Blacksburg, Virginia (1989)

This was the ingenious bunk bed system New Mal and his father designed and built that he brought to our dorm room my first morning there.

I’d driven up with my parents the day before and after depositing my belongings and saying goodbye, I rode my gray and black Huffy to a party on Lower Quad that was completely off the hook.

I wasn’t even 19 and people were handing me beers left and right.

At 2 AM when the party finally ended, I was so fucking hammered riding home on my bike carrying a 12 pack of beer that I could barely stay balanced.

When I got to the top of the hill near the War Memorial the beer carton split open and the cans went rolling everywhere, including downhill.

I tumbled off my bike and began giggling stupidly while trying to pick up the cans.

New Mal and his family must have set some sort of land speed record from Yorktown because there he was, standing over me in my bed, at 7 AM, laughing and slapping me on the back telling me what an amazing year we were going to have.

I was holding my head to keep my brains from falling out and all I could think was how I’d never been so hungover and now I was going to have to live in the same un-airconditioned room for a whole year with this crazy jackass.