Nicki

My college roommate and other stories...

A picture from high school at a dance…

I’ve been trying to write but finding it almost impossible these days. I’m much better at cheering on my students and doom-scrolling. Not good.

Then I thought of a story. I thought of this story because I will visit my college roommate, Nicki, this weekend in Knoxville. Nicki isn’t well, and it sucks, and I want to be with her. We are having dinner together at Nicki’s and her wife Debby’s house on Friday night. Tomorrow.

Our other best friends, Pattie and Judy, are coming too. Pattie is flying in from Las Vegas, which also happens to be my birthday, and Nicki’s birthday is a week later, so we’re celebrating our birthdays together.

It’s been decades since we celebrated our birthdays together in person.

Judy is buying a “chocolate on chocolate” cake from Magpies Bakery in Knoxville because Nicki requested that cake - it’s her favorite.

Chocolate on chocolate.

Judy offered to get my favorite, a cherry pie, but I’m happy to share a chocolate-on-chocolate cake with Nicki.

We celebrated many birthdays together when we were younger, and we’d always planned to do something once we hit sixty, like take a trip together like we used to do on spring break in college, but with the pandemic and life, sixty came and went.

As I’ve been thinking a lot about Nicki and this awful, unexpected illness she’s facing, I recalled something that happened on my 20th birthday with Nicki, Pattie, and Judy. We were sophomores at the University of Tennessee, the four of us sharing a dorm at Clement Hall on the Strip and going to the Smoky Mountains a lot.

(Nicki)

Pattie and Judy had joined sororities that fall of our sophomore year, and they told us that one of the things that happened to new rushees was that they were woken at 5:00 AM by a gaggle of their sorority sisters, dragged out of bed, and taken to IHOP without makeup on and still in their pajamas. Some girls freaked out at leaving the dorm without makeup and messy hair even at 5:00 in the morning.

I had big opinions sororities, and Pattie and Judy knew this but graciously allowed me to be an obnoxious know-it-all anyway. They knew that I would NEVER join a sorority. Neither would Nicki. It’s true Nicki and I had rushed the year before as freshmen but we both dropped out midweek of Rush.

My mother had also said, “I will not be spending a penny for you to make friends. Make your own sorority without dues. You may ‘rush’ but drop out. No pledging.”

I didn’t argue because I didn’t care, and when I rushed I found it overwhelming to walk into rooms in the Panhellenic Building with screaming, stomping, and clapping girls, only to have speed-dating conversations to see if we were a fit. I also thought it was gross that guys got to live in frat houses and girls had the “Panhellenic Building.”

This was the olden days.

So when Pattie and Judy told us about the rushees’ early morning escapades to the International House of Pancakes, I said, “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. Are you kidding me? How dumb is that? So stupid.”

Nicki thought it was funny, and so did Pattie describing panicked girls begging and pleading to put on makeup and brush their hair.

I probably said again from behind a book, “So dumb!” I was already plotting an escape for my junior year abroad in England, placing myself far above any Knoxville shenanigans.

Pattie and Judy didn’t respond to my harsh critique of sorority rush traditions. Still, something must have passed between them and Nicki because, at 5:00 am on November 22nd, I woke to Pattie, Nicki, and Judy standing over my bed with a Sara Lee cherry pie as they shouted, “Happy Birthday! Get up! You’re going to IHOP! NOW!”

I said, “Oh no way!”

“Yes, way! Get up!”

I was hustled down to Pattie’s car (she was the only one of us who had a car) and soon we were all in a booth at IHOP laughing and talking at the crack of dawn.

I remember looking at them in the booth as we ate pancakes and cherry pie, for God’s sake, and I thought, "How lucky am I?" They overrode my fierce critique of the Greek System because they didn’t care—we were friends. I adored them.

(Random picture from a random spring break)

In Clement Hall, Pattie and Judy were on one side of the suite, and Nicki and I were on the other, and we shared a bathroom that joined the two suites in the middle. Once I made macaroni and cheese in an electric hot pot but didn’t have time to eat it and promptly forgot about it. I unplugged the kettle, put it under the sink, and left it. Judy was the cleaner and a few weeks later, she picked up the hot pot and assumed it was filled with water. It was not.

When I came home, Nicki said, “Judy said she didn’t know we had a scientist for a suitemate, studying different molds.”

I apologized like crazy but Judy wasn’t even mad.

***

How it began…

I went to high school with Pattie and Judy, but the year before as freshmen, we all decided to get “potluck” roommates to branch out from our tiny Knoxville Catholic high school and meet new people.

My college roommate, my “potluck” roommate, was “Nicki Nye—Dayton, Ohio”—that’s what the postcard said when it arrived in the summer.

“Your roommate is: Nicki Nye - Dayton, Ohio. Dunford Hall.”

Nothing else. No phone number. We wouldn’t talk until move-in day.

Nicki received the postcard - “Your roommate is: Kerry Madden - Troy, Michigan. Dunford Hall.”

This was a laugh. I wasn’t from Troy, Michigan. I had just graduated from Knoxville Catholic, but my father had taken a job with the Detroit Lions to coach Special Teams, so I went to Troy, Michigan for the latter part of the summer. But I avoided Michigan as long as possible, staying with Pattie, and doing Catholic girl things like riding a school bus four hours across Tennessee to a sweaty Catholic Camp in Montgomery Bell outside of Nashville.

That summer before freshman year, Pattie let me store my things in her garage while I went to Michigan for six weeks until school started and my mother made me get a job at the Purple Cow, scooping ice cream and donuts.

I said, “But I’m leaving for college in six weeks. They won’t hire me.”

Mom said, “Don’t mention college, but two weeks before you have to leave, tell them your scholarship came through at the last minute.”

“What?”

“Don’t ‘what’ me! You’re not sitting around here moping. You’ll be gone soon enough, and you need to make some money.”

So I applied, got the job, and spent many hours at the Purple Cow scooping ice cream and rolling donut holes in powdered sugar before telling the boss - “Um, my scholarship came through.” I was a horrible liar, but he didn’t care.

“How much longer can you work?”

“I leave in two weeks.”

“Great. You’re on the schedule for two more weeks.”

“See,” Mom said. “It all worked out.”

Soon I was back in Knoxville, and Pattie picked me up at the airport. That fall, Pattie’s mother, Mrs. Murphy, taught me how to balance a checkbook after I bounced three checks in quick succession freshman year. Mrs. Murphy worked at the bank and was so nice about it. She made me come into the bank for a lesson on check-chasing and account balances. Mrs. Murphy even helped us move into our dorms, and I was so eager to finally meet my new roommate - Nicki Nye of Dayton, Ohio.

I lived in Dunford, and Pattie lived in Massey on the University of Tennessee campus.

Where did Judy live freshman year? I can’t remember.

Move-in day, Pattie was looking for her roommate, and I was looking for mine.

What would they be like?

Pattie had received a similar roommate postcard: “Your roommate is Sheltonia Sanders - Ripley, Tennessee.”

Pattie soon learned Sheltonia had a boyfriend, and he called Sheltonia, “Champ.”

He would call on their dormitory phone and ask, “Is Champ there?”

The boyfriend turned out to be Sheltonia’s roommate more than Pattie, so Pattie came over to our dorm room to hang out.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

On move-in day, I wore a bandana to create a casual, down-to-earth persona for my new roommate.

Nicki saw me first and later said her first impression was, “She wears a scarf?????”

I wrote about Nicki on another Substack, taking the bus with her to West Knoxville to see “Ordinary People.”

On move-in day, Nicki hung her Rocky Horror poster on our cement walls painted a sickly pale green. She set up her record player, which played cassette tapes and blasted music.

Nicki loved Pat Benatar, the BeeGees, Air Supply, and Barbara Streisand and hung their posters, too. There were twin beds and an oblong desk to share. We introduced ourselves, but I was shy, so we didn’t talk much that first day settling in, and hanging up everything with sticky squares. Nicki shared her sticky squares, and we had to go get more as we wanted to cover every inch of those ugly walls.

We moved into the soundtrack of “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.”

I hung up so many things. I wish I had a picture of Nicki’s side of the room.

Later on that move-in day, Pattie came to find me because Sheltonia’s boyfriend was visiting, which meant Pattie needed to go. Pattie and Nicki hit it off immediately, and we all just clicked. Pattie made Nicki laugh because Pattie could make people laugh, and I’d like to think we all went out to Gus’s for a deli sandwich.

Freshman Year

Freshman year is a lot to explain, but Nicki and I met while quietly grieving huge losses, so we took care of each other.

Here is a story about freshman year.

By the winter semester of freshman year, we were exchanging clothes, but I liked Nicki’s clothes better, and she liked her clothes better too. Nicki had a pair of Calvin Klein jeans that I coveted. I never had name-brand jeans. Mom bought us jeans from JC Penney. Nicki’s jeans fit me great, but she didn’t want to give them up, so she let me borrow them.

I was a good writer, so I offered to help Nicki, an overwhelmed computer science major, write her English papers. We took different sections of 1020 English, but Nicki had a far superior professor. I loved Nicki’s professor from afar because she picked great stories, and I loved helping her write papers about those stories that allowed for a smidge of creative writing. I hated my dry professor who had no personality and approached the teaching of literature in the dullest way possible with no creative writing. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t figure out how to give this professor what she wanted.

Here is the irony. Nicki got an A in her 1020 English class, while I received a C in my 1020 English. I had made an A in the fall in 1010 English, and I would make another A in the spring in 1030 English, but 1020 was a bust.

But Nicki felt so bad about her 1020 English grade she gave me her Calvin Klein jeans, which took the sting of a C away.

Later, Nicki got me through three quarters of “Introduction to Astronomy” when I woke up crying before one huge exam, “Why does Saturn have rings again?”

I also discovered Tennessee Williams freshman year and played Blanche DuBois for an “Introduction to Theatre” in the Humanities Building. Nicki had a white filmy graduation dress that was perfect for Blanche. She let me borrow it, and I found an empty Jack Daniels bottle, cleaned it out, and filled it with iced tea as my prop for Blanche who was ‘lapping’ up Stanley’s liquor all summer like a wildcat.

Nicki helped me run lines and came to see the classroom production, cheering me on, and sympathizing when the redneck boy playing the doctor (who takes Blanche to the insane asylum at the end of the play) called me, “Miss DuBoize” like Boise, Idaho, instead of the French pronunciation of “Miss Dubois” even though I’d told him over and over how to say it right.

Miss DuBOIZE….

GRRRRRRRR…

I didn’t break character but I complained about it later.

He ruined the moment!

Nicki said, “Never mind. You’re a star. You were awesome. The best of all!”

There is a novel of Nicki-Pattie-Judy stories, and somehow I’m going to write them.

Childbirth

But here is one last story. I had a natural childbirth with Flannery at a birth center in Culver City, California. It was rough. I begged for drugs, and the midwife said, “Having the baby will be your painkiller.”

I wanted to leave mid-labor on a Tuesday and come back on Thursday.

I said, “Please, I’ll come back on Thursday. Make it stop.”

Kiffen said, “Breathe. It’s like breathing through a sleeve.”

No, it was not like breathing through a sleeve, and I wasn’t going anywhere, but when Flannery was born, the midwife put him on my chest and he looked right at me lifting his head. I remember this because the midwife said, “Look at your baby looking right at you. Babies don’t do that. He’s staring at you already lifting his head. What a good baby. Wow.”

He had slate blue eyes that bore into my eyes.

Who are you, little baby?

But he already seemed to know me.

So there you are, Mama.

I asked Nicki to be his godmother. Pattie and Judy became his godmothers too. I came home from the birth a few hours after he was born, and I called Nicki, exhausted, and delirious, but I wanted to talk to her on the day he was born, so she would know I had a new baby son.

She said, “How was it?”

I can’t believe I said this, but I did because Nicki repeated the story over the years.

I advised her - “Stay gay.”

She found that hilarious. “Remember what you said the night Flannery was born?”

How could I forget?

“Stay gay.”

Anyway, I feel so lucky to get to go to Knoxville on Friday to be with Nicki, Pattie, and Judy. They have been my lifetime friends.

Judy saved all our lives when she made me pull over after I’d been driving ten hours from Florida on a spring break and was falling asleep somewhere outside of Oak Ridge, just a few more miles to go. Nick and Pattie were asleep in the back, and Judy said quietly, “Pull over now,” and Judy got all of us home.

We four couldn’t be more different, but we’ve stayed connected all these years. I have almost a decade of saved group texts between us, sharing stories and pictures.

We grew up together.

Please send some love and good thoughts for Nicki.

To be continued…