College Parts Two and Three

Part Two: Roommate

         Three days later, the peace in room 609 was really deteriorating. I could not stand Darla and I'm confident the feeling was mutual. Darla had refused to sleep in our room or be in it with me for long since I had come home super stoned. My friend and future roommate Amanda was also living in a pretty hostile environment down in 209 with her roommate, Paige. Paige was pretty difficult and strange. She had an anger management problem, had grown up a few towns over and never left a fifty mile radius from her home, wore only cowboy boots (even in the shower), and was a math major. Seriously, she loved math which is possibly a super power. We thought that if we could just get Paige to switch rooms with me, maybe everyone could be happy (or Darla and Paige could torture each other but at least we would be rid of them). We went to the student mediator who we will call Mr. D (because I forgot his name -Sorry dude). You couldn't switch rooms without trying mediation at least once or getting his permission.

         Mr. D was a great guy; He was very kind and understanding, super patient, and had a good read on people. Seriously, there was no bull shitting this guy. Amanda and I went to him the same morning Paige had threatened to beat her up and had thrown a text book at her and pitched our idea to him. After a moment's reflection, Mr. D said to me, "What's your name again?" I repeated it and he said, “Yeah, I have a meeting with you and Darla later today already so I guess we just need to set one up for Amanda and Paige." JAW DROP. Darla had set up a mediation meeting for us and not told me so I would look like a big steaming turd by not showing up! (That was low, Darla. Yeah, I hope you're reading this because I'm talking to YOU, GIRL!) I was pretty shocked, and I've never had much of a poker face so it seemed like he had picked up on that when he asked, "She didn't tell you?" He probably figured it out because he was so good at reading people, but it might have been the way my mouth fell open and all the stuttering as I tried to find appropriate words.

         So it was that I returned to Mr. D's office that afternoon full of jittery nerves and feelings of approaching doom. When I arrived Darla was already chatting Mr. D up. She always acted pretty entitled; her mom had also attended VI for photography back in the day so obviously that made Darla some kind of legacy. I sat next to her and Mr. D stated that we were having a meeting to see if we could work out our problems or find a solution that worked for us. I took the opportunity to say my piece; I explained I had found a room I would move to if Darla was okay with Paige becoming her new roommate. I told her I knew 609 was important to her because it had been her mom's room before and I was happy to be the one to leave. I said my problem was just that we kept very different schedules and that wasn't working for me, that it was clear it wasn't working for her, and that I felt it would be best if we didn't live together so resentments didn't build up. I saw no reason to attack Darla even if I did think she was a total buttface.

         Darla took a different approach. For twenty minutes, she personally attacked me. She told Mr. D a lot of personal information about my break up on the first day and what an inconvenience it had been for her, complained about my every personality trait she could think of, ratted me out for smoking pot (which I should add she had said was no problem when we first met), and bookended the terrible hate-fest by telling me she was scared I was going to rape her because of the one hug I had given her the night I got super stoned with Jimmy. (She also took the liberty to share all of this with the rest of the school.) For twenty minutes I held my tongue if only to keep from crying. Mr. D proclaimed that indeed, we would be allowed to swap rooms as soon as he had spoken to Paige and Amanda. I waited for Darla to leave before I wept all over Mr. D, practically begging him to believe me that those terrible things she had said were not a reflection on my character and I would never, never rape someone or intentionally make them feel unsafe around me. Luckily for me, Mr. D was a good judge of character, kindly told me he knew, comforted me by saying he could see I was having a rough time, and allowed me to compose myself before I left his office.

         There was a happy ending because within a week, Amanda and I were roommates (and what an adventure it was!) Before we became roommates, Amanda and I would have "window dates". We would stick our heads out of our dorm room windows and shout up and down the building to each other while drinking juice boxes. One memorable night in the midst of our window date, Amanda shouted up, "YOU LOOK LIKE BATMAN LOOKING DOWN ON GOTHAM CITY!" The nickname stuck. Amanada became my Robin, my blue Ford Focus became known as The Batmobile, our room was The Batcave, and we had a few enemies: The Joker (a creepy old guy with a crush on me who sometimes bought us alcohol), The Riddler (our upstairs neighbor who often had loud but fast sex in the middle of the day [the riddle was how someone kept having sex with him]), and Two Face (a dramatic, back-stabbing girl in our friend group). People around campus actually called us Batman and Robin probably 60% of the time and IT WAS AWESOME.

(Amanda and me prowling the halls of our dorm as our own versions of Batman and Robin)

        We had a great time living together. We would have Lord of the Rings marathons that involved drinking games, we discovered the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall together (after seeing it, we often greeted each other with the famous “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!”), we went with each other to get piercings and tattoos (and even hung out with our piercer, Scotty, pretty often). We found a strip club the next city over called Fuzzy Holes (we did not go in), went to drive through movies, and had many rounds of hide and go seek tag with our friends in the local (and huge) Wal-Mart.

(Me, Kaitlyn, and Amanda on a Wal-Mart adventure)

         One of the best things about living with Amanda was that she is a huge animal lover. She had a huge aquarium and was super serious about taking care of her beautiful fish. Although fish were the only pets we were allowed to have, Amanda decided she was getting more pets. She had the best pet rat that has ever been, a grey and white guy named Trevor, and convinced me to get the best hamster ever, a tiny grey Russian dwarf hamster I dubbed Cherokee Jack (as a tribute to Creed Bratton from the US version of The Office). They lived mostly in the hoods or pockets of our sweatshirts and were our awesome buddies. We even dog-sat two dogs for a full weekend without getting caught.

Here are some other great things about Amanda:

·Always decorated for holidays

·Respected my sleeping time

·We had the same friends and never left each other out

·Called me "Dragon Lady" in the morning

·Tolerated my rebellious tendencies

·Didn't care if I made a mess

·Tumbled with me (as in Tumblr, not gymnastics)

·Got drunk on strawberry vodka with me a lot

·Brought me food when I was sick on the toilet

(Amanda, Kaitlyn/The Spirit of Christmas, and Gopher decorating the hall outside of the Batcave for Christmas)

As you can see, Amanda was the best roommate of all time. Living with her was a dream; it was so great I knew even then that these were "the good old days.”

Part Three: Goodbye

         There was one really huge difference between Amanda and me: Amanda was a hardworking and serious student who knew how to balance her time between work and play and never skipped class or half-assed an assignment. I, on the other hand, was unmotivated, uninspired, and uninterested. After the first semester, I was on academic probation. In the second semester, I stopped going to classes most of the time in order to work more hours as a server at Red Lobster ( which I obviously preferred to school work).

          By the time midterms rolled around, my really great voice teacher let me know my grades were so bad that if I didn't drop out, I'd be kicked out and probably never get into another college. A week later, I packed up my car, gave Amanda one final hug, and made the 8 hour drive home with Cherokee Jack in my cup holder. Although I did not succeed at being a student (although if anyone thought I would in that stage of my life they were kidding themselves), my parents did accomplish something by sending me away: I got my first real taste of freedom and would never stop craving it again. I gained a lot of experience even if I wasn't yet able to put it to practical use and I learned so much about myself. Being at VI was a life changing experience for me; I have never regretted that time of my life (however misguided I may have been back then.)

(“I am a flaming ball of faaaaaaaaaaart!” –Amanda Wiehrs)

This essay is dedicated to my college roommate, Amanda Wiehrs; you changed my life with your love and true friendship. Thank you, I love you, you're the greatest roommate of all time.

College Part One: The Lung

(Snuggling in the student lounge with my roommate, Amanda. September 2011)

Part One: The Lung

       My first stab at college was short lived. In an effort to push me from the nest, my parents forced me to attend a tiny college a mile from the Virginia/Tennessee boarder called Virginia Intermont, which later closed due to immense debt. Originally an all-girl's, Baptist-based private college (that was smaller than my high school) tucked away in the south-western corner of the Virginian mountains, it was naturally an excellent choice for me, an outspoken, rebellious, bisexual liberal. It was my best option since I was offered a talent scholarship that covered almost half the tuition and because I had been too afraid to apply anywhere else (they were desperate for students so I knew I would be accepted). Luckily for me, my high school friend Ashley (who I fondly called Gopher) was also attending VI so I wasn’t totally alone right away.

         Upon arrival I met my first roommate, Darla who looked, dressed, and even had the haircut of a giant toddler. She was a sophomore photography student who claimed to have a severe peanut allergy and I'm pretty sure hated my guts upon first sight. (I say "claimed" because I'm pretty sure she just didn't like the smell and/or wanted to get me out of the room more often.) There's no nice way to say this: Rooming with Darla sucked. She stayed up all night, slept all day, made me leave the room to prepare my pb&j's, wouldn't share her mini-fridge, and spread some pretty nasty rumors about me (more on that later). I also met a basketball player who lived down the hall from me and pursued me relentlessly and aggressively (until I moved to a new floor) named Rhonda, two soccer players who roomed together (one was nice and one showed me his penis upon meeting him), my roommate-to-be Amanda, fellow theatre major Angelique (who is 100% fabulous), and my soon-to-be friend Kaitlyn on my first day.

         The big upside to living with Darla was that she introduced me to Jimmy, a huge teddy bear of a dude. Over my summer before college, I had become interested in marijuana. I had tried to smoke a few times without having any real success. Enter Jimmy. On my first night at VI, my girlfriend cheated on me and dumped me. Darla, out of the tiny ventricle of goodness in her heart, introduced me to Jimmy to get high.

         Maybe a week later, Jimmy and I sat in the parking lot of my dorm building in his car to smoke. After some small talk, Jimmy whipped out a 2 liter soda bottle with the end cut off and a plastic shopping bag attached to it and said, "Have you ever used a lung?" I had definitely implied I was a more experienced smoker than I actually was, and I did not want to lose face so I told Jimmy no I hadn't, but I was sure I could handle it. I'm pretty sure he knew I was full of shit and wanted to see how far I was going to take this. If you've never smoked from a lung, here's how it works: first you ignite your weed with the cap on the bottle and the bag pushed in. Then you slowly pull the bag out to fill both the bottle and length of the bag with smoke. Finally, you take off the cap, and slowly breathe in the smoke while pushing the bag in. It's pretty intense plus we were hot boxing. Jimmy was an experienced smoker and (I think) getting a kick out of my refusal to admit defeat. We ended up hitting the lung seven times each, and, man, I was beyond lit. Hopefully, I at least impressed Jimmy with my perseverance because I didn't have any kind of intelligence going for me in that moment.

         After what felt like an hour but was probably only ten minutes of chatting, a panicked thought occurred to me: This guy is huge. I am beyond impaired. He could do anything to me he wanted and I would be powerless to stop him. No one knows where I am except Darla who would surely not give a damn if I never came back. I played it cool (visibly freaked out) and asked Jimmy to take me back to my dorm to which he pointed out we were in the parking lot of the building. The problem was it was on a hill and to get to the door from there I would have to climb a small set of steps (and I was confident I couldn't). As any lady of class would, I made up a really lame (and very transparent) excuse to get him to drive all the way around campus and up to the door to drop me off. As I exited his car, I breathed a sigh of relief that I had escaped whatever terrible things I later realized he would never have done to me anyway. That ended as I approached the door and realized I had to somehow fit my tiny key into that tiny lock to get inside, would then have to pass the building's R.A, just to get my key into yet another tiny lock. Eventually after an unknown amount of time struggling with the key, some kind person came along and let me in. I lived on the sixth floor and didn't think I could make the stairs, so I took the elevator that, of course, opened in front of my R.A.'s more-often-than-not open door, but luckily she wasn't there. As I faced my final obstacle, unlocking my own door, I felt I was home free until I heard from the opening elevator the sound of Rhonda's drawling voice.

         Let's back up for a second. Earlier that week, as I was returning to my room from a shower in only a towel, Rhonda had followed me to my room begging me to take my towel off for her, have sex with her, and finally let her see "just one boob". When I had unlocked my door she had forced her way into my room ahead of me and it had taken a lot of pleading to get her out. Then, when I tried to shut the door, she had tried to force it open and then stood outside begging me to let her in for a full ten minutes. (Fun fact: later that year she got in trouble for trying to take advantage of a sleeping drunk girl after a party.) Now back to the story of the lung!

         As I heard Rhonda approaching from the elevator around the corner, time seemed to move in slow motion. I watched each desperate stab of my key missing the lock, felt my heart pounding with fear that I would not escape her in time, heard her words in slow motion, and each footfall echoed in my ears like terrible screams. Finally, my key went into the lock; SUCCESS!! As I slow-mo flew into the room and Rhonda turned the corner, I heard her call out, "Heeeeeeyyyy, Sssaaaaaarrraaaaahhhhhh," and I slammed the door shut in her face! After about five minutes of her knocking and saying "I know you're there. I saw you go in," as I hid in my closet (high-dea), I was able to come out. I ate every single thing I had in my dorm, binge-watched Friends, hugged Darla when she came in, and passed out.



(Part 2 to be released on Wednesday!)