levite

Okay, my sophomore year in college, I got the worst roommate ever. I was a week late beginning the semester that year, because I'd caught pneumonia toward the end of the summer. So I get there, and literally, I didn't see my roommate for the first two days. Third day in, he strolls in, says, "Oh, hey, you must be the roommate." I introduce myself, begin to tell him I'd love to get to know him.... He picks up some stuff, nods, and leaves. hasn't introduced himself yet. His side of the room is nearly bare: nothing on the walls except a class schedule, nothing on his desk except a computer. That evening he comes in, tells me his name, rolls a fattie, and sparks up. Not offering me any, mind you. So I say, "Look, dude, nobody's more in favor of smoking weed than me, but I'm just recovering from pneumonia, would you mind not smoking in the room for another week or two?" He says, "Sure, I get it." And he opens the window, and smokes next to that. I'm like, whatever, and I hit the sack.

Two AM, he's going "Dude, are you awake?" I said, "Now I am." He starts totally going off on this political screed. At first, I'm still groggy, and I don't know what he's saying. Then it starts to sink in: he's talking about the primitive black countries, the white man's burden to civilize them.... I said, "Dude, are you justifying European colonialism in Africa? Did you just wake me up to justify colonialism?!" He says, "Well, yeah! I thought you'd said you wanted to talk." I went back to sleep, worried.

Next day, he asks me what I'm majoring in. At the time, I was a Lit major, so I told him, and he brightens up, tells me he's a writer, and asks me to read a story he wrote. The story is meandering, poorly-spelled affair about a kind of Olympics where hardy Aryan youths humiliate weaker athletes of inferior races. There's Nazi imagery all over it.

I say, "Dude, do you know these words are Nazi pseudo-philosophy?" He says, "Look, I admit, Hitler stepped over the line in a few places, but he had some really good ideas." I say, "Dude...do you understand that I'm Jewish?" He says, "Oh, yeah, but look, Hitler was wrong about the Jews: the Jews aren't a lower race, they're Aryans, just like other white people!"

Five minutes later, I'm in the housing office, asking to move out. They tell me to be patient: new roommates can be hard to make friends with. Be patient. I tell them, "I'm a Jew, and you roomed me with a Nazi." There is a long silence, and then, "Go pack up, then come back for the key to your new room." They moved me...right next door to the Nazi. I didn't complain more, because they gave me a double room with no roommate, so I had a huge, sweet party room. But this guy was little better as a neighbor than as a roommate. He began coming up to me in the halls, saying, "Dude, I know there's a conspiracy against me in this dorm. Do you know who's leading it? I have to know!" He must have been doing some serious coke or speed or something, because in addition to that, he took a 90-minute cassette tape (this was in the early 90s), recorded it full of the same song on repeat, and used to play it over and over. On double-speed. And sing along.

Finally, one night, we have a dorm party. I host the green room (the room where all the weed is smoked). The next day, my room is a shambles of drink cups, rolling papers, bongs, ashes, and a weed-smell so thick you could cut it with a knife. I'm woken by a knock on my door. It's the Nazi.

"I got kicked out of the dorm! I'm on Academic Probation!" He complains. "Someone narked on me for smoking weed. I know it was you! You always hated me for smoking pot!" I'm standing there, a total wreck, burned out from hell, stinking of weed, dressed in peace-sign boxers and a tie-dyed t-shirt, with the havoc of a mammoth pot-fest in full view behind me. He pays no attention, and curses me out for being a nark and a tight-ass. He tells me he'll never forget this. One day I'll pay.

The next day, I run into him on the street by the student store. He's cheerful, and says, "Hey, Dude! How ya doing? Long time, man!" From then on, the rest of the year, it alternates: every other time I run into him, he accuses me of being the leader of the now campus-wide conspiracy against him, and threatens vengeance. Every other time than those, he's cheerful, slaps my back, and acts like we're long-lost buddies.

He finally got kicked out for smoking pot. On a campus where nobody-- NOBODY-- gets reprimanded for smoking pot. He was the nuttiest nut I ever knew.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

sapiens

One evening, I returned to my dorm room after classes, unlocked the deadbolt, only to find the door chained. My roommate answered the door, whispering "Just a second". Once in the room, I found my roommate sitting at his desk with a large pile of weed, meticulously dividing and weighing bags and 3 or 4 people sitting on my bed (the bottom bunk) waiting for their pot. Evidently, my roommate dealt marijuana (and not just to his friends). This happened frequently over the course of my first year of college. My roommate also regularly wore a skirt. Not a kilt, a long flowing skirt (which was a little different).

My second college roommate never cleaned anything. He didn't use tissues. He would sneeze or pick his teeth and wipe his hand on the furniture. He would fry a burger (the high fat patties that come frozen in a box) in a wok and leave the wok dirty on the stove. The next morning, he would fry eggs in the fat leftover from the burger the night before. We had piles and piles of dishes because he never did any. When I would come into the apartment at night and turn on the light, I could see the roaches scatter.

One evening, I decided to make some canned tomato soup. I left the light on in the living room and cooked in low light in the kitchen. After eating one bowl of soup, I went back to the pot only to find 3 dead roaches in the bottom of pot. Evidently, I had been eating tomato-roach soup. I was not happy.