and Words
I told you I had to leave
I had my reasons
I said that it hurt to stay
The way that I’m feeling
(It’s not love) that left you standing
(It’s not love) that left you cold
(It’s not love) misunderstanding
Only a mistake, there’s nothing left to take
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
On my sophomore year at the University of Miami, I moved to an apartment on campus. My college career started the year before, as I settled into Pearson Hall, one of the dorms on the edge of campus. Over the course of the past year, I formed friendships with a number of classmates and neighbors. As we finished our freshman year, we got an opportunity to sign up for an on-campus apartment. Initially, one of us signed up for the apartment and penciled the remainder of our names. The rest of us learned through word of mouth and subsequently rushed to the housing office to verify our names.
During my years of study, life became a series of obstacles to navigate. My attention shifted from working for money to logistics about school (like where I’d be living) to learning my field and passing my classes. Having addressed the ‘where I’d be living next year’ problem, I could focus on the other issues. Though honestly, as the summer approached, my main focus was to work in order to save and sustain myself through college.
The years that followed on that apartment with my friends was much closer to college life than the year in the dorm.
However, I’m getting ahead of myself. For my freshman year, the housing office paired me with a roommate. He returned for his sophomore year, but we overlapped some courses. He came from Lebanon, spoke Arabic, and was Palestinian. Initially, we got along fine. Things soured a bit later.
Having taken the AP Chemistry course in high school and passing the AP test, I understood the subject well. However, my advisor insisted that I should take Chemistry 101 again, and I caved. On that first semester, I endured an 8am Chemistry 101 class in a lecture hall. George, my friend from a few doors down the hall, also attended that class, so we’d often walk from Pearson Hall to the lecture hall in the Cox Science Center. I got 100% on that first exam, since it was mostly a rehash of what I had learned the year before.
I shared the news with my roommate as I celebrated but didn’t think anything else of it. I didn’t consider this any different than telling the rest of my friends. Days later, my roommate invited a friend to our room. No biggie. However, they both wanted to talk to me. Uhm… Okay. This is when they propositioned me; his friend would compensate me for allowing him to cheat off my test. No, this wasn’t an opportunity to tutor him or study with him. He spoke very explicitly. He had no interest in the content of the class; he simply wanted an ‘A’ in the class.
And I, having an overdeveloped sense of honesty, declined the offer. I don’t remember his naming a price, though I doubt that would’ve made a difference. They would forever be marked as ‘dishonest’ in my mind. It had nothing to do with nationality, language, or religion. That was the source of our friction, and one that endured through my freshman year.
We started sophomore year differently. Four of us shared a two-bedroom, four-occupant apartment. Early on, we found a window air-conditioner, because the apartment astonishingly lacked air-conditioning. Honestly, the apartment wasn’t that different from the dorms. First, similarly painted cinder blocks composed the walls. Second, our furnished apartment contained similar furniture, built for durability and lacking in comfort. It was located clear across campus from the McArthur Engineering building, where I’d spend much of my time.
Living in a dorm room felt like confinement, much like riding in a cramped bus. They configured dorm rooms to give you just enough space to function in borrowed time, but little else. However, this apartment felt more like our own space. We had a kitchen, dining room, and living room. I don’t really remember sitting down to a meal together at the table in that dining room. Instead, that table was more often stacked with books from marathon study sessions. In some ways, we prepared for the life after college.
I eventually brought the bicycle from my home in Fort Lauderdale. I rode this bike through campus to classes. Strangely, I don’t really remember the weather while I rode from one place to the next. I spent my time zipping from our apartment to the Learning Center, Memorial Classroom, and the McArthur Engineering building. I do remember that this bicycle lacked fenders, which basically means that at some point I must’ve been drenched in mud from my rides. Perhaps I rationalized that had I been walking that distance; I would’ve been covered in mud anyway.
On many such afternoons, I sat on the uncomfortable couch in our living room. I turned on the television to MTV while I continue to work through physics or statistics homework. A show comes on called Dial MTV. Back when they actually played music, they reserved an hour for music videos determined by popularity. They determined the rank of the videos by viewers calling in. The videos were overrepresented by hard rock power ballads, which was fine by me.
As silly and shallow as it was, this show anchored my day as I continued my studies. Perfectly inelastic collisions, permutations and combinations will forever be associated to these afternoons. I distinctly remember the familiar start to Dokken’s ‘It’s not Love’, as it started to play on the tinny speaker on our 13″ television. The video is set in the back of a truck as the band plays while traveling the streets of a city (I imagine Los Angeles). Honestly, it’s a profoundly stupid setting for a video and it angered me a little that they didn’t take the time to make a better video. That said, it’s been literally decades and I still remember it, so maybe Dokken wasn’t quite as misguided as they seemed to be at the time.
As for that apartment? The university has since torn down that apartment building; they replaced it with the Convocation Center. And the roommate from freshman year? We didn’t speak past that year.