other peoples’ roommates

While I douse myself in the Medea-fire of last-minute Courtney and write 40 other musicky and art reviews in the between-space of the next week and a half, please accept my humble offering, the story of someone else’s roommate.
My ole partner in crime “Ben” was a performance artist who got into the Museum School in Boston, a mondo fancy and supertuff art school for hyper-gifted not-fuckups, despite the fact that many of his pieces involved habanero peppers and full-frontal nudity. He was also fixated on becoming a rockstar hybrid of ziggy stardust and jarvis cocker, and operated on 150 percent sharp and debauched at all times, one time drew a black star in eyeliner over his right eye and wore it for like three days straight. It looked totes fresh with his Izod polo.
His roommate was another story. BEN was living with this other Museum school dude, “Dustin,” who was not just performance-arting, but going through a serious Buddha phase, one that made Billy Corgan’s reverent love for god appear about as pure as whoofing taco bell seven-layer gorditas up his nostrils. Dustin was dick-deep in the symbolism of purity; he shaved his head, was eating a macrobiotic diet, refused to wear anything but unbleached cotton or linen, and had discarded every last piece of furniture, draperies, and clothing from his bedroom—with the exception of his white votive candle collection, which he had carefully arranged on the floor in the shape of an OM SYMBOL.
BEN thought it was kinda monastic but fuck it they were in art school, and it was not going to stop him and his other roommates from having a booze party while Dustin was out. They threw a rager, full of pent-up 19 y.o. art kids, dropout kids, punk kids that used to hang out at “THE BEACH” (massholes, back me up on this one) and stamp out their cigs on their own hands, “kids” who dropped out of the Museum school after one crazy night at The Factory in the ’70s and had been nursing their junk habit ever since. They were partying and they were partying in Dustin’s room. Even some of the Mass Art kids were invited. Maybe Tinuviel was there, and Aimee Mann, I don’t know. It was too crowded to keep tabs.
I’ve long wondered how Dustin felt when he came home to the party, opened the door to his bedroom, and discovered an unknown couple drunk and FUCKING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE VOTIVE CANDLE OM. I would pay to see the horror. He ran downstairs after screaming “WHAT THE FUCK” and left for a couple days. When he returned, he’d snapped out of “Buddhist” mode and, no shit, started an aw-shucks kind of feyish indie pop band, in the vein of Belle & Sebastian.
TRUE STORY