From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume X

Introduction

This is the tenth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, and Volume IX is here. (The different volumes have little or nothing to do with one another.)

As with the last few installments, these are taken from ancient emails, back when I archived them as simple text files in the mistaken belief I’d be able to keep up with the practice. It didn’t last long, but has yielded some fun finds from a bygone era. I wrote all these when I was living in San Francisco, before moving to the burbs and becoming a parent.

December 26, 1994

[Having recently finished a 9-month bike tour] I’m still interviewing for a proper corporate-type job. In the meantime I’ve been working odd shifts at the bike shop in Berkeley, just to feel like I’m not a totally hopeless unemployed person. It’s a pretty ridiculous commute, first biking up and over California Street which has got to be at least a 15% grade, and then all the way under the bay on the Bart, for the typically paltry pay you get at a bike shop. Still, it’s diverting and often fun. For example, on Christmas Eve, a bike builder named Daniel, who has been on suspension without pay until further notice for sloppy work, brought in a 12-pack of Heineken, probably as a brown-nosing move. We threw it in the fridge, and brainstormed ways to get the owner, M—, to let us drink them on the job. M— was in a holiday mood, which was good; earlier, I’d “reminded” him of a policy of always buying lunch for members of the staff who wore staff t-shirts on Christmas Eve, and he went along with it. Well, by mid-afternoon the mad Christmas crowds were getting to me and the boys, and I proposed to M— the idea of discreet alcohol consumption to carry us through. M— said, “What, there’s beers!? Cool, gimme one.” Alas, it appeared we’d have no way to open them, lacking a bottle opener, but I grabbed a Maillard Helicomatic lock-ring tool and it worked great. In fact, it soon dawned on me that one half of the tool does the lock-ring, and the other is in fact nothing else but a bottle opener. You gotta love the French. Well, M— proceeded to walk out on the sales floor, beer in hand, and sell a bike. Needless to say it was a free-for-all after that.

January 1, 1995

I guess I forgot to give you my (kinda) new street address: it’s below. I had some fun moving in here. Our street is fairly flat, but our-cross street, Filbert, is crazy steep. They don’t call our neighborhood Russian Hill for nothing; our hills are as oppressive as Russia herself. Trucks and tour buses are prohibited on Filbert but that didn’t stop me from driving up it in the 14-foot U-Haul I rented. Its diesel engine was taxed to the limit, and I had this breathtaking, terrifying, yet oddly giddy feeling of impending doom. Halfway up—and too late to turn around—my inner ear started giving me (non-verbal) warning messages that the truck was about to pitch over backwards and tumble down the hill, end over end. It was such a fearsome feat that I almost got an erection. I held my breath and reassured myself with the fact that this time, I’d bought the full insurance. Anyhow, I made it over, down the other side on compression (the engine shrieking like it was gonna throw a rod), and then, as a final flourish, proceeded to parallel-park that baby in one of the toughest neighborhoods for parking in the entire city.

March 13, 1995

I am very gratified to get your response. The kind of honesty I indulged in via my letter to you, calling you out as I did, was admittedly dangerous—the recipient of such a letter can either take the painful, self-effacing route (which you did), or delude himself and continue to hide behind the falsity of his social veneer. This latter type, like a blindfolded tyke who has yet to learn object permanence, will assume that because he can’t see the truth, that it can’t see him. Of course such behavior is completely pathological. Right now I’m thinking of J— S—, whose insatiable desire to be cooler than me back in high school took the form of dissing me, like some kind of human sacrifice to the gods of cool. I thought to myself, “J—, can’t you do better than that? It’s not hard to be cooler than me—why don’t you try to be cooler than somebody who actually is cool? Like the Fonz? I mean, seriously … cooler than me? What kind of ambition is that?” I was originally drawn to J— as a friend, back in elementary school, because he was such a bold, unapologetic nerd. Unfortunately, it couldn’t last. Through what he probably thought was a social apotheosis from lowly dork into “happening dude” (his favorite phrase), I witnessed the slow, cancerous death of a personality.

May 2, 1995

Thanks for the warning about the virus! I’ve always wondered whether those anti-virus programs can detect viruses that come over e-mail. Fortunately, almost all my e-mail comes from trusted friends and relatives anyway. I did, however, receive a “junk mail” message at work. I guess business solicitations are frowned upon on the Internet, but on CompuServe [how I get and send e-mail], who knows, maybe anything goes. Anyway, I forwarded your warning message to everybody in my e-mail list (about 20 people).

So, yeah, e-mail sure is cool. It’s been wonderful to be able to write my brother Geoff without waiting for the normal three weeks or so it takes the postal service to carry physical mail to the Netherlands. Maybe I’ll get a sound card for my PC and record my actual voice, and send the recording as a binary file; Geoff could hear a reasonable computer facsimile of my voice on the other end! Of course that would be more of a parlor trick than anything useful. You know, the strangest thing about e-mail is that my dad, who by all means ought to be a master of this technology, has not actually joined up. And yet he has the computer, and the mind, for it. Bizarre.

August 6, 1995

You know what? Every time I make my Mexican rice, I think of the time I made it at your place in NYC, and scorched it. The horror! I am certain that you threw away the leftover rice, because it was, well, inedible. I only hope you didn’t have to throw away the pot since I’d blackened it so badly. I keep thinking about what a disaster that was. I say all this to my shame. I guess what I’m saying is, you should really come out to San Francisco so that I can try again with the rice, and show you that it really is good when the right ingredients and familiar kitchen equipment are on hand. I could send you back with a new pot, even. So if you get the chance, please come. Until then, I suppose you can just curse my name.

October 24, 1995

Using the formula f=mgh, and my stopwatch and altimeter data, I have calculated my power output for the climbs I biked up today: over a period of 16:30, I averaged 0.37 horsepower. But what does that mean? Does it mean I have a third of the strength of a horse? Well, not really; I don’t think horsepower applies to horses in the real world. But we do use horsepower to describe certain things. For example, my output was .0037 times the horsepower of a 1985 Volkswagen Jetta, I happen to know. And it would be more than enough to power a Hoover Mighty Might vacuum cleaner. If that’s not interesting to you, consider that 0.37 horsepower translates into 272 watts. That tells us my output is enough to power one of our chandeliers and a desk lamp.

November 1, 1995

Why yes, I’ve been to House of Nanking many times, and thanks for asking. I guess I can’t really recall what my favorite dishes are there, as I try to mix it up each time. Until recently, my strategy was to spend my time in line asking everybody else what they usually get. But the last time, I was in the mood for chow fun and asked the waiter, who is also the owner, if they had it. (In my experience, you can ask for just about anything, including chili mac, at a Chinese restaurant and they’ll have it, even if it’s not on the menu. Not that I have ever actually asked for chili mac. I’m just sayin’.) Well, the owner looked at me as if I were some kind of uncultured rube (which I may well be). “No, chow fun is white-man food!” he laughed. “This your first time here?” I said, “Uh … no.” He nodded and said, “I’ll set you up.” What then transpired you can well imagine, as you described your own Nanking dining experience so well in your last epistle … I need say nothing more. I love that place. It’s always worth the wait. I like the strange vegetables that they use—yams, for example. Totally unique (plus I normally hate yams). As far as the place being greasy, sure, it’s greasy, as Chinese food tends to be, but compared to most places, it goes down (and stays down) pretty darn well. Man. Now I can’t get that place off my mind.

August 27, 1996

How cool, I just figured out how to hook the CD-ROM in my computer into my boom box. It works great—so it looks like I bought computer speakers for nothing. Oh well. Now I can play CDs, which I never could before. Only problem is, I only own two CDs and they were both freebies that E— got from her work. I guess I could check out CDs from the library and tape them. Or of course I could do like everyone else and just go to the record store and buy music, but E— and I are trying to save up for a house one day, which is no easy feat in this area. We looked at a 2-bedroom condo a few doors down and it’s $250,000! There are 1-bedroom condos on top of Russian Hill for $1 million … as if! Sausalito is probably only slightly cheaper than San Francisco, and we’d have to pay $3 a day to commute in over the Golden Gate Bridge (not to mention fighting the traffic … no thanks). So we have to be pretty frugal while we figure out where, one day, we might be able to afford a place.

December 2, 1996

Just had the stomach flu. As if in some awful parody of the three-squares-a-day rule, I deposited my Thanksgiving dinner, in three installments, into the toilet (out the front end). Damn!

December 23, 1996

In reply to your question:

>>You’re set in Internet EtheReal Estate, hottest property going 
>>(the new frontier). But still one question: where do you put 
>>the relatives when they come to visit?

Well, it’s really pretty BASIC. First, I should say that my family members aren’t exactly queuing up to visit me. But when one or two of these characters feels the need to offload, I’m happy to let them nest in any free partition in my home. I help download their luggage (we have a little cache to store any valuables they might have). If they stay the night, I have a strange kind of cot I fashioned out of a kind of braided fiber (a web, you might say) that I’ve stretched over a mainframe. I have a nice spreadsheet for the cot, and some other soft wares, to make guests as comfortable as possible. Usually I keep the bedding compressed, but sometimes I set it up just for CIX and floppy down on it myself.

I’d really like to keep my domain open, but I normally limit it to friends and family. I mean, entertaining is a real effort for me—I guess I’m just not a natural-born server. Multi-tasking is hard for me so I just can’t monitor everyone all the time. I struggle to be a good host sometimes, and some guests I don’t like the slightest bit. Most are basically OK, but many just don’t observe the proper protocol. I can handle it if they’re not PC, but I won’t tolerate bad language. In fact, the next time I get a cursor, he’d better be ready to run, because I swear I’ll boot him!

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From the Archives - My New College Apartment

Introduction

Well, it’s back-to-school time, and nowhere is that more exciting than in a college town. I rode my bike through the Berkeley campus recently to enjoy the secondhand tension and giddiness of the new kids milling around. In their honor, I’m running this piece from my archives about moving into my new apartment, and getting to know my new roommate, at the dawn of my sophomore year at UC Santa Barbara.

Enjoy please enjoy.

Moving in to my college apartment – September 21, 1989

We’re all moved in here, pretty much. We’ve had a hell of a time trying to get furniture. The manager is always ready to talk our ears off, but never seems to get anything done. We had a big mix-up when T— arrived: seems the manager thought that my brother Geoff was our third person, because he happened to be hanging around when she came by. So when T— showed up, she tried to get rid of him. What a mess. I’m working really hard to believe that the manager isn’t just being racist (i.e. maybe she wouldn’t have rented to T— if she’d known he’s black). Maybe she thinks Geoff was planted as a ruse. I still can’t convince the manager that Geoff doesn’t have a set of house keys.

I got my new roommate at random. I was in the housing office trying to find an apartment for T— and me, and absolutely couldn’t find a place the two of us could afford on our own. Last year we had three guys in a one-bedroom and it didn’t work out so well, though that was mainly because the third guy was a jerk. Still, we wanted a bit more space ... but I finally gave up. Thus the third roommate I now had to produce out of thin air.

I have to admit, it makes me feel like something less than a social success to be in this position. All my friends from last year met their future roommates in the dorms. The dorms were like the perfect dry run. Not having lived in the dorms, I didn’t have this option, and I couldn’t predict if any of my pals would make a good roommate. Besides, if you consider the odds of growing to hate your roommate, it’s best to pick a mere acquaintance; that way you don’t risk ruining a friendship.

And why didn’t I live in the dorms? Too pricey. Even the bottom-of-the-barrel, very cheapest off-campus dorm, called Fontainebleau, cost too much (though I actually came within one signature of committing to it before chickening out). It was $4,500 for nine months and I was afraid to ask my parents for that kind of money.  (Not afraid they’d say no, which is a certainty, but that they’d be disgusted with me for even asking.)

Not that I’m bitter about missing the dorm experience. For $4,500 you live in a closet (albeit a closet with two beds and two desks) and eat recycled food. My freshman friends last year waxed eloquent on this point. The unused French toast from breakfast is repurposed for grilled cheese sandwiches at lunch. Quiche from today’s lunch is tomorrow’s soufflé (which, in dorm kitchen parlance, means any unidentifiable food that is covered with a fresh layer of cheese and re-baked). Most students like dorm food at first, because it’s not the whole wheat, lentils, alfalfa sprouts, and ground turkey they had to eat at home; refined flour and fat at first seem like luxuries. This gets old, so soon the students are merely tolerating their dorm food; then they start complaining; then they subsist on microwave popcorn and Pop-Tarts for the rest of the school year. Me, I gotta have my own kitchen, even if it’s infested with roaches.

My new roommate is really strange. He’s the result of my settling for almost the first guy I could find hanging around the Community Housing Office. It was my third visit there and I was desperate, and grabbed this greasy, puffy, nerdy guy and said, “Dude, you can be my roommate. It’s the Penthouse apartments on Abrego. Come sign the lease.” The guy looked really hesitant, and just stood there humming and hawing and mumbling stupid things like “Um, I don’t really know you,” until I was ready to punch him in the face. Standing nearby watching, looking amused, was this really thin, pale guy with a huge curly sphere of hair ensconcing his head. He was like this giant photo-negative dandelion. He walked up and said, “Hey, I’ll be your roommate.” Now the first guy looked torn, but I wasn’t about to give him a second chance—he was dead to me. The second guy, my new roommate, is named C—. I instantly took a liking to him, and this liking has grown over time.

C— is an art studio major, and he doesn’t own anything. I mean, he literally has no belongings other than a big Glad bag full of his clothes. His wardrobe is about the size of my “unwearable” collection (which I stuffed into a Huggies box that serves as a table for my typewriter). Among his garments there’s not a shred of cotton anywhere. I think he’s trying for the “starving artist” look. I can’t quite place the fabric ... all weird shades, stripes, or plaids, some of them having a weird shiny sheen to them. Maybe they’re the same material as those original Star Trek uniforms. I checked the labels: lots of Rayon and Polyester. Actually, cotton is represented, but only as a part of a complex hybrid involving at least two other fabrics. C—’s attire is sort of like what a real bona-fide grownup would wear if he couldn’t afford new clothes. Wait … could these threads be hand-me-downs from his dad? No, couldn’t be that, because come to think of it, these clothes actually look a fair bit more stylish than what forty-somethings would ever wear. Could it be that C—’s wardrobe is actually cool? Hell, I don’t know. (I mean, how would I know?)

I had to ask C— where he got his weird boots. He said he got them from some old man and before he could wear them he had to pull out these funky inserts that were supposed to fix up the old man’s back. Those boots look like something out of an ancient still life oil painting, maybe of the Georgia O’Keefe vintage. I guess that fits: an art studio major ought to look like he came right out of some weird painting. C— always wears a pair of jeans with paint spattered all over them. He calls them “work pants.” Except that all his pants look like that and I don’t think he ever works. I mean, I guess he works in the sense that painting pictures is work, but it seems like he’s having too much fun to think of it that way. He likes to say, “I’m gonna head over to the studio and put the hammer down.” But he says this in a laughing way that implies “as if.”

The thing is, C— could probably afford a lot fancier duds if he wanted to—he might just have to cook once in a while instead of eating out every meal. Okay, I’ll give him a little credit: he went to Lucky’s the other day for a major shopping trip. Here’s what he bought, taken right from the receipt: “deli, chnk tuna, Campl soup, clam chowder, boysen prsvs, clam chowder, ll pnut btr, salami, mayonnaise, whp crm chs, tomato soup, bn/bac soup, mex salsa ml, campl soup, salami, olym rnd tp, kleenex, lettuce, non food, coke clas 6p, dr pepper.” I’m not sure what “olym rnd tp” is … I think it’s bread. And I know what the “non food” is: Velveeta.

The Penthouse Apartments are much nicer than La Loma, where I lived last year. I will confess that La Loma had one advantage, at least on paper: it had a pool. That said, I never so much as dipped a toe in that pool because on my first day I saw the neighbors giving their dog a bath in it. I don’t know why this bothered me so much; I guess I just wondered what else that pool was used for. It’s also the case that I never saw a single tenant swim in it ... what did these people know? My roommates steered clear too, other than one of them throwing up in it one night.

So, the Penthouse Apartments look pretty sharp, with their crisp blue doors against the white exterior walls. La Loma was this uniform ghastly green.  Also, the Penthouse has regular college-aged neighbors, instead of the blue-collar guys from last year, packed like ten to an apartment, who seemed to despise all college kids. Not that everybody here is a UCSB student. It turns out the guys next to us in #23 aren’t really college students per se—they’re all here for the English Extension program. One guy is Swiss, another Japanese, and the third Korean.

The Korean, A—, is really strange. He just cruises right into our apartment like he owns the place, and talks our ears off while picking up and inspecting all our belongings. On the plus side, he’s also very generous, feeding us tasty Korean dishes his mom somehow mails to him. (Freeze-dried, perhaps?) He also offers us free cigarettes, which we decline, and various Kent-branded chotchkies (pens, lighters, keychains) from his dad, who manages the Kent affiliate in Korea. A—’s English is surprisingly good, considering that he’s only been in the U.S. for eleven days. He complains that he doesn’t get along with his roommates very well. Apparently the Japanese guy hardly speaks a word of English, and the Swiss guy only speaks German—that’s all he needs, because he always has at least half a dozen other Swiss guys couch-surfing in the apartment and “borrowing” A—’s stuff.

Whoever it was at the housing office who thought it would be cute to put these guys together sure wasn’t thinking very clearly. As if it weren’t hard enough for a foreigner to adjust to a new country, each of these guys has to cope with three distinct cultures, all squeezed into that tiny space. Shouldn’t these people live with Americans so that they can learn the language the way we speak it? As it is, they’ll all probably reinforce each other’s mistakes. I guess it could be worse: they could be sharing a tiny apartment in La Loma.

Of course, the Penthouse isn’t without its problems. The door jamb is broken so we can’t lock the front door, and the “porch” light outside is full of water. The chandelier/fan unit in the kitchen hung too low, and I would always bump my head on it, so I finally got pissed and took the whole thing apart, and at least half a cup of orange water poured out. Good thing this was before we tried turning it on. After removing the lamp part for head clearance, we were left with these hanging wires, and theorized that when the maintenance guy, Calvin, would try to rewire the light next year he’d have to use trial and error, and could end up knocking out power for all of Isla Vista. So T—, being the electrical engineering major that he is, enclosed a schematic of the wiring before putting the thing back together.

The bathroom is really not this apartment’s best feature. Due to routine flooding I should probably invest in waterproof shoes. Check out the neat pattern on the sink tile. You know what that is? It’s human hair! Left over from last year’s tenants! Preserved, like a fossil, or a scorpion’s skeleton encased in amber! I think it’s actually set in epoxy; I’ve scoured and scoured but I can’t get rid of it. But now that I’m satisfied that this hair wont’ interact with me or any of my toiletries, I kind of like it.  It looks kind of cool! It could actually be decades old!

I’m not so happy about the sink itself. They gave us this little rubber plug that we have to shove in there whenever we run the water, whether we’re filling the sink or not, because otherwise the bathroom fills with this terrible raw sewage smell.

The toilet pretty much works, though it does slobber a little and of course overflows from time to time.  But a real bonus is that the seat isn’t cracked. You literally cannot cut your bottom on it. It is also attached pretty well; it doesn’t slide around like so many cheap apartment toilet seats.

Now, we’re not so lucky with the shower and tub. The lag time on the shower is devastating. You get the water temperature just right, then engage the shower head, and everything’s fine, and then suddenly the water is coming out scalding hot, it’s just blanching your flesh and you grope desperately with the controls to cool the water before all the skin melts off your body. And nothing changes, at least at first, and then suddenly it’s liquid nitrogen spraying on you, and you have to hold still lest you bump into the wall of the shower and have your arm shatter like glass. You go back and forth between boiling and freezing until you’re too scared to continue and just decide your shower is over. Now you find yourself standing in four inches of dirty, sudsy water, which forms grey rings around your ankles. The drain at this point is making sounds like a fat kid choking on a piece of chicken skin, fighting for air.

This bathtub drain seems to have a more or less infinite amount of human hair trapped in it from probably every past student ever to live here. Every morning I go at that drain with the plunger, and the drain vomits up another big clump. See that thing that looks like a rat? It’s just a big clump of hair! I haven’t thrown it out because I’m kind of hoping my roommates will step up and do it, in the spirit of fairness, since I’m the only one who ever plunges. I’ll admit that I’m actually just too scared to throw out the hairball ... I mean, what if I it turned out it was a rat?

But things are coming along. We’ve actually managed to score furniture. None of us owns any furniture at all, and in fact most UCSB students don’t own any furniture, but the landlords play this stupid little game where they pretend the place comes unfurnished. I guess they don’t have enough furniture to go around, so getting anything is like horse trading. Except we have nothing to trade, we just have to beg. Now the apartment is finally equipped: two desks (but no dressers), five chairs (two ripped; all heinous blue-green vinyl), three beds (none of them capable of being stacked as bunk beds, so they take up most of the single bedroom), and yes, the pride and joy of our furniture fleet: a sofa. That was really hard to get ... almost nobody gets a sofa just by asking. But the manager finally took pity on us when she saw T— sprawled out on the coffee table after eating too much. I’ll have to remember that as a tactic for next year!

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From the Archives - My First Week as a College Student

Introduction

I have a kid in high school, which around this parts means I’m in earshot of a never-ending litany of worry, most of it about the near impossibility of getting into a good college (and sometimes about the near impossibility of ever getting a good job).  The latest fear is that even the second-tier, “backup” schools like UCSB are becoming too competitive for all but the very brightest students, blah blah blah.

If all of this is true, a good college is bound to be a pretty dull place by the time my daughters get there.  Nobody will know how to enjoy life, because they’ll have spent their teen years taking six AP classes per semester, studying like fiends, doing extracurriculars like cleaning public latrines “to look good on their applications,” and spending what little spare time they have worrying. 

But then I look back at my own college years and think, nah, students will never change.  When I was a teen my mom assured me that college had been much easier, and less selective, when she was a student, but I can’t imagine it.  There was nothing especially elite about my generation of students; we were your basic run-of-the-mill hedonists.  For some this took the form of partying; for others, sports; and for many, excessive sleeping.  (Yes, when I transferred to Berkeley I encountered a stronger work ethic, but we were still basically hedonists.)  And isn’t that part of the point of college?  To be hedonists for four years while earning an accreditation that will last a lifetime?

To celebrate this, and because I don’t have time to write this week, I’m posting another essay from my archives, chronicling my first week as a UCSB student.

First week of college – September 19, 1988

The line streamed up the block and disappeared into a building.

“You know, like, I’m already starting to miss people at home.  Not like my parents or anything, but you know, the people I’m close to,” said an attractive girl.

A girl with green eyeshadow said, “Like, our living room is nice, but it just isn’t that fun, you know?  Like, it’s kind of boring.”

A short guy in a Top Gun type jacket, sporting aviator sunglasses against the overcast morning glare, looked on, literally too cool to speak.  I stood by, tuning into various conversations taking place around me, trying not to look like Nipper, the RCA dog craning to hear the Victrola.

“You know, I’ve worked hard in school and I think I deserve a nicer car, you know?”

“I hate dorm food.  Let’s get Chinese for lunch.”

“I’m majoring in Psychology.  I don’t know why; maybe I’ll be a psychiatrist.”

Inside the building, I received a number, like at Baskin-Robbins.  I got number 31, and they were helping 37 … so I had 94 students ahead of me, all of us waiting to sign up for phone service.  Once through this line, we had to line up again in front of one or another card table to sign up for a long distance carrier.  Why only one rep from each phone company?  I had no idea which one to choose and a shorter line would have totally carried the day.

I made myself comfortable—as comfortable as you can be just standing there in cheap shoes on a hard floor.  Not far off, a guy was having an enthusiastic conversation with a pretty young thing about absolutely nothing.  God I envied him.  I don’t know a soul in this college town of Isla Vista, unless you count my new roommates, who have somehow talked me into getting the phone bill in my name—something my old friends in San Luis Obispo had expressly warned me not to do.

A girl in a Coors Classic t-shirt said, “You think we should ride our bikes there?  I don’t know, I might fall off.  I haven’t ridden a bike since 6th grade.”

“You know, it was like, right before the prom, and I looked in the mirror and said, ‘Oh my god, I have got to do something.’  So I ran to my hairdresser and said, ‘Just do something, please!’”

“You know, you should just take it easy until you’re all settled in.  Just take a minimum load, 12 units.  You’ll see.  At least, that’s what my counselor says.”

I drifted in and out of oblivion, stirring slightly to witness an MCI representative harassing a Sprint representative for making up facts, which to the best of my knowledge he had been doing.

“It used to be, like, really perm-y.  Now it’s just sort of curly, not curly-curly.”

I envisioned myself on a date with one of these girls.  “Just don’t open your mouth, and we’ll get along fine,” I imagined saying.  Then it dawned on me that the girl might do well to give me the same advice.  I stifled a shudder.  At least, I think I did.  Can you stifle a shudder?  Did anyone see?

By the time it was my turn to get a phone number, I felt as though I knew everybody in the room personally.  I held for each and every one of them the same respect reserved normally for McDonald’s associates and the operator when you dial 411.  I once again became acutely aware that I was at one of the finest learning institutions in the country, in some very sharp company.  I began to feel intimidated.  I was nowhere nearly as outgoing and poised as my fellow students.  What could I talk about?  The dramatic turn of events at the recent road cycling World Championships?  The fact that I live in La Loma, the lowest-rent building in I.V., a place so cheap that I’m among the only students there, the rest being factory workers who—based on how early in the morning I hear them revving their engines in the parking lot outside my window—must commute a great distance?

Lacking my own car cut my conversational topics in half, so considered describing some of the interesting rental cars I drove this past summer, or the ’52 Ford pickup I drove while working at a clothing factory.  As I left the building, my phone number receipt clutched firmly in my hand, I resolved to brush up on my social skills.  My worldly roommate speaks fondly of his success with the ladies, which he attributes to lying about his age.  Perhaps I shall consider this technique.

So began my first week in I.V.  When my mom and the landlord (that is, her husband, not my real landlord) came to see me off, I gave them the full tour of my quaint little apartment.  Imagine my shame when my own mom accused my happy home of being “a pit.”  Surely the thin layer of protective scum left by the previous tenants would wash right off, and the black widow hanging from the ceiling could be considered a pet.  I admit that I was initially slightly dismayed by the poor condition of the apartment, but that was before the landlord (the real one, my landlord) assured me that the previous tenants had lost their entire damage deposit.

The place did come equipped with quick-release window screens, as well as a somewhat stocked kitchen.  The refrigerator is sporting some well-aged pickles, and some organic-looking sprouts I have yet to identify.  Dried seaweed and brown rice, along with over ten varieties of ramen, comprise only a fraction of the delicacies lining the cabinets.  And the aspirin!  This place is replete!  Every cabinet in the house has its own jar, so I’ll never have to walk more than ten feet for aspirin again.  I feel baffled by my mom’s apprehensions.  I’m very excited about my new home and I can’t wait to meet all the neighbors, especially the children, who seem so energetic and vocal.  I’m sure their parent will have great stories to tell.  And I’m looking forward to chatting up the maintenance woman to find out how our apartment complex got its very own golf cart.

And yet, ever since I got here I felt that something was missing from the college life I’d expected.  I just felt kind of empty inside.  And then, on the third day, it hit me:  classes!  That’s right, a college institution as old and venerable as overpriced textbooks and frequent intoxication.  For some reason, UCSB decided to start classes on a Thursday.  Perhaps this was to give new students a chance to hit their stride, and balance all these new responsibilities:  freedom, housekeeping, hangovers, and operating the local Automated Teller Machines, which in many cases differ from what students used in their hometowns.  (Fortunately, these students will have plenty of opportunities to practice with these ATMs, and believe me, they will.)

I showed up for my first-ever college class five minutes ahead of time like a good boy, and immediately panicked because nobody else seemed to be around.  I automatically assumed that the temporary, unofficial schedule I was using (after losing my final, official schedule) was incorrect, and my college career would begin with a humiliating screw-up.  But to my surprise, the Teacher’s Aide (or whatever TA stands for, if anything) arrived with about ten seconds to spare, headed to the front of the room, sat down, and proceeded to stare blankly into space, seemingly on the brink of delirium.  The six other students who had arrived sat patiently in their seats, being careful not to slouch, and behaving perfectly, perhaps for the last time in their lives.  Looking at the TA, all I could think was, “She looks like she could use a cup of coffee.”  As if on cue she said, “I need coffee,” and left the room.  She returned a moment later sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup.  Did I mention this was my Environmental Studies TA?

She had prepared well for this first class.  She delivered her lecture with the poise and polish that indicate she’s given it many times before:  “Well, it looks like almost nobody is here, so there’s no point in going into anything.  But I want to say this is a great class, and I’m sure that’s why it’s so full this quarter.  I think.”

French class didn’t go so well.  I’d tested into French 4 but wasn’t nearly up to the level of the others, and right after class the professor demoted me to French 3.  I won’t miss her.  I will, however, miss this really cute girl with a hairdo like a tumbleweed.

On the way biking home I was accosted by a gentleman who came running out into the road holding out a piece of paper.  Instinctively I grabbed it, and it turned out to be a flyer.  It seemed a local chapter of a Greek leadership society was putting on a free event designed to broaden students’ social horizons.  The event was described in a touching free-verse poem:  “It’s not that far/ And they’ve got open bar/ You won’t have to drive a car/ To go see the party czar/ The liquor king/ The master of malice/ The hero of hedonism/ It’s EVIL EDDIE!/ At the original house of fun.”  Ah, the Delta House at 6515 Pardall, a building almost as elegant as La Loma.  Apparently, the fraternity would be hosting this event as a display of its benevolent leadership in the community.  After reading a list of the activities and hospitality planned (“beverages, snacks, sex, drugs, and rock & roll”), I was disappointed at having to miss it.  Laundry Night with my roommates had already been planned and I wasn’t going to let the guys down.

Well, I should wrap up this report.  I’m about to acquaint myself with the final puzzle piece of my college experience:  studying!  This is another collegiate tradition I’m hoping to keep alive, if only in my own tiny realm.  Wish me luck!

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

From the Archives - Heavy Metal Roommate

Introduction

As I age, I try to grow as a person, to keep from ossifying.  For example, in the last decade or so I’ve broadened my horizons significantly.  I’ve even dipped my toe into heavy metal music with a couple of Metallica albums, which are great when riding the trainer.

The other thing I’ve learned to enjoy is turning up the thermostat.  Of course this was off-limits when I was a kid, but oddly enough I stuck with this no-furnace-ever practice even in college, when my gas bill was subsidized by roommates.

This post showcases both aspects of my dark past.

Heavy Metal Roommate - November 10, 1991

My apartment is like a big walk‑in refrigerator.  I have never been in such a cold building in my life.  If I relax my jaw, it begins shaking violently and my teeth chatter.  I’ve never seen this happen indoors before, unless you count the Charles Dickens “A Christmas Story” movie I saw on TV as a kid, which I can’t remember very clearly because all the soup in my brain has coagulated, like really fatty gravy does when you refrigerate it. (If my roommates and I had any gravy, we wouldn’t even need to keep it in the fridge.)  I’m typing this slowly because my fingers are going numb.  If I sat on my hands they might warm up an imperceptible amount, but my ass would turn to stone.

Why is it so cold here?  I think it’s because the molecules, instead of bouncing around, are fleeing to far corners of the apartment, trying to escape the music my roommate plays twenty‑four‑seven.  His music is even worse than pop, worse than Tiffany, worse than the socially conscious music that Debbie Gibson will surely try to make after she becomes a big star.  I’m talking about music so absolutely hateful as to make Satan turn to the Lord for salvation:  heavy metal. 

I’ve often wondered how anybody could play heavy metal day in and day out without getting an ulcer, or at least a headache.  The other day my roommate J— was beating little cartoon characters with clubs on his Nintendo while some incredible noise was howling and shrieking through the apartment like only his $5,000 speakers can howl and shriek.  At first I thought it was the smoke alarm, but ruled that out because I tore the smoke alarm out of the ceiling the other night.  It was like thirty-something degrees in our apartment and despite my sweatpants, sweatshirt, and dual polyester comforters, I was still cold.  I finally broke down and turned on the heater, which hadn’t been used in so long it coughed up all this smoke and set off the alarm.  This alarm had no buttons or simple shutoff switches—at least none I could find at 3:00 am.  So I tore it out of the ceiling, ignoring the fire threat even in light of the Berkeley Hills fires that recently tore out five million houses near here.  (Maybe it wasn’t five million.  Like I said, my brain doesn’t work well in the cold.)

So with the smoke alarm no longer a possibility, I knew the heinous noise must be a death metal song—maybe by Hellhammer, or from the new Cradle of Filth album, or possibly Angra—raging across those inch‑and‑a‑quarter speaker cords to the acoustic cannons pointed right at  J—.  Heavy metal music on that stereo, in this little apartment, is like a Panzer tank running over a tiny hut in a defenseless village.  Were the other roommate and I to combat his stereo with an alliance of our little boom-boxes and “bookshelf stereos,” the acoustic holocaust would chase all the warm friendly molecules away for good, and we’d have audio winter. 

Today’s selection was the worst sound I had heard yet, and I was beginning to think it wasn’t heavy metal at all, but merely some electronic malfunction. I mulled over what I recently learned, despite my kicking and screaming in protest, about metal. Unassimilated noise is a favorite way to begin a song:  terrible shrieking begins out of nowhere and continues, with no form whatsoever, for what seems like whole minutes before gaining accompaniment—just like the riffraff who fall in together to share drugs or crime—of drums and howled vocal sounds, not harmonizing but clashing together to form complete and relentless auditory anarchy.  The metalist—that is, the eager listener imitating the MTV rendition of his idol on stage—listens, entranced, his eyes shut tight, perhaps his lips trembling in that same pseudo-awe we get in church on Sunday, his arms outstretched above his head, fists joined at the thumbs with pinkies extended to form the Secret Satan Symbol, his upper body wavering back and forth.  Finally the anarchy of sound reaches a pinnacle, at which point the drums explode into life and the first of many painful guitar solos begins. 

At this moment of ground-zero the metalist’s eyes pop open, hopefully revealing a bloodshot road‑map of burst capillaries, and he does something violent, preferably smashing a guitar or at least jumping off a huge amplifier and striking a gnarly stage prance, or in  J—’s case, smashing the skull of the aforementioned cartoon character on the Nintendo.  But this time, the shrieking was not building up to anything, wasn’t gaining any accompaniment, and finally another roommate, Eric, whom I was helping with a resume on my computer, said, “What the hell is that noise?” and we both started yelling at  J—.  “It’s just feedback, something’s wrong with the CD player,” he said, not looking up from where he was clubbing a queer bird with a big stick he had taken, by force, from another cartoon enemy earlier.  “Well shut it up!” we yelled, with no results. 

We closed the door and turned on some real music to drown it out and cheer us up—Bob Marley and the Wailers, I believe—and the shriek went on out in the living room for several more minutes.  How could  J— withstand the noise, especially when seated at the stereophonic focal point?  Simple:  all metalists necessarily build up a thick outer shell—an armor, really—that protects the human deep within from the traumatic noise.  Hearing such feedback, or a jackhammer, or an F‑15 fighter shooting down the runway (with Desert Storm over, it’d be on the way to a kind and gentle air show, costing taxpayers $2,500 per minute) or the squealing of two hundred pigs in a slaughterhouse, could no more faze a metalist than be discernible from the metal he is playing.  Until we pointed it out,  J— probably never knew the difference between the feedback and the disc he had intended to play.  His shell was too thick:  and this accounts for the rest of his personality as well.  The other day I told him, “Hey  J—, fix us something to eat” (mimicking Eric, who jokingly badgers me with outrageous requests), and J—’s response was the same as if I had told him to do his dishes:  “I’ll get to it.”  We roommates might as well be the mindless automaton that he is.

To  make matters worse, this music makes me feel embarrassed.  Here’s how.  I should probably have a warm hat to wear around here, but I don’t—I don’t have a hat at all—so I sometimes wear a bandanna.  Yeah, thin cotton isn’t exactly going to help, but I’m desperate.  So I was working on the computer and looked over at my mirrored closet door, saw myself, and thought, “Who are you trying to be?  Axl Rose?”

Axl Rose is pretty silly, you have to admit.  He wears a bandanna onstage, with that long, straight hair pouring out of it, and the effect isn’t so much “bad boy of rock” as “your friend’s little sister.”  It’s somehow ever girlier than Roger Daltry’s ringlets.  But at least Roger Daltry’s hair always looked unkempt and slept-on, and he never wore a bandanna.  Don’t get me wrong, Guns N’ Roses’ music, though I dislike it, is the serene singing of sirens, the cooing of lovebirds, my mother’s heartbeat as I am curled in her womb, when compared to the ferocious and hateful dragging of fingernails down a chalkboard I have to put up with here, like so much second-hand smoke. 

So, to try not to look like a rock star, I’ve turned my bandanna around so the knot is in front, in the style of Aunt Jemima.  She is warm and maternal and pancakes are warm and fluffy and this positive imaging might just warm me up a bit.  Maybe if I also think of Mrs. Butterworth, I can put my evil roommate completely out of my mind.  The pancake ladies are so opposite of J—, with his ice-cold demeanor, his molecularly inert slouch on the sofa, his violent video games, and the four hundred heavy metal discs he needlessly hoards in his room.  I just wish Aunt Jemima were a real person, and were here right now, to bring some warmth to my own private Siberia.

Quiz answer (added Feb 7 - not from the original essay)

No, you didn’t miss it—I never issued a formal quiz.  But you may have wondered, “Who is Ellhame?”  You know, Ellhame, from the homemade poster at the top of this post.  Well, I got that picture from the web.  Some metalist evidently decided to make his own “keep calm” poster, and despite the utterly intuitive tools provided by the Keep Calm-o-matic, he couldn’t figure out how to change the font so that “Hellhammer” would fit on the poster.  I guess he decided “ellhame”was close enough, and I think that tells you just about all you need to know about the heavy metal believer.