After rushing across campus to 104 North Mass with wet hair, more than a night's worth of work and a camera slung around my neck, Allie's warm, candy-lit dorm is a welcome refuge. I find her cross-legged on the floor with a friend and a half-finished bottle of wine, lounging amidst a wind-swept array of magazine clippings and nail polish. I spot "Barthes's Mythology" from a literary theory class she's taking this semester. "Tonight is certainly not a work night," she insists with a curling, Merlot-lipped smile. As I notice the blue light of the cold hour on the snowy fire escape outside her window, I'm tempted to agree.
Allie's room is full of comfortable, keeping details. A small white candle burns on a doily next to a wicker basket full of steel-cut oats and rice cakes.
Familiar posters don her walls Warhol's banana, that "Social Network" poster, Absinthe Robette creating a sort of college dorm time capsule for the rack of dresses she has hanging like an urban boutique from her floor lamp. Tie-dyed art from her DREAM mentee finds a place nearby the door, above which two strapping male models make all sorts of irritated, but nonetheless attractive, expressions.
Most inviting of all, though, is Allie's bed a plush, pastoral heap of bassinette-soft blankets and round pillows in a steady-handed country floral print, which is set higher than most and cradles a sleeping friend (incidentally my housemate). "We don't have to be quiet," she says, noticing me lowering my voice, "People are always taking naps in my room."
But as it turns out, since returning to campus this fall after some time away, Allie Lau '11 has made her dorm more than just a place of play and comfort. While most of her floor is covered in lacy underthings, tubs of cocoa butter and sketchpads, there's also a reigning sense of order. She has a coffee machine, lots of sharpened pencils and an army of plastic containers under her bed to hold her socks and T-shirts. "I mean it when I say I live here," she says, lowering her chin. "So it needs to be a place where I can hang out and stay focused too."
Her wall hosts a series of printer-sized chalkboard stickers, on which the days of the week are listed followed by attentive dashes. "Ideally, I put my schedule up there and it helps me remember what I'm trying to get done," she says, offering me a couple Flintstones gummy bear vitamins from a jar nearby.
This winter, Allie's focused on health. From her closet hangs a big brush with a wooden handle. "It's good for circulation," she says, "My sister convinced me to get it." Her shelf holds a large collection of vitamins and supplements, each of which she describes with ease.
"I have my Omega 60s, Omega 30s, Iron, lots of B-12," she rattles off, as I spot Jonathan Safran Foer's vegetarian manifesto "Eating Animals" on her floor. "I make sure to take care of myself in this weather."
