As I come down the small ramp that leads to the Village C patio, my heart starts to drop. I feel the growing knot of doom in my stomach as I approach the first door and take out my GOCard to swipe. I slowly enter the building and find the usual heavy security-either no one, or someone who is actually less productive than no one, as they seem to invite homicidal maniacs into the building with their very presence and nonchalant security attitude. Nevertheless, I feel strangely compelled to swipe my card and hear the subsequent ding.
Next comes the dreaded long walk down the hallway. Long is a relative term of course, because it’s only a few feet compared to the “trail of tears”-esque journey that is New South. Nevertheless, I dread this walk because it can mean only one thing-I’m returning to the wretched hellhole I’ve refrained from calling home so far. When I tell people I live in Village C, their eyes light up and they always chirp, “Oh, your own bathroom.” Yeah, we have our own bathrooms, but with great power comes great responsibility . . . cleaning responsibility. And as great as it is not having to rub ankles with someone else doing their dirty, sinful, ungodly business in a communal bathroom, my roommate and I are the laziest people alive and the bathroom has yet to be, and probably never will be, cleaned.
Immediately upon entering my room, you’ll notice one of several things. Either you’ll notice the mostly bare walls which invoke loneliness and despair, the small postcard on the wall that says, “I Want YOU for Satan’s Army,” to keep the room festive, or the odd rotting stench combined with Amazon-like humidity.
I wish I could say I was the only sufferer, but that would be a lie. The puppy, gerbil, rabbit and endangered whale were casualties also. I found the puppy and the gerbil in the bathtub with a toaster I never knew I had. The rabbit stopped eating and let its rodent fangs grow into its brain, and the whale . . . well, that was just never going to work out in the first place. But the first casualty of my room was my soul, which died several weeks ago.
I don’t know if it’s the broken air conditioning, the fact that my room is the smallest room on campus (I looked this up, it’s true), or the fact that I wake up every morning staring directly at a blank, white brick wall and think, “Oh god, not the Oz dream again.” This time no one even comes to forcefully sodomize me, but there’s still something not right here.
As if the aforementioned details weren’t depressing enough, my roommate has a demeanor that makes mine seem much like Richard Simmons’. He’s actually told me for 16 days straight that he’s going to drop out.
My state of depression was exacerbated when I visited friends in other dorms. It was then that I realized that I had gotten a room that must have been cursed by Beelzebub himself. I’m starting to get used to it, and the three identical posters of “After the Sunset” I took from GPB are really warming up the place. But every once in a while those wild feelings of misery begin creeping back. Hoya Saxa.
