“The Towers?”
There was a mixture of cheap booze, B.O., and stale air proliferating through the walls
and floors of Mountain View Tower. When walking through the hallways and upon passing a
dorm room there was the lingering odor of Ramen, two steps later is was burnt marijuana, and
two steps after that a pungent barrage of cologne. The flickering fluorescent lights, the hospital
white walls, the concrete like carpet with a stain every other step, the cheap furniture, the
dysfunctional doors and elevators, and to top things off with a holy shit where the hell do I live
epiphany of witnessing prostitution for alcohol in the hall way. There was the stricken realization
that the Towers of Utah State University are the equivalence to the Projects of Chicago.
Unfortunately nothing about the Towers fell short of an isolated version of the ghetto nested
right in the heart of arguably one of the most Mormon campuses. In the dorm rooms there were
holes the size of golf balls in the ceiling, the vents had piles of lint lodged in them, the mattresses
were rock hard firm, the desks had dents, scratches, and malfunctioning drawers, there were
beetles that crawled out of the cracks of the building exploring every flat surface in the room,
and dirt was aligning every wall and collecting in every corner. The windows had guards on
them opening only about a half an inch or so as if the administration was anticipating some sort
of mass suicide.
The nights were freezing. There were dead cold drafts creeping through the windows. It
was loud. There were doors slamming shut with enough force to mimic the sounds
of a gunshot, there were a dozen or so people crammed in the room next to me continuously
barking at one another, there were sounds of Facebook messages pinging, and there were
screams of the obnoxious Dominican Republicans becoming irate over a computer game. All the
different noises meshed together to produce the ambiance of the Towers. Some nights weren’t so
luxurious. Being woken up from a deep sleep for my ears to tune in on the subtle exacerbations
of a foreign voice espousing sexual comments at the height of her orgasm left me with a
sleepless night. There was a distinct sound of the flesh of the scrotum clapping against the
vaginal lips. When the speed of penetration increased so did the volume and rate of her
exacerbations. For some unknown psychological reasons my roommate felt the need to whisper
“Jarod I have a small dick,” during his five course meal. It was WTF moments like these that
kept me in a constant state of mass confusion.
Waking up in the morning to the screeching alarm and sitting up to glare upon a used
condom blatantly placed on the ground only to look back at my Many Positions Available poster
gave headway for a laugh. Walking in the communal bathroom with fuzz in eyes and a stuffy
nose to be bombarded by the horrific sight of feces all over the toilet accompanied by the gag
from the stench. I stood still staring at the bewildered expression on my face in the mirror and
then preceded to enter the shower. Upon entering the changing area of the shower with the usual
half an inch of lint water on the ground there was a fist sized clump of pubic hairs on the drain.
On Sundays after waking up at two in the afternoon with a massive headache, empty
stomach, chapped lips, and sluggish eyes to witness the desolate halls left me with a question
mark over my head. There wasn’t as so much the sound of a pin dropping let alone the sounds of
doors mimicking gunshots or the sounds of orgasmic exacerbations. I left my dorm room and
walked around, there wasn’t a soul. It was almost as if I were in one of those apocalyptic
scenarios waking up in a cold sweat from a deep slumber in a deserted hospital to be attacked by
a horde of zombies. Suddenly there was a swarm of suits that came flooding in the building
armed with bibles. They defiantly weren’t zombies.
Some played bored games until three in the morning and some raved in their rooms with
a fully functional hookah lounge with any drug of your choice. There were those who
were nineteen years old and seemed to have never lost their innocence as there were those who it
seemed never had any innocence at all. It was particularly disturbing to observe both extremes.
One the one hand there was the rationality of a five year old and on the other the rationality of
crack head.
Exiting the Towers and walking to class promulgated such a sudden and drastic change of
the environment it was amusing. If you looked at somebody for only an instant they would
automatically smile at you opposed to having someone tripping on acid give you a confusing
glare or a foreign exchange student giving you a cockeyed stare in the elevator. There were a few
“Heys” from complete strangers time to time. There were People joyfully playing Frisbee on the
Quad, riding bikes, long boards, and tricycles as if they all preserved their innocence. It was all
so surreal as if everything outside of the Towers was a façade, a culture distinct from the rest.
There were two separate realities in a physical juxtaposition both of which were oblivious to one
another. The Towers are a place of learning, diversity, mistakes, drugs, alcohol, sex, and crime.
The Towers managed to encapsulate the entire college experience void of the rest of the campus.
