On my first night of college, I was arrested.
I had moved into my dorm room hours earlier that day. My parents had helped me move. One thousand miles west we travelled; my entire life compacted in an SUV. We drove and drove until we reached southwest Montana. Big Sky Country, they called it. Where if you were high enough, you could see for literal miles. There wasn’t a single house, or building, or satellite tower in sight. Just open, expansive, beautiful land.
I was exhilarated. This is the start of the rest of my life, I squealed to myself. Funny, how one phrase can be so wrong, yet so right at the same time. We arrived on campus to the fever of a thousand other freshman and families. I spotted a few Minnesota license plates and felt relieved. I wasn’t completely alone.
I knew immediately that my dorm hall was the place to be. An architectural oddity, Roskie Hall stood out from any other residence hall on campus. I heard a rumor that Roskie had been featured in High Times magazine as one of top ten drug-trafficking dorms in the country. This was in the late nineties.
With three ‘pods’ to each floor, the unique layout created a social life almost immediately. These people were your family. You ate together, you skied together, you raged together.
After unpacking, I said goodbye to my parents. I remember tearing up. It dawned on me that they were leaving, that they weren’t coming back, and that I was alone. Call me naïve, but it came harder and faster than I thought.
I lied on my bed for what seemed like hours but was probably close to twenty minutes. I felt empty, for reasons I couldn’t even register. I got up to see what everyone else was doing.
This next part, the part between my parents leaving and me in handcuffs, is blurry because I have it blocked out. I played ultimate Frisbee. I ate dinner but I don’t remember with whom, specifically.
I remember sitting in my room around 7pm. People were canvassing the floors, gathering people for a meet and greet. So I joined them. I must have met close to 70% of the dorm that night. At one point I was standing in a pod, with a bunch of people. I remember Lindsey, the girl I would end up getting arrested with, being there. I complimented her piercings. She let me touch them. I was immediately smitten. Smoking marijuana came up. Before we, (me, Lindsey, and five boys I can barely remember) left to smoke on the recreational fields that were adjacent to the building, I grabbed my purse that held my pipe. My first mistake.
I entered the cool dusk of my first Montana night. I had to use my cell phone to light the way. This was what the officers on duty saw that night, our tiny lights in the middle of the field, glowing like bugs. This was my second mistake. I was texting my now one-day-long-distance-boyfriend. I told him the day had been good, but tiring. I opted from telling him what I was doing. He never approved of my smoking habits; he was a drinker through and through.
After sitting down in a circle, I gave my remaining marijuana to Lindsey and her pipe was packed. We shared it. I remember someone saying they saw another person headed in our direction. One of the other boys said to not to ‘get bugged out’. This was the attitude I also had. I was never paranoid before that night.
All of a sudden there was a flashlight in my face. One of the boys tried to make a run for it but we were surrounded on all sides. Three university police officers came out of nowhere.
I should have handed over my student ID, and stayed quiet. Instead my head was a hamster wheel, with my eyes darting in panic. It was evident that someone had to say something. Lindsey was the first to plead guilty. She said she had it. The rest of us were asked if we had anything. I was this close to being excused. But in fear of being searched, I thought I would be in worse shape if they found out I had been lying. My final, and most pivotal, mistake.
I handed myself, and my pipe over. I swear I saw the officer sigh. He handcuffed me in parental disappointment. I remember asking a lot of questions. For a police officer, he was kind enough. It was on a college campus after all; we were not being belligerent. In inconsolable shame, I asked if he could put my hood and he did. There were people staring out from the windows of Roskie, hollering at what was happening. I was walked and seated to the curb near the cop car. I was written a citation. I had to go to court.
A week later, I pled guilty in court in front of a Judge and my fellow unlawful citizens. I had to pay a fine. I had to go to a four-week drug and alcohol class. I had to stay out of trouble.
I tell people this story often. I get the same reactions at certain parts, from shock to anger to disbelief. Now, I can laugh it off, as almost it is a badge on my chest. It’s a story, after all. And everyone loves a good story.
But what I find even more pivotal is what happened on my second night of college.
Classes were still a few days away, so we freshman were still in power social hour. I met more and more people. My roommate was from Boise, Idaho. My neighbors were from California and Colorado. I didn’t feel worthy of any of them.
My roommate Sara was blonde and beautiful and smart. Her high school boyfriend, Jake, lived two floors beneath us exactly. Her older sister had just transferred to MSU and also lived in our dorm building. Her best friend lived in another high-rise close to Roskie. Her entire social life was within a half-mile radius. It took me months to realize I was resentful of this fact.
Her best friend, Eileen, and I hit it off almost immediately. We made each other laugh. She was tall, lean, a light brunette, with naturally curly hair that hit the middle of her forearm.
The night before I moved in, Eileen had lost her virginity to a sophomore boy who lived off-campus, someone she knew from high school. Later, after he consequently rejected her over the next few weeks, I was protective and fiercely loyal to her well being.
When I rested my head on my pillow that second night in Bozeman, my head was still buzzing with excitement. But it was a mixture of dread about my arrest, my fear of school, my success as a student.
I had a dream that I was in a pool, with Eileen. This seemed natural enough; Eileen was a lifeguard during her Boise summers. So it also didn’t surprise me she was wearing her red one-piece swimsuit uniform. In this dream, her eyes were closed. She had her back up against the tile of the pool. I know that in this dream we were kissing, I remember her lips aggressively attacking and then, tenderly, softly touching my own. I remember being aware that this person I was kissing had breasts, and that they could be touched. I remember wanting to but I didn’t. I was just happy to be kissing. I woke up with an ache in my crotch that was as foreign as being arrested.
I learned more in those two days than I did for the rest of my academic school year.
The rest of what I did with my social life that year falls between those two categories: staying out of trouble because of the arrest, and the slow realization of my sexuality.
Sara moved out at the end of the first semester. She acquired a single dorm three stories above, the only other female floor. I took it that had nothing to do with me, although it stung more than I expected. She needed more privacy, more room. I would have taken it too, if I had wanted a single room. And she had her boyfriend, who I liked well enough. I had never walked in on them having sex. Maybe, there were a few times I didn’t get the hint that I should have left room. These were the arguments I had with myself as to why she moved out. Again, it stung.
After she left, I was left with little options. Unless I wanted to pay more for room and board, I had to find a new room. My old room was to be used as a ‘show room’ for campus tours, to display for those high school seniors and their parents.
There were three girls on my floor who were in need of a roommate. I avoided doing this, partly because I felt like used meat from Katie, and partly because I was afraid to live with a woman who lived less than 10 feet away. That I would scare her off, as if she, this new roommate, would also be able to smell it on me.
I picked my roommate irrationally, I ruled out the Kentuckian Christian from my pod. I outright denied the snowboarding, ray-ban wearing, long boarding rager, who would only get me in trouble. That left Cheska, a fellow Minnesotan. She lived in a different pod on my floor.
She liked horses and Twilight. She had a splint. The pale gauze would smell for hours when she would re-bandage her wrist every few days. This splint made her literally messy. Everything was half-put together. There was a single sock on the floor all year; its partner was never bothered to be found. Drawers spilled out off cabinets, Clothes, paper, and homework were in just one large pile. I remember a pillow that would emit big, white feathers frequently.
The room was split literally down the middle. Nothing crossed the line. I never touched anything of hers.
So, for reasons that seem obvious. I had to find time. I had to keep myself busy.
I was still dating Zak, my long-distance boyfriend. But it was out of mere comfort to have him. It was someone to talk to everyday. He even came to visit once, and I visited him in Denver over my birthday weekend. It feels so awkward to mention. I was so unregistered in men at that point that I was only fooling myself.
There was this girl, Elizabeth. She was from Baltimore. She was pretty in an unconventional sense. Her smile is what I remember the most vividly. She came out to me on an early February night, in the coyest of ways. We were in the study lounge, on the main floor of Roskie, doing homework. She mentioned how her ex-girlfriend was still calling her, and while annoyed with it, she couldn’t help but still like. She asked me for advice.
My body started to hum and I couldn’t place the feeling. She was asking me because she wanted to see how I would answer. This foreign idea of flirting with a female got me tongue-tied. It would be two weeks until I ended up in her bed.
Frequently, the residents of Roskie drank together. As long as we were not too loud, the RA’s didn’t care. As long as they did not see any bottles, cans, or cups, we couldn’t be busted. I was still wary of drinking around strict supervision, so I stayed semi-sober, sipping tiny portions of my Jack Daniels and coke combination.
All the girls on my floor wanted to go to a party. There was word that a mutual friend who lived off-campus was throwing an impromptu party. He had a gazebo, a second-story porch, and exactly 3 strategically placed kegs. This was the rumor anyway. It was late February. There was two feet of powdered snow on the ground. It wasn’t actually too cold, but we couldn’t bike. There is no mass transit in Bozeman.
I opted to stay in the dorms. I made eye contact with Elizabeth. She asked me what I was planning on doing. I said that I would wander the floors, that I would be able to find someone to hang out with. She said her roommate was gone, and maybe we could watch a movie? I said yes, innocently.
Again, the parts between me entering her bedroom and waking up in her bed are blurry. A movie was put in her DVD player, I remember that. It was a Tim Burton movie I had seen before. There was nowhere else to sit besides her bed; the rooms were small in Roskie. I propped a pillow against my back. I was starting to feel drunk, and aware that if I wasn’t stimulated, I would fall asleep.
While the movie ran, neither of us talked. Our knees were touching and I remember feeling a heat emit from the friction. Neither of us moved. I ran my palms against my thighs in anticipation. I might have been sweating. While my palm was making its way closer to my hip, her hand stopped mine. She set it on my hand, softly. Our fingers interlaced. I didn’t know what to do next.
I looked at her through the corner of my eye. She was staring at our hands together. She said she wanted to kiss me. I licked my lips as an invitation
Part II coming later.
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