The Moose in the Closet: Junior Year: Tales of an RA

Couple of things before I get into today’s story. First of all, I’d like to share the first page to the back-up story I did with Jacob Warrenfeltz for Caleb Monroe and Noel Tuazon’s upcoming Red Chapel:

The other four will be available for the first time at Wizard World LA, more information in the future. Red Chapel’s turning out to be a tight little book – I already love Noel’s work and Caleb can lay down a story really well – it’s an all-ages magical/fantasy book and the story Jacob and I put together used the rules of the world to explain the Curse of the Bambino. Jacob is a workhorse, I kind of dropped the ball on this project due to other commitments but he’s just banging out the pages now that he has the script. Honestly – the finished project will be 90% Jacob, I hope I didn’t scare him off from future collaborations. Jacob’s first big project, The Alberic Heresies, is going to receive much pimping from me when that book gets ready to drop – it looks fantastic so far.

The Hive #1 was edited and sent out to Guy for publication on Buzzscope this Thursday. My forum over there should be set up today at some point. For the first couple of weeks we’ll be starting at the very beginning and brainstorming on how to build a better comic – more accessible to new readers and moving away from the collector’s mentality where every page must be aesthetically pleasing at the expense of functionality and being inviting to new readers.

I’m starting a new thing on the DCC blog that’s talked about here – it won’t stick to any sort of rigid schedule but it’ll be a way for any aspiring comic writers to learn a bit about writing for comics. Because you don’t necessarily suck, as some people would say, but a lot of you could use some work.

I gave some feedback on a pitch Josh is working on with an extremely talented cowriter and I have to say it’s one of the better ideas I’ve seen for comics in some time. Going back to my twelve days of Christmas wishes so far we’ve seen Sam Keith go exclusive to DC and Josh getting pitch time that will hopefully turn profitable for the dude. I’m going to start charging for Christmas wishes.

I saw Munich on Saturday; it made me think that Hollywood needs to hire a top-secret team of people who will go in and kill the last twenty minutes of every Spielberg film. Jesus Christ – when was the last time he didn’t overextend an ending, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?

I found out that I’ve been using “jive” whereas I should have been using “jibe” my whole life. Why doesn’t anyone correct me?

Finally – with four weeks left of The Moose before my needed break I foresee these stories getting a bit longer. If you read these stories yet hate them, my apologies in advance.

Story time…

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Let me tell you something – becoming an RA was the best decision I made in college. Whereas sophomore year was kind of weird – I became the RA on the floor since a) I was already applying for the job and b) my RA quit after somebody shit in a bucket and left it on the sixth floor. Due to the whole “being thrown in last minute” combined with the fact that all my friends lived on the floor the whole semester consisted of us drinking our asses off without any threat of getting in trouble. I think everyone involved knew 4-West was getting a free pass for a couple of months and I’ll come back junior year ready to be the best fucking RA of all time.

It didn’t exactly work out that way, though.

I wasn’t drinking with my residents or anything like that but there was certainly a “don’t drink or smoke dope in the hallway” rule that was leniently enforced. Honestly, my philosophy was a lot like my parents and my friends’ parents growing up – I know they’re going to drink, I’d rather them stay close to home in case they get stupid.

I would routinely find a resident roaming the hall who had too much to drink, hardly able to hold himself up, or passed out over the bathroom stall and instead of calling the cops I’d call his roommate, get him to bed and give the roommate instructions on how to take care of him, check in every thirty minutes or so until the situation seemed to be under control.

So a good neighbor but by the books a bad RA.

And then there were the things that were just wrong.

You see – I wasn’t 21 until February of my junior year and amongst the underage RAs there was an unspoken rule that it was fine to drink, just do it off campus and don’t come home that night. Since I wasn’t getting laid junior year, at all, I came home drunk quite often because sometimes a brother just has to masturbate.

Or play playstation.

Or both.

So there were many times I’d come home and puke in the bathroom sink while my residents took pictures. Honestly, if I ever wanted to get them in trouble, I’d have no case. But I was never out to get them in trouble – we had a great time on the floor, everyone was doing well in their classes and with the exception of the two kids that were dealing dope everyone was doing the right thing and staying out of trouble.

As for the two kids that were dealing dope – well.

One day my building’s resident director tells me that Boston PD is coming by and they have a warrant to search their room. I go upstairs, bang on their door, and tell them Boston PD is coming – we’ll talk later about what the fuck they’re doing but for now get all their shit the fuck out of the room. Boston PD finds nothing. Later on I ask them if they’re dealing anything heavy and they just tell me they sell some dope to friends and friends of friends. I take a dime and tell them to cut the shit out. Not my proudest moment but they had some primo shit and I kept their asses out of jail, least they could is hook a brother up.

Once a week or so each RA had to go on-call. There were two RAs on-call per night, we’d be in the RA office from 7 until midnight and then be by our phone until 6AM to handle lock-outs or people reporting disturbances. Getting a call at four in the morning could go several ways – it can be an incredibly hot, drunken chick that makes you pray to the good Lord she’ll invite you into her room after you open it up for her, you can get the rowdy-ass drunken guy with his three friends who are about to go circle jerk on a cookie, you can get the princess who demands you to get to her room within five minutes – there’re really a whole mosaic of people who can find different ways to bust your balls.

The worst is when the person calls because they believe there’s a party going on next door. Holy shit that’s awkward.

Ever break up a party? Every do it with bed head and pajamas on? Try demanding respect from twenty drunken college kids when you’re wearing glow-in-the-dark boxer shorts, an A-shirt and a robe.

I had to respond to two parties during my junior year. The first one I handled by myself. I went to the room in question and asked if anyone there was 21 and had some ID. One guy showed me ID and I asked him if all this beer was his. He claimed the hundreds of cans of beer and empty bottles of liquor as his own. I informed he wasn’t allowed to have more than a six pack in the room at a time and let him off with a warning – asked them to keep it quiet because I didn’t want their bitch neighbor to wake me up again.

That’s how I handled parties.

This other time I had to go break-up a party with another RA and she made everyone who was 21 get out of the room and wrote up everyone who wasn’t and then confiscate all of the alcohol. It took an hour plus all the paperwork we had to fill out afterwards. The next day we had to give a report to the senior RA. All this to ruin somebody’s good time – it was such a waste.

As the year goes on you get an idea for which RAs were cool and which ones followed every rule and you tried to schedule your on-call dates to be with the ones that would guarantee a smooth night. Every night you were on-call you had to go on rounds once between 7 and midnight which basically meant the two RAs would sweep the halls looking for any rule breakers. When I was with a tough RA I’d send out an IM to my floor and let them know we were coming. If I was with a cool RA we’d sweep through all 16 floors in five minutes and then laugh about who was likely having a party on what floor.

But on the whole it was good times – we were all friends and did a lot of stuff together. We all went out for each others 21st birthdays – when word got out that an RA was 21 the residents went nuts because the dorm was guaranteed empty of any authority figures except the two cats on call. There were 16 RAs in Towers – for my 21st birthday about 10 of them came out - the rest weren’t 21 yet.

It wasn’t just going out and drinking, though. We went to movies together – started workout regimens with each other and broke them in unison – every morning I had breakfast with RAs and almost every night I had dinner with them - it was a pretty stressful job and you find yourself connecting more to people who are going through the same things you are. You gossip about residents, trade horror stories – all that good stuff you can’t do within the dorm’s walls.

Then we had the big “event” days. Dorm closings – that was always a nightmare. We had to start going around to people’s dorm rooms and knocking on their doors at 7AM to remind them they need to be out by noon. Now, this is the morning after the last night in college – before these kids go back to their families in Oregon or Ohio or some other “O” state – do you think they were in any condition to be woken up at 7AM?

Fuck. No.

You get cursed at many times. You get shit thrown at you. I’ve walked in on rooms with a girl and a guy passed out naked in bed. The funniest story like that was I walked into a room and it looked empty. Lights were off, all of the residents’ shit was apparently packed up and moved out – when you see something like that you assume that the person is gone and you walk into the room to start the closing procedure. Check to see what was left behind, that all the windows are closed – shit like that. Well, a minute into the closing procedure I see some dude passed out on one of the room’s beds popping the early signs of serious morning wood. No blankets, nothing. Not wanting to deal with him and his erection I sneak back out, come back two hours later and he’s gone. The rest of his story will remain a mystery.

Another great closing story was over Christmas break when one of my friends comes back and says a resident had a cat in their room but besides the cat the joint looked cleared out. Not wanting to leave a cat in a room without food and water for three weeks he goes back to get the cat. Doesn’t see the cat, thinks the cat is in the closet and finds the mother of all bongs in there. I’m talking one of those six-foot tall bad boys with hookahs coming out of it and chairs attached – the thing was fucking huge. Took up the whole closet, no shit.

He comes back with the bong and the cat in his hands, not because he necessarily wanted to get the resident in trouble but mainly because it was too good of a joke to pass up – walking into the office with a little kitty and the apparent centerpiece from Snoop Doggie Dog’s living room.

Seriously, some of the best groups of people I’ve ever met. There were relationships that formed – Guam is still my boy to this day and one of the better friends I’ve ever had – it was a good group to fall into after all the shit from the year before. You go through a lot of shit with these people, deal with a lot of issues that you all keep amongst yourselves because when you’re in front of the residents you need to look like you have your shit together. Who’s dating, who got pregnant – who’s been sleeping around with Matt Damon’s best friend (no shit – tons of stories from that one).

Labels: mitc

Junior Year: Tales of an RA

Monday, January 09, 2006

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