1999ish

I looked in the mirror. Shit. It wasn't pleasant.

It was the dawn of a new century and I still looked like I was some suburban Grungester wannabe. Fuck. That was like eons ago. So 1991. I was too young back then to dress like that, so I guess I was making up for lost time. The long hair parted down the middle and the ironic Urban Outfitter tee shirts had to go. For once, my mom was right. I looked crap.

It was a sea change. In the past year I wrote and directed a play, got off with a model, fallen in love a few times and was accepted into NYU film school. I was shocked. I sent my application in a week late and I was a rich white Jew from New York City. I thought in order to get in, I may have to be a minority along the lines of "Black Asian Lesbian Cripple (With Braces!)", but somehow they took me.

So I did it. I chopped off my hopelessly dated haircut and highlighted the rest blond. I still looked crap, but at least I didn't know it. That oldest-member-of-a-boyband look was real cool in '99. I even allowed myself a goatee. Complete chin rubbish. The mustache didn't even connect to the bottom. But I was older and life was changing, so my look had to catch up. Oh right, I also had terrible acne. Oy. I can't even look back at pictures of myself for fear that my eyeballs might pop themselves out of my skull.

It was about a month until college when I got a letter from NYU with my roommate's name, address and telephone number. Rich Gibson, Some Shithole, Illinois. The next day he called me.

I guess he was nervous about my New York address, maybe my last name, whatever it was, the conversation was wholly unpleasant.

"Hey, so what kinda movies are you into?" He gurgled.

"I don't know. Comedies, I guess. Woody Allen's pretty cool."

"WOODY ALLEN? He's my favorite! I guess we're the perfect match! Maybe we should get married!"

Silence. This kid was fucking retarded. It took him about 10 seconds to realize it.

"...uhhh, sorry, I'm just excited about college"

A few hours later, I got an email from him outlining his personal habits.

1) I'm a Buddhist and I meditate four hours a day.
2) I go to sleep early and wake up early to meditate.
3) I've never done drugs, drank or smoked and never will. Mediation takes me to a higher plane.
4) I can't wait to meditate with you!

Not that I judge people on their habits or personal preferences, but I mean, shit: This motherfucker was strange. 18 year old kid from the mid-west who bases his entire life around meditation? How do I get out of this one?

My blond highlights and goatee needed someone cool to hang out with.

I searched for a way to get out of my predicament.

I noticed our dorm didn't have air conditioning.

BINGO.

I immedately went to my mother: "Mom, they stuck me in a dorm without air conditioning! I want to get out of there!"

Like any good superhero Mom, she sprung into action.

The next day, she told me she fixed everything and that I'd have a dorm with air conditioning.

"YES!"

"I got you and your roommate a new room!"

"My roommate?"

"Yeah, he called when you were out and we talked for 20 minutes. What a nice guy! He meditates, you know!"

I vomited a little in my mouth. I was going to be spending the next year with some Puritanical Buddhist.

CUT TO:

Four Months Later.

It was about 3:00am. Maybe 4. I couldn't see the clock because the room was spinny. No, the room wasn't spinny, it was my head. Colt 45 seemed awl-right when Snoop Dogg poured it out for his dead homies. But it wasn't when a bunch of hipster doofus white kids guzzled it like it was going out of style. It was completely nasty, but we felt so fucking cool. NEW YORK, DRUNK, NO PARENTS! ROCKSTAR!

When I got home, I flipped on the light. Rich wasn't home. The first week he kept to his Puritan mantra, but slowly fell out of it. I saw him smoking cigarettes, drinking and he was sleeping later then I was.

I brushed my teeth to get the 40OZ breath out of my foamy mouth.

CRASH!

The door was closed, but there was definitely some sort of wrecking ball on the other side. I opened it up. Rich lay, with a big fucking gash on his forehead, laughing hysterically. His eyes were dusty red pools of intoxicants.

"I couldn't find my keys. So I thought I'd knock down the door with my body."

I picked him up. The keys were in his hand.

He was an incoherent mess. He sat down and started to freak out.

He breath became protracted and short.

"I CAN'T BREATHE! I'M GOING TO DIE!"

I was too drunk to talk a paranoid down off a high, so I told him to eat some crackers.

He took a box of saltines and gleefully started chomping. One after one, they filled his cheeks until he looked like a chipmunk.

"Rich, you aren't swallowing".

Without hesitation, he spit the cracker dust all around our dorm room, tornado style and started to laugh like a fucking pathetic maniac.

"I KNOW, MAN!"

I jumped into bed and fell asleep. I was awoken less then an hour later to the sounds of gentle sobbing. I put my headphones on and cranked some David Bowie. Christ. This isn't how I wanted to spend my college years.

Rich and I survived that year together. We ended up going to London in the spring where he drunkenly confessed in a men's room that he "Loved Me" a few moments after he blurted out "I'm gay, I'm straight, I'm everything".

We've lost touch over the years. I guess everyone needs to make mistakes. I spent the majority of that year pining hopelessly for some awful Irish girl who laughed out loud when I told her how I felt. Rich is probably a cool guy now. Yeah, he was a pain, but if you don't act like an ass and screw up sometimes then you'll never learn from your mistakes. He learned that the meditation/no drugs thing is bollocks and I learned that I looked like an ass with frosted tips and a goatee. I mean, seriously, what the fuck was I thinking?