It’s that time of year when thousands of the nation’s barely-adults head off to college for the first time. Bed Bath and Beyond is just about sold out of their extra-long twin bedsheets, mini-fridges are all packed up and parents are sad about sending their babies off to live on their own for the first time.
But the thing is, their babies are not alone. For the vast majority of freshmen living in dormitories, there will be roommates. A few will room with their friends from high school. Some others will be like me and get stuck with a random stranger who performs fellatio on a football player upon the chair your grandmother bought you, and forever stains it with that guy’s spat-out jizz.
I was the only person in my high school graduating class to go to my university, and I was fine with that. But that meant I wouldn’t know anyone when I got there, which is scary as hell. As an only child, I was actually kind of looking forward to the roommate part. The university sent all incoming freshmen roommate compatibility questionnaires with questions about whether you were a morning or night person, clean or sloppy, smoking or not. (It was 2000, and smoking was still allowed in designated areas on campus [the highest concentration of cigarette smoke was right outside the door of the building where most of the theater majors took classes]. Not in the dorms, though.)
We got notified of who our roommates would be a month or so before move-in day. Jamie (whose name I am altering a bit in the event she’s a better person now) lived an hour or so away, and we met up and shopped for a rug together, along with some other stuff for our room. She seemed pretty normal, and I thought we’d get along and maybe be friends.
As soon as we moved in together, I quickly realized Jamie and I would not be BFFs, and that she either lied on her compatibility questionnaire or the Office of Residential Life wanted to conduct some kind of sick experiment. She was a disgusting slob, leaving food-crusted plates and crumbs everywhere. She smoked. While she did not smoke in the room, we had to share an approximately 2-square-foot closet, and the stench clung to her clothes and seeped on to mine. She was loud and obnoxious and craved attention and acceptance.
Which is why, about three weeks after college started, she burst into our room while I was doing homework and demanded that I leave for 20 minutes because “there’s this guy.” This wasn’t at like midnight on a Saturday, mind you. This was about 3 p.m. on a weekday.
The guy who lived across the hall from us, Dan, saw me in the lounge and asked what I was up to. I told him I had to read my stuff for class out there because Jamie’d kicked me out of the room to hook up with some guy. He told me it was my room, too, and I didn’t deserved to be kicked out of it. I was like, “Yeah! Totally!” So I marched back there, 45 minutes after I’d left - a full 25 more than she requested - and decided I didn’t have to knock on the door because I lived there, too. As I opened it up, the flip-and-fold chair (there is another more crass name for it that instead of “fold” is another four-letter F word that seemed pretty applicable for this situation) my grandmother had purchased for me for college was all spread out on the floor, as was the football player. He was hurriedly pulling his pants up. Jamie was coughing and sputtering a little and hurriedly pulling her shirt down. She quickly said, “We didn’t have sex.” I said, “I don’t care,” and walked back out.
The next day, I saw a crusty, whitish stain on the chair. Our suitemate later informed me that the guy was a football player who’d Jamie’d met at a party earlier that week. They weren’t dating or anything, but the day he’d come over had been his birthday, and Jamie thought he deserved a blow job for that. I don’t think she ever saw him again. My mouth had been nowhere near a penis at this point in my life, so I was pretty disgusted.
Oh, that was just the beginning. Other living-with-Jamie highlights include:
* On my way out to a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting - where I’d found my niche and met people who would become lifelong friends - Jamie asked where I was going. I told her, and with her friend sitting next to her, she said, “God, how many f**king Jesus meetings do you have a week?” Then she looked at her friend, said “Right?!” and laughed at me.
* I had to climb out of my lofted bed about 2 or 3 a.m. one weeknight to prevent Jamie from peeing in the closet, which her drunken stupor had led her to believe was the bathroom.
* Jamie was dating this guy for a month or two named Brian, I think. (and if you think she was super attractive because of all these exploits with guys, I’m sorry to tell you she was not. Just easy.) Except Brian was more into me than he was into her. Brian had a distinctly creepy, rapey vibe about him. I tried to avoid being in the room when he was around. I told her he made me uncomfortable, and she said to get over it. She had him sleep over several times. He would often come over to my bed - which praise Jesus was lofted off the ground so he couldn’t just slide into it - and want to have a whispery conversation in the middle of the night. He followed me around campus. And of course Jamie got mad at me for “stealing her boyfriend,” despite the fact I told her numerous times he creeped me out and I didn’t want him around. Several more guys spent the night in our room over my objections. Like as a grown-up, I am not OK with a random guy I don’t know in the room where I sleep, change clothes and generally where I have my greatest expectation of privacy, and I felt the same way then.
* Pretty much all of Jamie’s friends (and love interests) that first semester of college maintained companionship with her for one to two months, max. She was just too abrasive and obnoxious to keep around long. She rushed for sorority after sorority and got turned down by all of them. I laughed inside and hung out with the friends I didn’t have to impress or pay for.
The end of Jamie and me happened shortly after Christmas break. I had dreaded returning to live with her. After a few days back at school, I wrote my mom an e-mail enumerating all the ways Jamie was still as grating as ever, and that I’d talked to the R.A. about getting out, but they said there were no empty rooms to which I could move. Then I went to class.
When I returned, Jamie angrily confronted me. “Why are you talking shit to your mom about me?”
SHE’D READ MY E-MAILS. I hadn’t password-protected my computer because A) I thought I hadn’t needed to and B) It was 2001 by that point and cyber-security wasn’t nearly what it is today. Anyway, that crazy mofo went to my desk, turned my sleeping CRT monitor back on, opened up my student e-mail account and read the ones I’d sent. And I apologized to her for writing those things. 35-year-old me knows so much better now. 35-year-old me might tell Jamie that the personality flaws I’d enumerated in the e-mail were just the tip of the iceberg and inquire why she thought none of her friends or boyfriends stuck around for more than 60 days. And suggest she’d seek professional help
But this story does have a happy ending. I met my Campus Crusade friends in the cafeteria shortly after the confrontation and told them all about it. One of them, Emily, pointed out that a couple of our mutual friends - including her roommate - were studying abroad that semester. So she was without a roommate. As soon as the ink was dry on the res life paperwork, I ditched Jamie and moved into Emily’s room. We lived together for the rest of college. We were often mistaken for sisters out in public. This is what my only-child mind had always dreamed of. We’re still close. My son wears her son’s hand-me-downs. Due to our husbands’ poor health habits, I think we’ll probably outlive them, and I want us to be roommates again as widows. I can’t tell you how much I love that girl.
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