College Dorm Stories

I remember one night when everyone who was home in the above 6 buildings all started mooning out the windows. This stuff usually happened on Sunday nights.

sunny yummy engineering geek.

Luckily my dorm was the one nearest the hot truck.

Where there two hot trucks? Wasn't there one near Bach Hall (?) the womens dorm? I live in Clara Dickson freshman year. I was super poor and didn't spend much money at the hot truck.

I think there may have been one near Balch, but I'm not sure. What I remember now was that there were two trucks on west campus, one was the Hot Truck, that had all the Italian meatball and sausage subs, and that kind of food, and then there was the food truck that had burgers, hot dogs, sandwiches. Louie's I think. I preferred that one, because I didn't like the Hot Truck food with the gooey motzarella and the super-thick Italian toasted bread. Everyone else's tastes seemed to be the opposite, though.

There's also an article about the hot truck:

*mozzarella

The hot truck was operated by Johnny's Big Red Grill? I think. Need to look at the article.

R4 Actually one of the comments under the article says: "We loved tuna sandwiches from Louie’s truck parked outside Balch Hall."

Nothing salacious to report. My roommate freshman year was this absurdly handsome and ripped Italian-American guy. He used to walk around shirtless. Being in the presence of such a hot guy on a daily motivated me to lose a ton of weight and I became a twink slut the following year. I still think about Tony.

I remember my roommate had a girl staying in our dorm room for a while who'd been raped. It was really thoughtful of him to do that but then he tended never to be there, which meant there was this total stranger living in the room curled up in his bed for hours, who was traumatized and had nothing to say. he never asked me if it was okay for him to let her stay in our room. My roommate and I didn't get along, he was a goofy jock from Cleveland and he was a slob who never cleaned and threw all his dirty clothes into his closet for weeks. But we ended up getting along after I screamed at him one day.

The guys who lived next door to the room, and another guy who lived next door to them, are still close friends of mine.

Oh, yeah--and his dad used to call in the middle of the night to check up on him and make sure he wasn't out somewhere. It drove me fucking crazy.

I was still pretty naive in college. I had a single dorm room. Occasionally, the cute guy across the hall would knock on my door late at night to see if I wanted his cigarettes, claiming he only smoked while he was studying. About the fourth time, when he knocked on my door offering his Marlboro Lights wearing nothing but a towel…I got the hint. I invited him in, and had my first gay experience. We hooked up a few more times that semester, even though we both had girlfriends. I’ve often wondered whatever happened to him.

My freshman roommate was a very tall naturally built redhead, stunning and eccentric but friendly. He had a huge dick. We wore the same jean size. He took to borrowing my clothes. He was a cock tease. Or maybe it was generous. He said casually, "Hey I wore your Levis yesterday. But just so you know, I wore them commando." Then he winked at me. Nothing ever happened between us and I was a closet case freshman year and fucking women.

R11 Lucky

We became very friendly and got along great after we didn't live together any more.

I was not sexually active in college, but curious. I had to pass through a big corner rotunda called Woolsey Hall every night on the way to the music annex. It was an entrance to a concert hall. One night, not a concert night, I heard sounds from the basement men's bathroom. I went down to explore. As I got near the door, I heard many stall doors slam. I walked in. Every stall ( and there may have been as many as 15 or 20) was occupied. Three men were leaning/ sitting on the edge of sinks, two of them smoking cigarettes. I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore, but I was probably 19 at the time and had no concept how or what to do in that situation, so I scurried out. I wasted some prime sexual years in college because of growing up in a sex negative home and religion. I did my best to make up for it a few years later

If this way Yale, the GAY IVY, its kind of staggering you were so deeply repressed and clueless.

It could've been Connecticut or Kansas, R16.

ah ha

I was raped, fairly violently, in the ass, by a (self-identifying, I guess) straight classmate from some or other calculus class. This is at a non-Ivy in Boston. It was painful, way beyond anything I’ve ever felt during “normal” sex with a guy. My underpants had wet bloodstains when I woke up in the morning after a mostly restless night. It remains the most traumatic experience of my life. Decades later now and I’ve yet to maintain a romantic relationship for more than two or three months. And I 1000% attribute that to what happened to me back then.

I wasn’t able to move off-campus and out of that very dorm for another seven months or so.

After I came out, must have been about 1983?, twice I got notes under my door from shy closet cases wanting to experiment with me. I didnt take the offers because my dance card was filled with hotter closeted jocks who were certainly not shy in sex. Looking back now, I regret being a meanie who avoided tenderness. Also it took balls for those two to WRITE it down. I kept their secrets.

R19 geez I'm sorry to hear that. Why not go to therapy now!? They know a lot more about overcoming trauma.

I’m an old woman. I was a freshman at UCLA when there were separate “ wings “ of the building for girls and boys . I was very young, naive, with no sexual experience .

I went to this guys room for a study session . I thought we were going to study . I know I’m a moron . So he makes a move on me, and I am genuinely surprised .

What I’ve never forgotten was his explanation , “ I’m a very tactile person .” Go figure. Age of the innocence,

Oh wow, r19. I’m sorry that happened to you.

Have already posted about losing my virginity with the hot guy across the hall in my dorm at UC Santa Cruz in the early 1980s.

95% of the dorms were co-ed, with shared bathrooms, so there was zero nudity to speak of. The campus had no fraternities or sororities, so that scene was absent, which was good. No hazing, panty raids, or crap like that. There were no sports teams. Nevertheless, it was a nerdy hippie crowd with plenty of weed and hallucinogens like magic mushrooms and LSD. It was a physically huge campus, remote from town, spread out through stunningly beautiful Redwood forest up in the mountains/hills, with views of the Pacific Ocean. You had to sort of hike across campus to get to class from your dorm. It was a fabulous setting for this Biology major.

There was no central student union building, which limited social activities. Most students I knew were lonely and depressed and would rather have been accepted to Berkeley or UCLA. Students having sex on campus either had coveted single rooms, or met in shower stalls (as I did -- good times!) or waited until their room mate was away. Not many guys were out of the closet in 1980 there, including me. As a result, I fell "in love" with several straight guys who'd become close friends and was constantly broken hearted. Similarly, I missed cues from guys who I would realize years later were attracted to me. A lot of girls flirted with me because I was seemingly single. My dorm had a rare single-sex floor for (horny) girls. I was not accustomed to being sexually attractive to anyone. A fag-hag type dorm RA from SF gave me a makeover. New haircut, wardrobe from a thrift store, and I got contact lenses with student loan money. I grew a mustache. Little did I know that I looked like a Castro Clone. Many students were loners and/or just lacked social skills. Until there was a tragic DUI incident that killed three students, the campus actually sponsored alcohol-infused happy hours in each dorm every Friday. We were all underage and most of us were unaccustomed to drinking.

Aside from the excitement of covert sexual exploration with a few other guys, my best memories of dorm life were "hall shroom-outs" in which almost everyone - the "innocent Catholic girls" included - took magic mushrooms. These often coincided with "Vice Nights" in which there was a different drink or drug, or porn magazine or group massage going on in various rooms. You could hear stereos playing Pink Floyd, The Moody Blues, the Beatles White Album, etc.. while tripping in a new universe. Midnight hikes during full moons in the Redwood forest were wonderful and surreal. There were also psychedelic murals all over campus, some featuring scenes from the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland.

I also had to work a part-time job in a Chemistry lab to pay to be there. Needless to say, I did not excel academically while at UCSC living in the dorms. But I wouldn't trade my experiences for anything else. My guess is that similar scenes played out on college campuses all around the world in the early 1980s.

Damn, R19. I really hope you have had some help working through the trauma. I'm so sorry that happened to you.

I was an RA in a coed dorm. It was an incredibly benign situation. Years later, FOX network was doing promos for the show “Undeclared” as a crazy show about “Life in a Coed dorm!!” as though it was some sexual free for all. No. It’s guys with bed head and morning breath and women in modest bathrobes and towel turbans.

I lived in an all-male dorm the year before and it was all engineering geeks and exchange students.

engineering "geeks" at top schools can be QUITE non geek. they can be hot and handsome. just brainiacs as well.

My college dorm was organized vertically around stairwells leading to suites with two bedrooms, a common space with a fire place and an en-suite bathroom. You could combine them into larger suites by opening a fire door. Recently, in order to comply with the ADA, they tore out the suites and stairwells and replaced everything with single bedrooms off of long hallways that can be reached by elevators.

Sad.

I remember being taken out for my 19th birthday when the drinking age was 21, going to the bar in the freshman student union with a bunch of people, and drinking 19 shots during the evening. Wonder I survived.

Also I still have a scar on my finger from the same student union, from when I took one of the glasses at the drink machine, at lunch, and held it under the nozzle, and it cracked in my hand. I doubt they use glass today for drinks.

There was a huge apparatus set up in all the eating establishments on this huge campus for washing everything, and they didn't use paper or plastic (except for the industrial-strength trays, that people used to sled on in the winter). I worked in campus dining for a while. It was all real dishes, glasses, cups, metal utensils, washed in very hot water on assembly lines. My job was washing pots, in a line with a lot of other students. We washed them using vert hot water, wore heavy rubber gloves and rubber aprons, and used tons of Ajax. The steam was unbelievable.

One thing I do remember about my dorm was carpet surfing. Kids would wet down the carpets in the long hallways, add laundry soap, get a running start, and slide on their feet to the end, trying not to fall down.

Carpeted hallways in a dorm? 😱🤮

R31 Is that unusual?

It was a very basic, flat carpet.

Every dorm I lived in had carpeted hallways.

I was bisexual in college and had an affair with a Vassar Girl. They had "white angels" women in white uniforms who manned a desk at the entry to every dorm, every evening. wearing a white uniform.

so white I typed it thrice. oopsie

I still have a scar on the top of my head from where I stood up straight into the corner of the wall-mounted microwave in our common room and split my head open. The school nurse just tied my hair together to close the wound up. I tell people I got a traumatic brain injury in college to make them think I was a football jock now

The school nurse? You split your head open, how come you didn't go to a doctor or the hospital? That sounds like expert medical care right there.

r38 I didn't even know my college had a medical office until this incident - she said she could call an ambulance et cetera and I could go get stitches, or just do this. Stitches sounded terrifying to my 18-ear-old self so I just did what she said. And I didn't die so I guess she was alright. My hair covers the scar - when I've buzzed my hair down it's visible but otherwise it's hidden

Darfur Community College?

Ground floor shared dorm room with a standalone metal water fountain in the hallway, diagonally outside my room. Some drunk and raging frat ape gets mad because his girlfriend on the adjacent dorm-wing kicked him out. He goes tearing down our hallway screaming half-articulated obscenities and then RIPS the water fountain right off its supply pipe. I heard the entire thing happen from behind my door at 2am on a Saturday night. The torrent of water was instant, the flood was massive, it took over an hour for security to get the right plumbing/tech guy out to shut off the water.

The entire floor reeked of mold for the rest of the year and I had weird headaches until it was over. Yeah.. I lived off-campus after that.

R39 I don't think the issue is whether it left a scar or not.

It's whether you were in any danger from "splitting your head open" (which doesn't really seem to be what happened) and whether the nurse's response was appropriate for your health. Probably should have had a doctor look at it, if it needed stitches. And had exams for concussion.

Freshman year in Men's Hall I ticked the box for a roommate. From the southern part of the set, they put me in with a guy from the northern part of the state. Chunky wrestler, ugly face. Never thought a thing sexually about him. We were never close, hardly friends. But one night after about seven months we sat on his bed and ..... had some sort of sexual encounter, I don't recall much, probably beat each other off while I wondered why am I doing this, this guy is ugly. I don't remember anything else the rest of the year, we never mentioned it or did it again. Years passed, I read he had gone to jail. He was son of a big-time tire dealer upstate and the company had a state contract for huge industrial tires .... which hey delivered, then stole, then sold back to the state. About four times! They got caught by recording tire numbers. A few years ago I looked him up on The Google. First thing up was his obituary. No mention of his time in jail. Died at 65, survived by widow and three children.

R39 Sorry, not trying to sound like ti's such a big deal, just explaining why I was surprised.

*it's

I was an RA for Junior and Senior year to help pay for college. Put a serious crimp in my college life and kept me in the closet. Would NOT do it again. Wasn't worth it, though guys on my hall have randomly contacted me over the years and told me how important I was to their lives.

Lived a straight life - including a girlfriend - except for a few guys that wanted to try it. I must have had a sign on my back that said "Will Experiment." They were one-time events and very unsatisfying.

I was so fucked up that I purposely stayed away from anyone that I thought was gay. And lusted after and fell in love with the straight ones.

Now I'm thinking of more and more stories and events that I haven't thought about in years.

R46 - Please post as you remember 'em!

I was at college late 70s-early 80s. There was a Gay Alliance that attracted a few students. A lot of people were closeted. Not easy to make people understand what that was like, at that particular time. There was a guy I partly thought was attracted to me, and I was more or less attracted to him (not a big crush, or anything) but we never mentioned it. It was such a hidden thing that people didn't feel comfortable about. Caused a huge amount of anxiety because of the lack of communication about it. I never had a gay relationship at college, but one of my friends came out as gay then almost died taking an overdose. Strange times. Everything seemingly fine on the surface.

Most of us came out of the '50s-'60s mentality as kids, all the social norms, good manners, look good, make good. But also there was the reality and everybody was horny and looking at porn, making dirty jokes, talking about sex constantly but in a superficial way--and there was all that '70s humor, and culturally things were a lot of fun--movies, concerts. More fun than now.

There were 6 gay men and women on my floor freshman year, it turns out. I knew of 4 of them during that time. Met my first partner the 2nd week of classes.

Our dorm had single rooms instead of doubles, which may be why we had a higher LG rate.

That's all I've got.

Another memory, this one funnier. The juice incident.

I didn’t have the best time in college, in part because there was worsening financial pressure back at home and so I loaded up off-campus and work-study jobs to make it through financially. First two years, I worked in the dining-hall dishroom. It was WORK and I always needed a shower and total clothing change after, but usually we (crew) bonded and we had some fun moments when we could.

There were a coup of asshole frats who liked to “juice” us dishroom workers. You (diner) would put your finished lunch tray on a conveyor belt, anonymously, and it would glide down to us (crew) to deal with. These guys liked to fill plastic drinking glasses up with juice, and then do a trick where you turn them upside down onto the tray and the juice all stays in the glasses. We (crew) then had seconds to deal with the tray of upside down juice glasses coming thru the conveyor belt, and we’d inevitably end up soaked in juice. “Ha ha ha.”

One day Angela (my fave co worker) came in quick and said “Juice situation in 15 seconds.”

Two of us did the thing we’d sworn we would do: I grabbed an empty tray quick, passed it to Dominic, and he was in position. As the frat boy placed his tray filled with upside down juice glasses onto the belt, Dominic flung the empty tray backwards down the belt, hard. It smashed into frat boy’s tray full of upside down juice glasses (most of them grape of course) and those glasses went airborne and all over him. Dominic dove quick like a monkey under the whole belt apparatus and up the other side and hid in the back. Frat boy, covered in a purple slosh of juice, stormed into the kitchen. His buddies out there were hooting and screaming with laughter. He saw me first and attacked me, shoving me into a wall and screaming at me. Supervisor saw something was going on and she rushed in, threatened to have him reported and charged with assault. He said a few profane things and then stormed off wet and purple. I know this sounds like a “… and then everybody applauded” tale but this was the rare time in my life where such a story actually happened.

Fortunately I was in a green dishwashing uniform with cap and was wearing my old eye glasses instead of the usual contacts. Saw the guy a few times around campus after that, but he didn’t recognize me.

Love it r51.

BTW, this was the early 70s at a state college. I can't imagine how different it was in the 80s and 90s.

Such a waste trying to be the best little boy in the world.

I already mentioned I worked for dining, as a dishwasher, but I also worked as a short order cook, and washing lab equipment, and a few other campus jobs. The weirdest one was the first, when I had to work at the gym. Back then people didn't wear their own gym clothes at the gym (I've totally forgotten why. It must have been a rule.) They were given a set of clean shorts, a jockstrap, a T shirt and socks over a counter. It sounds crazy now. When you were done with the gym clothes, you returned them and they were washed (somewhere else). I had to work in the 'cage' where these things were given out and returned, with a couple of townie guys who were real throwbacks. Anyhow soon I was taken out of there and given a "better job."

This was not a co-ed gym, in those days (late '70s). My job was, sort of, security. I was supposed to hang out in the changing areas, pretending to be going to the gym, or something, and just walk around making sure nobody was stealing anything out of someone's coat or pants, or whatever. I wasn't given a uniform or a badge, I was supposed to be undercover (there had been a lot of thefts). I was only 18.

One day, a guy I used to say hi to sometimes, said to me, "What are you doing, anyway?" and I told him. He said, "I thought you were checking out the guys." It never even occurred to me anyone would think this. But it was a terrible job, anyway (just very easy, since I didn't do a thing except walk around for three hours or so, after class). So I quit and I told the boss why. "Never thought of that," he said.

[quote] Such a waste trying to be the best little boy in the world.

R53 Well, it worked out OK for Andrew Tobias (see link).

I once lamented the same thing to an ex, who said, “Who knows, you might have died of AIDS if you had been sexually active then.”

I discovered in therapy that all the trouble when young made me a stronger, more resilient person later in life.