My First Apt.

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My First Apartment

My daughter Stacy is away at college, and she is preparing to rent an apartment with one of her classmates. I am proud of Stacy, and I fully support her as she takes this big step toward independence. Still, I am concerned because I remember my own first apartment experience. It wasn’t pretty.

In September of 1973, I left the familiar surroundings of my hometown, Flint, Michigan, as I transferred from General Motors Institute to the University of Michigan. My first residence in Ann Arbor was a place called U Towers, a high-rise apartment building for students. I didn’t have a roommate when I arrived at the Towers, so I was assigned an apartment with two guys from Turkey and a couple from India. One of the Turks was a fellow named Mehmet. The other Turk never spoke to me, so I never knew his name. I didn’t know the Indian couple’s names either.

Our apartment had two bedrooms. I shared one with the Turks, and the Indian couple occupied the other. Mehmet and the other Turk were pretty quiet and unobtrusive. The Indian couple kept to themselves, and the husband was away in class most of the day. The wife stayed home and cooked pungent stews. On those occasions when I would return from class and find her alone in the apartment, she would immediately run to her bedroom and lock the door. We were very unlikely roommates: the black guy from Flint, the two Turks, and the skittish Indians.

Overall, I found my living quarters pretty disgusting. The Turks never seemed to change their bedding, and between that and the pungent stews concocted by Mrs. India, my nose was never found wanting for stimulation. After enduring these conditions for a few weeks, I retreated to Flint to spend a weekend at home in my old bed. As I lay there thinking about the good old days, I felt an itch on my arm. I looked down and saw a small scab on my forearm, and I immediately did what any red-blooded young male would do – I picked at it. To my dismay, the scab began to fight back. Suddenly, it leapt off my arm and ran across the bed.

My heart started to beat rapidly. What the heck was that? I was frightened out of my wits! After a few minutes, though, the anxiety began to subside as I realized that I simply had a bug on my arm. I spent the rest of the weekend in Flint and didn’t think much more about it.

I returned to Ann Arbor on Sunday night, rested and ready for another week at the apartment. When I arrived, the Turks and the Indians were absent. Before turning in for the night, I went to the bathroom. While I was standing in front of the toilet, I noticed a bug on my shorts that resembled the one I had seen in Flint. "So that’s where it went!" I thought. Then I saw another, and another, and I started to get frightened all over again. Upon closer inspection, I noticed what must have been hundreds of these little creatures. I was terrified!

A few of the bugs were dead, so I pinched one between my fingers and inspected it more closely. It was one of the strangest bugs I had ever seen, because it looked like a little crab, complete with little near-microscopic pincers. I couldn’t bear to think that thousands of these little things were boring into my skin at that very moment. What were they? Would they kill me? If I went to sleep, would the Turks find me dead in the morning, half-eaten by these micro-crustaceans?

I went to bed, but between the itching and the anxiety I couldn’t sleep. First thing in the morning, I dashed over to the student health center. As soon as I entered the building, I saw a huge banner hanging on the opposite wall, and on that banner was depicted a giant version of the bugs that were infesting my body. Either these bugs had taken over the University, or the cure was to be found here.

Sure enough, my condition turned out to be well known and common: I had lice. The little creatures had infested every patch of hair on my body, including my Afro. The nurse said that they probably came from the bedding in the not-so-tidy room I shared with the Turks. She brought me some Kwell shampoo and told me to shower with it a few times. I did, and within a couple of days the lice were gone.

Back at the apartment, I resolved that the Turks had to go. The Indians too. I was sick of my living conditions. I was sick of the Turks’ smelly sheets. I was sick of pungent stews, and I was sick of hearing the Indians’ door slam and lock every time I entered the apartment. I had to take control of my environment. I decided to drive them all from the apartment with music: loud, loud R&B music. I cranked up my stereo late at night. For extra emphasis, I played along on my trombone. It worked, and within a few days, the Turks and the Indians moved out.

I had the apartment to myself for a few days, but then U Towers assigned me some new roommates. The new roommates were a couple of brothers – brothers as in siblings, and ‘brothers’ as in African-Americans. I figured that I was home free now, and that everything would be hunky-dori in our little apartment. The brothers were well dressed and clean, and they seemed like nice guys. We could communicate with each other, and I even knew their names! This was promising.

One afternoon, I returned to the apartment to find the brothers sitting on the living room sofa, listening to MY records on MY stereo. On the coffee table in front of them was a huge pile of marijuana, which they were calmly transferring to little plastic bags. One of the brothers looked at me severely and said, "Don’t tell nobody ‘bout this shit, man". I just said, "Okay" and left the apartment. Now it was my turn to move out. I found a nice one-bedroom apartment on the other side of campus, far away from U Towers. I never wanted to see the brothers or the Turks or the Indians again, and I never wanted another roommate.

In the end, it didn’t matter whether my roommates were from the other side of the world or around the corner. It didn’t matter whether they were Turks or Indians or ‘brothers’. I didn’t know my roommates, and that turned out to be a big problem.

I hope that Stacy fares better.

May 4, 2005

Red Bank, New Jersey