STUDENT HOUSES
When H graduated from university, she and her roommates contemplated getting tattoos of the street number of their house in the student ghetto. [1] It’s interesting to think of the importance one’s first house has. Even if you only live there for a few months or years, your time there has an outsized importance in your memory bank and personal lore. Despite, or maybe in part because of, how disgusting the houses are. A unique form of ‘Comrades in Arms’.
My university house was 321 Johnson, which I shared with 7 other girls/women (we were between worlds at the time).[2] 321 was once a stately house, if the ornate woodwork, 13-foot ceilings and servant’s quarters were any indication. Over a hundred years old, it once stood in the heart of what was fleetingly the capital of Canada. It is now subsumed into the student ghetto - a 16 block party zone that has a population made up of 99% students and 1% families of unsuspecting visiting scholars who must contend with parties that involve garbage pails of Purple Jesus. In our era, 321 was ideally equidistant from key landmarks: Alfie’s Pub, the Cocomo and Stages dance bar. Or, if you were leaving any of those places at 2:00am: the Hoagie House, Lino’s Poutine, and the Quickie Mart.
I recently learned that the living room floor of 321 collapsed during a party…which sounds impossible, but totally tracks. Presumably a contributing factor to the ultimate floor collapse was the creepy cavern beneath the living room. There was a Silence of the Lambs room with a mysterious hole in the floor of indeterminate depth and which made an ominous splash sound when you threw something in. An indoor spelunking crevasse that was certainly a breeding ground for rats.[3] This sort of home “feature” was not uncommon. There is a long-standing story about human remains being found in the walls of a house on University Avenue. Certainly, having the Kingston Penitentiary as neighbour is perfect fodder for this sort of urban legend, but it says a lot about the houses that such an occurrence was 100% believable.
M’s house was 103 Clergy, which he shared with The Buddies™, and two unsuspecting recruits who had won the lottery for the inexpensive student housing. 103 was as close to living inside the campus pub as was possible. While this meant an easy stumble home, it also meant having the bar’s garbage bin get picked up at 5am right outside your bedroom window. It was like waking up in a trash compactor. A few years later, several blocks of student houses were torn down or moved to accommodate the expansion of the University campus. One guess which they elected for 103 Clergy.
At 321, we did try to make it nice. The carpet was originally (presumably) a brown shag that had matted together into a dense landscape of grime and polyester. At one point, we rented a carpet cleaner from the A&P. The water cannister instantly turned black. No amount of refilling the water or upping the soap content helped – it was ultimately an exercise in recycling sludge. The net result being an equally dirty, but now soaked, floor that smelled like a combination of wet dog, dirty hockey equipment and chlorine. When we moved in, we thought we’d brighten up the place with some new paint. We could only afford the ‘Oopsy’ paints - improperly mixed colours that the hardware store sold at a discount. As a result, my room was what was meant to be “fuchsia” but was more of a neon Pepto Bismol. It was certainly ’bright’, and beyond hideous.
While most roommates had theoretical chore charts and schedules. There was little hope of actual de-contamination. At M’s house, to keep the kitchen science experiment in check, the housemates were limited to a single plate, bowl, pot and utensil set apiece. This just reinforced the mono-diet of Kraft dinner and did nothing to improve the cleanliness of the kitchen. M’s room was right beside the kitchen and shared its “Eau de Dirty Microwave” smell.[4]
The furnishings were commensurate with the environment. I can (with shudders) distinctly remember being overjoyed at scoring a double bed from the garbage.[5] Our living/dining room contained nothing but an array of abandoned couches (and briefly a mid-century modern teak coffee table that looked way too much like a surfboard to survive drunken revelers). The couches served perfectly for the common area’s two primary uses: eating off our laps while watching Young and the Restless, (followed by Bold and the beautiful if we were feeling particularly sadistic) and as a party area (again, not surprised the floor fell in). At M’s place the furniture was even more optional. What meager assortment they started with quickly dwindled in the face of a Rage Room phase (which not incidentally corresponded with the Metalhead era). Lacking spare guitars to trash, one by one each article of furniture met its demise in a late night back alley.[6] This left room for a full drum kit and space for “band practices”, and did not contribute to good study habits.
321 was for many years the Engineering house – something we discovered during our first homecoming there when a hoard of drunk middle-aged men made themselves at home (note to middle aged men: it is NOT okay to party in the home of a bunch of young women). Finding strangers in your house was not unusual. We never locked the doors. People would walk right in and make off with your bike, your coat, your TV. Once, P & I inadvertently held the door open for a dude who (it turned out) was carrying M’s VCR under his arm. We pleasantly wished him “a good day” as he left with the singular item of value remaining in the house. Another friend notoriously happened on ‘Mrs Lee’ drinking milk directly from the carton in his kitchen.
The student ghetto was shared with a group of very short Asian woman that were together and interchangeably referred to as “Mrs Lee”. Mrs Lee (/the Mrs Lees) would collect beer bottles from around, and inside, the houses. It was widely rumoured that Mrs Lee owned many of the houses. Real estate tycoons who understood the value of a 10 cent bottle rebate. They certainly could have owned 321 where the landlord was no more than a bank account number. M, on the other hand, had the University itself as his landlord. This was fine until they were moving out and their dubious party choices (like throwing every beer bottle down the basement stairs) caught up to them. Goodbye damage deposit.
The houses were also shared with a large number of rodents. 321 was built on a sewer system from the 1900s that overflowed every spring. When this happened, the rats would swim up the pipes in search of air…as in, up the pipes and into your toilet. This is a True Fact…just ask my housemate T who discovered just how true it was when she was about to sit down on the toilet. As friends and roommates, you might think we’d be sympathetic. Instead, we ran out and bought a rubber rat, unscrewed the bathroom light, and traumatized her all over again. Meanwhile, at M’s house the vermin were ruling the roost. Boys being boys, capturing whatever had infiltrated their defenses became an all-consuming challenge. They set up an elaborate live trap like the Instagram Ninja Squirrel Maze. Only after 100 odd versions and a Costco sized tub of peanut butter did their Rube Goldberg roommate figure out that he was being messed with by human vermin, aka The Buddies.
They (you know, THOSE people) say “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Or, in the case of the student ghetto, just plain stay the same.[7] H’s house was 173 Alfred, which hasn’t changed a bit since our friend lived in it 30 years ago. When H moved in, she was very excited and proud of her new crib. We took her Papa by to check it out. He looked legitimately terrified and refused to go inside. I, myself, like our parents before us, would only use H’s bathroom (with its ill-advised “yellow” bathmat and shower curtain) if I was at risk of literally bursting my bladder. Her couch was so overused, by both partyers and mice, that even students turned their noses up at it on their garbage picking rounds. H and her housemates watched as student after student came to check it out, only to run off in horror. This fact was relayed to us with pride and immediate nostalgia for the student housing experience. It is a rite of passage, a Trial by Grime, that she, like M and I, will cherish forever.
_____________________________________________
[1] Or did? Don’t ask/don’t tell.
[2] While I do not like to reinforce stereotypes, this was probably a few too many hormonal females to coexist under one roof.
[3] And maybe a ‘Stranger Things’ portal to the Upside Down.
[4] Like many “bedrooms”, M’s was a repurposed living area. He, at least, had real walls. Having a bedroom created by a curtain wall, or one with no windows (me in fourth year), is not uncommon.
[5] There is some chance it was from outside of a motel (insert cringe/barf emoji!). I refuse to let my mind accredit that part of the memory for the sake of my mental self-preservation.
[6] Up to and including the velveteen yellow corduroy armchair that was taken out in a retaliatory strike by a mysterious Wolverine shod assailant.
[7] Except that now bylaw tickets are 10x and every misguided act is posted on Canadian Party Life.