To college (pt.1)
CHAPTER 16
To college…
What a fucking time! College was, being best friends with a complete stranger, driving your friend home with alcohol poisoning, meeting his parents drunk, sleeping in the residence parking lot at -15°C, being high at orientation, somehow always ending up at McDonald’s and driving late nights with strangers you met at a bar downtown. College was everything I hoped it would be, until it ended too soon. I met my group of friends night one, so for day one I was never lonely or bored.
I had graduated from high school a year early and sort of applied to college as a joke. I applied to one college and got in. I figured, if I liked it I’d stay, if not, I’d apply somewhere else, with no time lost. I went in to that first year of college, as if time didn’t exist, I felt like, because I had graduated aa year early that, it was, in a way, an added year to my life. A year, in which if I failed, or made mistakes that I could later omit from my life story line, because all of the timing still added up. I would go into another first year of college and none would be the wiser.
My first, and only year of college, I was 17. For the first time in my life, I was the youngest. For the first time, I had the choice not to share my health issues with my friends. I could just be, that chick in apartment 204A. I went to a small college, so we only had one on campus residence. I was only of very few, who had ever lived in an apartment building, so adjusting to a small space with no outdoor area, wasn’t anything new to me. I had always taken an elevator to my “house”, I had always had to deal with noisy neighbors. College was just like living in an apartment building, except, everyone is roughly your age.
Night one, my 6’2” roommate and I (5’5”) walked around the building, as did everyone else, to look for a party. It was fairly easy considering everyone was having parties and all apartment doors were open (against fire code haha). We just had to listen for the noise. Somehow, my roommate and I got separated and I walked into a random apartment that was oddly quiet. I met my first great college friend, Nico. Through him I re-met my neighbors and we organically formed a group. Our little group was roughly 8 boys and me. I always got along better with guys.
One night, a guy ran by my door piss drunk and knocked, so of course I let him in. I ‘d never seen him before, but he seemed fun and nice. He immediately started trying on all of my clothes and America’s Next Top Modeling it up and down my room. He stood up on my bed and gave me a full 15-minute Gwen Stefanie performance. It was like a drunk abandoned puppy showing up on your doorstep. I’d left the door open and a girl walked in during his musical number, and actually knew who he was. They were both piss drunk on a Wednesday night and ate all of my roommate’s Fruit Loops. The guy fell asleep so the girl left him with me and went to her room. He woke up and told me I had to meet his friend, because his friend “loves music and you like music, that’s great!”, so I walked this rando up to the 6th floor to meet his friend. Keep in mind, I still don’t know this guy’s name and he’s still wearing my neon pink onesie. His friend ended up being a good friend of mine, we would hang out whenever, our respective friend groups would disappear. He and I would sit in other peoples’ apartments, after everyone had left the party, and talk until 6 am. Me being and insomniac and fascinated by what people say when they’re drunk, I loved our conversations, and am probably the only one, of the two of us, to remember them. It was one of those relationships that you could never tell if we were friends, more than, or just random people who met after midnight.
***
End of Part 1