All right, so I had a CD Player, but no CD's to play. My CD collection was down at my folk's place in Norfolk, but I had no car to drive down there to get them. As I sat there on the lower bunk, a glorious idea formed in my mind. "I'll take the bus!" Of course! Home's only three hours away, so it won't be that bad a trip.

I jumped up out of my bed, walked out of my room and headed down the hall towards the pay phones to look up the bus station's phone number (I had no phone of my own). I reached the phones and discovered that my fellow dorm rats had pilfered all three phone books.

Shit. I stood there in the hall trying to think of anyone I knew who had a phone and wouldn't mind being bothered. The guy next door had a phone, I was pretty sure. I could always hear him holding one-sided conversations. Since the walls of our rooms were apparently pieces of cardboard tacked up to studs, you could hear even the quietest whispers of your next-door neighbors, which made some evenings memorable. You never could look at the girls you saw leaving your neighbor's room with a straight face. Oh, they tried to look all proper and respectable in public, but that facade belied the fact they were screaming, "I'm a dirty whore!" just hours before. Sometimes you'd find out later that they were some Colonel's daughter, which made it even better. Daddy's little girl had found a new Daddy, as evidenced by the repeated cries of, "You're my Daddy! You're my Daddy! Spank my ass, Daddy!" that carried over to my room on a nightly basis.

Okay, we're getting a little weird here. I'm supposed to be looking for a phone book. I stopped by the room of the dude who lived in Room 27 and made some tentative, half-hearted knocks on the door. At this time, I was still fairly new to the place and hadn't really spent any time getting to know the guys who lived in the hall, so I was pensive about bothering a total stranger about something as trivial as a phonebook. And let's face it- I was pretty embarrassed about my situation. I didn't have a car. I didn't have a phone. I didn't even have a decent stereo system. I was only 18, so I couldn't legally drink (save your comments on that for later. This story takes place before I was corrupted).