A Room of Our Own - part two

I’m not going to go over the entire history of sharing rooms. That would be far too long. The most famous of all my roommates over the years happened in the Spring semester of ’00. My second semester at University Park at Penn State.

Fall semester of ’99 I had Dave, aka “Soy Boy”. Why was he nicknamed that? Because the first day in, he put one thing in the refrigerator as his beverage of choice. Soy milk. A kinda hippie dude, but I wouldn’t have known. He wasn’t in the room for most of the time. He was either at class or at his girlfriend’s place and slept there. He was only in the dorm for two hours out of the day. Yet, when he was there, I hated his guts. How dare he intrude on my time, in MY room? That was it. No interaction, just him for two hours of the day... If I was there at the same time. Really, he was the perfect roommate. If I had a social life at that time, it would’ve been even better. But that first semester was all about getting my bearings at University Park and gravitating towards other people in hall that I enjoyed being around. Ya know... making friends. As much as the solitude and lack of a roommate in fall of ’99 was welcomed, it was completely flipped on its head heading into the millennium.

Dave went off to formally live with his girlfriend after the winter break. That meant a new roommate. But have no fear! My friend from Penn State Abington and from Central High was coming up to be my roommate. No worries, right? Wrong. For whatever reason, he never made it up to State College. But now it got even better! I was slotted with a roommate, but he never showed up. Two weeks into the semester, I had no roommate and it was looking good I was going to be on my alone, legit, for the semester. I had those thoughts of freedom when on a Sunday night, about to embark on week three of the quasi-bachelor pad when I heard a rap upon the door.

*Knock* *Knock* Knock*

I go to the door and open. What I saw was a confused kid, who looked like a middle eastern Rivers Cuomo from Weezer. He introduces himself in broken English, “Hello, I am your rrrroommate. My name is eye touch.” Without missing a beat, I reply, “Like... ‘I touch myself’? He started at me blankly. “Yes!”

Oh boy.

Eye Touch, or Aytag if you’re spelling it properly in his native Turkey (if you’re an Apple fanboy, you can spell it “iTouch”), became the talk of the dorms. Not because of his bubbling personality, not because of his mathletic skills, and not because of his killer CD collection. He had none of those. He also had no sense of smell, because he clearly had no idea how bad his was. Us North Americans are used to a standard of bathing. Usually once per day. This is a foreign idea with many exchange students (pun intended). Knowing some RAs, interventions had to be held on occasion to encourage the student to bathe more. iTouch had a funk that permeated the A floor of Hamilton Hall. And I lived in it. Everybody on the floor smelled it. You couldn’t get away from it. To figure out the funk would be like trying to identify all of the Colonel’s eleven herbs and spices. You might come close, but you know you’re leaving out a crucial ingredient. This kid was a combo of generic body odor, feet, cigarette smoke (during the winter, he smoked in the “Smoker’s Lounge” which offered very little ventilation, so he came back worse from a trip to Flavor Country), stereotypical foreigner smell, and then on top of that, let those smells commingle and ferment. That’s what I was dealing with everyday. Needless to say, no girls came back to my dorm that semester.

The dorm room was setup as such: When you entered the eight by fourteen room, you’re immediately on his side of the room, then the back half of the dorm was my end. I had to walk, everyday, through his funk to get to my area. My side was sanctuary from the funk, thanks to the good people at SC Johnson Wax (a family company). I already employed, on my side of the room, a Glade “Large Room” freshener. This sucker was double-barreled, two inserts, to freshen up a room. It was not enough. Glade then had just come out with the Oil Scents room freshener. Hawaiian Breeze was their only flavor and I got it to help out the troops. Those two forces working together barely worked on my side of the room. So to sum up, I walk into my room, get punched in the face with his funk for six feet, then happen upon this weird two foot Demilitarized Zone where the funk and Glade met in a constant battle, then the final six feet was an artificial botanical garden. Imagine going over the Berlin Wall to get to West Germany to escape the Iron Curtain every day. Every. Day.

My friends would wonder how I could put up with it. And in truth, I spent very little time in my dorm, except for sleep. The Glade Front kept my clothes from not funkifying, so I had no residual effects, besides socially, with the smell. And I pulled out the tricks. I made lots of popcorn, I had the door open to my room a lot (the people downwind in the hall loved that), and I kept the window open. The window was also the object of a Cold War of sorts. The Window War. The window was on my side of the room. I kept it open constantly for two reasons. One, the funk. Two, the heater was broken and hot air came out from the vents constantly. In the winter, this was fine, but as winter turned to spring, this would be a problem. I would leave for class, and I would come back with the window closed. I opened. I came back, it was closed. This went on for the whole semester. When the window was closed, the room heated up. A Turkish Bath, I guess for him. When the room heated up, the Glade Front would also heat up and became not so pleasant. Then the heat would further exaggerate The Funk.

It was a war of attrition. A test of wills. Can I get through this? Am I being tested by God/Universe/The Force? Sure, I could’ve opened the lines of communication, but that wasn’t going to happen. We rarely talked. What could I say to him that didn’t end in, “... and you need to take a shower.”? We certainly did not hang out, go to lunch, dinner, or bring him along with the others on the floor. It sounds so mean on the surface of immediately outcasting a kid who is in a strange country, strange university in the middle of Bumblefuck, PA, and I understand if you are thinking that way. But the smell coming from this kid would make Jesus cry. You have to believe me. This may be one of the few times I’m under exaggerating. I did feel bad for the kid though. There was one time he put on his best Euro duds to go to out. I thought it was odd he was getting ready at 7:30p to go out, but maybe it was going to be a long night for him. Some people came by the room to get him, and by 9:30p, reeking of cigarettes, he was back and had this dejected look on his face. He let out a long sigh after he changed and plopped on his bed to watch TV. I left the room to go myself thirty minutes later. That was the one of the two times I felt bad for him.

The second was on the last day of the semester. There were a few people in my room saying goodbye, and I was doing the same, as I was leaving the next day to go back home for the summer. iTouch grabs his camera and hands it to one of my friends and asks to take a picture of me and him, so he can show his family back home. Growing up in an Italian Catholic home, I knew this feeling all too well. The wave of guilt crashed through as that picture was being taken. I felt so bad at not talking to the kid the whole semester, keeping my distance, not asking and learning about his home half a world away. He was probably so scared, so lonely, maybe even thinking us Americans are so cold and uptight. I wanted to tell him I was sorry for not being a better roommate. While that camera flash hit, I felt like the most horrible person in the world.

Another wave hit... this time it wasn’t guilt, but The Funk. I couldn’t wait for him to leave.

(to be continued...)