The confessions of a couch-to-couch surfer

IN TRANSITION #5

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | August 28, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

Editor's note: This is one in a series of occasional reports about the strange time between getting a college diploma and entering real life.

I used to joke about this day -- the day that Harvard kicked me out of the dorms for good -- and how I'd be forced to surf from couch to couch.

I'm not laughing now.

By today, I had expected I would be all moved into my clean, hip East Boston apartment I had arranged to sublet weeks ago. Failing at that, I have suddenly been reduced to houseguest status at my former college roommates' apartment (yeah, I know, they were successful at getting a place). But I'm not so bad off, really.

My failure to secure housing upon eviction from college was not my fault. Miscommunication with my would-be roommates led to a ''T"-minus-36-hours discovery that my housing had fallen through. Hours of confusion and the frantic search for an apartment eventually paid off -- despite intense introspection and frequent bouts of panic (''Is this instability really worth it?"). Now I am all set to move to Somerville in September. All set -- except I'm still wondering if I'm ready to take the leap.

The place is nice, without a doubt. New appliances. Two porches. Beats dorm life any day. But my roommates, who (don't get me wrong) seem perfectly nice, are all strangers. I've lived the last four years with the same two friends.

Though I guess we were once strangers, too. Freshman year, after eating dining hall meals in quiet awkwardness, my roommates and I would return to our suite, sit down at our solitary desks, and distract ourselves on the Internet, e-mailing friends from home, reading, anything to take our minds off the college's failed efforts at forced socialization. We shared a living space, but we could hardly hold a conversation.

A futon changed everything. We went on an adventure together four years ago to Central Square, trying to scheme up a way to transport one of those ubiquitous $200 metal futons up Mass. Ave. without a car (we eventually caved and waved down a station wagon cab). How did we bond? Decoding poorly translated assembly directions. To this day, I'm still not sure what to do with so many kinds of washers. Once it was assembled, I must admit it really tied the common room together -- not to mention us.

Sure, we've grown in different directions over the years, and we always spent summers apart, but this is the first fall in four years we won't be reconvening to swap stories and unpack together -- where the seasonal ritual of futon re-assembly will happen alone. In fact, that futon will be my new bed when (or, gasp, if) I get to Somerville.

The other night, we had gathered together for a farewell dinner (one friend is moving to Michigan). We had dinner, drank wine, played Trivial Pursuit. Afterward, doing dishes, my friend muttered about the strangeness of people wandering in and out of one's life. My thought: Would I ever again have so many wonderful people so close by?

We'll keep in touch, and we mean it when we say it. But there's so much that's unsettled. After all, I'm living on a couch. With the fragility of my housing situation, I've been telling myself to anticipate the unpredictable, but you can only prepare for so much. Life after graduation -- or at least the Intro course -- has been much more difficult than any class at Harvard.

As my soon-to-be landlord said, ''You sometimes feel like life just keeps happening to you."

At least with new roommates, whatever happens next won't happen to me alone.

Benjamin Toff lives on a futon at his friend's place in Cambridge, but he plans to move to Somerville very soon. He can be reached at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

As she jets off, I slouch away

IN TRANSITION #4

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | August 21, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

This is one in an occasional series of reports about the strange time between getting a college diploma and entering real life.

My friend and I drove to the airport the other day in awkward silence, punctuated only by her gagging.

She was struggling with a hangover. Of course, extraordinary anxiety over her imminent departure didn't help either, as she faced a journey that would keep her away from US soil until June.

''Uh-oh, the tunnel," she said. ''No turning back."

I looked at her. She was biting a crumpled ball of white fabric to fight the nausea. I tried to put a sentence together -- she soon would be stepping into a foreign land and be surrounded by exciting sights and people and . . .

''No, not that!" she interrupted. ''Once we get to the tunnel, there's no way for you to stop the car so I can open the door and vomit!"

We kept driving. In the weeks before my friend's departure for Lahore, Pakistan, I watched her stress skyrocket. One day she came home with typhoid pills; another day a plastic bag the size of her face, filled with tampons. (Just in case.)

She frantically checked off each task on her list: Medical exams and prescriptions; rounds with friends; contacts with academic advisers; graduate school applications (she was determined to apply from abroad). The last step: packing and shipping her things.

En route to the airport in my '93 Honda, the silence was, I must admit, much my own doing. I felt both jealous and relieved I wasn't tagging along. Sure, Pakistan is no Iraq or Afghanistan, but it was an unqualified adventure. And Boston, uncertain as my post-college life feels, hardly qualifies. I was proud of her, yet I didn't want her to go. Every word of encouragement I mustered fell limply to the floor of the Accord.

The drop-off at Logan happened instantly and ordinarily -- as though she were off to Dallas. We hugged. I offered an obligatory, ''Have a good flight." Then she dragged her duffel, which she could have fit inside, through the terminal doors.

Then she disappeared.

I got in my car and descended into the tunnel back home. For weeks, we had planned to spend more time together, to reminisce, hang out, talk about graduating, and do whatever it is that we used to do naturally without all the self-conscious angst. We rarely got around to it. At least not in the quantity we desired. Nor did I manage to buy a going-away present.

I had two picked out: a leather-bound journal and a jar of peanut butter. (My mother always said it was hard to find in Europe back in the '70s, so I assumed . . . )

Michelle, if you find a way to read this article, don't forget to keep in touch. And let me know if you'd like some peanut butter.

Benjamin Toff is between things -- dorm life and real life, Cambridge and East Boston, school and a permanent job. Reach him at btoff@boston.com.

Nuke at night

When life is in limbo, a free microwave means a lot

IN TRANSITION #3

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | August 14, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

Editor's note: This is one in an occasional series of reports about the strange time between getting a college diploma and entering real life.

A week ago, I went on a midnight mission to Malden for a microwave. I drove around squinting at street signs in the dark, Internet map printouts in my hands. Was I lost? I couldn't be sure, having only a vague sense of what I was looking for: a Dumpster near a basement door off a carefully concealed side street.

While whizzing past the second of two 24-hour McDonald's (I definitely wasn't in Cambridge anymore), I had one of those outer-body, time-warp experiences where I saw my adult self 10 years from now shaking my head: This is what postgraduate life had in store?

Let me rewind. Despite graduation from Harvard two months ago, I have yet to move out of the dorms. I'm a holdout, a hanger-on -- not quite a squatter exactly (the university agreed to let me stay through the summer), but suddenly an unwelcome visitor on someone else's campus. Even my student ID has expired.

Despite the funny glances I get from underclassmen (''So why are you still here?"), I know very well what I'm doing -- avoiding a summer's worth of rent. The only problem, aside from no air conditioning: no access to a kitchen (and the dining halls are closed till September). Back in June, I thought I could get by on burritos, wraps, and sandwiches, but I realized that my dining-out diet was eating away every penny of my paychecks.

Then a friend moved in, temporarily, with her microfridge. Groceries at last. Ever since, it's been Easy Mac, canned beans, and basmati rice (which nukes surprisingly well). Only now my friend is leaving, and my microwaving days are numbered. Which brings me back to my Malden mission.

I was hooked on the wonder of microwave technology. I couldn't go back. I scoured the Internet for free stuff, and after a few days found what I was looking for. I knew the offering was old, and that I'd have to drive to Malden to retrieve it, but it was free.

I found it wrapped in a black garbage bag beside the Dumpster. Just as promised. I drove the machine home and carried it up five flights of stairs. (Let me tell you, modern microwave technology, if nothing else, is a heck of a lot lighter than it used to be). I quickly tore the plastic to shreds.I am looking forward to many weeks of getting to know my new (old) microwave. A General Electric with decorative fake wood paneling, the oven is enormous -- large enough to cook a whole turkey. I know its retirement is long overdue; it's loud, and vibrates uncontrollably at times, but I couldn't be more pleased. Free stuff feels so good.

The other day, I programmed the clock. It's not much, but it's improved the livability of my dorm room threefold. Ten years from now, I may be laughing. But I doubt I'll be so easily pleased.

Benjamin Toff lives in Cambridge, for the moment, though a move is in store this month. He can be reached at btoff@boston.com.

A rich life, a full life, a sadly expired e-life

Four years, gone. Is that the real world looming?

IN TRANSITION #2

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | August 7, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

My e-mail inbox was my college home away from home (well, virtual home away from home). Now it's gone.

It expired the other Friday, just as we were getting ready to celebrate its fourth anniversary. During that time, it lived fully, sending 11,831 messages and receiving thousands more. Although no tears were shed, its passing means as much to me as the loss of a dear friend.

OK, that's a stretch, but it is eerily strange waking up in the morning and accessing e-mail elsewhere on the Web. As much as I tell myself it's time to move on, I can't get the image of my former inbox out of my head. The black and green lettering, the electronic thump it used to make when new mail arrived, the way it would reformat text at the stroke of a key.

Talk about attachments -- my e-mail made them the old-fashioned way. You had to be deliberate, know what you wanted, and work at it -- no point, click, and browse there. It took me a year before I knew how to send a photo or document; it taught me humility and self-reliance.

I'm in e-mail mourning.

Over that first weekend without it, in a fit of desperation and depression, I did as any mourner ought; I reflected. I reminisced. It's a necessary part of letting go. I went to my ''sent" mailbox (which I copied over just prior to its demise). It provided an embarrassingly detailed anthology of my last four years. Suddenly, everything flooded back.

Some people save every e-mail they ever receive. Not me. I can't stand the clutter; I send most everything to the trash once I'm through with it. I organize my virtual home more meticulously than my physical one.

Early on I decided to save e-mail that I sent out, assuming something worth replying to is worth saving. (Somewhere before the 11,831 mark, however, that might have been wishful thinking.)

My sent mailbox contains the usual: the awkward introductions, the excuses for sleeping through class, the drunken screeds typed in the middle of the night (''so. owas wrigi noyu a good e-mail that was cool and then my friend shut off the [expletive] computuer.") A partial translation: ''So I was writing you a good e-mail that . . ." You get the picture.

Of course, those messages are then followed by the sober morning after apologies: ''Here I am writing you yet another 'Sorry about the flood of drunken e-mails' e-mail."

I smiled when I came across that first batch of messages. ''Hi. I'm in college now. My e-mail works. I'm exhausted. Talk more later, Ben." I had only the faintest hints of the next four years.

I'm trying to learn to like my new e-mail. It has some good features. My new inbox is searchable by keyword, and the address book links directly to messages to and from each contact.

But there's still the pain of knowing that no matter how much prettier or technologically superior my new e-mail proves to be, it will never possibly replace my old college account.

Nothing ever will.

Benjamin Toff lives in Cambridge. He can be reached at btoff@boston.com.

Diploma, done. Now what?

IN TRANSITION #1

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | July 31, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

Editor's note: This is the first in an occasional series of reports about the strange time between getting a college diploma and entering ''real" life.

For about one year in my youth, I thought I wanted to design cars. My parents signed me up for a stack of car magazines, and I pored over them, sketching imaginative visions in a notebook beside my bed. Bouncing along in the school bus, I proudly told my friends about my destined profession -- ''automotive engineer" -- with the kind of certainty I have long since forgotten.

These days, two months after getting my college diploma, I'm shocked if I can make up my mind about what I want to eat for lunch.

While it's not yet keeping me up at night, the anxiety surrounding that first job out of college has begun to spark more than a few existential questions. I was warned about this feeling -- the sudden fear of life's shapelessness, the terror of having no structure. For years, my choices have been confined to options neatly organized within the pages of a course catalogue. Now there is no book. The freedom has left me spinning.

Friends have coped by taking jobs -- anything, as long as it pays -- and convincing themselves that it makes sense. It's the safe thing to do. And they're right. Many admit they will likely spend their 20s jumping from one miserable job to the next. It's a part of our futures, the part nobody tells you about in elementary school.

The other night, one friend accused me of being too picky. ''Everybody hates their first job; you just have to suck it up and take one," she said. Reclining in folding chairs she had bought at CVS for a couple of bucks, my friend and I shared a beer on the porch of her new Washington, D.C., apartment.

''I'm just worried you'll turn out unemployed, without direction, and still asking for money from your parents when you're 30. Just try doing something for a while. If you don't like it, do something else."

She's probably right to worry. After all, I'm about to join the masses of people without health insurance. But I'm reluctant to give up on 22 years of people telling me to ''do the thing you want to do in your heart" -- even if I tell myself it's temporary. Will I ever again be so free to drop everything and do the things I've always dreamed of? Hike the Appalachian Trail, work communications on a political campaign, travel to India, or that ever so romantic cliche, move to New York and try to survive as a writer? Will regret dog me the rest of my life because I took a job to pay rent rather than risking, rather than exploring?

Taking in the view of a dilapidated gas station across the street from where my friend and I sat in Washington, I watched people shuffling by on the sidewalk. They were an odd collection -- business people in suits, college-aged interns, some people who looked utterly up against it -- dragging their bodies, avoiding eye contact. I imagined each going home to his or her plain apartment, eating plain spaghetti, and falling asleep to ''The Tonight Show." There was something so lonely about the prospect of plainness.

I couldn't help but wonder what that kid who devoted hours to sketching out his fantasies would say to me now. I don't want to design cars anymore, but I wouldn't mind some of his certainty.

Benjamin Toff lives, for now, in Cambridge. He can be reached at btoff@boston.com.