Nitesh Arora, Non-fiction

Dearest Roommate, Goodbye
Sitting at the large rectangular desk at the end of my hall, I heard the voices of all of my floormates enjoying their Saturday night. Apparently my hall had been unofficially dubbed as one of the party floors on campus, obvious to everyone but me. My floormates were squeezed into tiny dorm rooms blasting music through portable speakers, floors shaking because of the dancing and the large bass that had suddenly turned our ancient dorm rooms into covert dance clubs. Smuggling alcohol in juice bottles, they ran through our hall, nauseating odor of cheap booze wafting through the air. I sat alone at the end of the hall, studying. I wanted to go back into my room and sit in front of a desk that was actually mine, not a broken legged discolored chair in front of a desk meant for the hall. I wanted to have some peace and quiet while I was awake later than I wanted studying for tests that I was to have in slightly over twenty-four hours. I had paid just as much as my two other roommates to share our shoebox, with sane and mature roommates I would have been able to assert my right over my measly amount of space, allotted as my home for the year.
Since I became aware of the significance of August 27, 2009 as being Freshman Move-In Day I accepted that I’d have to share a room smaller than a prisoner’s cell with two other people. I hoped that my amicable nature would allow me to quickly become friends with my roommates. One of the few truly American pastimes I had enjoyed drilled into my head that roommates are legendary. These quintessential TV shows and movies showed guys meeting each other for the first time as they move in and growing to know each other so well that they would be chief characters through the entirety of each others’ lives, careers, weddings, children and all. My good fortune, however, had not struck. Freshman Move-In Day became another strike of reality for me.
My two roommates were John and Jake, the two Js. John became known as the tiny, adorable, stereotypical gay guy. Jake was the tall, came from military school, and said he hailed from Boston but his broken-English made us think differently. Whereas I awoke by 7:30 every morning both Jake and John slept in until the very last moment. While I finished my classes and returned to my room, John and I found Jake to occasionally return to the room and go to sleep around 6:00 AM. We had no idea where he went; sometimes we would just find army issued duffel bag missing and knew that we were safe. Jake had an eerie presence and lying about his background on multiple occasions had led us further away from trusting or feeling safe around him. Soon after classes began I noticed that Jake began to show dominance over both John and I and our room. Jake would mandate when the door could be open or closed, when music could be playing, and that any snacks in the room weren’t just the owner’s but to be shared by Jake. John would leave the room, drive home on weekends and sometimes sleep in friends’ rooms just to get away. With my parents four hours away, I did not have that privilege. No, Jake began to show his disdain for my “book-smart” personality, making cutting jokes about my not wanting to go to strange parties with him, not wanting to stay awake until the sunlight poked out of the sky, and not wanting to speak vulgarly. When Jake wanted to sleep he did and we were not allowed to get in his way. When I wanted to sleep, his music came streaming out of his amplifier and external speakers blasting until 4:00 AM meaning I had the opportunity to doze off in the first row of a twenty-three-person class. When I started to snore Jake started poking me, tapping me, pushing me, and hitting me. He leaned over from his top bunk and stretched his arm until it had reached the wall where I tried to hide from his “poking” and get sleep. Thus, I found myself a new home. The floor desk became known as my desk, where I could be expected to be reading, studying, emailing, and listening to music--anything to get away from Jake and avoid that room.
Every day, I would repeat to myself “Goodbye, dearest roommate, I hope to never see you again.” The day Jake was taken away by the police for assault became the last day I uttered my mantra and the first day that I started to breathe again.