The Student Union was a fair sized building. Check-in was held on the second floor, which was the main level, and normally had some meeting rooms and a large dining area for formal college uses or small concerts. Upstairs was where the student government lived, along with rooms for clubs and the school newspaper. The basement held the bookstore, a branch of Key Bank, a small bowling alley and billiards room, and the Rathskellar, or Rat, which was a sandwich and pizza shop you could get a beer at. Before I left the building, I went downstairs and opened an account with Key Bank, funding it with a certified check I got when I cleaned out my accounts at Clifton Trust.
Next I was off to Hall Hall. By getting there a day early, I was able to snag a good parking spot near the main entrance. In those days, the key was an actual physical key, not a card. The main door was unlocked, and I grabbed some stuff and wandered up to the second floor. I was going to be in Room 206. My roommate wasn’t there yet, so I grabbed the left side of the room and tossed my duffel on the bed.
I wasn’t the only one checking in early, so I made nice with my new neighbors and offered to help them move in if they returned the favor. This was readily accepted, especially after they noticed I had a small fridge and an unopened case of Budweiser in my car. I promised we would work on that later, so that got carried in first and set up, and then loaded with beer to cool down, while we went back out and finished bringing our shit in. After that the guys gathered in my room and we cracked open a few cool beers, cool but not cold, since that little fridge was a bit anemic. Nobody cared.
It was all guys in the room. It was all guys in the dorm. It was all guys in all four freshman dorms! This place had the highest testosterone factor I had ever been around, at least until I went through basic training in the Army. Up until about five years ago, RPI had been men only, sort of like The He-Man Woman Hater’s Club for nerds. Historically, the only time women had ever attended the school had been for things like World War II, when no men were around and they needed women engineers. As soon as the war was over, the women were sent packing. As it was, in 1973, after five years of co-ed education, it was still 14 to 1 guys to girls. You didn’t go to this place to get laid! There were so few women in the freshman class (40–50? Less?) they were all put into the graduate apartments, where they had private bathrooms!
The dining hall wasn’t open until the next morning, so after we got hungry we all got into the Galaxie and headed down to Hoosick Street. There was a strip mall there I remembered with a Price Chopper and a few other stores, but also a small Italian place we could order a couple of pizzas. When somebody asked how I knew about the place, I just replied that I had spotted it coming in from 787 off the Hoosick Street Bridge. In a different life I had taken girls down there to wine and dine them.
Saturday dawned sunny and bright. The dining hall was open, which was fortunate in that I didn’t want to have to drive into town. It was unfortunate in that, well, the dining hall was open! Imagine the worst meals you ever had in your high school cafeteria. Now, imagine them as an adult, seven days a week. Exactly what was being served at any given time was decidedly questionable. Nobody was ever able to prove anything, but most people noticed a suspicious lack of stray dogs and cats in the local area. That’s probably not what really happened, since I’m positive they would have tasted better. There were reasons I moved out of the dorms sophomore year, and the dining hall featured prominently in those reasons.
I woke up early and pulled on some gym shorts and jogged around the campus for a bit before heading back to the dorm and showering and changing. Then I wandered over to the dining hall, where I grabbed some OJ and an apple. Part of my strength and weight control conditioning was that I usually skipped breakfast. I don’t know who came up with the crap about breakfast being the most important meal of the day. Whenever Marilyn gave me that shit, I would always ask if she worked for the American Breakfast Board. By the time I got back to the dorm the day’s rush was started, and a huge number of cars were trying to cram themselves into the parking lots, as parents tried to get rid of their offspring. Nobody showed up in the morning, and by noon I was hungry enough to actually go over to the dining hall and eat a real lunch.
I got back to my dorm room to find the door open, and somebody’s crap on my bed. Whoever that somebody was I had no idea, and he was nowhere to be found. I threw his stuff on the other bed, the one conspicuously empty, and closed the door. It seemed as if I wasn’t going to be running a singleton, but as I remembered back, that was never going to be the case anyway. Back when I did this the first time, I hadn’t been early acceptance, and for the first few months, until Thanksgiving, I was in a temporary dorm carved out of a corner of the lounge on the first floor, sleeping on a bunk bed and living like I was in boot camp. By Thanksgiving enough students had flunked out to let us move into real dorm rooms.
Ten minutes later there was a loud thumping on the door. I roused myself off my bed to greet my new roommate. I opened the door to look out and found a fellow about my height, maybe a touch less, and about ten pounds smaller. He had a soft look to him, though he wasn’t quite pudgy. His hair was long, down to his shoulders, and very curly, and he had a wide, round face. He looked at me and asked, “How come the door was shut?”
What a fucking moron! “So that nobody would come in and take anything,” I replied.
He laughed and pushed his way inside. “Nobody would do that!” Then he noticed his stuff was on the right side of the room. “Hey, how come you moved my stuff over here?”
“Because I already set my stuff up on this side yesterday. Didn’t you notice it when you came in?” I asked.
“Oh. Yeah, I guess so. Who are you?”
“I suspect I’m your roommate. Carl Buckman. You’re assigned to 206, also?”
He gave me a funny look. “Yeah, why else would I be here?”
“Okay then, pleased to meet you.” I stuck my hand out and he absent-mindedly shook it, even as he was looking around the room.
“Yeah, great.” His eyes found my mini-fridge and lit up. “Hey, we’ve got a fridge! Wow! That’s great!” He immediately went over to my refrigerator and yanked the door open. “Wow! Beer, too!” He reached in a grabbed a can of Bud, before I could say anything, and popped open the top. Next, as I stood there in disbelief, he threw the door to our room open and yelled down the hallway, “We’ve got some beer in 206!”
Enough of that shit! I moved past him and slammed the door shut before I was mobbed. Even then it shut in the face of a pimply kid from across the hall. My roommate stared at me. “What’s the problem? Let’s have a party!” He drained the can of beer in a single long swallow, and moved back towards my fridge.
“Hold your horses. Let’s get a few things straight,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Like who the hell are you?”
“I’m your roommate,” he said.