"Where do you go to school?"
"Harvard."
"No, really. Where do you go to school around here?"
"I really go to Harvard."
"Come on. I'm a senior. I know about these things. What school do you go to around here? UMass Amherst?
What could I do to make this woman believe me? So I whipped it out--my holy bursar's card. No one spoke to me afterwards. I had committed the worst of sins: I shoved my Harvard I.D. on some poor unbelieving woman. So much for that trip.
Unlucky on my roadtrips, I was forced to endure the fact that my roommates had no problems at all with women. My bunkmate who so graciously occupied the couch for the five nights my ex-girlfriend visited paid back the favor with hefty interest. He started to date a woman seriously in late October, and it still goes on strong after almost three years. But the price was my intimate relationship with the couch. I really didn't mind sleeping on the couch two or three times a week, but many times I would come back to my room late only to wake up the couple while dragging my pillow and blanket out into the common room.
Like I said, I really didn't mind this too much. What I did mind was being treated like a yo-yo. Another roommate also started seriously dating a woman. The problem was that his bunkmate stoutly refused to join me on the couch. So sometimes I found myself kicked out of my bedroom and other times kicked into it by the other roommate who made full use of the pull-out feature of our couch. I also faced a moral dilemma everytime I needed to use the facilities. What really got to me wasn't being jacked around the room according to my roommate's sexual needs. It was the fact that I could not return the favor that made me feel small. I knew that either of these guys would sleep on the couch for months on end if I had a decent-looking excuse.
* * *
Forced to find a release for all the unused energies, I comped The Crimson. I went into the comp meeting thinking of possibly comping news. The news comp requirements were read, and I headed straight to the photo lounge. Eight weeks later, I was elected to The Crimson and began my long love-affair with the building on Plympton St. I spent nights and days learning more about photography than I thought possible. But what kept me there was this intangible sense of belonging that I desperately needed. My roommates and I did get along, and we are still good friends, but we were so fundamentally different and travelled in such completely opposite circles that I could never belong where they were. I stopped dealing with my roommates altogether by the second semester. I ate with my Crimson friends, went to their parties, visited their homes during vacations. Sometimes I even slept at The Crimson. The photo lounge became my home, and I hoped that one day I would become its proprietor.
But as I was being sucked deeper and deeper into the Crimson whirlpool, I realized that I had simply escaped from one homogeneous group and entered another. As my rooming group was Irish and jockish, the Crimson was Jewish, New York, and too serious. My Harvard changed from Andover cornheads, to Irish jocks, to Jewish editors. It seemed that there was no escape from homogeneous groups, and I feared that I would not fit into any one of them.
In my preparation for the yuppies, I bought a dozen Oxford shirts. In an effort to fit in with my roommates. I drank and played hard. My desire to belong at The Crimson drove me to view my work there as career-oriented and as if nothing else mattered. The diversity promised to every incoming freshman existed from the outside of the "Ivory Tower" but not from within. Not for me anyway.
Schoolwork entered my mind once in a while, but I was just too burnt out. My high school required four or five years of just about everything, and I was determined to take a break from the neck-breaking cramming I had suffered throughout those four years. I can't even remember some of the courses I took freshman year, but most were pretty good. And most of them required at least a dozen books. Of course, only the foolish and the lonely read everything, but at least I bought everything the Coop had to offer. By the end of my college career, I figure I will have spent more than $2000 on coursebooks, and one thing I will have to show my children for my college education will be the magnificent library built on unread textbooks.
A little more on sex.
Some say appearance is everything. As far as parents are concerned, appearance really does mean everything. The night before everyone was to clear out of Harvard for three months of psychological recuperation, my roommates, our proctor, and I downed at least three bottles of Jim Beam and Stolies. I passed out sometime during the night and awoke early next morning when my mom opened my bedroom door.
She walked in quietly and a shoe caught her motherly attention. It was sitting on my bureau in my room, but it wasn't mine. The shoe was black and had at least a six-inch heel. Not knowing that it belonged to one of my roommate's girlfriends, my mom first took a close look at my bed and, noticing that the mess on the matteress held only one inebriated soul, she slowly scowled around the room for that evil being that had corrupted her invaluable son. Not finding anything in the room, she gathered enough courage to open the closet slowly, expecting to find the culprit. Disappointed only to find my laundry, she was resigned to believing that the evil corrupter had escaped her moral net. Of course, when she asked about the shoe, I only smiled. It's funny. My mom shares the same delusion I suffered. Besides, my mom would not have such a healthy respect of my sexual prowess if I did get that dream single. Mom, if you only knew.
You would do well, young plebes, to heed the following advice. First, lie a lot on your rooming application. Telling the Freshman Dean's Office that you're mildly messy is inviting big trouble. Since no one describes himself as a certified pig, you have to say that only anemically immaculate roommates are acceptable to be grouped with only mildly piggy roommates. Don't say you are in athletic type if all you do is dance to Jane Fonda. Third, leave your ego at home. If it's not crushed by Joe Einstein it'll be crushed instead by some woman. And finally, take your time getting to your room.