You can't have one without the other.

Well, I guess I lied. This post will not be about any real roommates, or roommates at all. In fact, it's only about a room. A great room. An old room. Mine. Well, it became mine. Originally, it was mine and my brother's. But then he left for college, and even though I was just a year behind him, I continued to live at home because I went to college in my hometown. Many people don't do much with their rooms. It's a place to sleep in, possibly to work or study in, to store clothes and other various belongings in, to change or get dressed in, and I guess to, on certain rare occasions, to actually hang out in. That last one was always (and still is) the main purpose of my room. Even when my brother and I shared it, it was already quite different than rooms occupied by other boys our age. We actually put real art on our walls. We had this great stereo. We had model cars placed neatly on the top shelf (for display as opposed to play). We had a small growing collection of books and cds here and there. But the main thing, the real thing that made our room so much different than the rest was our lighting. We didn't just use the overhead light fixture coming out of the center of our ceiling. We used lamps. And not just one desk lamp or bed lamp, but both, and closet lamps, and corner lamps, and window lamps and whatever lamps. Lamps galore. And we also had twinkle lights or string lights or whatever they're called. Also, on the ceiling were hundreds of glow-in-the-dark star stickers. When my brother and I were very young, we got this mammoth package of these things and we put them all over our ceiling, with real constellations and everything. When we turned off the lights at nighttime, because there were so many, it was like we were in a sort of planeterium. I was beginning to really notice this stuff as I got older and I loved all of it.

Well, like I said, my brother eventually moved out and I stayed in the room for a good, I don't know, five more years I guess. Something like that. And during those years, I went to town. I was constantly covering the walls with all sorts of neat things--postcards, posters, photographs, things that normally don't go on walls like towels or linens, etc. I even painted an outline of a dinosaur on the wall. I took out the bright bulbs in the ceiling light fixture so there was never that real bright central light again. It was certainly not dim, not at all. I had plenty of lights all over the place that helped accentuate every nook and crannie in the room. I had a reading chair--this great golden easy chair I found at a thrift store for only fifteen bucks. I had a loveseat-sized couch that I got for free cos someone was getting rid of it. I had this old desk that my aunt gave to me when she moved. My bed, for most of the time, was a bunk bed that my brother and I had had since forever. I stayed on the bottom for a long time, but then, to help with space, I took out the lower bunk and moved my couch in place of it, so it was below the top bunk. This was all near the end. I had a turntable and receiver and speakers and my record collection was getting bigger and bigger. I even had a cassette deck and plenty of tapes to play. I had a goldfish in a small aquarium with a little castle in it. My small library was getting to be just that--a small library, literally. And the stars were still there of course, but I had eventually obtained two blacklights, so I could "charge" up the stars and make them glow even brighter than any incandesent light ever could. And this was all in my average sized room at the end of the hall.

There are many reasons someone might "go through all this" to have such room. They could simply be one of those people who love interior design and refuse to have their living quarters be a place where they can only do the things I mentioned early on in this post--the essentials. Or they could be a bit compulsive and can't help themselves--everything has to be in a certain place and look a certain way and it has to change and so on and so forth. Possibly they could have plenty of friends who also have awesome rooms and they're all doing it because it's a trend and they want to be cool. Or maybe they love to entertain, and they view their room as a gallery of sorts when people come to visit. For me, it was some of these things and more. I always viewed my room as place where my friends and I could come hang out and sit in the couch or the golden chair and play a record and just enjoy ourselves. I also a viewed it a sort of museum or, yes, even a gallery. I'm certainly not saying I had any fantastic relics or artifacts in there. No, it was all just my pictures and mail all over the walls, all very personal in fact. But nonetheless, it was quite curious still, to see and look at so much stuff all over the place. And that's what I loved most about it.

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That room is no longer. The physical room still exists but it certainly does not look like it once did. A year ago, I moved out because I transfered to a different school somewhere else. Immediately, my parents wanted to rent it out. So that meant I had to basically strip the room clean. It was very odd taking down every single thing. There are two closets in the room, one for my brother and I. I was told I could still use one of them to store things in. I used my brother's. My closet was gutted. After I left, I found out my parents had painted the room and filled in all the holes in the walls. I expected the holes, but they painted over all the stars on the ceiling and also my dinosaur. The dinosaur, sure I guess it could have gone. I was thinking maybe whoever the new tennant would be could simply put a small poster over it, no big deal. But the stars, I mean, it's kind of dark you know. I'm not one to shy away from poetic imagery and when I found they were painted over, I thought of the light or something leaving that room forever. Nothing left. Not even some silly stars on the ceiling. I'm not mad at my folks or anything. I was at first, but to them, it was simply a room to make some money off of since I was leaving. That's fine. I know I'm in the minority when it comes to rooms. To most people, rooms are just places to stay, and nothing more. They're four walls, maybe a window, a bed, a closet, a small desk perhaps, one door. But to me, a room is so much more. So very much more.