Michelle slept with one of those creepy sleep masks.

(I am planning a short series of posts about the various roommates I’ve had since moving out of my parents’ home, in succession, starting with my very first one. This is that.)

Michelle - My freshman year of college was spent at Austin Peay State University. Even though that school was just 30 miles from where I grew up, I desperately wanted to live in a dorm. Anything to get out of Ashland City. So I paid the extra 1,000 or so bucks to live on-campus even though I could have easily driven, so that I could experience college life as I knew it at 17 years old. I filled out my dorm application by marking big, overachieving checkmarks next to “Likes the Quiet” and “Studies Often.” I was thrilled to learn that I got a room in the semi-private wing of the Honor’s Hall, which was a bit bigger than everyone else’s because it was on the corner of the building. My roommate was Michelle, a junior who was transferring from Virginia.

She was a shy, overweight education major whom I took no interest in getting to know. Beyond the fact that I had a poster on our wall of an eye with a globe for the eyeball crying a tear, and the coincidence that she had a tattoo just like it, we had very little in common. Oh, she was always borrowing my Sarah McLachlan, and I was always stealing her Les Miserables soundtrack.

It was 1995 and I was participating in a community theatre production of Anything Goes! in Franklin over 60 minutes away. (My only line was, “Sure!”) When I wasn’t in class or sleeping, I was in Franklin rehearsing (I did do most of the singing and dancing). That is until the musical ended, at which time the lead of the play asked me to participate in his television sitcom produced at MTSU. Which was more than an hour and a half of driving time. Since I had a crush on the guy, and because I was a big fat, total dork, I agreed to take over a graduating actress’ role in the show. It was during the taping of this horribly unfunny, unoriginal, overacted piece of shit show that I met my next roommate. He played the role of the cranky old grandmother on the show. In drag. See? I told you it was a piece of shit show.

So I barely got to know Michelle, except that we both liked Olive Garden and would order overpriced take-out pasta from them all the time. And one time I stole a dollar from her for gas money, but only because she wasn’t around for me to ask. And one time she gathered her things and headed for the door without saying a word, so I asked where she was going. She turned and screamed, “LIKE IT MATTERS! DOES IT REALLY EVEN MATTER?!,” and turned and slammed the door. I remember crying, bawling, thinking I’d been annoyingly asking her whereabouts all this time—even though I didn’t think I had—and I was so hurt and so afraid of being a nuisance that I took off for a couple of days. Writing this now it’s apparent her outburst had nothing at all to do with me.

Right before the semester ended when finals were approaching and I had to be there, Michelle and I finally bonded. Drunk on too little sleep and an overload of information, our sanity buckled and we lost our damn minds up on the third floor of dorm. We threw open our windows and sang Les Miserables, screaming into the night, “And all I see is him and me forever and forever.” We danced around the room and laughed until our throats were raw. That night we played together like children; like we weren’t 18 and 21.

During Christmas vacation I learned I lost my scholarship due to simple ignorance. My university choir class met three times a week. When I signed up for courses with a councilor it was assumed that the choir class was considered three hours like the rest of the 3-day-a-week classes. We assumed wrong–it was worth just one hour of credit. I had actually only been going part-time and without any warning they jerked my scholarship. I had to move home.

I wrote Michelle a note after all my things were packed into the truck. She hadn’t made it back from Virginia yet, and I didn’t know how to get in touch with her. I explained everything in my letter to her and cried and cried and cried. My mom had to almost carry me to the car.

I only saw her a couple of times the next semester since I was not in class very much, but was instead all up in my boyfriend’s ass.

I bet Michelle is a badass teacher.