“Got my own life

I wanna make my own decisions

When it has to do with my life, my life

I wanna be the one in control” 

~Janet Jackson  

 

After several shitty roommates, I ended up with Marcy.  The last shitty roommate used to be a high school friend.  She turned Single White Female after moving into my freshman dorm.  Next thing I know, I’m getting my ass kicked in our suite bathroom over my boyfriend.  Turned out she was obsessed with him (he did warn me) and now I’m sitting down hard in the tub after being pushed into the shower curtain (which also fell on me.)  Thump!  Not really a fair fight–she was twice my size.  Friendship over.  

 

So, I ended up with Marcy from Jasper, TX, one floor up from my old room.  My old room that I had painted Bearkat colors.  The room that I had reserved in my junior year of high school during the college tour.  I was sad that I had to move out.  The R-A said if I complained, I had to leave.  So SWF got my room that I had painted spirit orange and “Columbia” blue.  Not that that was the end of her.  SWF and her minions still harassed me upstairs, in Marcy’s room.  On the white board on our door, they wrote, “Jessie’s a bitch!”  and other assorted insults.  R-A did nothing about that.  So, I persevered and got the last laugh–I wouldn’t drop out of college, I would keep my boyfriend (that was what I told myself every day.)  Inhaling and exhaling…

Marcy had the double room all to herself.  As the only black girl in the dorm, no one wanted to room with her.  She eyed me with suspicion.  “What is this cracker-ass white girl gonna do to me?” her look said.  I just smiled and said, “Hi.”  I was too tired to start anything after my bruising from SWF and her trolls–not that I would.  I grew up in poor neighborhoods in Houston where I was the only white girl–I knew how Marcy felt, like an outsider.

“I have a boyfriend, too,” she told me.  “We’re gonna get married.”  Marcy never spent the night with him, though.  Her mama and daddy wouldn’t like that.  She spent every weekend sleeping in our room.  Our dorm was girls only, so I spent every weekend with my boyfriend, Sam, at his dorm.  It was a pigsty, an all boys dorm.

My mama and daddy didn’t care if I ran off with Sam.  Even better–I’d be someone else’s problem.  We were technically adults anyway:  he was 22 and I was 18.  Believe or not, we haven’t had sex yet.  We just met three months ago at an orientation week party.

I just arrived from Alief-Elsik High School:  Features Editor of my school paper; Alto in my Treble Choir (our senior production was the Music Man and I was Ethel, the Shipoopi Girl;) Academic Decathlon (average student, maybe I represented the creative type.  I really don’t know why they chose me to join them.)

Sam just arrived from Lone Star junior college, and he was an aspiring actor.  He grinned at my rendition of “Pick a Little, Talk a Little.”  It was a hot August night and I was wearing my graduation dress–a peach flower print, sweetheart neckline, full skirt.  I rested my hands in my pockets, holding my dorm I.D.  He looked down at me, all blonde waves, smiles and cleavage.  Then he looked down at my feet, covered in silver flats.  “Dorothy shoes!” he said as he pointed at them.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Dorothy wore ruby slippers, not silver.

Sam’s friend and roommate, Terry, was standing nearby with a tumbler of beer, watching us with interest.  Fran was also there–a cute little Italian dude and their dorm suite mate.  The campus police appeared with flashlights and Terry dropped the beer and ran.  He was underage–19.  The rest of us were old enough or drinking Coke, like me.  A campus cop pulled up his belt with one meaty hand and leaned into my face with a flashlight in the other hand.  I smiled, all blonde waves and cleavage, and showed him my tumbler of Coke.  He moved on.

It was getting late, so Sam offered to walk me home.  At the double doors with the curfew security guard, he waved “goodbye” to me, nonchalant, and turned to walk back to his dorm.  No.  Kiss.  No.  Phone.  Number.  I went back to my orange and blue room, dejected.

The next day, the girls from math class sat down at my lunch table and asked me about him.  “Can you believe it?  No kiss!  Didn’t ask me for my number!” I answered with a frown.  “Maybe he’s shy, Jessie,” said Cathy, her tan skin highlighted with her usual blue eyeshadow and bubble gum pink lipstick.  “Why don’t you ask him for his number?”  “How am I going to do that, Cathy?” I asked her, puzzled.  “Silly.  Go to his dorm room and leave a note with your number,” she rolled her eyes and sighed at me.  “No, I can’t do that–too forward,” I shook my head.  I had never done something like that before.  “Come on, I DARE you!,” Cathy squealed.  “I dare you to do it.  You won’t turn down a dare.”  She was right.  I can’t turn down a dare.  So there I was, at the lunch table, writing this note.  I addressed it to “S” and signed it “J.”  Then with some encouragement, I got up from the table and walked out with the note.

I left it, folded and wedged in his dorm door.  I walked back to my dorm to do homework.  Then the phone on the wall rang.  I jumped up and answered.  “I’m so glad that you left me this note!” Sam’s voice exclaimed in my ear.  “I’ve been thinking about you all day and feeling stupid that I didn’t ask you for your number!”  I leaned against the wall. wrapping the squiggly cord around my fingers, and smiled with delight.  Then I waited for him to speak again.  “What are you doing tonight?”  he finally asked.  “Nothing,” I said coyly.  “Ok, I’ll pick you up at your dorm and we’ll get some food.”

I put on another sundress, navy blue abstract print, and the “Dorothy” shoes.  He called up to my dorm window, throwing pebbles at it.  I came down, through the double doors to the outside, and when I reached him, he took my hand.  We started to walk down the ramp when I slipped.  My feet went out with such force that I saw them in front of me in mid-air.  I cried out, thinking I was going to land hard on my back.  But Sam’s hand in mine pulled me upright and set me down hard on my feet.  He squatted in front of me.  We were breathless for a moment and stared at each other.  Then we both burst into spontaneous laughter so hardy that we leaned on each other.  He recovered his composure, then with his hand still holding mine, he pulled me up to standing, and said, “Come on.”

We ended up at Wendy’s for burgers, fries and Cokes.  I watched him eat with relish.  One hand crammed the burger in his mouth; the other pivoting from the elbow, hovered in an half-closed position above the table.  I then noticed his outfit–bumble bee yellow-and-black stripes tucked into grey jeans and grey oxford shoes.  Bold choice.  I watched his face as he talked with a mouth full of burger.  His curly black hair hung over hazel eyes.  Unexceptional bone structure.  Not really handsome, but it was a face that could grow on me.  His personality was charming, engaging and humorous–that was his hook.

So, the next weekend, we pretty much repeated the same:  fast food dinners and lots of talking to get to know each other.  Well, mostly him talking and me listening.  And the weekend after that added on the invitation to spend the night at his dorm for the rest of the weekend.  I told Marcy where I was going as I packed a small overnight duffel.  The wall phone rang.  Sam said he was leaving his dorm and could I meet him on the Mall.  I walked out of my dorm and walked up the hill to the Mall.  I waited there until he appeared from around the corner.  Then he would take my hand and we would walk back to his dorm.

We were not having sex in the first couple of months.  We just spent the weekend, kinda like an established couple in college.  We would do homework, hang out talking, get dressed for dinner out somewhere cheap, watch the Astros or Oilers or the Rockets play on TV.  We would talk about his upcoming auditions and he would practice reading lines to me.  That was my favorite–I got so emotional, watching him work through his character.  Then we would go to sleep, spooning.  I had never spooned with anyone before Sam.  He showed me how–I was clueless.  “Come here,” he gestured with his hand.  “Lay down on your side.”  Then he slid into his twin bed, and molded himself behind me, draping his arm over me.  I felt at ease with him then.  I trusted him as I had never trusted anyone before.