Story the Third, Part the First: On Living Conditions

Having posted two stories therefrom, I believe the time has come to discuss the exact nature of the accommodations shared by Schmedrick and myself during our notorious second year at PCU. To begin, I should explain how the housing system at that estimable edifice operates. First year students are assigned their rooms based on some fairly loose guidelines of their selection. They vary in quality but are, on the whole not bad. After the first year, students organize themselves into housing groups from one to around six people they wish to live with in various sized houses, rooms and apartments. These groups receive a number, randomized within year groups, and then each take a turn choosing where they will live, based on the space still available. Lower numbers go sooner, and are thus more desirable. As it happened, there were 463 groups on the year in question. I was part of a group of six, although that will turn out to be largely irrelevant. This is because we received number 463. As in last. So. There was a series of large gatherings at which the groups' numbers would be called and they would select their housing. We went to the last of these, naturally, and waited while, say, numbers 325 through 440 were called up and picked through the increasingly distasteful refuse of the earlier groups. At this point it was announced that:
A. The university had a '100% occupancy' policy - meaning that, in theory, they needed to fill every space in every room.
B. There was an estimated number of students who would not return next year, due to transfers, dropouts, and... I dunno, being eaten by weasels wearing jetpacks, maybe. Therefore:
C. All the rooms were now filled, and the remaining 20 groups or so might as well not have bothered coming, because there was no space left to give out. Instead, they would wait for those estimated people to do their transferring, dropping out, and feeding of jet-propelled weasels. Then, everyone who had already gone would 'move up' into such spaces as those folks had vacated, and we, the lucky last few, would get whatever those people had already rejected. We would be informed of what those places were a few weeks before the semester started.
This took place over five years ago, and just thinking about it still makes my long for the chance to eviscerate those responsible with a spork. In any case, the appointed time arrived, and we learned where we would be spending the next several months. Firstly, two of our group (entertaining pseudonyms as yet unselected) would be located far across the campus, on the far side of a busy multi-lane thoroughfare. I'm given to understand that one or more students are hit by cars on it in a typical year. Needless to say, we didn't see them very often. The rest of us would be located in a building that was home to a group which, for all that they called themselves a 'Society' is best understood as the agglomeration of the worst aspects of every crap-tastic fraternity you may have encountered in fiction or fact. Let me tell you of them.
At some point in the distant past, they must have been fairly respectable. Their house was, from the outside, a pleasant enough neoclassical brick structure. On the inside, however, it showed clear evidence of a past rich in idiocy and poor in maintenance. It was dingy. Most anything that could be broken had been, and none of it repaired or replaced. It stank - I would estimate it smelled of 50% spilled beer, 30% urine, 10% sweat, and 20% unidentifiable horror. At any given time, counting the partially empty beer cans and bottles in the upstairs hallway would require the fingers of both hands (not that any of them likely every did this at a time when they were sober enough to count, even on their fingers). At one time, there had been a kitchen. Or so I am informed. I am also told that, in the recent past, the inhabitants stripped the kitchen in order to sell the appliances. Apparently the supply of drugs was running low. Yes, the majority of the occupants were almost certainly on drugs. You're probably thinking I'm referring to the 70/20/10 mixture of caffinne, booze, and weed that is typically associated with college students. That is not what I mean. That would have been a vast improvement. So how do I know they were hopped up on something illegal? For one thing, none of them ever slept. I have a fairly odd sleep schedule when there aren't classes to nail it down, so there were times when I was awake at every hour of the day over a week-long period. No matter what time I dared venture from our room, there they were: drinking and being generally noisy in the hall. The same people, for the most part. I consulted with Schmendick, who had a more normal schedule and was thus awake often when I was not. He confirmed that these people did not sleep. Additionally, they were prone to random acts of violence, generally against the various parts of the building not already destroyed. One more story of note along those lines is yet forthcoming. It should come as no surprise that these folks loved to party. However, they apparently saw no reason to go elsewhere to do it. Thus they hosted parties. Every weekend. And by weekend, I mean Thursday afternoon through Monday morning. Needless to say, Shemdrick and I both had morning classes on Friday. 8:30 AM on Friday is one of the few times it was quiet in that hellhole. It's possible the natives slept, but I consider it far more likely that they were simply busy drugging themselves in order to be ready for the party to resume in a few hours. We got to walk, carefully, to avoid the cans and puddles of ichor, downstairs to the door. On the way, we would pass the hired cleaning staff, who would be disgustedly sweeping the piles of crap in the downstairs rooms into piles. We would attempt to convey by our expressions at firstly, we were very sorry they had to deal with this and secondly, it really wasn't our fault. I don't know if they understood. I hope they did.
The parties were quite popular among the sort of person who likes that sort of thing. There were enough such that most evenings during the Party Span, it would be too crowded to get inside and to our rooms. Getting back inside involved going round to the back of the building. First, we would convince a large and likely intoxicated person that yes, we really did live here. Then, we would climb two floors up the fire escape (the point where it started was below the level of the ground floor). We didn't get out much, and once out, we did not lightly return.
The closest thing to a positive memory of our time there was going out to the aforementioned fire escape and climbing the last flight up to the roof. No one else seemed to go there, it had a great view of the campus, and it gave much needed detachment from the noise below.
Given these remarkable conditions, it is perhaps unsurprising that many of my stories come from this time period.
Next Time, in Part Two: Thin Walls Make Poor Neighbors