Morning can be a real tragedy. In the first place you have to get out of bed and just often enough in the last year, I had to really think for a moment about which bed it was that I was getting out of. I have been loyal to multiple cities, countries and continents. I suppose the promiscuity began freshman year when I lived in the Hyatt first semester and then in Towers and then back at home, then Danielsen Hall ‘- district of the diseased ‘- then India and so on. I have a fondness for inhabiting, and even through all these one-semester stands, I have tried to leave a toothbrush, so to speak.
Of course there are certain things every college student owns (all of which can be found on the third floor of the Barnes-&-Noble-at-Boston-University-Bookstore-proudly-brewing-Starbucks-Coffee). A trash can, a poster of your choice of unique pop icon, a plastic cup, some sort of temporary housing for your books/clothes/dirty laundry that has already kind of broken but is the only thing between your room and mere anarchy.
Some rooms are never right. It was impossible to be a college-aged Eloise in the Hyatt. That children’s book heroine who makes The Plaza Hotel her own failed to teach me her techniques. I eventually managed to cover the forgettable hotel painting with a piece of cloth and I did like the glass elevator. Still, I never got used to watching the migrations of businessmen to the workout room, the only view from my desk. I moved to Towers the next semester, and by spring, had duct-taped some postcards to the cinderblock above my bed and made a certain peace with the fossilized vomit on the door to the communal bathroom. A college dorm may foster community, but it’s also like living out of your high school locker room. It never really feels right to walk around in your towel.’ Girls man the industrially indestructible mirrors with hair weaponry you’ve never conceived of and there is that one who breaks up with her boyfriend an astounding three times a week. It’s hard to close the door, in part because it’s not yours. It’s also your roommate’s ‘- that creature that so strangely turns out to be either the most loathsome creature you know or someone you cannot do without. Either way, the only square footage you can call your own is the underbrush of computer cables from your bed to your desk. It was my friend who hadn’t yet left for college who saved me from the identity crisis of institutional furniture and poster sales. She packed me a green box of things that were mine or could be, and those prayer flags sure warmed the heights of my chilly white walls. They’ve marked doubles and singles and finally an apartment beyond rooming lottery specifications.
To fill small student spaces with things that fit in an already 50 pound suitcase requires a lot of commitment and dangerous hoarding tendencies. A toy car that I found on the street ‘- a red Volkswagen with a fly-fish decal and sweet turquoise bumper ‘- became a statement of self. I’ve now invested my personhood in my pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge and an airplane cookie cutter. Every time I unpack my shrink-wrapped Woody Allen record, it’s a little more reflective; this is probably in part because all I’m missing are the glasses. This small fleet of mine is my first line of defense against jet lag and vertigo. I could start my own quirky gift shop with all the toys, crockery and postcards I insist on toting around now. It’s worth it when my confusion on waking is settled by my shrieking aluminum bird. I’ve dragged San Francisco to Delhi and populated my single with New York relatives and my high school sweethearts. My summer sublet could have been a hospital room before I hung my aunt’s cheerful felt garlands.
Just in time to fill an apartment, I’ve been collecting like a real connoisseur. You see a matchbox, I see my mantel. You see trash, I probably see trash also, but if I squint I see my corkboard. Of course I’m not alone in this. I have found my mother gathers, too. With monastic patience, she decorates her cubicle with bright orange construction tape, rocks from the Maine Coast, feathers from the surviving Beltway wildlife populations. My roommate habitually rearranges. As she put it, she has been up till 2 a.m. on a Tuesday to see if the bed is better against that wall, hoping for a whole new perspective. She explained hers is also a possible genetic trait. Neither my roommate nor myself have ceased to circle around our rooms now that we have our own space ‘— for that matter, neither have our mothers. Dorm life reduced me to a Floor-themed construction paper door decal. I was only my name, college and year of graduation. My current door is not nearly so descriptive ‘- you have to come in to find out.
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