Robert Berry's Web Site

When I started at the University of South Carolina in August of 1983, I was assigned to a dormitory called LaBorde, one of the buildings known collectively as The Towers. They’re not there anymore — they were torn down last year — but The Towers were then the rock-bottom dorms, the slums of undergraduate housing. From the outside, these buildings looked like giant cinder blocks; they were covered entirely with a featureless brickwork lattice with no visible windows.

These buildings were also known as “the Honeycombs,” a name I think appropriate: the experience of living in one was, I imagine, similar to that of an insect larva occupying a cell in a beehive. This was the view from my room:

There wasn’t much to see inside, either. The room was just barely large enough for two small beds on opposite walls, two small built-in desks, and a couple of closets. There was no such thing as privacy, either in the room itself or in the communal bathroom shared by the entire floor. The atmosphere was crowded, noisy, and beer-soaked.

I don’t know how much of this is true, but at the time, I heard that The Towers had been constructed in the 1950s as temporary structures, intended to last no more than twenty years. It was certainly true that the walls were built from cinder blocks that were stacked directly on top of one another, rather than staggered as with typical masonry; this, I was told, was to make the buildings easier to demolish. (Back then, the thought of seeing The Towers demolished was just a pleasant daydream; but in time, the Internet makes all things possible.)

My roommate, Steve, was probably a decent enough guy, but he and I couldn’t have been less compatible. I found him obnoxious: he smoked, drank, talked too loud, and listened to hard rock music. He, on the other hand, probably found me weird — especially my record collection, which included almost no rock music, but instead was heavy on orchestral film soundtracks. (He once asked me, “Do you listen to anything except opera?”)

At night I would lie awake listening to Steve snoring. The snoring always started quietly and built gradually to a volume I wouldn’t have thought possible for a human; it would climax in a bout of coughing, and then, as if this had unblocked something in his brain, Steve would often talk in his sleep. He would speak some cryptic phrase, often startling me fully awake and leaving me staring at the ceiling. (On one occasion he exclaimed “If they know you, they’ll get you!”; another time, he recited a series of numbers. Either Steve had weird, paranoid dreams, or he was a CIA agent.)

I’m aware that these kinds of living arrangements are a longstanding collegiate tradition. And my feelings about The Towers are not universal; there are those who remember them fondly, and consider their time there the best years of their lives. But it wasn’t for me, and it was clear within a few days that I had to get out of there. I talked to my parents and obtained their permission to request reassignment to a better (more expensive) dorm, though they probably didn’t know which one I had in mind.

Shortly after arriving at school, my misery had been compounded when I visited my best friend, The Artist, and saw his dorm room. An honors student, he had been given preferential treatment and had been placed in an apartment on the Horseshoe, the nicest housing complex on campus. He shared an apartment with three other guys; each of them had a private bedroom, and they shared a spacious living area, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a pleasant balcony.

I visited the housing office and determined that there was an open slot (just one) on the Shoe — in fact, it was in an apartment just one flight of stairs away from The Artist’s apartment. I had to have that room.

Transfers were not permitted during the first three weeks of the semester, so I had to pay my dues in LaBorde for that long. (It was long enough; indeed, that three-week period still stands out in my memory as an era of my life.) After those first three weeks, transfers were allowed on a first-come, first-served basis. And since there was only one room available on the Horseshoe, that meant I had to be first.

And that’s why, at 8:00 PM one September evening in 1983, I showed up at the door of the campus housing office with a pillow, a Walkman, a book, some snacks, and various other supplies. I was early: the office wasn’t due to open for another twelve and a half hours, and there was no sign of anyone else prepared to wait that long. But somebody had to be first, and on this occasion I was determined that it would be me. My survival depended on it.