The Towers.

The Towers

The smell was disgusting. There was a mixture of cheap booze, B.O., and stale air

proliferating through the walls and floors of Mountain View Tower. The flickering white lights,

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 to 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, and you could barely see out the window tinted with soap scum.

           

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.

            

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

noose 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 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.

            

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.

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.