Glory Days: Closet Bar

              “I’m so happy that you applied,” I said excited to my roommate. 

              “It is the perks of being a sophomore in the dorms,” she replied.

              She had applied for us to move rooms to the corner dorm for the second semester of school. One had become vacant, and well anyone could apply, but seniority ruled in most cases. And while I was only a measly freshman, she was a sophomore and reigned over the rest of the first year students on our floor. See the corner rooms were two dorm rooms put together; twice the size, twice the fun right?

We started the moving process from one end of the building to the next and quickly made the new room our own. We even had a mini kitchen of sorts set up in there, with a bookcase that we stored all of our “dorm safe” appliances. We had the futon couch aimed at our television for the living room flare. But the greatest attribute to our room was our closet bar.

There were two small indented rectangles in the far wall each about a yard wide with a pole to hang clothes on running along the top. They were floor to ceiling in height and had doors that slid from one side to the other. I lived only ten miles from home and didn’t really need to keep my clothes at the dorm. So we had the bright idea to turn our dorm room closet into a bar. Because why the hell not? We were nineteen at the time, so of course it was a good idea.

We had glasses, straws, shakers, liquor...lots of liquor. Ice buckets, shot glasses, beer bongs, and more liquor. Juice, pop, beer, and still more liquor. It was stocked to the cramped capacity that the crawl space could hold. But best of all, it was hidden from the world when the closet door was closed. We would have friends over and open it wide for the shock and awe effect.

Behind the futon sat a wooden beer pong table that could be flipped out at a moment’s notice. The desk converted into the mixology lab for cocktails. We were the party central on the weekends. Friends came from other dorm rooms across the building and campus, not to mention the stragglers from the other universities.

At the time these parties seemed small to me, because we would only have maybe four to eight people in our room. We would jam the music, at an appropriate decibel so we didn’t get a noise complaint, whilst lobbing little plastic balls at red solo cups. Bob Casey shot races and cards were always a part of the festivities as well.

We lived life back then, with not a care in the world. It didn’t bother us if we had things going on the next day. We almost always got to them, whether it was family functions, classes, work, or school events. And we usually had a half smirk on our face reliving the fun we had from the night before.

College was a time where we got to be adults while still being kids at heart. We could experience the freedoms of being away from the watchful eye of home, while still pretending we were the mature grown-ups that we tried desperately to convince our parents we were years before.

I was involved with only two groups on campus the entire time that I went there. I kept my so-called partying lifestyle quiet from those groups. Yet after I moved out of the dorms and found an apartment, I found these two worlds colliding.

I was referred to by people in the music department as the partier or that party girl. And I hadn’t met any of them until after I was out of the dorms and into my own place. I sure as hell hadn’t partied with any of them before. Yet they somehow knew about our dorm room merrymaking. I couldn’t figure it out then and still can’t to this day. Not a single one of my friends was in the music department, nor were they friends with anyone in it. So that wasn’t the connection. Yet they somehow knew.

              

I was referred to this way for quite some time, feeling like a local partying celebrity of sorts. Years later, after I was no longer in college, I had a conversation with one of my present roommate’s friends.

              “You don’t even remember me from before, do you?” He asked me one afternoon with a grin on his face.

              “What do you mean?” I replied to his rather random question.

“I was over at your party dorm when we were freshmen.”
Slightly taken aback, I pondered over when he could have been there. I knew most of the people that were in our dorm room that year. Like I said previously, our new room was big, but still not that big. We only had a handful of people in there at a time.

He went on to tell me that I was known as one of the coolest freshmen for our closet bar in our dorm room. Word had spread from people that had been there. People had wanted to experience it, but didn’t know my roommate or I to get invited.

I still don’t understand it to this day. We were just having fun. Both of us liked to play host, so it was only natural that we would have the liquor supply to please everyone’s fancy. And that we did, and then some.

As I look back at that moment in time now, I’m not ashamed at our excessive partying. I’m not mortified by the fact that we were probably immature. I am in fact proud of the way we handled ourselves. We never missed work. We never got in trouble with law enforcement, nor did we even hear a word from our RA. Nothing ever got out of hand. We never even experimented, as they say, with any form of illegal substances. It was just us, friends, and our closet bar. We were considered adults, even though we were still teenagers, having a good time. I wouldn’t change a thing because they are some of my best memories. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.