All in the Family
I’m writing about my roommates for two reasons. First reason: I’ve got new ones this year. Because of my ’06-’07 status, I had previously lived with a group of ’06ers and now I’ve been compelled to find a new family. The two sets of roommates could not be more dissimilar. Second reason: in the same way that my mom used to silence my complaints of not having “cool” parents with the old “you’re stuck with us” move, I feel somewhat invincible in my comfortable position of “stuckness.” In other words, they can’t stay mad at me forever.
When Will, one of my unemployed (amendment: he’s now employed as a Starbucks barista) ’06 roommates all but moved-in this fall, indefinitely, I knew I had to pursue this topic. He’s become a waddling juxtaposition—a Kong VIP and NFL prospect sharing a shower with Daedalus flies and Spee junkies.
He didn’t even call to say he was coming. I had to call him. You can imagine, on Halloween, calmly enjoying a beverage upstairs at some pretentious party, when a half drunk female-acquaintance, obliged to be wearing almost nothing, stumbles into me to announce the good news: “your roommate’s moving in!” “Oh really? With whom?”
Yes, needless to say, I was thrilled. Will is a 300lb giant. My room is large, but certainly designed for one inhabitant. So far, we’ve managed OK: I’ve given him a small corner, just between my door and my loveseat, with which to do what he pleases. His bed is an Aero mattress, conveniently stored in the closet during the day. He brought his own comforter. Kelly Clarkson is always available on his laptop, which occasionally wanders from Will’s corner on to my desk. Although I was somewhat hesitant to let him crash, it’s been a surprisingly symbiotic experience for the both of us. Will gets me free drinks at the Kong, and I arrange for his laundry to be done. He gets the bouncers at the Kong to do me random favors, and I’m on call to pick up his dry cleaning. He brings me to the Kong, basically. And I give him a corner of my room.
I couldn’t be happier to see the guy. You see, for my final year at Harvard, my super senior year, I have the pleasure of living with quite an interesting bunch. I moved from Eliot to Leverett to live with these characters. Sometimes, however, their affinity for the distinctly “female” emerges. A couple nights ago, Wakefield and Wilosevic started arguing over the discomfort of certain fabrics—for their neckties, of course. Wagner quickly engaged as a moderator between these malcontents. When Wakefield declared an inability to wear Ferragamo ties because of the way in which it often chafed the delicate nape of his neck, Wagner pointedly shifted to the trajectory of debate toward the merits of Wilosevic’s addiction to www.bluefly.com, a website whose tagline reads, “the ultimate hook-up for the fashion obsessed.” I remember thinking, “If only Will were here now.”
For the previous two Crimson seasons, I was pegged as the room “diva”—a moniker that I still contest (predicated upon my not being, at the time, a varsity athlete, and my healthy enjoyment of birch trees and practicing yoga in the common room before breakfast). My roommates in Eliot were equally self-important, but on the completely opposite end of the spectrum. Mike, Will, Josh, and even Tom were varsity athletes. Jay merely played JV baseball, though his general incapacity for compassion and inability to understand most human emotions gained him entry into a more “manly” standing in the room. Because Jay and Tom and I did not participate in contact athletics, the three of us often competed in intra-room competitions as “The Pointer Sisters,” a refreshingly sexist team name donned upon us by Mike, our gentle, dietary supplement-scarfing, MuscleMag-reading, IROC-racing, Naperville-native roommate. (Not surprisingly, we dominated in Wiffleball.)
By day I was trained to be a History and Literature intellectual. By night, I was being conditioned for the WWF (that’s World Wrestling Federation, not World Wildlife Fund)—thrown from wall to wall, often bouncing.
Today, Wilosevic changed his jeans twice and put on a tie “just to see.” Wagner, meanwhile, was lifting lint from his new overcoat. After buying me a much-needed burrito, Wakefield had his hair trimmed, unsatisfactorily—still too bushy on the left side, though as he conceded, the mistake was invisible.
Will was gone for the weekend (thank God: I could breath some fresh air at night without having to open all the windows). As I sat down to write this article (one which I admit must be rather unfunny for you diligent readers who don’t even know these random men), he called while on the bus back to Boston to see if I could possibly be on-call to pick up his XXL tuxedo from Classic Tuxedo tonight—he’s going to a football player and cheerleader convention masquerading at the Harvard Club of Boston as some sort of consulting firm.
“Yeah, of course—oh wait, not sure, I’m committed to a pre-Krokodiloes engagement.”
Roommates are the darndest thing. And almost universally, at Harvard at least, they become families. I’m not sure there’s a moral to this endpaper; it’s meant simply to illustrate the clashing of two distinct kinds of Harvard families—and I couldn’t be more honored to facilitate such an unlikely introduction.
— Jake C. Levine is a super-senior in Leverett House. But you should have picked that up from reading his Endpaper.