At the end of my freshman year, I was enmeshed in the exhausting process of finding an apartment. Between fighting with my future roommates and getting together the dough for about six months worth of rent between us, I discovered that the most stressful aspect of college is not, in fact, the choice between drinking Rubinoff or Popov, or whether to eat that third cheeseburger in the dining hall despite having gained the freshman 45, but signing the lease for your first apartment – or probably for any apartment, for that matter.
Even after all the effort (and money) I spent on that first apartment, it didn’t end up working out, so I moved out after four months. In January I moved into an apartment on Hemenway Street with six girls, all close friends from freshman year and all Catholic (as a Jewish girl, they discovered I was somewhat of a late bloomer on how to dye Easter eggs), then hopped into a place on South Huntington with two feisty Latinas (owners of the now-infamous Cosmo,) and so on. The embarrassingly free-wheelin’ summer after my freshman year I also lived with six boys in a house on Mission Hill. My apartment now, on Westland Avenue, is my eighth in four years – thanks to Northeastern, I’ve gotten a great head start on becoming a full-fledged, 21-year-old nomad.
Why would I move every four months, you ask, when on-campus housing offers such luxurious accommodations? For example, where else will you have no choice but to sign in the guy you brought home from Punter’s whose name you already forgot, and wake up your roommate you share a room with to make her sleep on the tiny couch that I imagine is about as comfortable as being water-boarded – all for the low, low cost of almost $1,200 a month for a double room in West Village? I guess it’s one of life’s great mysteries.
But I probably would rather take all of those things – the water-boarding, especially – than repeat the experience I had living with three club lacrosse bros on Symphony Road last fall. In the vein of warning my fellow Craigslist-using nomads, I tell my tale of bro-dwelling, complete with body waxing, a sudden disappearance of all of my food, four months without any sleep, many, many protein supplements and Ryan Cabrera.
Although I hate them and hope they go out in a way as admirable as Elvis (go ahead, Google it), in order to protect their (already basically tarnished) reputations, I will refer to them as Bro A, B, C, and T-Pain (he’s the only one I liked consistently). T-Pain didn’t actually live with us, but was, in their words, the “fourth roommate.” (Ha. Funny, guys. I can’t wait until karma brings you phallic-shaped male-patterned baldness.)
Last June when I was looking for a four-month sublet I found the bros on Craigslist. Two of them showed me and my mom the apartment in their boxers. I’ve already gotten roommate-cest out of my system (a.k.a. the free-wheelin’ on the Hill) so I had no ill intentions, but I thought it would be entertaining to be buddies with four laughably stupid dudes.
In the beginning, the bros were a lot of fun. My first night in the apartment we went to Symphony 8 and ran into (as previously foreshadowed) a plastered Ryan Cabrera, of “The Hills” and “that guy who slept with Ashlee Simpson” fame. After much convincing, Bro A got Ryan to come back to our fourth-floor walk-up and play beer pong, but with whiskey. (Bro B and I won. Twice.) When Ryan started hiding in my room and speaking gibberish, I called a cab and dragged him outside, where he got kind of gropey (what do I look like, Audrina?) The bros were disappointed I rejected his advances, but I thought it was funnier that I rejected a D-list pop star. I mean, I do have standards; at least C-list.
My next bro-tastic tale happened on the bro national holiday – Hallbroween. Bro A, B, C and T-Pain spent weeks preparing for the event, in which they were donning the bro-iest costume ever – Spartans. To prepare, they bought “300” and watched it repeatedly. They worked out extra hard and weighed themselves only like four times more than usual. Bro A also made them little loincloth costumes that looked like puffy diapers. And it wouldn’t have been complete without spray-tans.
When I came home from school one day two of them were waxing Bro C’s extremely red chest. “Why don’t you just shave it?” I said ignorantly; bros never do anything halfway, and Bro B looked at me incredulously. “If we’re going to do a gay thing, we’re going to do it in a straight way!” he shouted. They continued waxing, but eventually Bro C bitched out and went to town on a bottle of Nair.
Hallbroween night, I came home from a birthday party to change into my costume and head to another party. Bro B and T-Pain were about halfway into a bottle of whiskey, and were bouncing around the living room in their red cloth diapers like jacked cavemen. I took a few shots with them and they insisted I go to my party, and they stayed behind pre-gaming. (Side note: I once came home from working at this paper at 4:30 a.m. and one of them was still awake, having taken 22 shots. Drinking problem? Nahhh…)
I stayed out all night and came home early the next day to find the two of them passed out on the couch – where, after preparing for Hallbroween for weeks, they had fallen asleep shortly after I left, around 11 p.m.
It’s probably no surprise that moving out in December felt like the joy of my birthday, Christmas and fleet week combined.
– Rachel Zarrell can be reached at [email protected].
