The Roommates

by Stephanie Wu

  I remember we had one bonding night where I realized that the two of them hadn’t smoked pot or been high before, so I rolled them a joint. I got high and they didn’t, because they weren’t smoking right. So we decided to borrow a bowl from someone next door and we smoked out of the window. All the smoke blew right back into the room and hit the two of them, and they started coughing horrendously. Jenna had an asthma attack and I had to grab her inhaler; Nicole had tears of laughter rolling down her cheeks, and her black eye makeup was everywhere. They both got incredibly stoned and lay in their beds and didn’t talk, even though I was stoned and chatty. As we got closer, we had bonding moments like that that we look back on and laugh at. We told one another about guys we were interested in or had been with and stories about class.

  Nicole was relatively stable during our first semester, until she found out that her dad had been cheating on her mom for years, which led to her mom leaving her dad. And then her grandfather passed away—all within two weeks around Thanksgiving. Nicole started getting a bit depressed—she wasn’t leaving her room much and was sleeping a lot and reading in bed with her lights off and a headlamp. She gained about twenty pounds—she was still a small person but seemed unhappy.

  When Christmas break was over, we all came back and shared stories about what we’d done. And all of a sudden, Nicole said, “I have a story for you guys, but do you promise not to judge me?” “Yes, of course,” we said, because that’s always the answer to a question like that. And she said, “I’ve started seeing my uncle.” She’d talked about how good-looking her uncle was after Thanksgiving, and we had written it off, since she was so quirky.

  “What do you mean, your uncle?” we asked.

  “He’s my mom’s younger brother and he’s so hot,” she said. “We’re dating. We slept together, and he’s amazing, and I know it’s weird but I think we’re soul mates. We’ve always had a connection.”

  Nicole started showing us pictures of him on Facebook. They’d gone on a trip and there were artsy pictures of them together, though nothing too suggestive. He was forty-five years old (she was eighteen). He was living the bachelor life and looked like he was trying hard to come off as young and hip.

  After she left, Jenna and I looked at each other and doubled over laughing hysterically. We had no idea what to do with that information and didn’t know what else to say. We felt pretty firmly that we weren’t going to judge her, and we knew that she was going through a hard time. It wasn’t really our place, but I did get her to go see a counselor in the health center. My mom is a therapist, and I’ve always liked having someone to talk to, especially a professional who knows how to listen and respond. I remember telling Nicole it was cool to have a shrink and convincing her to go talk to somebody. When I told my mom about Nicole, she pointed out that it was abuse, in a way, but didn’t tell me it was my job to tell someone else about it.

  The relationship lasted a couple of months—she used to Skype with her uncle in our room and giggle with him, and she introduced us to him. She truly believed they were meant to be together. Toward the end of the year, it fizzled out and she told us it was over. She later dated her best friend’s older brother for a lot of college—maybe it was something about the intimacy of having a romantic relationship with someone who reminds you of someone you love. She was always looking to be cared for and for a father figure when hers had let her down. Since then, I’ve seen Facebook photos of her with her uncle during holidays, so it seems they maintained their close relationship. Whether it continued to be sexual, I don’t know—and don’t want to!

  —L, 24 (F)

  THE SECRET KEEPER

  MY FRESHMAN YEAR ROOMMATE, Annie, was incredibly smart. She was fluent in three languages and so into physics and chemistry, and when she showed me her schedule during orientation week, it was full of classes like advanced organic chemistry—ones that freshmen technically aren’t allowed to take. Most of us were taking four or five classes, but she was taking seven. She was also really, really quiet.

  In the first few weeks of school, I wanted to go to Fashion’s Night Out, and I brought her with me. I was so excited, because it was my first year in New York. She brought a textbook with her to read on the subway train downtown. When we got to SoHo, my friends and I were all sitting around a clothing store and sipping champagne, even though we were underage, and my roommate was in a corner reading her textbook. That was strange to me. Everyone at my school was a smart kid who worked hard, but she took it to another level.

  For a while, I thought Annie and I could never bond. Sometimes we were both in the room studying, and she interrupted me to tell me something interesting she’d read in her textbook. I didn’t have the advanced knowledge to understand what she was saying, and it was rare to meet someone who was so fascinated by what she was studying. I was so distracted by what was going on in New York that school was not that big of a priority for me.

  That year, Halloween fell on a Friday. We all went out, but Annie went to the library to study and work on a research project. I watched everyone else around me bonding with his or her roommates and having a great time—we lived in the most social dorm, but Annie never wanted to hang out. I assumed she didn’t want to make friends. I had a narrow view of her based on what I had seen.

  Once, the guys on my floor decided to play a practical joke on us by putting condoms on our doorknobs. Annie freaked out—she had no idea what they were. She gave me the impression that she was a sheltered little girl who only ever thought about doing well in school.

  One night, there was a storm, so no one wanted to go out. Our room was the biggest one on the floor, and the entire floor crammed into our room that night. We started out telling scary stories and bonding, drinking a little, and eating snacks. Then we started talking about what we wanted to do with our lives. We were freshmen who were getting to know one another—a lot of people said they wanted to be bankers or work for Google or go to law school.

  When it was Annie’s turn, she said she wanted to cure cancer. Someone very close to her in her family had died of cancer, and that made her want to devote her life to finding a cure. “I think there’s a cure out there,” she said. “We’re just looking for it in the wrong direction.” I thought it was so profound coming from an eighteen-year-old.

  I waited until after the sleepover to tell her that I had been suffering from acute leukemia but was way too scared to tell anybody at college. And she responded by hugging me and telling me that I didn’t have to pretend to be strong around her. It was so nice to have someone to confide in, and she became an anchor for me.

  During the school year, I sometimes had to get bone marrow and blood tests, but was relatively fine. I was the first one in the dorm to be hospitalized, because I wasn’t in the best physical state. I had been ill with the flu and went to the emergency room the third night of orientation week. Annie stayed with me then, even though we barely knew each other. She had seen me throw up a couple of times after treatments, but of course she didn’t assume I was sick, just that I was some crazy party girl.

  After we opened up to each other, our dynamic changed and we saw each other in a different way. She used to write messages on Post-its to motivate herself whenever she was frustrated by a physics problem, and I would roll my eyes. I later realized it was because she has this huge research goal that she’s so obsessed with, and she wanted to become an oncologist and find a cure for cancer. I had thought that I was more mature and worldly than her, but she taught me so much about judging people and understanding that we all come from different places.

  Annie never became my best friend, but I trust her much more than most people. She kept my secret for all of these years, and I admire that. There are very few people who are so passionate about a project that they’re willing to give up their social lives. Some people want to be doctors because it’s a stable way to make a living if you survive med school, but I don’t think she’s that kind of person. I truly believe she’ll contribute t
o curing cancer someday.

  —N, 23 (F)

  THE GARBAGEMAN

  BEFORE MY FRESHMAN YEAR STARTED, I’d chatted with my future roommate online and was looking forward to living with him. But a month or so before college started, he got word that one of his best friends from high school had gotten off the wait list and wanted to room with him. He asked me if we could switch roommates, and I said I was okay with it as long as I stayed on my floor. That’s how I wound up with Blake. I tried to look him up on Facebook, but he wasn’t on there, so we didn’t connect until school started.

  Blake seemed a little eccentric to me, and this may have partially been because I was coming from a foreign country and my understanding of an American college and its dynamics were all stereotypes out of movies. I expected someone friendly who I’d hit it off with. But from day one, I thought, I don’t know if I have much in common with this guy. He was quiet and reserved, and we exchanged pleasantries and backstories, but never got each other’s phone numbers. I lived with him for a whole year, and when we went our separate ways after freshman year, I still didn’t have his number or e-mail. Clearly, we were never close.

  The first weird incident I can remember happened in November, and that’s what I like to call the ice cream disaster. A friend of mine, Doug, was trying to impress a girl on our floor, and had the genius idea of buying her ice cream in the middle of midterms because she was stressed. Blake had one of the only minifridges on our floor, so Doug asked if he could store the pint in our freezer for a couple of days over Thanksgiving break. Everyone was leaving for a few days, and in order to save energy, Blake decided to unplug all our appliances. When I came back, I noticed the fridge wasn’t on, and of course the ice cream in the freezer was now soup. I had to call Doug and say, “Hey, that pint of ice cream is totally gone, so you’re going to need a backup plan.” I guess Blake unplugged the fridge whenever it wasn’t in use, though I’m pretty sure you don’t save energy by unplugging and replugging a minifridge. There were plenty of times when I turned on my desk lamp to find it wasn’t working because he’d unplugged the entire power strip when he left the dorm. It wasn’t just for weekends or holidays, it was a regular morning occurrence. That was when I realized he wasn’t your typical college kid.

  That incident was the beginning of a very passive-aggressive relationship. I’m certain I could have handled it better, but for two or three months, we didn’t say more than a few words to each other, aside from hello when one of us walked into the room. We both studied in stone-cold silence and didn’t exchange words for hours on end.

  Blake had his fair share of interests and hobbies—I found out through friends that he was in an African dance troupe, which was cool because he was a white kid from the South. But his big passion was recycling: he hosted a dormwide information session on the topic and gave a speech about how we should all be recycling because there are bins provided in every room. But we were college kids, and it was one of those things where you might sort everything in your room, but then decide that the recycling bin outside the dorm was too far away and throw it all in the hallway garbage can instead.

  After it was established that Blake was a bit of an oddball, my friends told me they saw him rooting through the trash and separating the recyclables from the garbage. It was bizarre, but I knew he was very environmentally friendly, so it didn’t surprise me too much. A couple of days later, I came back to my dorm, opened the door, and saw a pile of recycling from the trash can in our room. He had turned our room into a holding dock for cans, bottles, and the like, before he went out and recycled it.

  From then on, a little mountain of recyclables appeared in our room about once a week. Thankfully, it didn’t smell, but I was disgusted. It was more psychological than anything else, that there was literally garbage in our room for a couple of days before he took it out to recycle.

  One day, I was so fed up with Blake that I complained about him in a friend’s room. He happened to be walking by and heard me, and he popped his head in and said, “If you have a problem, you can say something to me.” After I apologized the next day, we went back to not speaking to each other. Our weird relationship allowed me to bond with the rest of my floor, including others who didn’t like their roommates. I like to say it was fortuitous that I switched roommates instead of floors, because some of my best friends from college came from my floor.

  I never did pick up Blake’s recycling habit. It was great that he cared, but I wish he could’ve cared without bringing trash into the room. I’m a lot better about recycling now, maybe because I’m in my twenties and am more cognizant of things like that. Maybe Blake was ahead of his time—his heart was in the right place, but it just wasn’t very well received by eighteen-year-old freshmen.

  —A, 25 (M)

  THE ALCOHOLIC GENIUS

  MY ROOMMATE LARS was a first-generation prodigy from Eastern Europe. He had taken calculus in eighth grade and was taking graduate-level math courses as a freshman in college. He was very talented, but also had a clear and pronounced alcohol problem. He was so infrequently sober that it was hard to learn much about him. Lars was one of those individuals who, even in the middle of the day, cops would look at weirdly. He was six foot two, more than two hundred pounds, and had a shaved head. Whether it was intentional or not, he gave off a thuggish persona. In the short amount of time I knew him, he was kicked out of multiple dorms.

  On the second day of college, we built a table so we could have a beer pong party in our room. He was standing on the table when it broke and made a loud sound. Two female RAs came running into our room to see what was going on. “We need your IDs,” they said. And Lars started swearing at them, telling them to get out of our room. The RAs called security, who told Lars he needed to calm down. That’s when he pulled his penis out, pointed it at the RAs, and screamed, “You’re never going to get any of this, you ugly lesbians!” The RA who he was yelling at actually had to be restrained by the security guard because she was so incensed by what he was saying.

  The next few infractions were minor—he was caught with alcohol a few times. Lars only lived with me for three weeks, but we spent a good amount of time together. Without a doubt, he was drunk more than he was sober. We heard crazy stories about him too—he was drunk in a graduate class once but managed to get twice as many questions right as anyone else. When he was forced to move out, I wasn’t sad to see him go—I didn’t want someone in my life who was putting my friends and me in direct danger.

  Lars bounced around a few dorms after that, and in his final dorm before he was kicked out of housing completely, Lars’s roommate was a quiet, introverted foreign exchange student with a computer science background. The RAs had told the new roommate, “If Lars does anything, let us know.” So one day, Lars was in this new apartment, drinking before he went out. And the foreign exchange student went and told the RAs, who told Lars that he’d run out of chances and needed to find an apartment off-campus.

  That evening, Lars went out and got drunk. When he got home, he saw his roommate sleeping and peed on his face. The poor kid woke up screaming and ran to the RAs, and Lars passed out not in his own bed but in his roommate’s bed. He was woken up by security and kicked out of the apartment. He later told us he didn’t even remember peeing on the guy’s face, and that the security guards were actually laughing when they told him he needed to leave.

  At this point, Lars wasn’t allowed in any university housing at all. We still maintained a friendship with him, or maybe it was a fascination. And yes, it says a lot about my friends and me back then, that we decided to hang out with this guy after all that. Another friend decided to throw a party, and we gave Lars someone else’s key card to get into the building. This was only about a month into the school year, and a lot of us had never seen cocaine before. He brought a lot of it with him and did it all himself. This party, like the other one, was broken up by RAs, and my friend who lived there tried to get people out of his room as quickly as possible—w
e all knew that Lars was risking expulsion by being there. The RAs were taking down names and figuring out who was there when Lars decided to get into the shower. As the RAs were about to leave, they heard the water running, and said, “Is someone in the shower?”

  “Yeah, it’s my roommate,” said my friend. And his actual roommate—who hadn’t been taking part in the debauchery—piped up and said, “No, that’s not me. I’m right here.” The RAs knocked on the door until it opened, and Lars came out in a towel. “We need to see ID,” they said. Lars said he needed to get changed, went into the uninvolved roommate’s room, put his clothes on, and somehow convinced him to let him borrow his ID. The RAs obviously knew it wasn’t Lars’s ID, and as he was fishing around in his wallet for his real ID, Lars walked toward the RAs, shouldered them so they fell to the ground, and then ran. Instead of taking the stairs, he took the elevator, and because the RAs were in complete shock, he managed to get on the elevator, which closed before they got there, and escape. I spoke to Lars a few times after that last party, but he dropped out of school soon after.

  Among my group of friends, Lars is still a mythological creature. He was only around for four months or so, but eight years later, we still bring him up once in a while. In hindsight, I appreciate the entertainment.