Hanging with White dudes

I never used to fuck with white dudes, but that all changed when I turned 19.  I was going to KU and to avoid another year in the dorms, I put in to live in the campus apartments.  As unpopular as I was, I didn’t know enough people to lock down reliable roommates so I had to put my name in the lottery.  Basically they put your name in a random pool and the three guys that they pulled after you were going to live with you for a year.

            In this day in age I suppose that I should say that I mean “fuck with” in the sense that I wouldn’t befriend them; not as in having sex with them.  FYI I don’t have sex with any color man.  What can I say? I’m straight.

            Anyway, my sophomore year at the University of Kansas, I got put into a two bedroom apartment with TJ, Tanner and Chris.

            Almost as important, we were across the hall from Chevonn, Jessica, Jessica and Jamie.  Tower C was a unisex tower and it wasn’t uncommon to have women next door to men.  We were right across the hall from the girls and I distinctly remember the day that I went to check out the place with my mom.  There were two elevators in “The Towers”.  The day I started to move in, there were two girls that went into the other elevator seconds before I went up in the other one.  One was Black; one was Mexican.  I remember thinking how much that I wished that those two beautiful young women lived on my floor.  When the elevator reached my floor, I was beside myself to see the two girls (Who totally could have held the elevator on the way up) going into the apartment across the hall.  It was Jessica and Chevonn, my peeps to this day.

            I came to love those two women but that is a story for another day.  The day that I first saw those two, I met Chris.  Chris was scoping out the spot the same Day that I was.

            I could tell that Chris was surprised that he was having a black roommate but the shock was over in an instant.  That dude was just plain friendly.  I don’t know what it was about Chris but he made me feel real comfortable about living with those guys for the next year.  Tanner and Chris were friends and would share a room but Chris seemed like he was anxious to get the year started. 

            The next guy I met was TJ.  TJ was a country boy.  When I met him, he told me that the only kind of music that he hates is rap.  I told him that only kind of music that I hate is country.  For some reason, we ended up being pretty friendly roommates.

            Our leader, however, was Tanner.  I don’t know what was up with this dude but he was extraordinarily cool.  Tanner was about my height and a normal build but he just exuded confidence.  I thought he was a particularly funny looking dude but this guy would pull women like it was nothing.  Women loved this dude and like 3, 19-year-olds, we subconsciously designated him the leader.

            Funny thing about that, Tanner never got anyone but himself, laid.  But, with the exception of TJ, get laid we did.

            There was one thing that will you unite young men, that’s young women.  The girls across the hall never gave any of us any play; however, Tanner married a woman that moved in down the hall.

            You know that you have good roommates when you had good times when you went out and good times when you stayed in.  We used to play NBA 2K on Sega Dreamcast for hours.  When that ended we could play Duke Nukem on Playstation.

            One particular time when I brought my mother to see where I lived, Chris and Tanner had taken that opportunity to get high on mushrooms.  I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with them until they explained it to me later. 

            That was the thing with them.  They were so foreign to me until they explained their craziness.  After that, they would always try to drag me in to it.  TJ was a loner but Tanner and Chris would always try to involve you in the disaster of the week.  Crazy as that sounds, it seriously made me feel welcome. 

            I wasn’t always up for it.  I was a bit of a loner myself.  I remember one time when they decided to take Lemon Drop shots with cheap vodka (Viaka).  I avoided that particular adventure by trying to bond with my future fraternity brothers and damn if I wasn’t right.  Those poor guys were hung over for two days.

            That’s how it was though.  We would be stuck with each other in the bad times and stuck with each other when we were having fun.  After a while, we just got used to having each other around.  One of us was black, one of us was hillbilly but together we were a team.  Together, our team not only attracted the company of the girls next door, but the guys upstairs, the girls down the hall and the guys from downstairs (who were more attracted to the girls across the hall). 

            I never used to fuck with white dudes but it was those young White boys that taught me, as long as you don’t go into relationships with prejudices, you can have some real fun and make some real friends.

            Maybe I was just lucky; getting such cool, beautiful neighbors and having roommates that didn’t mind having to live with a black nerd.  That isn’t the lesson for the day though. 

            The lesson is that whether you are the black nerd, the cool white guy or the hillbilly, when you give somebody the chance to be a friend, they might surprise you and take it.  That is what I learned from those guys and I take that with me to this day.