"It has been said that anyone who wants to live in a dorm is either a freshman or a mental defective." - Josh Charles, Threesome
There comes a time in every freshman's life when he realizes it's time to move out of the dorms. For me, that time has come.
The most prevalent of my current woes is my roommate. He's a foreign exchange student from Japan, and hooker studies ALL THE TIME. This boy is constantly at his desk with his blinding snake light poring over course materials. That's cool if he wants to study. It's college and studying is going to happen, in theory. I even peruse a book every now and then. But more often then not (during the scant hours I am in the room), my ass is stretched out on the extra-long twin bed with the phone in one hand and the TV remote in the other. Granted, I probably watch more TV than the average person, but it's what I like to do. It entertains me most of the time, and even when it doesn't I like to have it on.
On a few recent occasions, the roomie has asked that I turn the television down and/or off. It's really hard to tell, because despite the fact that he's been in the country for almost a year, his English skills are seriously lacking and it takes twenty minutes to have a five-second conversation with him. Plus, I talk a good game here on the nameless, faceless Internet, but when it comes to real life confrontation, I fold faster than a hotel ironing board. Thus, I have granted his requests that the TV be silenced.
The fun hasn't stopped there, because even with the TV silenced, I'm still yakking away on the phone. Roomie is too polite to tell me directly to shut up; instead, he passive-aggressively slams the door all the time. And the other night, he left me a note explaining that he has an important test on Tuesday that he needs to do well on or something. I'm guessing it's an English test and his ESL teacher is all over him for watching Gundam Wing for the last eight months instead of learning the language, but I don't particularly care. I had two important tests today that I needed to do well on, and I studied for both of them without harassing my roommate.
The thing is, I go to class all day, where I am subjected to learning whether I like it or not. Even geography, a class in which I have taken to frequent and obvious naps, has taught me how best to utilize my right arm as a makeshift pillow. Thus, when I come home, I want to be entertained. I paid rent to live in that room. It's where I go to kick back. I don't need to be told when I can watch TV or talk on the phone. I already did that for eighteen years. If the roomie needs complete and total silence, the campus library is open almost twenty-four hours a day and the dorm provides private study rooms on odd-numbered floors. This is all stuff I'm preparing for a possible argument with roomie this weekend, as I don't plan to get out of bed tomorrow at all, if possible. (It's Saturday; leave me alone.)
Another conclusion I have reached as a result of these few months in the dorms is that if I'm paying such exorbitant rent to live somewhere, I'm going to have my own goddamn bathroom. Our floor has the nicest custodial staff on the planet, but niceness isn't an effective quality in fighting the unending squalor those bathrooms are always in. The showers are unpredictable, frequently flooding the entire floor of the bathroom. The toilets are either out of order or not fit for human use, and I'm really curious as to how there came to be blood in the sink. I know I hated cleaning the bathroom when I lived at home, but I'd take a little Tilexing any day over this mess.
I've got a bad case of apartment fever. I went to a dinner party last night and one girl was describing her old apartment, which featured, in addition to the standard amenities (privacy, clean bathroom, refrigerator for my milk as I have become calcium-deprived of late), a fireplace and a balcony. I was excited just hearing about it. Apartment guides are my new porn. I'm fantasizing about one special night with a real estate agent, y'all. I need help.
And then there's the subject of floor meetings. Every so often, the coordinator of residence life, who is quite a condescending bitch for only being twenty-two years old, organizes a meeting of all the residents on a floor. This Wednesday, she wanted to discuss the issues with our resident advisor. As I noted last week, he has moved out of the building. I chose not to attend the meeting because of my prior commitment to a family dinner (read: off-brand potato chips and orange soda in front of Protein's big screen), but the next day Condescending Bitch informed me that he was no longer employed by the university. No replacement will be hired; we're on our own until January. If there's an emergency blah blah blah contact the RA on duty. Whatever. Our RA was, for all intents and purposes, useless, so this is no big loss. What's more interesting, though, is why he left.
For this to even sort of make sense, I have to explain that the staff likes to adorn our doors with signs bearing our names, in case we forget in our drunken stupors (oh, but the dorms are alcohol-free, which certainly explains all the Natural Ice boxes in the garbage) what room is ours. The names are usually handwritten on a half sheet of paper and tend to feature lame clip art (race car, football, Wesley Snipes, and no, I don't know why).
Word on the street (okay, I heard it from a desk clerk who heard it from another RA) is that someone lit my (now former) RA's name thingy on fire one night. The guy spazzed and quit the next day. Granted, I would have too, but I'm more concerned about the fact that no one told us there was a fire until two weeks after it happened. It's like high school all over again, when they once took us outside because of a bomb threat fifteen minutes after the bomb was supposed to have exploded.
And on top of all that, we get to attend mandatory fire safety workshops next week because some asshat tried to torch the place. I know not to light things on fire in a dormitory. I have enough common sense that I don't need to attend a workshop to know that playing with fire dangerous. Just ask half the state of California.
What it comes down to is that in addition to not paying rent for shitty bathrooms and inconsiderate roommates, I didn't pay rent to have to go to more meetings. I'm busy enough already. I have all these apartment applications to fill out and I have to find an English-speaking roommate who likes to watch TV.
Someone got here by searching for: ming dynasty lesbians And: prison stripes t-shirts Reading: Mercifully, nothing. Listening to: The new Dido. It's a lot happier than her first CD, and the songs are very catchy. Watching: I've almost finished the first season of Six Feet Under. How much do I love Frances McDormand? I've got a whole stack of DVDs I'm hoping to get through this weekend, but I have to go see the school's production of Rocky Horror tonight, since I'm supposed to review it for the paper or whatever. Eating: My grandmother sent me a big box of Halloween candy. Have I mentioned how much I love my grandmother?
