Another Dave showed up for the spring of ’01. He was a twenty-one year-old freshman mormon. Fresh from the mission and pure as the driven snow. On day two of the semester, my friend and future roommate Erik, comes down to my room laughing his ass off because he just found out what a “Jelly Doughnut” was. He then explains it in great detail, while Dave is in the room listening in horror. If you do not know what a “Jelly Doughnut” is, look it up on Urban Dictionary. I’d like to hold myself to some standard on this blog and not sully it with such explanations. Myself, along with the rest of the floor corrupted Dave very well, and by the time the semester ended, not only was he making Jelly Doughnut references, but we also suspect he was breaking, or coming close (pun intended), to breaking Mormon celibacy rules. And so ended my dorm living career.
Probably my favorite time in a shared living situation was in the fall of ’01 when I lived with my friends from the dorms Brian and Erik. We had an apartment on the north side of town in a sea of student apartments. We were at The Pointe and had apartment 333. “The three three, mothafuckin’ three” we used to say. I think we were all living on our own for the first time. No food allowance, utilities to pay, rent to pay, and parties to be thrown. My God, did we have parties. Maybe I’m just bragging, but shit, we had some good times. We had tons of booze, good music being played, and a more than acceptable girl-to-guy ratio. We had a few normal non-themed parties, but my favorite was the Graffiti party. Aside from the fact it was also a 22nd birthday party for me, it was damn good time. If you’re not familiar, a graffiti party is where you show up to a place in a white or light colored shirt. Then a bunch of markers are given out, and in the middle of the boozing and dancing, you write or draw things on each other’s shirt. By the end of the night, your shirt should be covered in... graffiti! I retired my “Pimp, Tom, Pimp” shirt, now covered in marker. I still have that shirt in my closet. There’s stuff on that shirt I never noticed until just recently. As you can see from the pics, one of the benefits of writing on someone’s shirt is that they won’t be able to see right away what you wrote or who wrote it. The alcohol certainly helps in adding to being ignorant to what’s on your shirt. It also didn’t hurt I got laid that night... I think... it was kinda hazy after midnight.
The 333 was the first taste of living the bachelor life the college way. The college way, of course, is devoid of... nice things. The furniture is well worn at best. Beeramids were feats of physics. No posters were framed, but damnit, there was a blacklight within a foot of them. Bass thumped through the walls, and also thumping was the coughing from the bong being passed around. Strange events occurred, too. The strangest was when everyone was asleep on a Saturday night. We were all in our own bedrooms (no bunking here, finally). I’m just falling asleep when I hear a knock on my bedroom door. I think it’s one of my roommates. I open the bedroom door and it’s a random girl. How in the blue fuck did she get in here? She asks if so-and-so lives here. Stunned, I simply say no, and then she turns around, goes out the front door, and hops into a cab that’s waiting for her and drives away. I know I didn’t dream it. Erik came out of his room ready to lay down some judo on a potential intruder. It took another thirty seconds for me to realize just how in the hell did she come in the apartment (door left unlocked... usually not a problem in State College). Why did she knock on my door? Why was she walking into apartments, without knocking, at 2am? Good thing I wasn’t in the raping mood that night, otherwise she would’ve looked back on that as a poor life decision. Surreal.
After The 333, I began an unhealthy habit of moving, maximum, every two years. Some moves were based on choice, others were based on necessity. In fact, beginning with the move out of the dorms, I moved seven times from 2002 to now. And I hate moving. I detest it. I literally get headaches from moving all my crap from one place to another. The process of moving makes me ill. Because of this, I never really got comfortable anywhere I was. I always knew that eventually, it would be time to pack up again. I didn’t completely let go and settle in. I realize I should’ve done just that, settle, and fully enjoyed myself. But I’m not like that. The byproduct of all that moving is that I ended up with almost no possessions. I had whatever computer I had with me, maybe a bed, and that was it. I added a coupe kitchen appliances, but I had no furniture, only moved a TV twice, and a fish tank three times (pain in the ass). It was going to be a fourth time moving a fish tank, but I decided I was going to leave it at one place and stopped feeding the four fish in there. They all survived off of the algae. I wonder if the new tenants fed them at all? Relax, it was only a ten gallon tank. I wasn’t abandoning puppy-sized fish. They would’ve died by my own neglect eventually.
So now after a decade of moving back and forth within State College, I finally knuckled down and bought my own place. A hefty tax rebate was incentive enough to do it. As I said in part one, I’m not completely settled in yet, but I got the basics down. Over the course of writing this, I did make progress. The biggest thing in settling in, is the house-into-home transition. This past Sunday was Easter, and my family came up. There were eight of us in the house. My mom and dad, grandmother, brother, his wife, my nephew, my sister, and her boyfriend. I grilled the meat and veggies, while my mom made up the pasta and prepped. My nephew was playing in the living room with his blocks and matchbox cars. My brother and sister-in-law were watching Dancing with the Stars on hulu and my father and grandmother were outside on the deck enjoying the eighty degree weather we were fortunate enough to have. We all settled down for an Easter dinner. And as I sat there, I leaned back with a crooked smile on my face enjoying everyone being there. It was nice having everyone together... in my home.
The past two nights, I had friends over and we sat on the deck, cooking up food, smoking cigars, and having drinks. If Easter didn’t drive it through, the past two nights did. Despite a lack of pictures on the wall, no actual honest-to-goodness bed to sleep in, and zero knickknacks that fill most living rooms, my place of residence made the transition from house to home over the course of five days. All it took were good friends and the people I care about the most to make that happen. To paraphrase you-know-who, I never had a place that I could call my very own, but that’s alright because they are my home. I could move eight more times in eight more years within town or across the country, but without friends and family to help fill the room, it’ll just be a place to put your stuff. At least that’s just me. Maybe I just like having people over from time to time. So, if you already have visited, thanks for dropping by and helping my place feel more like a home. I hope you come back soon. If you haven’t stopped by yet, you’re welcome to come over. But do take your shoes off when you come in. I don’t want you to fuck up my carpet.
No comments:
Post a Comment