I – The Chad
It was my first day at the University. I spent the day before driving north from New Mexico, from my dad’s house. After a night at Super 8, I was ready to start college. I pulled my white Cavalier up to the looming twin towers on the corner of the University’s enormous campus. At twelve stories each, the buildings seemed to dwarf every other structure in that small city. Against the advice of someone, I showed up at eight-thirty in the morning.
The designated move-in period began thirty minutes before my arrival, and the parking lot was packed. There was a line of cars waiting to pull into the limited loading spaces, and we were restricted to twenty minutes each. Students and middle-aged parents were lugging belongings this way and that. Some were unloading vehicles onto the sidewalk, to make room for the next carload.
When I backed into my space, I was determined to stay there as long as necessary. An assortment of college girls in green shirts helped expedite the process. All of the push-carts were spoken for, and the line for the elevators extended out the lobby and onto the sidewalk. Three or four girls and I made several trips, up ten flights of stairs, and then back, carrying the bulk of too much junk.
I glommed on to a push cart, and the girls disappeared. It was elevator time for me. I was able to get the bulk of the remainder with one trip, and left everything else in the car. I moved the Cavy to the (now very full) student lot, after being in the loading zone for close to an hour. Nobody acted like they noticed.
My punctuality had been worth the trouble, as I was there before my roommate. I wanted the best spots for my bed and computer desk, without having to deal with any shit. I chose the wall of windows for both of these things. Halfway through the assembly of my desk, I met my roommate. He walked in brimming with confidence, with his parents. His name was Chad.
Chad and I spoke once, before meeting. I had a feeling I knew what kind of guy he was, and was right. He was the typical resident of a Denver suburb, which was an hour away from Collegeville. Chad was tall, with a short black haircut, and had a muscular build to disguise his love handles. He had an air of being better than me. I could tell we wouldn’t be close, and had a feeling we wouldn’t get along at all.
I had on a black Pink Floyd t-shirt, black jeans, and my hair was in a blonde pony-tail. We shook hands, and Chad introduced me to his parents. His dad had the typical early fifties gut and silvery hair. Chad’s mom was trim, with graying blondish hair. They seemed nice enough, but his old man looked at me funny. They invited me to lunch with them, after Chad moved in, and I figured I should tag along, to make an attempt at civility. After a patio meal, at some restaurant downtown, the old folks split.
I began to meet other residents on my floor that day. On one side of my room, in the corner quad, were four sexy stoner women, Kinsey, Trish, Emmy, and Lee. Lee was a short blonde girl, with a killer body and bitchy attitude. Kinsey was a tall redhead, whose freckles were all but gone, and Emmy and Trish were brunettes who both wore glasses. The glasses worked for Trish, but not Emmy.
Emmy was a cute girl from Michigan, with shoulder-length hair, and a part-time home in Colorado. She gained a reputation as a bitch. Not a stuck-up cunt like the blonde one, but still a bitch. Trish was the prettiest of the four, but came to school with some dorky-assed boyfriend. The nicest was Kinsey, a hippy wannabe. She seemed lost. The two of us got high in her room, that first night in the dorms. We smoked alone, and in the dark, because I was paranoid about people seeing us through the window, ten floors up.
On the other side of me were two guys, Teague and Nick. Teague and I became friends. He was a stoner-snowboarder from a town not far away. Nick was a straight-edged, dorky-looking guy who waited tables at Bennigan’s. That’s about all I knew of him. He once told me I might have a problem with alcohol, though.
Around the corner from the girls lived Tyler and Mike. Mike was an outdoorsman. He started out that year not smoking weed, and ended it a huge stoner. Tyler was another rich kid, from Washington or Oregon, but nicer than The Chad. Tyler, according to his roommate and others, was worthless without Aderol, which they told me was like Ritalin, for ADD. Despite this fact, he always had some for sale.
Coreen and some fat chick lived next to them. Coreen was a super-fine hippy chick with a hippy boyfriend she brought from Pennsylvania. I should say wanna-be hippy. They were both rich as fuck, and the dude drove a newer Jeep Cherokee, all decked out with goodies. Both of them looked like hippies, and were stoners.
The other quad, on my side of the floor, housed Chrisred. He had bushy red hair and a beard. His roommates were Bobby and Mark, and Jason was the fourth roommate. He didn’t get assigned to their room, but he was always there. The group knew each other in a past life, prior to college.
They were friend-cheaters; they came to the University with a full roster of friends in tow. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it just made them popular without effort. The four of them were wealthy stoners, who always had good herb for sale.
Shamala and Jessica lived next to that quad. Jessica and her boyfriend were rumored to be cokeheads, and she moved out before the middle of that year. She wasn’t a freshman, and wasn’t required to stay there, like the rest of us. Coreen’s fat roommate moved in there, to replace Jessica. She was replaced herself by Coreen’s boyfriend, against housing regulations. Shamala was from Hong Kong. She spoke and looked like an American, smoked Marlboro Lights, and was a recovering heroin addict.
Next to Sham was the resident advisor’s room. That year we had Jackie the redhead, for our first semester, and Justin the second semester. Justin had a girlfriend, and also signs of gayness. Most people thought he smoked pole. Keith was a jolly fat guy, living next to the lobby. Opposite of Keith, on the other end of the U (our side of the tenth floor), lived Bri and Nicky.
Dorm life was a giant extension of high school. Cliques were pre-existent on everyone’s arrival. Most people knew someone from high school, somewhere on campus. Beautiful, popular kids flocked together, and didn’t talk much to other people. I’d go into it more, but everyone remembers high school. The dorms became like the high school cafeteria, with me searching for the parking lot to bum cigarettes.
That parking lot was the patio section of the dorms. A lot of people smoked. More so, it would seem, than one would think, in a college do-goody environment. I was quitting when I arrived, but the first night I bought a pack of cigars, to avoid having cigarettes around. I wanted something to do, to meet people. I arrived a few days before the first school Monday, and had some time to kill. After unpacking, there was nothing left to do.
The rambunctious Chad talked Tyler, Mike, and me in to walking five or six blocks for a Chipotle burrito. The walk sucked, the burrito sucked, and as I acquired, so did Chad. I think that was the last thing we ever did, beyond live, together. He was funny. The stupid bastard would listen to shitty, suburban, white-kid rap and Dave Mathews Band. Then he’d sit and read his bible, praying. It was disgusting. He was a do-gooder virgin who had hot, dumb, blonde women throwing themselves at him. Chad worked out every day, and was Mister Number One Football Fan of the University. Yay!
I started smoking quite a bit. It kept me from being bored and depressed, all alone in my dorm room. I know that sounds pathetic, but I wasn’t the only one. It sucked. Before all that, I went on this Ag trip. I had my cigars on the Ag trip, and they proved to be not enough. Since I was an open option Ag major, they forced me to go on a trip to the mountains, for some giant hick circle-jerk. I was seeking landscape architecture, so the people in my group weren’t total redneck farmer kids, but they were dull and boring, just the same.
Most of them wanted to design golf courses after graduating. To dedicate my life to such a task seemed like hell, so I dropped my landscape architecture class after the first day. Also, I didn’t wanna waste weed money on a camera, which was needed. My group was city-kid preppies and outcast city-kids, with a few farmer-types.
Everything about that giant hillbilly pep-rally sucked. It was remote, so the counselor’s had alcohol, but none of us had risked bringing any. I left my weed behind, which was foolish. I could have gotten away with bringing some, and there would have been plenty of time for smoking. It was as if we’d been invited to bring contraband, but no one had any.
A few people stayed up late and talked, in the lobby out front. I found someone with bud, and two other guys, a chick, and I went for a walk to smoke a joint. It was late at night, on a chilly night in August, in the mountains of Colorado. Most people on the compound were asleep, except the drunken counselors and few who had booze or weed, or were waiting to find such.
That walk was the best part of the trip. The food sucked, the company sucked, and the instructors sucked. I was miserable the whole time. It wasn’t my crowd. I’m sure they’ll all lead eventful and successful lives, examining dirt and bugs and crops, but I didn’t see the appeal. That trip killed Friday and Saturday before school started. Friday night, after getting high and feeling weird amidst the lobby crowd, I went to my bunk and fell asleep. I slept on top of the covers, with my clothes on.
People in the dorms were making friends and partying, while I was in the mountains. They separated men and women, on that trip. As one shit-stomping coordinator stated, “There’s blue and there’s pink. What do they make? That’s right, purple. There will be no purple here, not on this trip.”
I imagine there was purple that night, but none for me. The one girl up with the guys was chilling outside, in the cold, with the smokers. She was cold and leaning against the glass door. Her perfect ass was sprayed in sweats, which were pressed against the window. All of a sudden she got uncontrollable spasms, from being too cold or high, in her ass cheek.
Her left ass cheek started shaking up and down, like a spasm. It went from relaxed to full-flex several times per second, as it bounced in the tight, thin sweats. Everyone inside noticed, and busted out laughing. Laughing and pointing. We waited a few seconds, and another butt-spasm occurred. Everyone was rolling in laughter. The people who missed the first one saw the second. It was a glorious, ass-shaking delight. She came in, passed through the lobby, and no one said a word.
I wanted nicotine, after running out of cigars on the trip, and watching other people smoke. The first thing I did was buy some when I got back. I went to college intending to quit; that’s why I partnered myself, on purpose, with a non-smoking roommate. Once, sitting next to the window, I tried smoking in the room. Chad had a box fan, which I set on full blast, to blow outside. I was inches away from it.
Chad came in the room, left the door open, and started screaming, “You’re smoking cigarettes in the room? Oh my god, Robert’s smoking in the room! You can’t do that in here!” He left to get air cleaner, from the girls next-door.
Chad returned, and began spraying it everywhere. “Oh my god, I can smell it! It’s awful!” He kept the door open, to air out the room.
II – Chris
Out smoking I began to meet people. Beyond that, at least for the first week or so, everyone was friendly and open. It was kind of weird, but it did the job. Most of all, it seemed, people were seeking friendship. That trailed off soon enough. Those who acted with similar friendliness a week later seemed desperate, and were either that or bubbly idiots.
Somewhere amidst the confusion, I was out smoking and met Chris. After finishing the butts, as the Easterner would say, we walked to another hall, for their late-night cafeteria. On a night after that he came by, inquiring of everyone on our floor, “Do you want some tequila?!”
Chris lived on the other side of the floor, in a single. As he came in, he pulled a three-fourths empty bottle of Jose Cuervo from his dirty-white tie-sweats. A bottle of lime juice emerged, and I had salt. I took a couple swigs, and tried to pass the bottle to Chad, who said no. Chris split. He got high too, but hadn’t done so for three or four months, so I started getting him high.
Everyone else was getting him high, too, and he started getting himself high. Chris and I became friends right off, it seemed. He was from Vermont, and older than everyone else. I don’t think he was twenty-one, but he passed for it, with or without fake id. Chris liked reggae, rock, rap, and techno. He spent his time annoying neighbors with music, his drum, guitar, or whatever drunken shenanigans were happening in and outside of his room.
It was on Chris’s insistence that I drove to Home Depot, and the two of us bought the stuff to build a potato gun. When the glue dried, in Chris’s dorm-room, poisoning the stupid bastard, the PVC weapon was complete. Chris and I went to fire our potato gun in the mountains. We fired over a lake, from high up on the bank. Most of the shots didn’t make it to the water, that first time.
One day a man let us try to shoot his model airplane out of the sky. He flew it near us, but we didn’t get close. Chris fired blank shots, or pairs of socks, at unsuspecting people on our floor. That fucker was loud, and seven or eight feet long.
It was Chris who helped lead the riot, getting pummeled by pepper-ball shots. A block party, consisting of three or four houses, got out of hand. The cops showed up and told people to leave. When the cop left his car, a guy started running across it, and people started throwing beer bottles at the car. He jumped back in and drove up the street. More cops arrived, at both ends of the two-block span, to set up barricades. Bryan and I walked around the block to a side-street, sat on the tailgate of a resident’s truck, and played instruments as loud as possible.
We had a perfect view, maybe thirty yards out. I played guitar and Bryan drummed, as we watched a massive crowd form in the street. The home-owners kicked everyone onto the street, because the police were there. We played music as the crowd in the street grew. We began the night playing on the steps of the main house, the house the cop ran away from, but the owners made us stop, to avoid drawing police.
Chris and a small crowd of protesters of nothing went towards the police barricade. At the same time, people were throwing beer bottles in that direction, from the crowd. Chris was screaming something, inciting similar behavior from the people behind him. He cajoled them to follow, his hands in the air, in formation to victory. I don’t know what he expected to do, in his corduroy pants and t-shirt.
An array of air rifle fire was heard, repeating loud pops. Everyone in front turned back, but the crowd was still there. Tear gas canisters landed, in the center of the crowd, and everyone scattered. The SWAT team charged, with their shields up, in riot gear. They used non-lethal force with glee - it was a good show.
There was a woman cop running around, with a large can of pepper spray. She bounded to fleeing victims’ backs, sprayed them, and moved on. Her blonde pony-tail bounced with every step, through the gas-mask straps. When a pack of bacon ran by Bryan and me, we decided to stop playing music and run, avoiding the gas. Hawkin got a billy-club to the side, and most people got gassed.
No arrests were made. Somebody got it on film and sent it in. We taped it on the news that night, on two channels. The next day nobody would shut up about it.
III – Hessito
Prior to the riot, at the beginning of the year, I met Jesse. He was from southern Colorado, near where I went to high school. I ran into him while smoking in the courtyard. He moved into my hall after school started, after living with friends the summer prior. He lived on the third floor, with a square from Alaska.
I was wearing my Megadeth shirt, and he was wearing his patented Manson shirt. He had a pony tail, too. A conversation and friendship started, and Jesse, Chris, and I started hanging out together. We all hung out with everyone at the dorms, but Jesse and I could be found in Chris’s single almost every night. Smoking weed there became ritual.
Chad was a baby, and didn’t want me to smoke it in our room. Jesse’s roommate was such a square that Jesse never broached the subject (or talked to him at all), so that left Chris’s room. We had a secret knock, a short knock followed by a doorknob jiggle. Cops imitated shave and a haircut, but they did not attempt to open the door. People learned the knock.
Due to Chris’s ability to buy alcohol, his room was popular. The peephole no longer worked, after I dismantled and reassembled it. It showed blurry shapes of people, way out of focus.
In his room Jesse had a Jim Morrison poster, with other music and drug related posters, including Marylin Manson and a picture of an imitation Marlboro man smoking a joint. Jesse liked to drink. There were nights when he would come home late and drunk, which might be why his roommate moved out. One night after, Jesse went home drunk and passed out. He left the stereo on full blast, during the wee hours of the morning, playing Metallica.
Jesse’s Resident Advisor lived next to him. She was a tiny girl with brown hair. Chris started a running joke that she had a crush on Jesse, which seemed true. She was bisexual or gay, and was dating a foxy girl named Jessie, or so rumor had it. If they weren’t muff-diving every night then they should have been, as they walked around hand-in-hand. I had a crush on the girl Jessie, which seemed mutual.
Jesse’s RA was unable to rouse him, despite several minutes of door-banging. She went downstairs, grabbed a key, and opened Jesse’s door. She never reported Jesse, and he awoke the next morning to hear what happened from his neighbors. Had she not liked him, Jesse would have been fucked that night. Any other RA would have called an ambulance on him.
I found Jesse in the courtyard, having an afternoon cigarette, one day that fall. He was shit-faced. He said he knew a girl in our dorm that wanted him to come by. He swore she wouldn’t care about his drunkenness. For the entertainment in store, I followed him. He led me to the fifth floor, to Jackie’s room, who laughed it off.
One night Chris, Jesse, and I went to a party somewhere near the school. We often walked to house parties - not to avoid drunk driving, but the late-night parking shortage at the dorms. Jesse and I were at our usual party hang-out, the smoking section. That night it was outside, on a wooden deck. Chris was in and out, being the life of the party.
The party was for suburban white kids, where average looking people don’t stand a chance of landing decent tail. The competition is fierce, and those parties are sexual feeding-frenzies, with beautiful people being devoured by other beautiful people. The only reason to go was to get laid. Not that we ever did.
Jesse was hitting on a girl and, according to him, was without his contacts that night. I believed him, because that girl’s birth mark was hard to miss. He got her number. Chris and I told him about the splotch on her face after she left. We antagonized him to the point of rage on the subject.
IV – Anna
I became friends with Anna and her friend, Tabby. At the same time, the beginning of my freshman year, I became friends with a guy from back east. I don’t remember where, or even his name. He got kicked out of school after a couple of weeks, or left on his own accord, after getting into trouble. I never saw him again.
That guy lived in another dorm, a block or two away. I met him (and the girls) in the courtyard, smoking cigarettes. I acquired a decent hacking ability from hanging out there all day with nothing to do (other than schoolwork, of course).
This now-unknown friend of mine, Anna, Tabby, and I went camping one weekend. It was cool, but kind of weird. That guy and I both liked Tabby, but it didn’t matter because Anna was there, and she was cuter than Tabby. Tabby was a small hippy girl with a cute face and sweet personality. She was too hippy, though.
We rounded shit up and piled into Tabby’s Buick. It had been her grandmother’s, and it looked like a grandmother’s car, except for the bike rack on the trunk. I took one bowl of weed with me, packed in my metal pipe.
We drove into the night. Tabby drove while Anna rode shotgun. We could smoke in Tabby’s car, but we had to extinguish our butts in the ashtray, to avoid forest fires. How fucking stupid. Tabby took us to a commercial campground, with assigned camp-sites and picnic tables. The sites were private, and we were surrounded by dense forest.
Before leaving that day, we grabbed to-go containers from the dorm cafeteria. We filled them with sandwiches and fruit. Campfires were not permitted, and there was no wood anyway, so we sat around the picnic table and talked that night. That’s when I realized what’s-his-name liked Tabby (and not Anna). Both of us were sitting next to her, with Anna on the other side.
Anna pointed it out, and then I felt dumb. Anna wanted one of us to show interest in her. I thought about moving to her side – I wanted to - but that seemed too bold. I should have moved, because we were friends. I don’t think Anna was attracted to me, but I should have sat by her anyway, just in case.
After our late start, and the long drive, all we wanted was sleep, and the conversation at the picnic table was a distraction from that. The girls set up a tent, and Anna went in it. I smoked my bowl with that guy; Anna and Tabby didn’t want any. When we smoked the three of us were out under the stars, next to the tent. I didn’t go in the tent to sleep, or stay there.
Instead, after getting high, I moved to the back seat of the car. I figured that way if Tabby wanted to fuck the other guy she could. And, if he wanted to fuck Anna he could, and if either girl wanted me, they knew where to find me. I should have gone in the tent with Anna, just for the company, but I didn’t know better. Also, I was hung up on Tabby, for some stupid reason.
V – Tabby
The next morning Anna was up and at the picnic table. The other two were where I left them, sleeping in the dirt. It was still grey out, not bright. Anna told me to look. There was a deer about three feet from the car, with others scattered in the woods. I’ve seen plenty of deer, but to have one next to me on waking was uplifting.
We nibbled on the rest of the sandwiches and fruit, and then took off. Tabby drove us down to a small, touristy town. The girls bought us coffee. Behind the coffee shop was a rippling creek, ultra-bright and reflective, in the morning light. We sat on its bank for a while, on the rocks, drinking coffee and not talking.
The four of us were scattered, doing our own thing. I was playing in the dirt, next to the water, moving rocks around. It wasn’t long before the girls got bored and rushed us to the car, and then back to Collegeville.
I became infatuated with Tabby after that. She was like the moped in that joke: fun - but not something to be seen on. That sounds mean, but I got enough shit from Jesse and Chris for liking her. In other words, I was a giant pussy, and cared too much what my loser friends thought.
Beyond that, though, I had my own doubts about Tabby. She took some getting used to. Still, she was one of the sweetest people in the world, or could be. Tabby jumped into my arms on seeing me one time, and wrapped her legs around me. That might not mean anything to guys who have women jumping all over them, but to me it meant a lot.
I didn’t know Tabby liked me until one day in my car. She complained that I never called her.
“I don’t have your number.”
Then she gave it to me. Until then, I thought she wasn’t interested. I missed a clue when we got back from camping. The girls and that guy had been talking about spooning, on the drive back. I had no idea what that word meant, and they wouldn’t tell me.
While we were unloading the car, Tabby came up behind me. She pressed the front half of her body against mine, from head to feet, and stayed there. She whispered in my ear, “This is spooning.”
Tabby didn’t go to the University. She met Anna in a prior life, in Chicago, somewhere. Tabby moved to Collegeville before us freshmen, and Anna reconnected with her after getting there. One day Tabby walked up to the dorms, where I was outside having a smoke. She came up to our group and stood next to me.
She looked at me with the cutest grin, happy to see me, like I owed her something. I put my arm around her and gave her a half-hearted hug. That sealed my fate with her. I should have grabbed her in my arms, swung her around, and kissed her. But I didn’t.
I’d like to blame it on being shy, but that wasn’t it. My friends were watching, and I didn’t know how to act around her. I didn’t know what they would think. It’s embarrassing in hindsight. A cute, sweet girl was standing there, wanting my attention, and I blew her off.
I called Tabby a bunch after that, and left messages. She ignored me. The last party I was with them at, I watched her dirty dance with some old guy, which now leaves me unembarrassed. Then Chris, the drunken asshole, spilled beer in my lap, on my goose-down coat. I was pissed.
That night was the last time I saw Tabby. I like to think of the fun we had together, playing porno dice, or smoking weed. Anna told me, one night when we were drinking, that Tabby got pregnant and left town.
At one of those parties, those hippy parties, Anna and Chris hooked up. The hippies there were a bunch of assholes. Chris fit right in, and Anna was a city-hippy, so she loved it. Anna told me she liked Chris, and asked if he liked her. I knew he did, so I told him about it, like she wanted me to.
Later, she asked, “Why won’t Chris kiss me?”
By that point I was pissed off with getting Chris laid, when I had nothing myself. I told Chris what she said. He took Anna behind the corner, and at best made out with her. I enjoyed the spectacle. We went home, and Chris took Anna up to his room.
He had a willing partner, after so many tries, and was too drunk to get it up. I don’t know what happened, but they never got together again, after that. They stopped liking each other.
VI – Ryan
Ryan lived in the eastern half of the tenth-floor. His room was next to the lobby. The lobby was big, housing three elevators, a study area, and windows on the south. Ryan and Adam, his friend from high school, were roommates. I met Adam at college orientation, the prior June. Adam and I shared a suite then, in one of the other dorms.
When my roommate at orientation learned I was about to smoke weed, he decided he would stay in a girl’s room; a girl he knew from high school. When Adam and his roommate heard I was getting high, they were cool. I went in their half of the suite to smoke, with my trusty metal pipe. Adam’s roommate had a lighter, and the two of us got high that night, in the dorms, at freshmen orientation. Adam took a shower while we smoked.
Ryan and I had a class together, Principles of Plant Biology. Ryan and Adam’s room had a sports feel to it. There were two easy chairs in front of a TV, and a PSII that played sports games. The TV showed ESPN, cheers, or a video game, at all times. There were sets of golf clubs lying around and golf balls everywhere.
There were two computers and a set of bunk beds crammed in there, as well. The place had a smell. Like a locker room with tobacco spit in the corners, but better. I could never place that smell. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good, either.
Ryan was cool; he liked country music, along with other shit. Adam liked classic rock and hip-hop, with a dash of metal - he was fanatic about Dream Theater.
Ryan and I went to biology class together, and got notes from each other when one of us ditched. Or we’d get them off Emmy. Sometimes the three of us would walk together, to and from the lecture hall. It was nice having someone to go to class with, it made the journey seem less of a chore.
Ryan would bum me chews. I’d take a chew and walk to class with it, and grab a spitter out of the trash, so I could keep it in during class. Ryan gutted his.
One day during class, my pen ran out of ink. Ryan and I were sitting in the back. Everyone was focused on the professor, getting the notes, because everything on the tests got covered in lecture. I shook the pen, to no avail. Another sheet of paper didn’t work, either.
I removed the ball point, with the ink tube attached. I could see there was ink, with a bubble between it and the point. I thought if I could get the ink down a little, my note-taking could continue. I blew down the end of the ink-tube, in the direction of the ball. Nothing happened.
I blew again – harder - and ink came shooting out. It was on my lips, face, and hands. Ryan turned to see me, sitting next to him, with ink all over the place. He burst out laughing, he couldn’t help it. Then I started laughing, too. I was trying to get it wiped off, with blank notebook paper, while laughing. Ryan and I both couldn’t stop.
More than a few turned to see me. After I stopped laughing, I asked Ryan, “Is it still there?”, “Did I get it all?” I checked the mirror after class, just to be safe.
Ryan and Adam were from farm country, in Northeastern Colorado, and both seemed wealthy. Ryan drove a white Camaro with T-tops. It was sick, despite being an automatic. Sometimes, when we didn’t wanna walk to class, one of us would drive. We parked in lots we weren’t supposed to, because there was never any parking, anywhere. Ever!!
VII – The Rat
Lauren and Kathryn were both from Albuquerque. I was also from New Mexico, in a roundabout way, so I felt a sort of kinship with them. It faded. Lauren was a pretty girl. The worst part about her was her super goody-goody attitude and the impression she exuded that she was better than everyone else.
She and Kat were both churchy girls, though I don’t know if they attended. They were straight-edged. One of them, we suspect Lauren, called the police on Ryan and Adam for drinking one night. Ryan and Adam were supposed friends of the two girls, and they were often seen in each other’s rooms.
According to those guys, one or both of the girls saw them with beer and called the campus piglets, because they were worried about them. Kat was different from Lauren. She was prettier, for one thing, but also had a better attitude; she was more easy-going.
She had the attention of a lot of guys, including Adam and me. I remember one time seeing Kat in the hall, in tiny yellow shorts bearing our school initials across her ass. I made some comment to her on how her shorts looked nice. She turned around and looked at me, “Why is that, Robert?”
I said “It’s the school letters across…I mean, it’s the yellow. That’s my favorite color.” She smiled and walked away. I think she had a boyfriend.
For some reason, the power was out on campus, one day. It had been out a while, and people were starting to leave the dorms via darkened stairwells for afternoon sun. There wasn’t any class while the power was out.
I was in the tenth floor lobby, looking out. Over at the Super Duper Sports Dome Arena, out the window, there were fire trucks and campus police.
I was opening the windows, not intending to leave. A lot of people weren’t leaving. I noticed the screen was unlocked. The screens had two locks on them, at the top and bottom. Some of these locks were easy to pick, but windows with two easy locks were a little rare.
One window screen had been picked, and was ajar for me. I opened the screen and started hanging out it, for a view. After a while Chris came out, and I told him “Let’s get on the ledge.” There was a concrete ledge under each window, about the size of a small balcony, but with no railing.
Chris walked over to the window and looked out. He looked at the open screen and shrugged, “Ok.” He went out the window sideways, one leg at a time, onto the ledge in the bright afternoon sun. I followed him out. I figured that since it was made of concrete, it should be able to hold two people, at least.
Chris was looking off the ledge to one side, and I crawled out to the front of the ledge, a few feet from the face of the building, to look off. I threw a banana peel off, to get the attention of some friends down below, in the courtyard. It took a while to hit. They looked up and noticed where the shouting was coming from.
The courtyard was crowded on that day, because everyone from the two towers had been collecting there. With the elevators out, and this day being nice enough, people weren’t eager to get back to the darkened dorm-rooms. I noticed people noticing us, so I went in off the ledge. I figured I’d gotten all the attention I needed.
It took some prodding to get Chris to come in, though. People might have been called to rescue the screaming elevator victims (the power outage having locked them in). With Chris inside I closed the screen so no one would notice where we had gone out at. It was still unlocked, though.
We went, with a group of the last remaining people on our floor, down the pitch-black stairwell and into the sunny courtyard at the bottom. Our friends called Chris and me to a group standing in the shade, by the cafeteria. They were motioning for us to go over there, and we went - through a group of firemen, police officers, school officials, and well-dressed old people, all of whom were shielding their eyes from the sun as they peered up to the ledge where we had been.
Our friends said “Nobody saw, they don’t know it was you.” And then “Just chill here awhile.” We were on a concrete walkway, in front of the cafeteria, above what was now a large crowd of students. The firemen and cops had gone upstairs looking for us.
The rest of the old people, down there in skirts and suits, were fixated on the ledge. None in the crowd of students were looking at Chris and me, and if they realized we were the culprits, they weren’t revealing us. People were looking up at the ledge, as if the people might reappear.
Chris said, “I’m glad you told me to come in.” That was the last of it, or so we thought. We went in the dark cafeteria to eat cold sandwiches on Styrofoam trays. We sat with Lauren and Ryan. Lauren was in the lobby when we came in from the ledge. Ryan and Chris and I talked about the ledge incident, and what a close call it had been. We went about our day like normal; the power outage didn’t last long.
It was that night or the night after when Jackie knocked on Chris’s door. Jesse and I were in there, and Jesse was playing a video game, on Chris’s old-school first generation Nintendo. Chris started to apologize for the cigarette smoke and Jackie said “I need to talk to you two,” looking at Chris and me.
We didn’t get excited, as Jackie wasn’t intimidating. The tiny redhead used her most serious voice when she said “Apparently two people got onto the ledge on this floor. I have it on good information that those two people are in this room right now.” She didn’t look at the video-game-playing Jesse, who didn’t notice her, either.
“It’s my duty as an RA to tell those two people that should they want to continue pursuing an education at this school, and if they want to remain living where they do, those two people would be wise to never, ever do something so stupid again.” We made sure she knew we were clear, and she left.
Somebody had told Jackie. The problem was: a bunch people might have seen us out there, so we had no idea who. If housing had known, we would have been in deep shit, so she seemed to be the top of the information pyramid.
The Chad proved himself a useful tool. One night in our room we were talking, trying to figure out who told on us. Chad was listening, and said “you know, I think I know who did it.
“I was hanging out in Lauren and Kat’s room, on the other side, and Jackie came in asking if any of us knew anything about who was on the ledge. Lauren made this guilty sigh and - you could tell she knew. I bet they talked later about it.”
Then it clicked. Of course! It would be the most obvious person, the person with a reputation as a snitch. Both of those women were the super good-girl type, and Lauren was the bitchy-fascist good-girl type, and she saw us coming in off the ledge. She ate lunch with us right after, when we were talking about it.
I was so naïve when we ate, and after - when I was trying to figure it out. Oh well, fuck it. Nothing happened.
VIII – Briel
At one corner of the other side of the tenth floor, in one of the quads, lived three hot chics. They were fine, and had nice, tanned bodies, that they loved to show off. And everyone loved them for doing so.
Briel was the short one, shorter than me. She was the type of girl who would have her belly-button pierced. I’m not sure if she did, but The Unholy Bastard Chad said he was over there and she showed him her clit-piercing. That type of shit happened all the time.
One night Chris, Jesse, and I were drunk in Chris’s room. His door was right across the hall from the girl’s bathroom. Chris had taken to urinating in the hall, outside his door. This happened late during the drunken night, when he had company.
During the day, he would make the journey across the lobby, through the fire doors, to the men’s restroom. And the nights when Chris was alone? It was then that empty coke bottles got filled with dark, putrid urine. The urine would be put out on display, for guests to see.
People were also free to smell or spill the bottles of urine, as some sat with no lid. Sometimes he would stash his piss under the desk, or to the side of it, but most often it was lined up next to the books, TV, and refrigerator, on the floor. When Chris felt the urine had cured to a satisfactory degree, he would take the bottles and place them, capped or uncapped, in the upper cabinet above his closet, with the other bottles of old urine.
The night in question, when Jesse and I were in the room, Chris left for a brief moment and came right back in. We assumed he had gone for a drink at the fountain. He closed the door and told us, “Shit! Briel just saw me takin’ a piss.”
Jesse and I turn to him, “What?”
“Yep, I was standing there; pissing on the mirror, and Briel came around the corner and saw me.” He grabbed at his hairline and smiled a little bit as he shook his head. You could tell he was embarrassed; almost as if he’d been caught with his fly down, or something.
“What did she do?”
“She looked at me and said ‘Oh my God!’ and turned back around.”
“What did you do?” We asked.
“I grabbed my dick and ran, what do you think I did?”
IX – Margo
Margo lived on Chris’s side of our floor, next to the lobby. She was cute. She was honest, and would talk to you about anything. A brunette, she was from back east somewhere. Margo and I got high together a few times, in Chris’s room.
I watched Braveheart with her for the first time, on Chris’s computer. She had seen it, and was in love with Mel Gibson. Then, and I don’t remember how I heard it, it was known that Margo would be leaving. She was going home. She could have left for any number of reasons.
The night before she left, we smoked weed in her room. Margo’s roommate was square, and gone. I don’t think Margo cared, by that point, anyway. The roommate was obsessed with cars - high-end luxury and sports cars. She had a calendar and other photos that featured Porches and other status symbols.
She thought she was a model.
We were sitting among the boxes and bags of Margo. She had way too much shit to be taking on a plane. Margo had been planning to stay in Collegeville for some time.
She gave the furniture away; I got a bookshelf from her. She didn’t like her roommate, I don’t think, and didn’t want her to have free furniture. Still, there was a lot for one woman to take on a plane - too much. We discussed methods of shipment…
Shamala was on Margo’s bed, and Jesse and Chris were amid the junk. Margo had to leave for a second, and while she was gone I hid in the upper cabinets, above Margo’s empty closet. I was planning on jumping out at some unexpected point, to scare Margo.
I waited in there a while, in the dark, until Margo came back in. When she came back in she asked where I went. They told her they didn’t know, to the bathroom, maybe. Then Chris and Shamala started talking about me, in a negative way. They said shit like how they wished I would stay gone for a while, and how they didn’t like me.
Margo started defending me, saying “He seems like a nice guy to me… I don’t have any problem with him being here.”
I thought it was a dirty trick, so I burst out of the high cabinet, screaming something like “BLAH!!!!” She didn’t have a reaction. I surprised her at best, with her sitting across the room. When we left that night, being as stoned as I was, I didn’t say goodbye.
Chris said one time when he had gone to see Margo, her roommate offered to tell him why she was leaving, but she preceded it with “Well, I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but…”
Chris, with that eastern shrewdness, said, “Well then I don’t wanna know!” which stopped the roommate from blabbing details. Margo was the first of many to go.
If she had not left campus early, she would have left at the end of the year, like everyone else. A lot of people came back, of course, but a lot of people didn’t. And things changed, after freshman year. It was never the same again. The people were never as nice, it seemed.
Some came back and lived in their own neighborhoods, far from me, took different classes, and, if they had my number, never called. I would see that same network of friends at parties - when there were parties. After freshmen year, people got more serious about school.
Many people I knew in the dorms didn’t recognize me on campus, in the following years; or if they did, they didn’t act like it. Everyone was busy, and most people didn’t have time to talk.
X – Meg
Meg was nice. She was a fellow smoker, of pot and cigs. She was fun to hang out with, and a chill smoker. Not a weekend warrior, like some. She wasn’t someone I wanted to be with, but I could tell she wouldn’t mind being with me. But Meg wouldn’t have minded being with a lot of people. She was said to have kept a list. I don’t know about that, but knew at least one guy who’d been with her.
I was a virgin. It sucked ass. And under normal circumstances, it’s easy to wait. But after a few drinks, one can lose sight of that.
It was Mickey’s, a forty, to start that night. And then Chris gave me codeine. I thought, “Why not? It might relax me.” I washed it down with grapefruit juice, which was sitting on the TV.
There were five or six shots of cheap Vodka in that grapefruit juice. I made the concoction earlier in the night to make sure I’d be getting drunk. It chased the hell out of codeine.
I guess it wasn’t that powerful of a pill, but with the amount of alcohol I drank, I was sideways. I have brief memories of sitting in Chris’s Christmas-light-lit room, on his bed, with my friends around. We were all wasted, but I was a sideshow freak.
I convinced Chris to let me smoke in his room, by the fan in the window. I started ashing in my vodka and grapefruit-juice. Someone pointed out my mistake. I said “fuck it.
“It’s just nitrogen.”
Chris replied, “Oh yeah? Then let me ash in your drink. Better yet, let me ash in your mouth!”
I wasn’t about to let Chris win. There was nothing unhealthy about ashes, so I said, “Ok, sure!”
A little later I began to cower near the door. I was trying to fend off puking. But before that, back in my room, I had begun to hang on Meg. “Oh yes, Meaghan!” I thought. I glommed on to her, in my room first, then in Chris’s. She escorted me to the bathroom, to puke, and that was the last I saw of her that night.
In some unimaginable spectacle I got into bed. I was down to my boxer-briefs, nowhere near well. Continued vomiting felt inevitable. I set out a white trash bag, in a flattened circle, for emergency purposes.
I was in bed, the head of which was against a half-wall window. The curtains were half-open. I was lying in the moon light, and the world seemed as if it were coming to an end. The room felt like it was spinning.
I was on the bed, and was connected to the bed and the floor. The bed, the floor, and I were all spinning…but not all the way around. I was being slammed down, into the lower half of my plane of reality, while watching the upper half twist above me, as if that image stayed still, while the world moved beneath it. I would slam down into a spiral, and back out, over and over.
I remember thinking, “If I get through this, I’ll never drink again. This is the worst feeling ever.” I remember thinking that I might die, and wondered if that would be better than the misery I was experiencing. I regretted ever tasting alcohol, and swore it off. I had forgotten about the pill.
During the night, I had to crouch down above my trash bag, Indian-style. Chad was awakened, and (with my inability to stop him) got the attention of the neighbors. He felt it necessary to call attention to me, in my underwear, huddled over a trash bag like it might save my life.
I remember having a couple of the girls, Bri in particular, in my room, assisting. It was nice of whoever held my hair back, that night, to do so.
The next day Emmy, from next door, told me, “You could have died, you know. You mixed a sedative with massive quantities of alcohol. You’re an idiot.”
XI – Shamala
Speaking of sedatives, Shamala was a fan of dope, and I don’t mean weed. I’d talk to her out smoking cigarettes. She seemed pretty cool. Once you got her talking it was alright, but she seemed bored with listening to someone else at first, people she didn’t know. It came off as snobbish, but after seeing her a few times, she was nice.
Sham would mention smack during normal conversation, like it was an everyday thing. One day we were chilling in the sun on the benches, in the courtyard, when she said, “Everybody looks at me weird when I talk about smack.”
Then I asked her, “What’s smack?”
“Heroin.”
“Oh.” She was trying to find someone who did heroin.
When we first started hanging out with Shamala, she was the fourth member of our group. She was foxy, and did drugs and had sex and got tattoos and listened to cool, non-trendy music. Sham started hanging out with Chris, Jesse, and me, like she belonged there. We didn’t mind the company.
She was attracted to Chris at first. I guess she realized Chris didn’t like her, because as far as I know they never hooked up, or anything. She would spend the night in Chris’s twin bed with him, but he would always swear the next day that he was curled up at the end of the bed, on top of the covers. She slept on the other side, under them.
Whatever their relationship was, I don’t think it was intimate. Sham was cool; she’d hang out and talk while Chris and Jesse played old-assed Nintendo games, night after night. She smoked weed, but not as much as us.
She was smart, so she was a good conversationalist. Shamala was popular with both the girls and the guys in the dorms. With the guys, it was more than her good looks. You were never bored when she was around; there was always something to talk about. Also, she didn’t mind buying alcohol for all us little kiddies, when Chris was predisposed.
Sham always had crappy opium on her. I never tried smoking it on weed, since she didn’t smoke much weed. We placed the opaque-white rocks on pieces of aluminum foil, and would heat it with a lighter. The soapium would melt around the edges into brown liquid, and bubble off. That vapor we inhaled.
The suction device of choice was a Bic pen, with the cap and ink-tube removed. As I mentioned before, the soapium sucked. Maybe there was a little opium in it, and Shamala seemed to always have some, so I always smoked it when she or Chris or Jesse would pass it my way.
Between whatever Shamala had, Chris’s drugs from falling off a roof the previous summer, and what pills could be bought on the black market, someone often would have pharmaceutical downers or uppers. Shamala liked opiates, and would share her bounty with Chris and Jesse. Then they’d snort them. It didn’t seem like fun to me. I didn’t try snorting their pills, but they weren’t offering me lines, either.
One day Shamala discovered where heroin could be bought. It was easy to come by in downtown Denver, among the mini-skyscrapers. She had to find the right person, but to Shamala, that was the easy part. Getting to Denver was harder, because she didn’t have a car.
I made three trips Denver, to supply Shamala with heroin. She got other people to help, after that. I was toying with the idea of trying smack myself, just once, to see what it was like.
Chris came with Shamala and me to Denver the first time. Chris was riding shotgun. Sham met her contact, and they met us back at my car. I drove them around while they made a deal, and while they got high in the back seat.
Shamala asked me to take it easy over potholes, and the guy Shamala met up with asked her if she had ever done heroin before. Shamala replied that she had, but with the help of a friend.
The junkie suggested that I stop somewhere; it might be easier for Shamala. I found an ally to stop in, one recommended by Shamala’s friend. I watched as she heated up one of the little brown rocks in a spoon with some water. The rock melted into the water, turning it brown. They weren’t worried about injecting air bubbles. Shamala once told us, “There are always bubbles.”
Her dealer pricked a needle into the large vein of her inner-elbow. Then he got high. They acted about the same, with a drop-off in conversation. I dropped the seedy-looking white kid off somewhere downtown. She later told us he was a male prostitute.
I don’t know how she met him, and don’t care. I remember something he said, though:
“As much as I love dope, I wish I would have never tried it.”
On my second trip to Denver for heroin, Shamala and I weren’t getting along. To start, I wasn’t confident it was a good idea to help someone buy heroin. Sham had a way of manipulating people. She would ask you for what she needed, when she needed something, and then see what it would take.
I did it too, every time I bummed a cigarette. But wasting four hours of my time, driving her to a foreign city, and then obtaining a controlled substance wasn’t like giving her a cigarette. And I did have classes to attend, after all.
I let her know in advance that I would leave her in Denver. I didn’t want to get down there and then get split up. I didn’t have a cell phone, so we couldn’t reconnect if she wandered off somewhere. I’d be left waiting, like an idiot, while she got high. The tension between us was high.
Also, we thought we got pulled over. We were approaching the freeway, before leaving Collegeville. I was stoned. Shamala and I had been passing her little pipe back and forth. In addition to that was my pipe in the ashtray, my weed, Shamala’s weed, the new and used needles in her bag, any heroin she might have had, and whatever else was in her bag. I saw flashing lights behind us, and told Shamala.
We both lit cigarettes and started rolling windows down. I was approaching a stoplight in the right lane. My lane ended at the light, turning into a business complex. The turn was unavoidable. I drove through the turn and pulled over as soon as there was a shoulder.
The cop, with his lights flashing, sped up and whipped around us, off to whatever emergency was ahead. We felt lucky, but had the adrenaline rush of a traffic stop, which added to the tension.
We parked in a paid lot downtown, and followed the directions on a sign, in the corner of the lot. Shamala put money in the machine, and it gave us a ticket with the time on it. We put the ticket in plain view, on the dash, as per instruction. Shamala couldn’t find her contact; he wasn’t at the meeting spot. She called the guy, and he told her to meet in a different spot.
Shamala and I went back to the car. A man stopped us, saying we couldn’t leave yet, that we hadn’t paid for our spot. We told him that we paid; that we put money in the machine, like the sign said. The guy acted like a dick, saying the machine didn’t work. After showing him our ticket, with the time and date on it, he apologized.
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