Smells Like College Freedom

Smells Like College Freedom





    Whenever I return to West Michigan, instead of getting a hotel room, I spend my nights at the largest Sorority house on campus.  It’s an enormous two story house with wide hallways and a tall, wide-open atrium.  I return to campus for visits to my mother in-law who is the house supervisor.  The visits occur during holiday so the sorority house is required to be empty.  The girls may be gone but plenty of life remains in the vacant rooms, hallways, parlors, and the entryway where I drop my luggage.



    For several years the first thing I notice when I walk into the atrium at the sorority house is a picture of two girls (I assume they are sorority sisters).  It draws my attention.  Actually, there are several different copies of the picture.  Some are small, some are large, but one copy is blown up and displayed in giant poster size at the entry on the foyer table.  Sometimes when I visit, there is copy of the picture lying on a shelf.  Sometimes there is a copy on the top of a hutch or in a photo album.  I must not be the only person captivated by the picture. 



    Almost certainly the picture was taken by a friend with a simple 35 mm camera, maybe a digital camera, but just as likely a disposable bought at the corner drug store that was lucky enough to catch the right lighting and angles. The capture is a good one.  Sometimes a five dollar disposable camera, when it gets lucky and the lighting is right, brings out excitement just as potent as a picture taken with a thousand dollar lens. 





    I visit the campus sorority house several times before I give the picture much more than a double take.  It’s a great picture of two girl friends out having a good time, a fun snapshot of two college coed’s with bright wide smiles.





    There is a sense of fun cast from the girls in the picture that demands attention.  I’m sure it’s also one of the reasons the girls in the picture have decided to duplicate the print and why I see it in several locations throughout the house. 



    The girls in the picture would not make it as supermodels.  This obvious fact is one of the pictures most intriguing aspects.  It’s why I can appreciate the print in large poster size form, yet also quickly dismiss it year after year when I enter the door to the house foyer.  It was a lucky snapshot capture.



    The picture offers more than I first gave it credit for.  For several years, every time I return to Western, I find the picture lying around on an anonymous coffee table or corkboard and my eyes are instinctively drawn in its direction.  This year, I pull my truck up the circle drive and I make repeated trips in and out of the house unloading duffle bags, playpens, and strollers for a Christmas stay.  The picture is sill here. 



    In a different setting the two girls might strike you as just average looking coeds but this picture downplays their flaws and accentuates their best features.  I hasten to add they might be slightly overweight - though I mention it with a cautious hesitancy because the beaming energy from their happiness outshines most of their imperfections and weight is a subjective issue. 



    It’s a photo of two girl friends standing close, side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder.  They lean into one another.  Each girl is sort of half facing each other and half facing the camera, with an arm around each others back. 



    One of the girls has dark hair and is dressed in a black spaghetti string top that barely reaches the waistline of her jean skirt.  The second girl is blond and wearing a pink lace sleeveless top that also, doesn’t quite make it to the waistline of her short shimmering gold skirt.  It must be a warm season.  If not, then the girls are willing to suffer a bit in the name of style and seduction. 



    The girls have radiant inviting grins.  The pleasure on their faces is certainly one of the picture’s most alluring aspects but with further and closer consideration I realize it’s the setting of the picture that tells a story I’m all-to fondly familiar with so I sit down alone on a couch across from the fireplace in the parlor of the girls’ sorority house to take a closer look.





    Based on my personal experience I’m guessing it’s a probably a Thursday or Saturday night before going out.  The picture wasn’t taken in the sorority house but I it was definitely taken somewhere else on school campus or maybe at a house in the student ghetto.  It might be the summertime in Kalamazoo before returning to classes but something tells me it’s most likely the warm start of a new semester.  It’s easy for me to imagine running into them pre-drinking at Knollwood Apartments or at one of my friend’s run down house in the student ghetto. 







    The foreground is a kitchen and not just any kitchen but an older dated apartment kitchen with painted yellow wood cabinets and dark metal handles that are so commonly found in a dorm room.  The smudgy kitchen could also be in a house on a street in the student ghetto that hasn’t been updated for the last twenty years.  The kitchen sink is old and made of stainless steel.  It is a dual tub model probably installed in thousands of similar homes and apartments across the country.  In the sink there is a small white dish and one glass; remnants most likely from the apartment owners Hot Pocket snack eaten quickly before people started showing up.  The countertops are cleared off but not exactly clean.



    In addition to the two girls (the girls are obviously the subject of this picture), there are several other people starting the party in this memory.  Not a single person has any concern for material amenities surrounding them because the freedoms of the night’s possibilities are so much more exciting.  This is a time and place where the amount of money in a person’s bank account or the car they drive is (almost) irrelevant.  There are so many more exciting things to think about besides architectural flaws of the surroundings. 



    I remember the questions that might through their minds on a night like this.





Before we leave, who is coming over?

Will we leave this place or just party here? 

If we leave here, where are we going tonight? 

Who will be here?

Who will be there? 

How late will we dance?

Will he be there?



    In-between the two girls and the background of the picture, the dwelling is beginning to fill with other students.  Just behind the two girls, leaning on the door wall to the kitchen, is a third girl with brown hair, jean shorts, and white t-shirt.  She is talking on her cell phone; maybe giving driving directions to another coed or discussing the possibilities of this night’s activities.  Beyond the girl with the cell phone, past the kitchen entryway and into the picture’s background, a small group of people gather near the entryway.  An MP-3 player and two small computer speakers sit on the stand next to the door. 



    Everyone in the picture provide subtle details that are so powerful I can feel the worn carpets in the house I rented on Westnedge Street in the student ghetto when I was a student.  I can smell the half empty plastic cups of Natural Light beer scattered on the countertops of Knollwood Apartments during a courtyard party. 



    I’ve been to the place in this picture many times.  I can feel the intricacies that these two girls have to offer.  On a night similar to the one in the picture I met two girls just like them.  One was blond and one was a brunette.  I would argue the girls I met were more beautiful but that can be debated.  In the night from my memory, at the end of my night, the brunette ripped off the corner to a Domino’s pizza box and took the time to give me a name, number, and address that drastically altered my life’s course.



    Back to the picture I’m looking at.  The girl in the picture with the black spaghetti strap shirt and jean skirt has a flirty on-purpose slink in her hips and shoulders.  The ever-so-slight slink reveals a shy confidence that speaks to the certainty she feels toward finding the perfect person for her, maybe only for a night, maybe for a lifetime. 





    The blond girl in the short gold skirt and pink shirt stands a bit taller; she doesn’t slink quite as much.  She projects a different confidence that is a bit more obvious but no less welcoming.  Her smile is offered for someone who will honestly care and appreciate all the wonderful qualities she can give on a colder winter night during the holiday season.



    Sitting on the couch in the sorority house and looking at the picture, for a moment, I’m a college student again.



    I can smell college freedom.  It smells like the sense of not worrying about what time I go to bed or what time I have to wake up.  It smells like the freedom to smoke as much as I want, however I want, and not care about where I have to go or what scent might trail in behind me.  It smells like the two girls that sat side by side on my old brown couch under the loft in my bedroom on Westnedge Avenue.  It smells like traversing the eastbound and westbound one way streets trying to locate a new house on a dark Saturday evening or trying to find my way home on a crisp Sunday morning where I can smell the fresh morning dampness of newly fallen leaves bathed in crimson.



    Streets in the student ghetto fill me with anticipation and the excitement similar to exploring hidden undiscovered caves in an underwater dungeon.



    Every new house I visit in Kalamazoo holds a mystery like a halocline illusion; a multilayer adventure waiting to unfold and, like cave diving, it always feels like I’m the first person to explore the area, even if many have gone before me.



    I love the little nervous twitch I get in my stomach when I visit a new house and the people who live there.  It’s exciting and on several occasions (for myself) even dangerous. 



    Most campus houses are mammoth with old hand crafted king trim and wooden floors that creak with every step on every level.  Fake stalactites made of beads hang from the doorways and ceilings in the rooms of girls who are kind enough to invite me in to share one of their stories and make a memory of our own.  I meet many of my life’s loves and uncover rooms full of euphoria in the dorms and in the houses on the Student Ghetto streets.



    But I am not a student any longer and as fast as the smell of college freedom hits me, it leaves me.  The memories stun me and linger just long enough to leave a bitter-sweet taste.



    For another year or so, every time I visit the house on campus, the picture is there to greet me – a tribute to its lasting impressions.  Finally, one year on my Thanksgiving visit, the picture has disappeared from the house’s atrium.



    Both the picture and the girls have moved on – just like I have.  I’m reminded of how fabulous and bizarre my college years were.  I feel a little sad thinking about how much I learned about myself during those four intense years.  It’s these thoughts, for one brief moment, that trigger the smell of college freedom and the desire to travel back in time.



    This thought stings as I unload the car seats from my truck in the circle drive of the sorority.