No school for Sterling.

My sophomore year in college I lived in a single in the so-called New Dorms. In the room to my right was a woman who I never actually heard speak. I don't know if I ever learned her name, and I certainly don't remember it if I did. My only memory of her was watching her go into her room one night and about half an hour later hearing someone pounding on her door. About fifteen minutes later I got tired of the knocking so I opened my door to see who to blame for my current misery. It was Astro-boy. The Smiley Guy. Guy Smiley. Whatever you want to call him. And he was pounding and shouting and smiling and pounding and shouting.

"Dude. She's not there." I said.
"I saw her go in." He replied.
"How long have you been knocking?"
"I don't know, fifteen minutes?"
"Yes. Has she answered the door?"
"No."
"Well seems to me that either she's not there, or she's ignoring you."
"But I need to talk to her."
"You'll have to find a way to do that that doesn't involve pounding on the door."
And off he went.

* * * * *
To my left was Tatyana, a junior or a senior in her late twenties. She had three friends: Fardowsa, a sophomore who came around twice a week, or so; Deb, a compact, fuzzy-haired lesbian, who was very clearly in love with Tatyana; and Adam, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed gay-boy in his early thirties.

Adam was a squatter, I don't really remember his story, but I do remember that he was staying with Tatyana until he figured out what he was going to do next. He had a thing for Gabe, a gay-boy who was actually a student. About a month into his squatting period they started playing Madonna at ridiculous decibels beginning around midnight. I would get back around 2 am from my all-night *study periods* at the Coffee Haus to the single of Erotic on repeat. I had quit smoking the previous summer, but the stench of the cigarettes they smoked wafted through the closet wall we shared and seeped into my clothing.

Tatyana left at the end of the first semester. Nobody used her room for the second semester and I soon learned that all of her things were still in it. Over spring break, Fardowsa had a security guard open the room so that she could reclaim her rug, which Tatyana had borrowed at the beginning of the year. When the guard opened her door, the smell of stale cigarette smoke filled the hall. Her door and windows were left open for a week in order to let the room air out. I ran into Deb a few weeks later, who told me she had seen Adam recently. Apparently during one of their nights of passionate Madonna-listening Adam got Tatyana pregnant. The plan was for them to raise the baby together.