Stranger in a Strange Land

Senior year I lived with two of my best friends in a one bedroom college-owned apartment. Amanda had the bottom bunk, I was on the top, and Rachel slept like a princess in a free-standing single bed. We lived most of our dorm lives outside the bedroom in our spacious living room or huddled together in the dining area studying. It was a small apartment by almost any standard, but it was a first for me and we felt very grown up.

Rachel and I met a few weeks before school started, she and I both knew Amanda but didn’t know each other. She’d spent the previous Spring semester studying in Spain, where she had met and befriended Gabi, a very handsome theme-park enthusiast. She helped Gabi secure a job a “Paramount’s King’s Dominion” that summer and it lasted until the early fall. In September, Gabi came to visit us in Williamsburg we were all taken with his rich Spanish accent, Jordan Catalano face, and charming old world chivalry.

We went out to dinner with him that night and drank beers and laughed until we cried. “Oh, Gabi!” Amanda and I squealed as we dropped him off at the bus station, “Move in with us!”

“Okay!” Gabi said then he got on the bus and drove away.

Amanda and I might have exchanged a look, but I don’t suspect we did. We tossed the suggestion out half seriously and I wasn’t willing to commit to either way.

It turned out the exchange program that placed Gabi at King’s Dominion was kind of screwing him over. (He operated the Rebel Yell, in case you were wondering. I asked him if it was the backwards or the forwards one, I think my knowledge of Virginia roller coasters made him fall in love with me a little bit.) The company deducted housing expenses from his paycheck, but once the summer ended and the park closed on weekdays, he was making much less than a week in his hotel room cost.

So, by the end of the week we’d met Gabi, he packed his bags in Doswell, snuck out of town and was in our apartment, unpacking his stuff on our futon. He tried in vain to get a job in Williamsburg but without a work visa he came up empty and got discouraged. Instead he spent his days watching the movies of the month on the college station and episodes of “De Golden Gurls.” According to Gabi, the Spanish voiceover used of Dorothy sounds nothing like Bea Arthur, “Is Dorothy a man?” he asked me one afternoon.

There were a lot of great things about having Gabi as an extra roommate – he’s an exceedingly kind friend, sometimes he made us dinner, he did the dishes better than any of us could, he made me speak Spanish constantly (which helped contribute to my A in Spanish 201 that semester), he was really funny, and helped me online shop! (“That skirt esta fea. Buy this instead.”)

Being away from home took its toll on Gabi – he got homesick and probably bored out of his mind. One afternoon, on a lark, the four of us sat around watching Crossroads on the campus movie channel. We all made fun of Britney Spears and had a good couple of laughs. Then Amanda went to the library, I went to the coffee shop and Rachel studied in the kitchen. Gabi watched the movie again. I came home the next day and the movie was on again, “Look what’s on!” Gabi said, “the funny movie, let’s watch it again.”

“Sorry, Gabi, I think I’ll pass.”

The thrill of having this exotic stranger camped out in our living space waned for all of us, including Gabi, who eventually grew tired of Britney Spear’s crumby acting and Bea Arthur’s baritone; our small apartment was made ever smaller when it was split among the four of us.   And then, just like that, he was gone. Off to spend 10 days in 12 Florida theme-parks. Off to return to southern Spain, to finish architecture school so that he could eventually build roller coasters of his own. And once again there were three of us…until the next wayward soul landed on the futon. But this one didn’t have a sexy accent or a willingness to do dishes. This one drank our orange juice and peed in the shower.