A Room of Our Own

Last spring, I informed my father in a single sentence that I planned on taking an extra semester at Harvard and that that semester would be spent living in a suite with three men—Michael A. Gee ’03, Toby D. Anekwe ’03 and Aaron M. Tievsky ’03. “YOU’RE DOING WHAT?” he asked me in his e-mail format, all caps, comical by day, but somehow haunting when he is actually angry or incredulous. When I informed him that they were gay, and that Mather house allowed for such arrangements, his tone didn’t change, and he was sure I was entering some sort of sketchy roommate lair that would swallow his only, delicate daughter whole before she ever managed to grasp a diploma.

But like all stories that pique my interest, in this one, the adults were all wrong. After a year of living with gay men, I’ve become a convert. I know now that Grace—the character, the beauty, my alter ego—isn’t lying when she tells people the best living arrangements involve a mixture of the sexes. My home is my sanctuary and I would rather not share it with anyone lacking a Y chromosome and a strong preference for men.

To fully understand my situation, one must know that I’ve never been a girl who didn’t get along with her own kind. I lived with females for years at a time, and as a sort of drifter college student—I transferred to Harvard as a sophomore and took time off as a junior—I’ve lived with 14 different girls in college-issued housing. From #6 (Shelby J. Braxton-Brooks ’03) who taught me to appreciate the earthy, gospel music of Kuumba, to #1 (Gretchen Ruethling, a 2002 Northwestern University graduate), the perfect Phish-fan roommate for a disillusioned, recent high school graduate, I couldn’t have ever been more lucky with those randomly assigned to me.

But I was always somehow wracked with little pains of annoyance. I remember nights in Lamont, looking up to see one of my sweaters, stretched over a roommate’s larger shoulders, wandering out to the e-mail terminals. And I can’t even begin to recount the number of cheap-o drug store items—the Jane glittery cosmetics and plasticy bangle jewelry—that have disappeared into the black holes that seem to exist in every female-only room I’ve ever populated at this campus.

Living with gay men, however, has been rewarding in many ways that far exceed the conveniences of day-to-day life. When I think about my room this year, I always think of a blissful happiness. “Your room is filled with so much beautiful laughter,” roommate #3 (Elizabeth H. Hagan ’02), said when she stayed with me for a few days this term. She had fallen back into my life when I was mired in a thesis-induced haze, and she referred to the little cackles that drifted through the cracks of my bedroom wall when Toby, Mike and I buckled over the sink brushing our teeth (a sometimes ritual). That laughter was the only thing that pushed me through my senior thesis, my breakups and the bleary days that followed all-nighters at The Crimson. Even when we were all dispersed in far off computer labs dashing off final chapters, the e-mail reincarnation of our jokes made me giggle aloud all by myself, making me stronger.

The humor that we developed in our room seemed to develop out of the fact that we were different. With the media constantly putting forth images of the gay male as over-sexualized and feminine to a fault, we had fun living a life where we could laugh heartily at the meaningless character of stereotypes. I would complain to Mike about a tough moment with a TF, and he would flick his wrist in my direction telling me that “Hon-nay, you are going to be fine.” Down in the dining hall Toby and I developed an entire lingo that helped us scope the flawless athletes who sauntered the Mather dining hall in the dinner hours. The genius of Missy Eliot’s ditty, “Work It,” infused our daily speech. “I need a glass of wa-ter,” an innocuous dining-hall apropos phrase, became understood as “give me some space; I’m trying to flirt with this guy in the line.” But our social dynamic wasn’t about just playing up the overdone behavior that we are told should exist between gay guys and a girl. Our room always seemed terribly honest, because we created an environment that was infused with comfort. There is a certain dynamic between girls and guys that lacks sexual tension that seems to be somehow more soothing than the typical interactions that transpire between roommates of the normal order. We talked openly like many roommates do, but at the same time, underlying it all, there was an element of innocent physical contact. Toby would always hold me between his chiseled arms when I felt sad, and Mike and I would walk through campus hand in hand on dark nights. A simple flash of my eyes in Toby’s direction at the Red Party told him that I didn’t want to be alone and we converged on the dance floor to dance like seventh grade friends who didn’t have to worry about the adult consequences that always flare up at the end of a night.

When I reflect on our unique brand of support, I always think of a single word that is plastered on the front of our door in the form of a page ripped out of a glossy issue of Vanity Fair. This word—written all over my memories of this school year—is the delectable French term, bebé. I sit on my futon stressing over an FM story and it drifts through my door. Bebé? (Toby wants to know if I’m home.) I bound quickly ahead in the dining hall and it is there above the sea of soon-to-be-checked-out faces. Bebé! (He wants me to wait; he knows I feel panicked when I’m alone in crowded rooms.) And 24 hours and as many pages before the due date of my thesis, it became almost meditative. “Bebé, bebé, bebé,” he whispered as he stroked my tear-stained cheeks with the back of his hand.

But maybe the biggest change that takes place when you live with gay men is the way you learn to see things that other people can’t see below the surface. I’ve stood, awkwardly holding a sad excuse for a margarita in the corner of a crowded BOND party, the organization that serves as a much more subtle and somewhat undercover version of the BGLTSA. I remember running my eyes through the room and wondering just how many of these Harvard men only expressed their gayness secretly within the confines of BOND. Even when I decided to publish this piece in FM, I hesitantly asked each of my roommates for their permission to rave on about their greatness, not wanting to push any of them further out of the closet into a world where not everyone was so understanding.

For I’ve learned this year, that there are so many men at Harvard who feel completely isolated—not only from their own peers, but from their very own sexuality. Sometimes, late at night, the secretly gay wander near our rooms, or call our collective phones, trying to convince my roommates to spend a few moments—or a night—with them when no one’s looking. And there are always those who linger too long in the elevator, or brush up against my roommates in the dining hall, making us all wonder if the Mather gay circle extends even further than we thought.

I knew that my room had forever changed my outlook this spring, when I stood at the threshold of my room during the last moments of my 23rd birthday party. Aaron had convinced me to make my birthday bash a toga-only affair, and I walked into my room as the crowds cleared and the din of Cher died down somewhere in a darkened dance room. My own bedroom has become somewhat of a lounge meant to exude the vibe of sex—red cellophane draped the lights, and Morcheeba crooned jazzy lyrics from my laptop speakers. As I loosened the safety pins on my toga, I suddenly heard a rustle coming from my bed, and looked up to see two girls, stragglers after the revelry, sprawled on my beaded pillows with limbs entangled, lips locked. I stood there drunkenly holding my sheet, and the idea of immediately ousting them from the room flashed through my mind. But then I paused, and felt somehow happy for them. For they were there, in our room, doing what they wanted and not really caring what anyone else thought. My voice died in my throat, and a subtle smile stretched across my face as I spun around to go change in the bathroom.

Angie C. Marek is a government concentrator in Mather house. She plans on spending next year in Washington, D.C.—mostly swimming in her olympic-size pool, but occassionally working.