I once lived in a room that was a closet.
It was about 8 feet long 4 feet wide and 10 feet tall. Even though it was technically a closet, the door locked from the inside, there was a window, a lightbulb, a light switch, and three shelves under the window.
There were 3 other roommates in the house: Derek, JC, and Alex. Derek was a punk rocker in a local band, JC liked classic rock like Led Zeppelin but wasn’t in a band, and Alex had a girlfriend so he didn’t need to be in a band.
They were already living together and I was looking for a place to stay. They had previously mentioned that the hall closet wasn’t being used for anything and that I could live there. I think they were joking but I took them up on the offer anyway. We decided I would live in the closet and just pay the utilities bill, which was about 90 bucks a month. It was a pretty sweet deal.
People liked to hang out in my room more than the rest of the house even though It was real small and you had to sit on a mattress. But it had a space heater in there. Plus, any time there was more than 1 person inside it would heat up pretty quick. It was really cold that winter in WI and nobody wanted to sit around our cold living room for very long, even if they were drinking booze.
In other words, after acclimating to the temperature in my room guests didn’t like to leave. Or maybe people wanted to hang out in my closet room because I was the coolest roommate. Probably both.
One time when Derek and Alex came home they found the house empty, except for me and 8 friends crammed in my closet room, drinking and having our own little party in there. It was odd to feel their slight envy of my situation, since they were the ones doing me a favor in letting me live there.
One night we finally all got drunk together outside of the closet my roommates included. They had some sort of principle against hanging out in their rented closet of their own house. However, my closet parties helped my housemates realize that we should have more people over and needed turn up the heat a little bit. They must have supposed that if people were willing to party in the closet, they would be willing to party in the house itself as well.
Continued in part 2…