Next Semester (3 page)

“Trust me, she would’ve never shot you down if you had letters, G. Greeks never get turned down.”

“How you know?” I asked. “You ain’t Greek!”

“Not yet.”

ROOMY

The
smell hit me before the door swung open. It was a familiar stench. One of x-chromosome overload, musty armpits, feet, Raid, dirty clothes hampers and corn chips, mixed with humidity. Aaaah, Marshall Hall—the only all-male freshman dorm on campus. My home away from home. Much like an acquired taste, the foul aroma drifting through the hallways took some getting used to.

“Somebody needs to spray some Febreeze up in this piece,” I said to myself, grimacing as I lugged my suitcase through the hallway behind me.

The trek from the front door to my room was also familiar. I could always tell who’d made it to their rooms and make an educated guess about where they were from by the music blasting from their stereos. And by the sounds of the reggae tunes blaring from some guy’s stereo system
in the middle of the hallway, I figured we had at least one new guy living on the first floor this semester. As I neared my door at the end of the hall, I expected to see my neighbor Lawry come flying out of his room asking to borrow something. But his door, which was right before mine at the end of the hall, was shut and I couldn’t hear any music playing. I started to bang on his door, just to let him know I was in the building, but I decided to drop my things off in my room first. I still remember the horrific experience I had last semester when I opened my dorm room door for the first time, and an overgrown roach was waiting for me, doing the two-step in the middle of my floor. I hadn’t been inside my room for a while, so as I turned the key, I braced myself for the worst. Who knew what would be waiting for me inside this time?

I wish it had been a roach.

One step inside, and I thought I had entered the wrong door. My room looked like the international Alpha Mu Alpha frat house. There was paraphernalia everywhere. Timothy’s half of the room was painted gold. He had the black-and-gold Alpha Mu Alpha floor mat. The black Alpha Mu Alpha comforter, with gold sheets. He had paddles hanging on the wall. His line jacket hung neatly over his computer chair. An Alpha Mu Alpha mouse pad. An Alpha screen saver on his laptop. And a large poster of a black guy’s arm reaching down to pull another black man up by his forearm, with the phrase “He’s ain’t heavy, He’s my brother” inscribed underneath. This was a classic example of going Greek, then going overboard.

“You can’t be serious,” I said to myself, precariously walking into my room in awe. “Ain’t this about nothing. I can’t believe this fool.”

Timothy wasn’t there. But I could tell he’d been there. And by the looks of things, I knew this would be a long
semester. After thoroughly sweeping my side of the room, hanging my clothes and arranging my shoes, I called my mom to let her know I’d made it in safe.

Just as I hung up with my mom, my roommate—Timothy McGruden III—came waltzing in. Timothy couldn’t have weighed more than a buck thirty soaking wet with bricks in his pockets. But one look at him, and it was evident he wasn’t the same Timothy I’d roomed with last semester. He was missing the Coke-bottle glasses. His pants weren’t hiked up to his underpits like they used to be. And it was the first time I’d ever seen him wear anything other than penny loafers. Granted, the Adidas shell-tops he wore were laced extremely tight, which looked lame as hell. But he’d made a complete swag transformation. As miraculous as when Steve Urkel morphed into Stefan Urquelle on
Family Matters.
Timothy’s parents hadn’t changed a bit though, dressed in their Sunday’s best, as usual. All of them were carrying Wal-Mart bags.

“Hello Mr. and Mrs. McGruden,” I said. “Timmy.”

“It’s T-Mac, now,” he said, placing his bags on his bed.

Now, I’m no expert on Greek fraternities or sororities, but I overheard some Kappas on campus last semester ganging up on one of their new members, talking about him for wearing a hat with their fraternity letters on it and a matching T-shirt at the same time. They called it “double-nalia.” When I saw Timothy bust through the door in his Alpha Mu Alpha T-shirt, matching hat, tube socks, dog tag and key chain, I immediately wondered what the rules and regulations are for “quintuplet-nalia.” Something told me Timothy had to have been breaking some of ’em.
Even though he joined a fraternity last semester, he was still as lame as he could be,
I thought.

“Hello, James,” Mr. McGruden said. “Great seeing you again, buddy. How was your winter break?”

“It was just fine,” I said.

“And your mother?”

“She’s fine, too,” I said.

“Well, that’s good to hear. I plead the blood of Jesus over you and your entire family and wish you nothing but success this year. Timothy told me about your little academic probation situation last semester. How were your grades?”

I cut my eyes at Timothy.

“I got a 2.67,” I said proudly. “Good enough to come back.”

“Well,” Ms. McGruden said, with a hint of disapproval in her tone.

“You made it, son,” Mr. McGruden said. “That’s all that matters. Now, it’s time to take it up a notch. I’m not going to preach to you. I do enough of that on Sundays. And by the way, you’re always welcome to come to service with Timothy the third, anytime you please. Just remember one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s something I tell Timothy the third all of the time,” Mr. McGruden said. “Never let good enough be good enough. Or as one of my favorite college professors used to say, ‘Always shoot for the moon. That way, if you fall short, you will still land on a star.’”

“I know that’s right,” I said.

After helping Timothy unload all of his school supplies and restock his snack drawer, his parents dipped. As they were leaving, Fresh was coming in.

“Yeah!” Fresh said, walking in. “My nigga J.D. is back in the…”

He stopped talking and walking in midsentence. His feet frozen, he just looked around the room, his eyes carefully scanning Timothy’s side in disbelief. The face he made
was identical to the one I made the first time I walked in—pure shock and disappointment.

“Gaaatdamn, joe!” Fresh screamed, with Timothy’s parents still well within earshot.

I could hear Mrs. McGruden in the hallway.

“Lord, have mercy,” she said.

“What the hell happened up in here?” Fresh continued, looking around in awe. “This looks like something straight outta
School Daze.
What is this, a mural on the wall?”

“I am actually just proud to be a member of Alpha Mu Alpha,” Timothy said in a defensive tone. “Thank you.”

“Well, somebody must’ve dropped a pair of nuts in your Christmas stocking,” Fresh said.

I started cracking up.

“Ol’ Timothy standing up for himself,” Fresh continued with more sarcasm. “I ain’t mad at you. But on some the real though, folk, you deserve some kind of Greek fraternity interior decorating award or something. This is extraordinary, fam.”

Timothy rolled his eyes, sat down at his desk in front of his laptop and logged on to the Internet. Facebook, to be exact.

“Can you believe this guy?” Fresh asked me, nodding to the decorations.

I just shook my head with a slight grin.

“Hey, at least my roommate don’t stink,” I said. “Last time I was in your room, I damn near died trying to hold my breath.”

“You got a point there,” Fresh said. “He does smell like horseshit.”

“You wouldn’t know class if it was staring you in the face, Lamont!” Timothy yelped, without looking away from his computer screen, apparently still annoyed by Fresh’s comments.

“You wouldn’t know a dime if it was staring you in the
face!” Fresh retorted. “You might wanna keep cyber surfing, sending friend requests and anonymous honesty box messages and maybe…just maybe you’ll get lucky this semester. Oh, and for the record, I go by Fresh. From now on, when you address me, that’s what you call me, choirboy.”

“Well, my name is Timothy. But everybody calls me T-Mac, now. So from now on, that’s what you call me.”

“Oh, it’s
T-Mac
now, huh?” Fresh asked, cracking up. “Okay, J.D., I’ve heard enough. I’m outta here. What you on? What’s demo?”

“What’s
demo?
” I asked. “What the hell does that mean, blood?”

“Oh,” Fresh said, laughing. “My bad. I thought I was back in the Chi for a minute. When I say, ‘What’s demo’, I basically mean, ‘What’s up’? Or as you would say, ‘What’s crackin’?”

“Oh, okay,” I said. “Well, tell me something, man. I thought we had a lot of slang in Cali. Just when I figured out that ‘joe’ really means ‘homie,’ here you come with ‘what’s demo’? I got it now, though.”

“Good,” Fresh said. “So, what’s demo, G?”

“I can’t even call it, blood,” I said, laughing. “To tell you the truth, I’m feeling kinda jet-lagged right now. I think I’ma lay it down until our meeting with the RA’s at eight.”

“Damn, that’s right,” Fresh said, removing a brush from his back pocket, stepping in front of the mirror and touching up his waves. “I forgot all about that. Well, I’ll see you there. I’m ’bout to meet up with Tiffany in the caf. I’m starvin’ like Marvin, joe.”

“Tiffany who?” I asked.

“Big booty Tiffany from Houston,” he said. “I’m kinda feeling her right now.”

“You’sa fool, blood,” I said, bending over to pick up a flyer that someone had just slipped under my door. “The
semester just started, and you already got too many for me to keep up with.”

“Hey, I’m single,” Fresh said, grinning wide and throwing his hands up. “Anyway, what’s that?”

“A flyer for some back-to-school party,” I said.

“Man, I had about eight of them under my door when I first got to my room,” Fresh said. “I damn near slipped and busted my ass when I came through the door.”

“That’s a bad look,” I said, checking out the flyer.

There was a superthick, caramel-colored chick on the front of it, with no shirt on, covered in soap suds, sucking a red lollipop.

“They say the foam party is gonna be going down tomorrow night,” Fresh said. “That’s our last night of freedom before classes start. Plus, Ludacris is performing!”

“I think…” I said, flipping the flyer over, and seeing Ludacris’s album cover. “Yep, this is the flyer for that party right here. You think it’s gonna be crackin’?”

“Does a bear shit in the woods and wipe his ass with a rabbit?” Fresh asked. “You already know! We there, joe.”

“I don’t know if I’ma be able to make it,” I said. “I don’t wanna be all sluggish on our first day of class. You know I gotta buckle down this semester. Plus, my money is kinda funny. So…”

“So you’ll have your ass ready by ten, so we can get in for free!” Fresh said. “You got the rest of the semester to study and worry about class.”

“You got a point there,” I said, still weighing my options. “But you know me. I ain’t really a morning person as it is, blood.”

“That’s why I’m glad this party is at
night!
I don’t care if you miss every other party this year, you know we gotta make this one. It’s the first party of the year!”

I hadn’t even been on campus for a week, and already I
was going back on the promise I’d made to myself before I came back to campus—to get my priorities together, and put school first. Just when I thought I could resist the temptation, I succumbed to it.

“Well, since you put it that way, I guess I better find something to wear,” I said. “But I’ll tell you right now, the only way I’m going is if we catch a ride. I need to check with Lawry and see if he’s driving, because catching the shuttle is what I ain’t gon’ do! You remember what happened last semester, when the shuttle left us and we had to walk home from the club.”

“Nigga, I’ll walk
to
the club I have to,” Fresh said. “You see the girl on the front of the flyer?”

“She is fine,” I said. “Yeah, fools are probably gonna be going dumb up in that thang! I already know there’s gonna be hella breezies there. Plus, it says you get in free before eleven-thirty, with this flyer.”

“There you have it,” he said, dapping me up and opening the door. “Hold on to that. We need to get out there early, ’cause I damn sure ain’t tryna pay, either. I’ll see you at the meeting later tonight.”

“Fa sho!” I said. “I’ma try to get a nap in first, though.”

Timothy shook me out of my slumber.

“Hurry and get yourself together so we can get to this meeting,” he said. “We’ve only got five minutes, and I’m not trying to be late. Especially not after the way Varnelius chewed you out for being tardy to the meeting last semester.”

“I know right,” I said, wiping sleep from the corner of my eye. “I had forgot all about that.”

“I’m gonna check my messages on MySpace one more time, while you get ready,” Timothy said.

“You sure have been online a lot today,” I said. “You looking up some classes or something?”

“No. Just doing a little chatting.”

“Your dad started up some kind of Internet ministry or something?” I asked, sliding on my sweatpants.

“Actually, I’m conversing with a love interest of mine.”

“Whaaaat?” I asked excitedly. “A little cyber sex, huh? I guess everybody’s tryna get their willy wet these days!”

“Oh, nonsense,” he said. “Amy doesn’t even participate in those type of activities. She’s a church girl.”

“Amy, huh? Got you a little jungle fever there, Timmy?”

“Jungle fever?” he asked, pressing the back of his hand up against his forehead. “I’m not running a temp.”

“Oh my God!” I said. “You’ve never seen
Jungle Fever,
the movie?”

Timothy just sat there, his fingers hovering over the keyboard, looking puzzled.

“Aaaah, forget it! I meant to say, I didn’t know you liked to ski in your spare time.”

“There aren’t any mountains in Atlanta,” Timothy said. “Well, there’s Stone Mountain, but it rarely ever gets any snow. I’ve never been skiing a day in my life.”

“Timothy, if this roommate situation is gonna ever work out, you’re gonna need to learn some damn ebonics! How ’bout this one? I didn’t know you had a thing for pink toes.”

“Pink toes. Pink toes. Pink toes,” he mumbled to himself. “Okay, I still don’t get it. Do you mind using the King’s English instead of all of this street slang?”