a microcosm appeal to it—in three weeks, you cram in a full school year’s worth of academics, which also feels like a year’s worth of experiences. Time passes slowly—you think it’d blow by but it goes on forever. You can make a friend in the first or second day, and it feels like you’ve known each other for months. If you date a girl for three days, it’s a big deal. I had so much fun at camp that I later worked there as a teaching assistant.
By the time our last summer rolled around, Dave’s family had moved to Switzerland, so we were sending letters to each other with six stamps on them. We were competitive too—he once wrote me a letter on a piece of cardboard, which was cut up into a jigsaw puzzle. I couldn’t top that, so I sent him a package of the worst comic books I could find.
As we both started to apply for colleges, my first choice was Princeton and my second was Columbia, and his were vice versa. Had one of us gotten into our second-choice schools, we probably would have been roommates in college too. When it came time for fall break, Dave wasn’t planning on returning to Switzerland, so I invited him to my parents’ home in Long Island. My mom went to a family-owned video rental shop to get us something to watch, and she said to the guy, “What would two teenage boys like? I want something like Vampire Vixens from Venus”—which, by the way, is a real movie. They found the movie and it wasn’t until we were watching it in the living room that we both realized my mother had rented us soft-core porn. Dave and I spent a ton of breaks together, including Thanksgiving for all four years of college and most years since then.
After graduation, Dave spent a year teaching in Japan before returning to the States, and that’s when we decided to become roommates once again. I did most of the apartment hunting, and we settled on Jersey City because the commute was easy and rent was reasonable. We shared an apartment for a year, until my then girlfriend (now wife) graduated and we wanted to move in together. Dave graciously stepped aside and moved to another apartment six blocks away. When I got married a year later, he was my best man. My wife and I are still living in the same apartment, and Dave’s moved a couple of times since, but we’ve always been walking distance from each other. He’s at my apartment at least once a week for game night. When my wife gave birth to our son, Dave was the first person allowed in the hospital to meet him. To some extent, you could call it a lifelong friendship—all because of nerd camp.
—C, 33 (M)
THE PUBLIC BACKSTABBING
THE SUMMER BEFORE MY JUNIOR YEAR of high school, I attended an all-girls precollege program. While moving in, I met my roommate Clara’s mom before I met her. Her mom seemed friendly and told me that she hoped we could be friends. Clara was very quiet—whenever I tried to ask her a question, she gave straightforward answers and didn’t open it up to any further conversation.
The two of us coexisted in peace. I played my music and did my homework, and she did whatever it was she was doing. As the summer went on, I began noticing more and more about her. She always wore the same navy tank top and khaki shorts with beat-up sneakers. I couldn’t tell if she had a lot of navy tank tops and shorts or if she was wearing the same thing every day, so I peeked into her closet one day. There were only three hangers in there, holding three navy tank tops.
In the eight weeks we lived together, I never saw her do her laundry. She didn’t shower a lot either. I often saw her pick at her skin, including her nails, acne scars, and scabs. I once caught her picking her toenails and eating them. It didn’t bother me until I came home from class one day and saw her lying on my bed staring at the ceiling. When she saw me, she got up, and that was it. I didn’t ask any questions and she didn’t give me any explanation.
Clara and I weren’t friends, but we also never fought. On the very last day of the program, we attended a banquet with more than a hundred people where students could share what they had worked on over the summer—there were a lot of monologues from actors and the creative writing kids. I wasn’t paying attention when my roommate got on the stage, but I thought, “That’s cool—I didn’t even know she was a creative writer.”
Then she started talking. “This is a monologue about my roommate,” she said. I was not expecting that. “My roommate plays R & B music every single night. I hate my roommate. I hate R & B. I can’t stand the music and want to kill myself. It makes me want to rip my hair out.” She started talking about how annoying and loud my voice was, and how I stayed up much later than she did and always left the lights on. All my friends were looking at me, because they all knew who she was. The whole thing was totally confusing. I thought we had an okay relationship, and she had never once brought up the fact that she didn’t like my music or said that I was too loud or annoying, and here she was, giving this very emotional public rant about me. Everything she said was hurtful, and much of it about my personality—she must have been keeping a list the whole time of things that bothered her.
That night back in the room with her was incredibly awkward, as was the following morning. We didn’t talk about it—I couldn’t even look at her. We both pretended nothing happened, and she didn’t ask me what I thought of her speech. We both packed up and left, and that was that.
Clara was my first and last roommate. My freshman year of college, they asked me if I wanted a roommate and I said no way. It wasn’t recommended, but they let me live alone throughout college. This happened six years ago, and I still get hyped up thinking about it. And I’m much more conscious now than before of
how my voice sounds. Sometimes, when I hear myself talking, I’ll wonder, “Does my voice sound annoying or loud?” Or if I play music, I’ll ask people, “Are you okay with this kind of music?” Maybe she made me a more sensitive person, but it was a scarring experience.
—T, 23 (F)
THE BUNK BEDS
I’VE KNOWN JASON, my brother, since I was one and a half years old—that’s when he was born. Our parents were studying to become professors and we moved to a different state every two or three years because of their jobs, and the two of us had to share a room. We had bunk beds as kids. I used to roll around in my sleep a lot and was afraid of falling off the top, so Jason got the top bunk and I had the bottom. The two of us were constantly up late talking and sharing stories. We were close as kids, though we had our fair share of fights and arguments, because we’re both strong-willed people. Moving around so much forced us to get along, because we were always in a new community.
Sleeping in a bunk bed was exciting until we were in seventh and eighth grade—that was when we realized we wanted rooms of our own. When we had a big enough house, our parents gave us our own rooms. At first being in our own rooms was a little sad, but we got used to it quickly. When high school rolled around, I thought it was the end of my bunk bed days.
The two of us went to separate colleges. After I graduated, Jason was in New York working as a consultant and I lived in D.C., working first at the Department of Education and later in the White House. We first started Jubilee Project on the side to pursue a passion. We weren’t trained in filmmaking but wanted to use videos to tell stories that inspire young people to do good in their communities. Over the next two years, we had weekly conference calls, filmed videos on the weekend on everything from antibullying to HIV awareness to sex trafficking, and posted them on YouTube. We’ve also done public service announcements, commercials, and recently, a short film with NBA player Jeremy Lin. We slowly built up a following, and after a few years, decided that it was something we should pursue full-time.
When you work in the White House, you get to have an exit meeting with the president. You can invite your family, but my parents had already met President Obama. I brought Jason; our third founder, Eric; and his girlfriend, Elaine. I thanked the president for the chance to work at the White House and we told him about the Jubilee Project. He thought it was a cool idea and told us he couldn’t wait to see what we would do—it was an out-of-body experience. We left our jobs and drove across the country to California, because Eric’s parents live in Irvine, and we moved in with them for a short time.
We started looking for a place of our own a few months later. By then we had some funds and a team of eight. We found a house with four bedrooms, and quickly realized we had to pair up. It made sense for Jason and me to live together again. We couldn’t fit two beds in our room, so we got bunk beds for three of the rooms. Thankfully we found full-size beds instead of twin-size beds because we’re both tall. And yes, Jason’s still in the top bunk. The last room has a queen bed, because the two people sharing it are dating. Since we’re a start-up, we’re not yet able to pay salaries, but we do provide housing for the people who work with us.
We have a lot of house rules, primarily around chores and cleaning. Once a month, we all come together to clean the house, and Monday nights are for family dinners where we take turns cooking. Since the eight of us spend so much time with one another between working together, playing together, and sleeping in the same house, we’ve become a family of sorts. In the months we’ve been here, nothing has been too dramatic and we’ve all gotten along pretty well.
The best thing about living with my brother is he’s even more clean and tidy than I am, which inspires me to be cleaner. After years of living in the same room as kids, we’ve learned how to creep into the room quietly. He used to wake me up all the time, but now he’s mastered the art of getting into the top bunk quietly. We do joke about having girls around—he has a girlfriend, and bunk beds aren’t the best situation. She comes over but doesn’t spend the night.
The great thing about sharing a house together as a start-up is that you build a work culture. We try to spend time together and ask one another how they’re doing in their personal lives, but also give one another space to have those personal lives. It wasn’t planned this way, but everyone happens to be Christian, so we spend time praying together, which can help us stay grounded. I truly believe it translates into our work.
In an odd way, sharing a room with Jason as kids was a great foundation for what we have now. The only reason we can live together, work together, and have the same friends is because of all those years of living in bunk beds back in the day.
—EDDIE LEE, 28 (M), COFOUNDER OF JUBILEE PROJECT
FRESHMAN YEAR
THE AMATEUR TAXIDERMIST
I FILLED OUT A ROOMMATE SURVEY before freshman year and was paired with a girl who introduced herself over e-mail as Alice. After a few exchanges, she started signing her e-mails “Kitten”—as in, “See you soon, Kitten.” Shortly after, I found out that she wanted me to call her by this nickname. I can honestly say I never once called her Kitten; I always called her Alice. On move-in day, her parents called her Alice, but she asked professors and RAs to call her Kitten. She came from a strict family, was an only child, and was a super-talented design student—I think it was a persona she had decided to take on for college.
I knew from our first e-mail exchange that she was different. We talked about likes and dislikes, and she said things like “I really like dolls and dollhouses and little animals.” That made me nervous. I was pretty shy and reserved about the whole thing and tried to keep an open mind, even though I knew we were totally different. I tried to embrace her weirdness as best I could.
One Saturday night, about a month into us living together, she decided to tell me that she was keeping a dead hamster—which had previously belonged to a friend—in our freezer. She told me she wanted to perform taxidermy on it and hang it in a hot air balloon in our room. This came as a shock—it was not the type of thing I’d expected to hear from my roommate. I remember running to my friends and telling them, and they had a bigger reaction than I did. I was in denial that this was something I had to confront.
It took me a few days to get the courage to tell her I didn’t want a dead hamster in my freezer. I was trying to be a good friend even though I disagreed with the whole thing. She asked me if seeing a real one would make me feel better, to which I said no. “I want you to respect the hamster,” she said. “Would you respect your uncle if he died?” You can’t compare the two, because I would never freeze my uncle in our dorm room and do taxidermy on him and hang him from a hot air balloon. The fact that I had to argue this point to her made me feel crazy. Finally, I got my RA involved. He tried to appease her and tell her she could perform taxidermy in a science lab, but she was not happy about it. The whole thing got shoved under a rug after a while, but they did have to change the rules at our school, one of the biggest universities in the country, from no animals allowed in dorms to no animals, dead or alive.
A few months later, my friend was joking around, and she said, “Let’s check your freezer to see if there’s a dead hamster in there.” She opened the freezer and pulled out a dead fish. It was a goldfish that had been living in a little bowl in our room (fish were the only pets allowed). It must have died at some point, and I thought it was gone, but it turned up in our freezer.
Taxidermy wasn’t something Alice had done before; it was a new obsession she loved. She also liked to collect things—there were a lot of stuffed animals and figurines and dolls sitting on her side of the room. I was a neat freak and her side was cluttered with all this crap she bought at antique stores.
Alice had a few other quirks too: She was also into burlesque vintage porn and wanted to hang up naked vintage posters of girls. She asked me to get rid of an Andy Warhol poster I had, and then tried to convince me to hang up naked Dolly Parton photos instead. There was alway
s something I had to say no to.
She was super obsessed with being skinny. She wore a corset at night and then measured her waist in the morning. She was super frail, and I’m pretty sure she only drank Ensure, the nutritional protein drink that gives you calories. Her burlesque obsession eventually turned into a hobby. Our sophomore year, after we weren’t roommates anymore, my friend saw her performing at a strip club. I never saw her after we moved out. We didn’t leave on bad terms, but it was like, Good-bye. I’m not going to miss you.
I don’t know why I never thought about moving out. I guess at the time I didn’t know what my options were. I was trying to make the most out of the living situation. Plus, if I didn’t live with her, someone else would have had to, and no one would have liked living with her. I took one for the team in a way. I did make sure that the next year I didn’t have to room with another stranger. My mom argued that I deserved a single, and the university gave one to me.
—C, 26 (F)
THE CLOSE-KNIT FAMILY
I STARTED COLLEGE IN THE LATE 2000S, when people were starting to find each other on Facebook and develop an initial impression based on social media first, as opposed to real life. My two freshman roommates were Jenna, a blond girl with a friendly, big voice, and Nicole, who had albums full of self-portraits on Facebook where she wore heavy makeup and was always brooding in dramatic ways.
I lived on an all-girls floor of our dorm, which was either called the brothel or the nunnery, depending on who lived there each year. The girls were catty to one another, so I stayed away from the social scene on our floor. I even joined the men’s freshmen crew team so I could make male friends. But I did become very close with my roommates, and the three of us developed a dynamic that worked well. We didn’t hang out outside of our room much, but we had fun together, appreciated one another’s eccentricities, and got comfortable with one another. I used to vacuum all the time—I’m a bit neurotic with my cleanliness—and they always laughed at me.
