Personal (sound)space

I just overheard Jason mock-shout, “You’re typing too loud!”

The typist’s answer was a mock-acerbic, “Well that’s just how the typewriter types!”

The type-complainer, Jason, started joking about how someone actually used to tell him that he typed too loudly and too quickly, and that it was distracting this person from work. Jason’s answer: mock apologetic, “I’m sorry,” and typing louder and harder.

Jason and Kendra laughed over someone actually complaining about typing volume, and I flashed back to college.

Cinder-block dorm room painted puky blue, matched, straight rows down either side of the room: closet, dresser, bed, desk. My roommate and I were best friends, shared a major, and spent all of our time together, in and out of class. Due to necessity of proximity, we drove each other nuts, but in a loving way, I thought.

I was fortunate that, even way back in the early days of technology, my dad bought me a laptop and printer to take to school. It cost $1000, ran Windows 95, and we had to purchase the optional external floppy disk drive separately. My roommate and I couldn’t share the computer (not that I wanted to, anyway), because all of our papers were due at the same time since we took all of our classes together. Of course college students would never work out a schedule where someone actually writes their paper early, so she needed a different option.

Her parents bought her an electric word processor. The trumped-up typewriter looked odd and clunky across the way from my shiny plastic toy that still smelled like clean electrical parts, and she was always defensive about it. “It’s just like a computer, but it has a smaller screen.” I couldn’t imagine looking at that tiny 2” x 6” window to see what I had written. And revising? How could you manage that when you had to use the up and down arrow keys to scroll through every line? While I recognized that I was lucky that my dad was so wild for technology that he’d splurge on a quickly obsolete paperweight for me, I also recognized outgoing technology when I saw it. And secretly laughed at it behind its back.

I never said a word to anyone but my dad about how I really felt about the silly typewriter, but when the “word processor” actually printed the pages, it ground and shrieked and ruined the dorm room’s quiet peace so I’d have to leave. “Oh, I need to go see what Abby is doing down the hall…” I usually just went outside and smoked cigarettes. Sometimes Abby came with me, but usually she wasn’t even in her room.

My roommate and I were both odd and quirky and damaged in our own special ways, and we brought a lot of baggage for a tiny 9’ x 18’ cage. Mentally, we bumped into each other a lot, and suffered the bruises, nursing grudges. We could go from intimate friends to cold strangers and then back again, all within the span of an hour. Even though I was grudge-holder supreme, I could still love her and want to spend all of my time with her. Maybe it was wrong to fight and make up all the time, but that felt normal to me.

When writing research papers for our classes, my roommate liked to swing her legs under her desk while she typed. Although she didn’t type too loudly, the leg-swinging made me a little edgy. “Swish, swish, swish”, her jeans would saw, softly. I preferred total silence when I worked and couldn’t handle the distraction.

“Natalie, can you stop swinging your legs? I can’t concentrate.”

“No,” she’d grumble at me.

Later, when I complained again, she’d quiet-shout, defensively, “It calms me down when I work,” but we were not calm.

All right, I was willing to ignore the leg-swinging. I was making a petty grievance about a small thing anyway. But it still made me restless. I’d end up chain smoking until she went to bed, and then I’d type for the rest of the night, quietly, on my soft laptop.

We moved dorm rooms once, and that’s the point where I can say things really fell apart between us, though I didn’t know it at the time. There were so many ways and so many reasons that we flapped into each other so hard, but one illustrates well: the box.

Somehow, the box for the word processor came to live under Natalie’s desk. It was empty since the typewriter was on top of her desk, but that was where she chose to put it. This was fine until we started writing. I remember I was writing about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” and she was kicking her legs. But, now, instead of just “swish-swish” swinging, Natalie was a drum. “Kick-kick-kick,” she’d swing her legs straight into the empty box, “boom-boom-boom.”

“Natalie, do you have to kick your legs?” I’d whine.

“Yesss!” She’d hiss through her teeth at me.

“Can you move the box? It’s so loud!” I’d whine some more.

“No, there’s no place for it,” she’d hiss again.

By this point, I guess our relationship had deteriorated beyond repair. Everything we did drove each other over the edge, and not just in the “been your roommate too long way.” We were out over a cliff, and neither one of us was heading back. And then “grind, squeal, grind, squeak,” she printed her first draft to proofread.

“I’m gonna go smoke outside,” I lied.

We bumped into each other too many times. We couldn’t escape each other’s personal space: space of sound, of belongings, of desires, and of differences. We were always there, present, occupying room in each other’s lives.

While I was content to forever grate away at each other, she moved out. It came as a total blow, a complete surprise, and she wouldn’t talk to me about it. She just disappeared one day and was gone. Poof. She had new friends and everything.

Six months later, a mutual friend of ours explained what happened, and I was crushed.

“Really? You don’t know why Natalie moved out?” Heather asked me, shocked that I didn’t know. “She’s told everyone else.”

That stung. Everyone was in but me. “No, she never said a word to me. She just moved out.”

“She told everyone you competed with her too much. She said you tried to do better than her on your homework, and that you tried to get more compliments than her by dressing up nicer than her,” Heather explained.

Like a spy novel reveals all the clues at the end of the book, my mind raced to all the little incidents that added up to our break-up. The times she would wait until the last possible second before class to get dressed and then put on a skirt. I’d say, “Oh, I wish I knew you were going to wear a skirt, now I don’t have time to change!” and she’d hurry me out the door.

The time I got a compliment, “You have a beautiful smile.”

“Thank you,” I said politely, flattered.

Natalie shouted, “She wears a retainer!”

The time in class I asked her what grade she got on her paper, and she shouted, “A ‘C,’ OK?”

Stymied didn’t describe what I felt when Heather revealed Natalie’s real motivation to leave. Betrayed might have been closer. I never had any idea Natalie felt that way. I wanted to be her sister, to do everything just like her. I looked up to her and respected her guidance. Everything I wanted to do, I wanted us to do it together, even if it was just wearing skirts on the same day. I was completely oblivious that all I ever heard was the death knell, the “kick-kick-kick,” “boom-boom-boom,” on the empty box, striking down the hours left in our friendship.

In the end, my personal sound space was empty. I finally had the quiet I wanted, but I learned it was awfully lonely in silence. I sat on the floor, staring at Natalie’s empty bed, smoking cigarettes one after the other. My heart went “Boom. Boom. Boom,” in the empty room.