College Roommates

College Roommates
(This turned out to be a REALLY long post, which I guess makes up for the alleged "not posting enough" that my sister Leah is bitching about.)

Today I randomly decided to find out what my two favorite college roommates were up to, since we hadn't spoken in over 5 years. I wasn't able to track them down but it led to some reminiscing. The following is a list and some stories about the random women I shared a room or apartment with in college:

1. Carmen - Senior year of high school, I had pretty much cut every class I had except tennis practice. For the first semester, my teachers let me get away with it, because I was the school's tennis star and needed a 2.0 to compete in the city's Individual Tennis Tournament, of which no girl from my high school had qualified for in over a decade before me. During the second semester I didn't have that working in my favor so every single one of my teachers failed me, for ditching their classes day in and day out to go swimming in Monkey Canyon, bodysurfing in Malibu, eating "French Slams" at Denny's and putzing around at my friend Mike's apartment while his mom was at work. As a result, UC Santa Cruz revoked my admission unless I attended summer classes first to determine whether or not I could handle the "rigors" of college education. So after graduation I headed up there for 6 weeks, at the age of 16 and having obviously never lived away from my parents. Carmen was the roommate they assigned me, a Mexican chick who was pretty but looked mean, and didn't say one word to me for the first hour we were in the room together. We got over it fast though and became very close, she was one of my bridesmaids when I got married six years later. She was (and I assume still is) beautiful, sweet and funny. She never actively participated in any of my random mischief-making, but she was my enabler since she would giggle endlessly with me over some of the dumb shit I did. Also, she had abs of steel.

Me and my mom in my dorm room sophomore year. Note the
posters of Aaron Kwok and the random Last of the Mohicans poster.
The rest of the pics are random black and white photography shots.

2. Marcy - UCSC is broken up into a bunch of different colleges, which you select after you're admitted. You're still a UCSC student but you're affiliated with a college within the university, kind of like the different houses at Hogwarts. Yeah, I'm going to assume that each and every person reading this knows what I mean. Carmen was affiliated with Oakes and I was affiliated with Merrill, so I had to get a new roommate. One of the chicks in the summer program asked me to be hers so although I didn't know her well, I said what the hell and signed up to reside on the "Chicana-Latina" floor in B dorm. I don't remember much about Marcy but we didn't part on the best of terms. She used to put dirty dishes into the dish rack with the clean ones. She ate all my food. She used to talk in her sleep in Spanish and sometimes I'd hear my name. At one point, I opened some random person's photo album and found a picture of all the girls on my floor at a dance. At least six of the girls were wearing my dresses. Marcy actually lent the dresses to them without telling me.

3. Veronica - Though she disliked me at first sight, partly due to the fact that we were both close to Carmen, we ended up becoming roommates sophomore year because she and Carmen were sharing a room in one of the campus apartments, they'd racked up two other girls to share a room and needed someone willing to live in a single. After a year of having to listen to people in the next bed have sex, while some strange guy climbs into my bed and tries to get with me, forcing me to bolt from my own room, I was more than willing to rock a single. We bonded the night we got drunk on Boone's Strawberry Hill and she taught me and Carmen how to do the Electric Slide. Veronica was (and I assume still is) smart, driven and funny as hell. She was also an awesome dancer, one of those people that just knows how to move perfectly to the music. Also, her boyfriend tried to get all of us (I was dating Tony at the time and Carmen was with her future husband Jose) into an orgy. She named her daughter after me, which is pretty much the biggest compliment anyone can give you.

4. Crystal - Though we all started the year out as friends, it degenerated into all-out war with her and Lorena versus Carmen and Veronica. I stayed out of it for awhile, but eventually took sides when Crystal made some really disparaging remarks about Carmen. And when I take sides, I take sides with a vengeance. As in jumping off the arm of the couch and telling her to shut her mouth or I'd do it for her. She used to wake everyone up at 7 in the morning with really loud Madonna, an offense which should be punishable by drawn and quartering. I'd counter by turning my radio up all the way at night, then locking my door and climbing out the window. Can't picture how she looks but her nickname was "The Ogress." And I think she used to wear a powder blue T-shirt all the time with her name on it.

Veronica, Carmen, me (okay if you must know I'm wearing
a minidress with a Marie Antoinette-style top) and Lorena.
I wasn't the one who put the stickers but they're funny as hell.

5. Lorena - She was quiet. That's about all I can remember.

6. Pauline - Lorena and Crystal moved out after two quarters, and their room remained vacant for the rest of the year because according to our preceptor, "everyone is afraid to live there, they think you're all evil bitches." The following year however, our luck didn't hold and we got assigned new roommates. I met Pauline the first night I was back on campus, when she opened the front door and said "Yes, what do you want" really snottily to me and my dad. I replied, "Ummm, I fucking live here" then shoved past her with my luggage. Still, we started out getting along until one day, when she tried to use my best friend by pretending an interest in him just to get a ride to her home 3-hours north. The night I found out about it I drunkenly tried to jump her and Wes tackled me to the floor then sat on me, while Carmen and Veronica cheered and yelled "Let her do it, let her beat her ass!!!" So he got off me but she was safely locked in her room by then and wouldn't open the door.

Once she made the mistake of asking me what I was thinking. I said that she didn't want to know. She persisted and the 12 or so other people tried to convince her she didn't want to know. I told her anyway, "What I'm thinking is that if hoe-ing around was an Olympic sport then you would have the gold medal." Once, she partied with her hometown friends in our apartment all throughout finals week, while the rest of us were studying day and night. And then left the apartment filled with their dirty dishes. I broke into her room and left the dishes (still unwashed) under her covers. Sometimes she would use my razor without permission (which I wouldn't give, eew) and once she left it by the side of the tub in a disgusting pile of pubic hair. My reaction to that wasn't very friendly. Also, her and boyfriend used to cover their sex sounds with the radio turned up, but never on an actual station. So you'd hear all this groaning and a shitload of static.

Faby and Carmen looking at one of Pauline's random mugs in the fridge.
It had about an inch of water and was covered with a ziploc bag.

7. Fabiola - Faby was my partner in crime. Whenever I needed someone to help me with some random diabolical scheme she was always game. We got into an altercation once with the girls who lived beneath us over noise. I had just gotten home and was still standing by the door when some girl knocked on it and immediately started screaming at me with her noise complaint. Yeah, just a word of caution, that approach doesn't work with me. Picture Monica and Rachel jumping up and down in their apartment. When she rushed back up to complain of the "thumping noise" I was feeling smarmy as in "Carmen, you were just in your room but perchance, were you in there thumping?" Followed by "Thank you ever so much for stopping by" and a slam of the door so hard that Pauline's friend who was coming up the walkway told us the girl stumbled backwards to avoid it. Faby helped me torment the people below us, despite their very prettily drawn (with crayon) apology covered with slogans like "Peace at Oakes" and actual peace signs and flowers.

We smoked up once and thought we were in Mission Impossible as we tried to steal their bird feeder with coat hangers. When that didn't work, Faby poured creamed corn all over it. When one of them came upstairs to investigate "the vomit", we blamed the people upstairs. Though we lived on the top floor. Then continued eating dinner as if she wasn't still standing there, trying to figure out what to do. Yes, I know. We were awful. Also, Faby hooked up with some guy once just because he had a British accent.

Carmen, Michelle, Veronica and Christie before a
graduation dinner dance at Oakes.

8. Michelle - Ahhh.... this girl. On our first night of senior year, she and Carmen went to a party and Michelle hooked up with a stranger named CJ I think. The next morning, she came to us and asked if one of us had a car. While they were in the actual process of getting busy, a bunch of cops broke in and raided his apartment which was also a meth lab. There were about 20 or so cops there and none of them would let naked ass Michelle go into the bathroom to put her clothes on, because they were afraid she would flush evidence. Michelle wanted a ride to go visit CJ in jail. She used to walk around the apartment in only a wifebeater and boxers, which bothered Carmen and Veronica because she wouldn't wear a bra and had like size C breasts. I got into it with her with her once, when I went to the kitchen in the middle of the night and found a stranger sleeping on our couch. The next day I found out he was a hitchhiker she had picked up and brought home because he needed a place to stay. I told her she needed to be a bit more careful, considering it wasn't only her safety she was compromising but that of all her roommates. She said that she knew just by looking at a person if they were psychos capable of rape. I sarcastically replied that Quanitico was calling to offer her a job.

9. Christie - Out of all our various roommates, our only white one was the sweetest of them all. Made us feel guilty too because she was a super-hippie (she even used that crystal deodorant shit you randomly see at drugstores) and we made a few jokes about it when we first met her. She wore tie-dyed shirts every day and burned incense like she bought it by the barrel. She once got chased by a mountain lion, while on one of her daily nature walks in the grassy fields behind our school.