How to Freak Out Your American Roommate

The first time you meet your first roommate, you are jetlagged from the nineteen hours of flying to the United States. You barely register the names of his mother and father and siblings as he introduces them to you. But you do register how friendly and chatty they all seem to be. It strikes you, also, how everything he says appears to end with an inflection, so that he always seems to be asking a question. And when his family leaves, he tells you how he thinks it’s awesome? That you are like from Africa? And everything? You do not understand why being from Africa is “awesome,” but you smile and say thank you. He tells you then that he is from Maine, and when you reciprocate by telling him that this is “awesome,” he looks at you with a mildly puzzled smile and asks why. “Exactly,” you do not say.

You are wide awake that night when he begins to unpack his suitcases. And since you have nothing else to do, you ask if there is anything you can do to help. You install his television and his refrigerator, both of you, and he tells you that, although he understands you might want to buy your own fridge, he has brought a relatively big one so that you might share his, since he figured you couldn’t possibly bring one all the way from Africa. You tell him—and you really mean it—that this is very considerate of him, that it’d be nice to share his fridge. You can use his electric kettle as well, he says, and his printer, too. And, oh, his mom had gotten him a lot of snacks—too many, in fact—so you can help yourself to those as well. “Oh, nice!” you respond, laughing.

It takes him hours to arrange his closet and bookshelf. Even though it looks like a lot of work, he declines your help. When he is done, you realize why. He has ordered the clothes in his closet, you see, by season, and each season in graduating color shades. The books on his shelves are ordered by subject and height; you have seen libraries that looked less organized. It occurs to you then to really look around, and this is when you notice how absolutely meticulously put-together everything on his side of the room is: the bed laid so carefully it is completely free of creases, the suitcases, stacked perfectly under the bed, the cosmetics, in military formation on the dresser. . . . It almost makes you dizzy, the deliberate orderliness of it all. And though you are not exactly untidy yourself, you suddenly feel, in the face of such punctiliousness, a self-conscious need to straighten out everything you own. He notices your discomfiture and tells you, almost apologetically, that he is “kinda a stickler for order.” “But don’t worry,” he adds quickly. “I’m not gonna go all OCD on you or anything.”

Calder Series #1. Color photograph. 40 × 32 inches (101.6 × 81.3 cm). Courtesy of Mickalene Thomas, Lehmann Maupin Gallery and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. ©2013 Mickalene Thomas.

In that moment, it occurs to you that you just may have lucked out, that you’ve just gotten the perfect roommate: friendly, considerate, tidy. . . . OK, maybe a bit too tidy.

Later, as you both play Halo on his Xbox deep into the night, you learn more about each other: your high schools, your intended majors, your families. He tells you how, when he’d seen your name, Oluwatigbogotan—but what were your parents thinking?—listed as his roommate, he’d virtually run screaming to his mother and wailed, “Mom, I don’t think his name is even pronounceable.” You laugh out loud at this. And so you are puzzled when he suddenly begins to apologize. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That was so inappropriate.” You tell him, still laughing, that it’s all right, that your friends back home who didn’t speak the same language...