College Room Mates

Yael and I were just talking about how impossible it would be to have a room mate (that wasn't your boyfriend or husband) at this stage of life. I realize that in NYC and in other equally unaffordable places, you don't have much of a choice. After experiencing four female room mates, I've accepted the fact that I'm territorial and basically intolerant of other females in my living space. Catching a glimpse of another girl's dental floss in the garbage gets me on edge, especially when, upon closer inspection, I realize that she's been using my Glide Dental Tape. Shit's expensive. But what was in store for me during my college career was a string of unusual girls who were kind of a pu-pu platter of personalities and quirkiness...and poo-poo.
I met my first roommate in August, 1991, at the University of Texas in Austin. Her name was Sarah and she hailed from rural Alberta, Canada. That's kind of redundant, isn't it? Suffice it to say, she was not what I had in mind back when I used to fantasize about going to college and living in a dorm. She had the coke-bottle glasses, the bowl-cut, the works. Besides being Canadian, she was a cellist. In fact, she was on a music scholarship - a very serious musician. Also seriously weird... and unhygienic. I quit using the mini-fridge that I had rented soon after I saw/smelled her contents inside of it. She made a bizarre practice of spreading her processed bologna slices on top of it before putting them on bread, leaving grease stains and a meaty smell wafting through the room. Do they use the top of the fridge as a cutting board in Canada?
On Sunday nights, she'd spend a couple of hours on the phone with her very red-haired boyfriend in Canada, appropriately named Garnet. They would have surprisingly raunchy conversations in very hushed tones in the Queen's English with goofy Canadian inflections. Many times, she'd be completely under the covers/sheets while on the phone with him. I can't remember too much else about that year. I took no photos of her. She freaked me out.

For my Sophomore year, I moved into a carpeted townhouse apartment with a very unusual layout. It had a shared upstairs bedroom with a sink in the bedroom, kind of like a hotel. Heather was my roommate, and her name was on the lease. I knew her because she was the ex-girlfriend of a guy whom I had a crush on back in New Orleans. She was fairly attractive and had a good body. Guys noticed her. She was American (from Houston, in fact) but wanted people to think she was foreign. She ended her sentences with "no?" And, for that matter, she was constantly on the phone long distance. How international!
All of her studying took place at the French bakery, where she'd converse in French with French speaking Arab men who obviously wanted to have sex with her. When any of these smitten guys tried to pursue her, she'd act totally coy about it. When we were approached by say, Pasha, her black Russian gynecologist friend, who hung out with her at the coffee shoppe, she would nudge me when he asked her out and try to convince him that she and I already had plans for that date. This one guy named Brian who wore lederhosen(and wasn't German) had a huge crush on her. He would stop me whenever he saw me to ask about Heather. I didn't want to be seen on campus talking to 40 year old Pinocchio, or any of these creepy guys from other lands. So I was put in a position of avoiding at least 10 guys that year. I remember one Dane in particular named Jens (pronounced Yenz). It was during their brief courtship that Heather began washing her diaphragm in our bedroom sink. It would happen like this: she'd spend the night out, I'd be sleeping upstairs, I'd hear the two of them enter and some foreign mumblings, of course. She'd come upstairs, pop it out and give it a quick rinse, like it was a retainer or something. No scrubbing the sink afterwards or nothing!
Would you scrub the toilet bowl with someone's toothbrush? Would you dry your face with someone's dirty underwear? I'm looking for an equivalent here, but I can't find one. Toward the end of our year together, she'd invite herself to tag along with me and my pals. I wasn't having it. She'd have to drink her cafe au lait all by herself...or toute seule, no?

Junior year, my best friend at the time, Amy, and I decided to get a place together. We were pretty much inseparable after we met on a study abroad program in Guanajuato, Mexico. She, too, was very pretty and from Houston. Two in a row. However, she was way cooler than Heather.
Once we did find a place together in Hyde Park, we had a great time living together. We called the 4 unit house "Walling Place." Amy smoked cigarettes and had two cats that used to leave warm spots and fur on my pillows. Somehow, that didn't bother me back then. She also had a multitude of male suitors, mostly of the Latin American persuasion, who were tragically in love with her. They were always around the apartment, fixing things and looking for ways to make themselves useful. It wasn't like Heather, who would do it for her ego; Amy was merely throwing these guys a bone. They'd go so far as to escort her when she drove back to Houston, just in case she had car problems on the trip. Ah, just to inhale the fumes of her Acura! Actually, I called her the Road-Runner. I can't remember why. The last time we traveled to Mexico together, she ate a cream-puff that had sat out too long and came down with a case of Salmonella. I spent a couple of days in an outdoor hospital in Cuernavaca signing papers allowing doctors to inject her with god-knows-what. I hope she's testing negative these days. Somehow our friendship fizzled out. She moved back to Houston into her parents' home in a golf course subdivision that her father owned. According to Google, she placed 203rd in a marathon in Houston.

When Amy moved out, one of my good buddies from back at Jester Center (the dorms freshman year), Sabrina, moved in. She, too, was a colorful character. It's worth mentioning that we roomed together two separate times in both Texas and New Mexico. Sabrina and I bonded back at the dorm, mostly because she always had weed, a television in her room, and an impressive assortment of delicious German cookies. Her room mate was a bible thumper and mine, as you know, did that thing with the bologna. Sabrina and I had a good time together, in spite of the fact that she acted like a character off of an annoying sitcom. She did all of the "college" things that I never did. She majored in Anthropology & Women's Studies, participated in drum circles, and had a brief summer internship as a lesbian.
Once she moved in to my unit at Walling Place, she was a pretty good roommate, especially since we both had serious boyfriends and slept out most nights.
Our friendship spanned about 10 years. We were both living in Santa Fe, NM, when I saw her last. Eventually, she hooked up with an extreme athlete with a shaved head and a temper. She got even more annoying, and we lost touch. I found out recently that she was working for an accountant and calling herself a Republican. I probably need a whole blog to discuss Sabrina.

For my Senior year, the inevitable happened, and I moved into a complex near downtown Austin called "The Rio House" with my boyfriend whom I snagged back at Walling Place. He lived in the downstairs unit and drove a beat up Porsche that needed a paint job.

This is a good place to stop, since I haven't had other female room mates besides the ones mentioned here. Who knows where they all are today and what they're saying about me in their blogs? Let's just hope they've cleaned up their acts a little.