To All the Roomies I've Loved (or Not)

Over the years, she's shared on-campus 'mods,' houses, apartments -- even futons -- with nearly four-score strangers and friends

I grew up your average suburban girl. My thoroughly nuclear family lived in Cape Cods or split-level ranches, set on cul-de-sacs or streets named after the farms they had replaced. Our furniture was from Sears. My brother and I each got our own rooms, just like the kids on sitcoms.

Yet somehow, after leaving home for college, this "normal" New England girl ended up living with a total of 78 roommates over the next nine years. It's true. Totally verifiable.

I'm not a cult member or polygamist, nor have I done time in a commune. The reason I divvied up chores, electrical bills, mammoth bags of black beans and cases of beer with so many souls, in my mind, boils down to youthful desire coupled with economic and generational forces.

I'm a Gen-Xer who headed for a series of high-rent cities after graduating in the middle of the early '90s recession -- and promptly, jobs being scarce, became a receptionist. I never had much cash, still don't, and lack of money limits your options. And to be fair, I also loved to move -- weird, I know -- so that may have contributed to the impressive total.

Would I have chosen to cohabitate with each and every one of the 78 guys and gals? Of course not. Many were just rent checks with deep neuroses attached. But I've been looking back on my nomadic life recently, and I've made a discovery: Each and every one of my numerous housemates taught me a bit about making a better home.

IN THE DORMS

1987-1991

I went to a hippie college in Massachusetts that boasted an "experimental living" scheme: It had modular on-campus apartments complete with kitchens built, no joke, by the National Guard in roughly a weekend.

The doughnut-shaped "mods" straddled a fine line between futuristic and hideous -- very Woody Allen's "Sleeper." They had pie-wedge apartments ringing an empty poured-concrete center and, inside the quarters, furniture that included pine picnic tables and plastic-covered mattresses.

As is the case with most 18-year-olds in my demographic, college represented the very first time I lived with non-family people. Sussing out the basic things, like whose turn it was to buy toothpaste, and the larger, philosophical issues -- Since we were so fortunate, shouldn't we invite homeless people to live with us? -- was a vertiginous, communal balancing act. It was also, often, a blast.

In Mod 31, for example, someone dragged a broken behemoth of an old console TV into the living room, and all of us roommates set about decorating it. The sides were painted hot pink, the screen lime green, and its entirety was covered with little glued-on toys, beer caps, cigarette-pack foils and the like. (I recall that when graduation day came, we dragged it into the woods outside and posed for pictures atop it. I also remember my father saying, "What the hell is that!?" and thinking how uncool he was for not getting our incisive commentary on a media-driven society . . . or something.) But pretty soon it became clear collaborative living wasn't all art projects and late-night bull sessions. The catalyst for that revelation was named Matt, or, as we came to call him, "Stinky Matt." He was a first-year student and a friend of one of my mod-mates (yes, a term we actually used). She told us he was cool and persuaded us to invite him to move into our mod for spring semester.

It soon became apparent that Matt still belonged at his mom's house. His room was always a pigsty, and he never had clean clothes, towels or essential hygiene supplies. Worst of all? When he got too grossed out by his own environs, he would just sleep directly on the couch. In his boxers. Sweating profusely, skinny arms and legs akimbo, literally stinking up the joint.