Blue Ridge Hall, much like the Berlin Wall, had been built some years before pretty much overnight. Though it had been intended to be a temporary fix for a chronic housing shortage, it remains there to this day, squatting with an ill-favored look upon
Mike, you see, had originally been planning to room with a friend of his, who tragically ended up flunking out, or being arrested, or possibly merely turning out to be imaginary. At any rate, he was less than delighted to see me. He was, in fact, less than delighted about most things, as he possessed a rage collection which would make even the Incredible Hulk or Alan Keyes envious. Also, he thought he was a hardcore gangsta from the inner city. He was in fact, a white guy, whose somewhat diminutive stature and 24 hour a day diet of rap music had warped him into one of my most memorable mutant roommates.
Mike, you see, loved rap. It was his very reason for living, and as a result he played it every single waking moment and most of his asleep ones as well. I personally, am not a great fan of rap, but really even if he’d been playing something infinitely more palatable to the ear of a cultured and hoity toity gentleman such as myself, it would have gotten to be epically lame in short order. In time, retaliation became all too necessary, and I found I needed to dip into my voluminous polka collection for ordinance (polkas, of course, being his one weakness)(well, okay, polkas and all other things in the world that made him angry) (of which there were many).
He also believed himself to be quite the lady’s man, and to be fair, he did seem to have some luck with the sorority girls. Unfortunately for him, all too frequently when he would be sitting on the floor of the room with his date, whispering sweet nothings in her ear, wooing her as the melodic chords of “In My Projects” gently wafting out the open window, I would walk in, laden with books and Shmuffins, a five gallon kerosene can under one arm and a bag full of brewing supplies under the other. For some reason, this seemed to dispel the atmosphere of romance he had so carefully wrought, as he usually let me know afterwards.
He wore armbands. All the time. Now, I realize that I’m not exactly “hip” or “with it” or even “Not Living In the Late Renaissance Anymore” but it is my general understanding that armbands are a thing one wears to keep ones hands from getting all sweaty whilst riding a bike. It seemed however, that if Mike did have a bike, it was either invisible, like Wonder Woman’s jet, or it was nonexistent, like Wonder Woman’s pants. Perhaps he merely had unnaturally sweaty palms, like he was bitten, in his youth, by a radioactive sweat monster, granting him altogether preternatural powers of perspiration that allowed him to fight crime but at the horrible cost of always making it difficult for him to hold onto the handlebars of his mythical bike, and making it really disgusting to shake hands with him. Either way, it was silly.
Finally, he was dead set on joining a frat. As a result, he was perpetually having these guys over who were all complete buttweasels. “Argh! I’m so angry, Biff and Myron are such buttweasels!” he would often tell me. At last though, his unprincipled sucking up to the frat gods paid off, and he was, happily, not around so much.
The end came suddenly, and awesomely. One day,
Mike went off to live in his frat, where I heard later that he was taking anger management courses and remaining on track for a rage-induced heart attack by the age of 35. He also shaved his head and looked like a giant thumb with armbands on. I however, celebrated my newfound freedom by learning to make chainmaille, and for the rest of the semester, the room was mine. What happened in the Spring though, is another story entirely…
