One Night Stand With The Alpha

I arrived in Leipzig on Monday, 17th June 1991. I travelled by bus for hours from my little home town in a charmingly rural and utterly boring region of Saxony, until I arrived in what I thought at the time was one of the rougher areas of the city. I had never been to a city as thriving and full of life as this one before and it was overwhelming - everything was different here, and the western influence was crazy to me. It was filled with new fashions and stores that I had only heard of before. This was the place I was going to call my home while I trained as a doctor at the University of Leipzig’s prestigious Faculty of Medicine. I had never met my new house mates before; my accommodation had been arranged for me in advance as part of the scholarship I had been awarded to train as a neurologist, and all I knew when I arrived was that I would be sharing a small house with two other first year medical students who had also been awarded scholarship. I didn’t even know their names. They were both at the house when I arrived - they had arrived on Friday, exactly as I was supposed to. My father had made life difficult for me, as per usual, and I was left to arrange my own transport to the city when he refused to drive me as he had promised he would months ago. I fumbled in my pocket to find the little silver key for the front door, which had been sent to me in the mail several weeks ago, and opened the cheerful looking red door to my new home. I was filled with hope as I entered that basic apartment. It was just a student house and it was nothing extraordinary, but it was in the middle of the city, and I was excited that I was finally starting my new life away from my father, and everything else I had hated in the boring little town I had grown up in. Everything was going to be different for me now; I was in control of my own destiny, and I was going to achieve things I could actually be proud of. The only things I had when I got there were in a single backpack - I had planned to bring more, but when my father finally told me he would not be driving me to the city, I had to repack everything and leave most of my things behind. Not that it really mattered; the clothing I had packed at first all looked so quaint and outdated compared to the things people wore in this city and it would have marked me out as a little Eastern girl who was afraid of giving up the old ways of doing things. At least I could use this as a chance to reinvent myself as someone modern and trendy. I was pleasantly surprised that my house mates were both young women around my age. I had just turned 19, and for some reason I had been worried that I would end up sharing the house with a couple of stuffy old men in tweed jackets who smoked pipes, because that was the image that people who attended university conjured in my naïve young mind. “Marlene?” The taller of the two girls bounded down the stairs to greet me as if we were old friends, and she swept me into a hug that smelled strongly of synthetic vanilla and raspberry body spray. She was pretty, and blonde, and she was wearing a bright aqua-blue crop top with a pair of pale denim shorts so that her pierced navel was visible. She was like the living embodiment of fun. The other girl we would be sharing the house with was her polar opposite. She had waited at the top of the stairs, and she was looking down at me with her brow furrowed and her hands on her hips. Her clothing was rather outdated, even compared to mine, and her mousey brown hair was scraped back into a bun. She hissed a ‘shhh’ at us and then pressed her finger to her lips as if we had been causing a commotion in a library before she turned away from the stairs and shuffled back to her room. I noticed she had a pencil secreted in her hair, tucked neatly in the bun like a concealed weapon. That was probably her idea of a fun little secret. Her name, I learned, was Biata. A beautiful name for an unbearably dull young woman. It made sense now that the blonde girl had been so enthusiastic about my arrival; she had been trapped in the house alone with Biata all weekend and even if I didn’t look cool compared to the other young people in this city, at least I didn’t look like I was actually allergic to fun. I hadn’t responded to her yet. She knew my name, even though I had no idea who she was, and I didn’t really know what I should say to her. “I’m sorry I’m late. I wasn’t given a phone number for the house or anything and… I had to change my plans to get here at the past minute.” The girl smiled and linked arms with me, without responding, before dragging me up the stairs to show me to my new room. I was surprised by how nice it was; I had been expecting something that felt like a prison cell, but it was a generous size, fresh, clean, modern… a little noisy because it looked out onto the street below, but that didn’t bother me. “I’m sorry we couldn’t wait to choose who stays where… if it’s any consolation, Biata wanted the ‘quiet room’ so you don’t have the smallest room in the house just because you got here last.” The girl had used exaggerated air quotes and a mocking tone as she said ‘quiet room’ and I smiled at her little joke. At least I hadn’t done anything to offend Biata to cause her hostile introduction, she was just the kind of person who liked to be left alone. “I like this room," I shrugged. "It’s nicer than my bedroom back home, at least. Besides, I think we will be too busy to care what the rooms look like soon.” “Please tell me you’re referring to how much fun we will be having, because I might literally die if I am stuck in a house with two complete killjoys for the next year.” The girl’s overly dramatic reaction made me smile, and I tried to reassure her that I was not going to be as stuffy and difficult to live with as Biata appeared to be. “I assure you I am not a killjoy. I’ve heard medical students are the absolute wildest whenever they have the opportunity, and I intended to keep that reputation up. It’s a noble tradition, and it is our duty to uphold it, right?” The girl grinned, and as she sat down on my new bed and looked around the empty room, I realized I still had no idea what to call her. I put my backpack down on the bed beside her and started to unpack my things, hoping desperately that she might reveal her name so that I didn’t have to feel awkward about asking her. She was peering into my bag, and she started to rifle through the contents as I was putting the clothing away. It didn’t bother me - she seemed friendly enough and it meant she remained in the room with me rather than leaving me alone. “I was really hoping you would have something fun in here…” I snatched the bag away as her hands moved dangerously close to my toiletries; she was nice, but I didn’t want her looking through my prescriptions. “If you mean alcohol… I didn’t have the space to pack anything fun.” She pouted dramatically, and then winked and grinned. “Well… I think that gives us a great excuse to go out and explore the city tomorrow, don’t you?” I guess that mild display of enthusiasm was too much, because before I could respond, my door was yanked unceremoniously open and Biata appeared. “Elizabeth clearly didn’t bother to explain our house rules to you, but it is unacceptable that you are being this loud while I am trying to study.” At least I hadn’t had to ask the blonde girl her name in the end. She was called Elizabeth, and she rolled her eyes dramatically at Biata’s comment and mimed gagging to me before she hopped up from my new bed, brushed past Biata, and left me to finish unpacking my things.