By Kendra Hurley
Two weeks after I turned 18, I arrived at my arty New England college eager to reinvent myself. I had just left Houston, Texas, which I'd never much liked, and my family, whom I'd never much gotten along with. Moving into my dorm room, I was certain my life was officially beginning.
I purposefully left behind many staples of my teenage years — the tennis racket that saw me through four years of high school tournaments; the electric typewriter I used for college applications; the pink-rimmed curling iron that singed my hair daily. Instead, I packed a bunch of oddities, most of them completely useless: the guitar painted Day-Glo green, a going-away gift from a friend; the clunky, manual typewriter I bought after Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance convinced me that manual typewriters had more character than electric ones; the stiff and itchy blue Moroccan rug I intended to use as a bedspread.
Never mind that I didn't play guitar, that the second-hand typewriter lacked several keys, or that the nubby rug lasted all of two sleepless hours before I tossed it on the floor, where it belonged, in lieu of something, well, softer. Carrying those objects across the continent seemed important, even critical, but not because they were practical or familiar. I imagined them to be magical beans that, once planted in my dorm, might help me climb toward a whole new world of possibilities. Maybe I would be a rock star! Compose masterpieces on a romantic, fire-engine-red Royal typewriter! Travel to Morocco!
My dorm mates and I decorated our cinder-block-walled, shoebox-size, transient homes to mirror our lumbering hopes. No detail was too small to obsess over. Newcomers took leaps of faith and painted their walls lime green or rocket orange, knowing full well they'd have to repaint at the end of the school year. Those who shared rooms, like my roommate and me, pried apart our bunk beds so we could each claim half the room as our personalized terrain.
Students with singles held heated debates over whether to leave the narrow mattress on the box spring. The practical-minded argued that it made sense to use the bed frame, which not only offered storage space underneath but also kept dust where it belonged. Then they cringed, exclaiming they sounded like moms, and a group of us would rescue them, hoisting the bed frame into the closet and leaving the mattress unbridled, bohemian-style, on the dusty floor. Jen, a sophisticated sophomore, took it to the next level. She showed up with a wide, floppy futon because, she winked, it slept more than one.
Josh, one hall over, left his mattress framed, but made up for it by lacing his ceiling with red chili pepper lights. At his high school, an elite Eastern boarding school, Josh, a Westerner, had felt alienated. He arrived at college determined to indulge in serious, soul-searching bonding. The chilli peppers were part of the plan. Late at night, after the required dorm "tolerance meetings" where we freshmen practiced putting condoms on bananas, or role-played coming out as gay, we crept somberly to Josh's room to share his air-popped popcorn and Red Zinger tea.
Those sizzling chili peppers provided the perfect backdrop for mulling over the Big Questions: Could I actually be gay? Am I secretly a racist? Must I wear my leg hair long, in feminist vogue?
Many of us had picked our liberal college because we wanted to challenge and be challenged. But we also wanted to feel safe. While the campus rules outside our dorms were murky and in continual flux, inside our dorm rooms we found our footing. They were the only space where we alone set the rules, and so we made them incubators for our dreams. To have someone visit your room and slurp your crock-pot brewed tea from mugs pocketed at the dining hall was the greatest compliment. Visitors weren't just accepting who you were, but all you hoped to become.
If Josh's room had a philosophical, coffee-shop feel, Sarah's was the panacea for pre-party jitters. A no-nonsense Long Islander, she transformed her assigned shoebox into the peppiest, most conservative room on our floor. With primary-colored throw rugs, overstuffed pillows, a shiny stereo, and a never-rumpled bed, it seemed straight from an IKEA catalog. We, her hall mates, derived comfort from its bright blandness. Weekend nights, three hours before party time, we gathered there wearing lipstick and miniskirts.
Bopping along to house music, we sipped screwdrivers from plastic cocktail cups, boosting our courage to venture into a less tidy nightlife.
The morning after, after all the ridiculous things we'd said or done, or kissed, we'd skulk moodily to Kathleen's room, a masterpiece of sheer will. In her former life, Kathleen, then bookish and shy, had quietly cultivated a love for jazz and a secret wish to become, like the jazz patron Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, a nurturer of musicians. At college, Kathleen transformed her new home into a mini-version of the Baroness' Fifth Avenue apartment where Charlie Parker had died. To create a mellow, groovy ambience, she placed in the overhead light a bulb colored "dawn pink," a color rumoured to have a calming effect on prison inmates. She tucked her clock and textbooks out of sight, in a closet hidden by a beige tapestry. A bright shroud disguised her desk, which held not notebooks, but a refrigerator, a wok, a coffee maker, a set of handmade pottery mugs and a perennially burning candle.
Outside our dorm Kathleen seemed nervous and unsure. But in her room, sitting Indian-style atop her 50-year-old green, leather armchair, she'd attend to her guest's needs calm as a Buddha. And eventually, the confidence she cultivated in that room spilt into the larger world. When Kathleen started hanging with a musician, her room became his band's favorite spot to chill.
They lounged on her bright, flannel-sheeted futon for hours on end, sniffing her incense, slurping organic coffee, and tapping their cigarettes in time to Kathleen's extensive jazz collection.
Whenever I felt anxious and overextended — as was often the case — I dipped into Kathleen's room. Within minutes, my concerns began to melt. If I stayed too long, I'd find myself talking in dragged-out monosyllables like a true jazz junkie myself.
"Man," I'd say. "Rad. Sweet."
Kathleen's dreams were not my own, but once the sun had slipped into darkness and the first notes of house music emanated from Sarah's walls, the glow-in-the dark sticker stars Kathleen had placed on her ceiling began glistening, and I could see her point of view.
After college, Kathleen became an artist who nurtures bees on the roof of her Manhattan apartment building, not far from where the Baroness Pannonica lived; Sarah, now a headhunter, continues providing sanctuary from self-doubt by keeping job applicants hopeful between interviews; Josh has become an experimental educator, an advocate of the type of Socratic learning he first hosted in his college dorm room; and though I’ve had my share of mundane nine-to-five jobs, I have also continued to pursue my early dorm room dreams. I write. I travel. I kick myself daily for not being a rock star.
Our whimsical dorm decorations marked our first tentative attempts to discovering who we might be. And though they were often ridiculous efforts, they did reflect something real in each of us. Looking back, those silly sticker stars on Kathleen’s ceiling loomed like tacky, lovely guiding lights, and we’ve been following them ever since.
Freelance writer Kenda Hurley lives in a one-room apartment that looks surprisingly similar to a college dorm room. She is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York, and co-editor of “Foster Care Youth United,” a national magazine written by and for teenagers living in foster care. She also wrote “No rules romance: the problem with hanging out” for UnderWire.
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