The Chris Sartinsky Memoirs: Chapter Seventeen: I Almost Move In

I moved into Danielsen Hall at the eastern edge of the Boston University campus on the day before Labor Day. My parents had a wedding to get to in Rhode Island, so they helped me throw everything I owned onto the curb, wished me luck and sped off. I asked someone standing outside to watch my things while I went to check in and pick up my key. I figured it would only take a second, but instead, I immediately became acquainted with Boston University’s most famous trait: its impenetrable bureaucracy. The R.A. who was working in the lobby informed me that I was not on the list.

“What list?” I asked.

“The list,” she said, waving a piece of paper, which was apparently some kind of list. “Your last name begins with a T?”

“No. S. S-A-R.”

“Oh, in that case, let me check.” I gave her the complete spelling of my name again and she took another quick glance at the list, but she shook her head. “No, I still don’t see your name here.”

Luckily, I had the housing assignment the school had sent me over the summer in my pocket. “I’m living in room 323,” I said, showing her my own little slip of official paper. She called over another R.A. who had a different list—organized by room number—and compared his to mine, and hers to mine, and his to hers.

The other R.A. shook his head. “No, it doesn’t seem you’re on any list. Let me make a couple quick calls,” he said, and he retreated into a little office before I could say anything.

“He’s just making a couple quick calls,” the first R.A. assured me, and I looked out to the curb where my things were and saw that my TV was gone.

I ran outside and saw the guy who was supposed to watch it. When he saw me, he slammed the trunk of his van and ran as fast as he could around the side of it into the front seat.

I grabbed onto the car and hit the passenger’s window. He lowered it.

“Where’s my TV?” I cried. “You were supposed to watch my things.”

“Fuck you, shithead,” he said, and he drove off down Beacon Street as fast as he could. I saw my TV and a bunch of my clothes in the backseat.

I collected the rest of my things and dragged them into the lobby. By now, a line had formed at the table, but I saw the R.A. who had promised to make a couple of calls, so I headed for the front.

“There’s a line here,” said one of the kids towards the back.

“I was already here,” I explained. “They’re looking for my name on a list.”

“I don’t give a fuck, shithead,” the kid said. I wondered if his dad had just stolen my TV. I took the time to notice that he was huge.

I looked for help from the girl behind the table. “I’m sorry, you have to go to the end of the line,” she told me. “No cuts.”

“I just had to get my stuff.” But she wasn’t listening, so I found my way to the back, two spaces behind the kid who had been shouting at me. He turned around and gave me an evil little smile. I thought when you get to college, everyone’s nicer, because they want to make new friends and the people who were assholes in high school want to become nice guys now that they have a chance to escape from their old reputation. But this guy seemed to be pretty comfortable being an asshole for the rest of his life. He was probably an upperclassman.

When I finally got to the end of the line, both R.A.s were behind the table, and it was clear that neither of them recognized me. “I was here before?” I said. Neither showed even a glimmer of recognition. “I’m not on the list?” The girl started to get it. “You,” pointing at the fellow whose name was Mikey, “were making some calls?”

“Oh, that’s right,” he said. “I didn’t recognize you for a second, I thought you had been taken care of. You should have come to the front, instead of waiting in line.”

“Yes, I should have.”

“I made a couple quick calls, to the housing office, and they told me that you’re not on their list.”

“Is their list identical to your list?”

“It should be,” he laughed. “They just dropped it off here this morning.”

“Well did they tell you anything else?”

“Yes. They said that you were on their list, as recently as a month ago, but you took yourself off it.”

“I didn’t do that.”

“Are you sure? Because that’s what they said you did.”

“Yes, I am quite sure.”

“Well, that doesn’t matter now,” Mikey smiled—he never stopped smiling, “because you’re not on their list, any way you slice it.”

“So what can we do?”

Mikey looked puzzled. He looked down at the girl, who hadn’t been listening. “Do?” he asked.

“Yes. So I have a place to live?”

“Oh, you still want to live here?”

“I have to live somewhere,” I explained.

“It’s just that you’re not on the list, so I figured you had made other arrangements.”

“No, I need to live here.”

Mikey stroked his chin. “Let me make a few calls,” he told me, and he went back into the office. I did not relinquish my spot at the table. But in the meantime, the girl started checking in the people in line behind me. They were all on the list, I noticed.

About ten minutes later, he strolled back into the lobby. He saw me and he looked like he had just remembered something. Like—oh, I don’t know—that he was supposed to call someone. He turned back around immediately and was in the office for another ten or fifteen minutes before he came back out.

“OK, I made a couple of calls, and you’re not on the list.”

I almost dropped to my knees, I was so exhausted by this point. “I know that,” I said. “I just need you to help me find a room.”

“I know, I know,” he chuckled, like I had appreciated his joke. “Luckily, the spot you had back when you were on the list is still open, so you can just have that bed.”

“Oh! That’s perfect!” I said. And then I thought, if my original room had never been filled after I had been taken off the list, why in God’s name had this taken so long?

“Not so fast,” Mikey chuckled. “There are still a few pieces of paperwork that have to be filled out before you get that room, and the housing office is closing in,” he looked at his watch, “twenty-seven minutes.”

“So I can’t move in for twenty-seven minutes?”

“Oh, no,” he laughed, like I was a fucking idiot freshman, which maybe I was. “They’re closing up, so they won’t be able to get to your case until tomorrow.” I just looked at him, waiting to see if this was another awful joke. It wasn’t.

“So when can I move in?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Probably,” Mikey clarified. “They should be able to get to it after lunch, but who knows.”

“So I might not get the room?”

“Oh, you’ll get the room. It’s just a matter of when.”

“So if I’m getting the room for sure, then can’t I just move in today?”

Mikey laughed, like I had made a joke of my own. “Of course not. After the paperwork.”

“Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?” I looked out onto the street. There wasn’t much of a lawn in front of the building, but I thought I might be able to make myself a spot on the grass.

“Well, since you’re not on the list, technically, I’m supposed to kick you out of the building.” I don’t know if it was intentional, but he paused for long enough that, just for a second, I believed that was the last thing he was going to say to me before he actually kicked me out of the building. “But, I pulled a few strings, and you’ve got a couple of options. You can sleep in the common room down in the basement, or I’d be willing to make some space for you in my room.” I chose the common room so quickly he must have been insulted.

I figured that there would be people filtering in and out of the common room throughout the night, looking for new people to meet, but I was alone for hours. There was a little TV down there, so I watched the news and a couple of Seinfeld reruns. Just as I started to doze off on the dingy old couch, a tall girl with long blonde hair down to her hips walked in yawning. She was wearing pajamas. “Oh, hi,” she said, clearly surprised to find someone down here. “I was just checking out the building,” she explained.

“I’m sleeping down here,” I said.

“Unbearable roommate?”

“God, I hope not,” I said. She laughed, like I had told a joke, and since I didn't know why she was laughing, I explained my situation.

“Huh,” she said, and she strutted over to me, with something on my mind that I was afraid of. “You ever think,” she said, speaking slowly, “that it’s amazing how things happen?” I shook my head. “Everything has a reason, you know?”

“Maybe it’s just a fallacy, and we only think everything has a reason because we confuse consequences for fate.” I was speaking about as fast as I could to counteract her slow, sensual drawl, trying to hold her off, like I was putting out a fire. What the hell was I so afraid of? Besides the obvious, of course.

This sounds silly, that some leggy girl strutted into the basement and started coming on to me. Like I'm embellishing, to make myself sound like a real stud. Well, I wasn't, but she was coming on to me anyway. I'm pretty sure that anyone could have been down there, and she would have reacted exactly the same way. There was no reason it had to be me. Just the situation, I guess, she found exciting, or maybe she it was just her first night at college and she was incredibly lonely. I won't pretend I don't know the feeling.

Anyway, I guess she didn’t understand what I was saying, or she wasn’t listening or she couldn’t care less, because she grabbed me—kind of by the shirt, but mostly by the neck—and gave me a horrifying kiss that almost made me scream. She was sucking the air out of me, it was awful. I felt like the clueless victim in the first scene of a horror movie. When she let go of me, I started wheezing like an old fish climbing a high mountain. She moved in for another one, though, and I tried to get away but I realized for the first time that she kind of had me pinned down. After kiss number two, she punched me, square in the chin.

“Ow!” I screamed. “What the hell was that? Are you crazy?”

“Don’t be a wimp,” she said, and she hit me in the collarbone and the chin again. Then she threw me onto the floor and jumped on top of my stomach.

I tried to yell at her again, but I found I couldn’t breathe. My mouth opened and closed and I started panicking. I pulled her hair and threw her off me and went staggering for the door, groping the walls, looking for help. The plan was to make it upstairs and tell the guard at the security desk, like he would have been able to wave a magic wand and fill my lungs with air or something.

It was nothing serious, of course. The wind had been knocked out of me, that’s all. But in my seventeen years on earth, I had never experienced anything like that before. Stupid as it might sound, I thought it was going to kill me. What actually might have killed me was smacking my head on the stairs, which happened when I tripped and passed out trying to get upstairs. As it turned out, I spent the night in the hospital, so the doctors could monitor my minor concussion. By the time they let me out the next day, my room was ready, and someone had stolen the rest of my stuff from the basement.