College Rent Receipt
I don’t remember how much total rent I paid for a single bedroom in a large house shared with the homeowners and at least three other college and conservatory students. It was said this was the only rental in town with a rule requiring extra rent be paid if you have sleepover visitors more than a few times a month. You had to pay for your sex.
I don’t recall anyone having overnight visitors while I was there but it could well have happened without me knowing about it. I know I had none that year, and the house rule about having to pay extra rent did serve as kind of a barrier. In college I only dated women during freshman year, though I was neurotically obsessed with one woman throughout college, and at times behaved inexcusably badly on account of it.
I had a discussion last week with someone who, as a younger woman, screwed around all over the place, earning her quite the “reputation.” She lost virginity at 17. I had girlfriends in high school and a few dalliances freshman year in college but my virginity ended up waiting until I was 23, on Riverside Drive, to a woman I learned not so long ago is as beautiful today as she was back in 1991.
I never felt deprived for being such a seemingly late bloomer. However important it must have seemed at the time I find today it just doesn’t matter. I’m more satisfied with my generally excellent academic record than I would be for having boned my way through college.
Evidently I had to pay for the first semester rent up front. Why else would a final payment for the first semester of the 1988-89 academic year have been made in the month of May?
My memories of the house are surprisingly scant for having spent a year living in it. A 4-story structure with a Steinway Grand in the living room it was considered one of the fancier houses in town, as I recall. I have no idea what its street address was, and combing through some maps of Oberlin turn up no definite clues. The “3rd S. West” written on the top left corner of this receipt would have been the location in the house of the room I rented, 3rd floor southwest, not the street address. Through the magic of the internet, and after deciphering the signature of the homeowner on this receipt, I now know this house was on a cul-de-sac named Reamer Place.
