Authors: Ava Michaels
“Um
… It’s all that indie dance crap that I know you like,” she said while she
pulled a small black skirt up over her delicate, tan legs.
I
had no idea what she meant by this, so I just sighed and stared at myself in
the mirror. I had on a slightly ruffled black skirt, pretty short, but pretty
conservative, and a tight red spaghetti strap top that I thought matched it
pretty well.
I
couldn’t help but wonder what Big Stick was doing tonight.
I didn’t really feel like going out. I wanted
to listen to love songs and stare lazily at my journal as I wrote my feelings
in it with hearts over the “I’s” and smiley faces at the ends of sentences. I
was cool.
“Plus,”
she said, “there’s
gonna
be a ton of hot
upperclassmen there. Maybe even that dude… What’s his name again?”
“Ryder,
Jess. It’s Ryder,” I groaned. It’s not as if she didn’t interrogate me on a
dozen occasions about how the progress was going with my new beau.
“No…
Big Stick!”
“Hey
Jess,” I yelled to her over the music. I knew what I needed to get motivated. I
just needed a little liquid courage. “Why don’t you pour me a shot of that
secret stash of Absolut you’ve been hiding?”
She
giggled and looked at me shocked. She thought I didn’t see her sneaking in on
some of her later nights with bottles of booze, and sometimes a little pot. Why
she was concerned with that but not with having sex in front of me I’ll never
know.
“Oh, really?
Looking to howl
at the moon tonight?”
I
laughed and took the tall shot from her.
“Don’t
you worry about what I do
…
Especially
not with Big Stick.
Things will get a
poppin
’
soon enough. Um, do you have anything to chase this with?”
Jess
grinned wide and innocently and shook her head.
Okay,
I thought. Bottoms up, it was. I seemed to be taking a lot more steps out, more
risks lately. I mean, if you had asked me just last month if I’d find myself at
The Snake Pit with a boy, let alone at his house eating sushi and watching Star
Trek… I’d have laughed you out of town. Now here I was taking a shot on a
Thursday night before even going out…
Pre-gaming, if you will.
I was not a pre-gamer.
Jess
was now touching up her makeup. Once she finished, we headed out of the
apartment.
………
Outside,
there were kids everywhere, rushing around, texting like maniacs, stuffing
bottles into backpacks, whooping it up. Welcome to Thirsty Thursday at
Dartmouth.
“Hey,
where is this thing at anyway, Jess?” I asked as we were nearly trampled by a
cackling group of frat boys who already reeked of liquor. “It had better not be
The Snake Pit. Tell me it’s not The Snake Pit, Jess.”
She
laughed hard and yanked on my arm.
“Just
come on!” she screamed.
As
I was being yanked off-campus by my giggling aspiring slut of a roommate, I
felt a heaviness swinging against my side from within her purse. I groaned. She
had brought the bottle of vodka. Of course she had brought the bottle of vodka.
What bar did she think was going to be okay with two freshman girls swigging
Absolut from the bottle in their establishment?
We
were walking for quite a while when it came to me that we seemed to be joining
a throng, a procession really, of drunk kids from every class. And that we
definitely seemed to have passed the streets that would lead to Hanover’s few
bars. Then it hit me: Jess was leading me to frat row. What the hell?
She
just grabbed my hand tighter when I started to protest.
“No way Jess!”
“Come
on, girl, I promise it’ll be fun. Have I ever disappointed you?”
I
prepared myself to be disappointed. I prepared myself to most likely be
disgusted as well. Frat row was a place I’d avoided even more studiously than
The Snake Pit so far freshman year. Stories of streaking sessions, lawnmowers
being ridden around inside, people being vomited on… They had never done a good
job of painting me a very pretty picture of this particular brand of Dartmouth
bacchanalia.
Still,
I trudged along, trying not to notice the clothes most every other girl on the
block were wearing, clothes that bared midriffs and a whole lot more – the
lower halves of ass cheeks in some cases, and, naturally, thongs.
“You’d
better give me another swig off of that bottle, girl.” I said resignedly.
Jess
happily obliged, and, while I was tipping it back and gulping the horrendous
stuff, a chorus of bro’s suddenly erupted beside us, cheering, whooping, and
asking to “get in on that action.”
I
rolled my eyes when Jess turned around to face me.
“Yeah,
sure we can share!” She grinned.
The
guys were all dressed nearly identically – polo shirts, collars upturned, and
backwards baseball hats. I was not impressed with Jess’ gregariousness this
particular evening.
“So,
where are you guys headed tonight?” she said flirtatiously as the three drunk
aspiring Abercrombie models drained almost the rest of our bottle.
“Alpha
Delta, baby, you know it!” One of them burped.
“Let’s
go,” I said, tugging on Jess’ arm. She turned around to wink at the guys.
“See
you guys around.”
Something
was wrong though. As we continued up the street, the guys were still behind us.
I knew Jess wouldn’t be taking me to Alpha Delta. I just hoped these guys
weren’t following us.
Passing
by one of the trashier frats, both Jess and I screamed and hit the deck when a
front window exploded. Someone had thrown a trash can through it. That was very
nice and very classy.
“Animals, huh?
Come on, let’s
go,” Jess said as we got up and dusted ourselves off with no help from any of
the “gentlemen” behind us, thank you very much. In fact, those three tore
across the lawn to the building the trash can had just come from, intent on
joining the revelry.
“Fuck
yeah, this is what I’m
talkin
’ about!” one of them
screamed.
I
guessed that they were freshmen too, who probably looked at joining a frat
where trash cans regularly shattered windows as the zenith of the college
experience. After a few more blocks, Jess stopped.
“No,
no way Jess …” I warned, stopping dead in my tracks and planting my hands
firmly on my hips as I stared at the monster that was none other than Alpha
Delta.
It’s
kind of unassuming. Colonial-style brick façade with white window trims and
columns did nothing to conceal the noise coming from within.
“Come
onnnn
,” she implored me. Then she finished the
Absolut bottle and tossed it onto the lawn. “I swear the bands are
gonna
be really good… We don’t have to stay all night.”
“I
swear, if you make me regret this,” I mumbled as we headed up to the front
door.
The
music, although deafening, didn’t actually sound all that bad.
“You
ladies are in luck tonight, no charge,” said this gorilla in a sweatshirt
guarding the door. The little I could see behind his hulking frame was strobes
and masses of bodies.
“Thanks,”
I said weakly, and shuffled in.
Jess
wasted no time at all.
“Okay,
let’s hit the jungle juice first, girl,” she flatly commanded.
I
really wasn’t in the mood for any jungle juice. I wanted to be back at the
apartment. Scratch that. I wanted to be with Ryder doing whatever Big Stick
does. I kept looking at every male face hoping that maybe it would be him, by
some chance of a miracle. No luck. Although, in the interest of full
disclosure, I did check my cell phone for a new text message before we started
to battle our way through the fray and towards the punch.
“Um,
where’s the stage?” I asked Jess.
She
didn’t even hear me, unsurprisingly. I recognized the sound of the live and
loud music, the drums pummeling through the walls and floor and making all
parts of you vibrate in a way that’s always undeniably exciting, no matter what
the venue it is. I hated to admit it but Jess was right. There was something
about live music that made a person feel… I don’t know…
Alive.
I followed my roommate through the crowd, noticing how she was flashing the
same flirtatious smile at every guy we brushed up against. Sigh. God bless her,
I guess.
I
knew that even when he was younger, Big Stick wouldn’t be caught dead in a
place like this. And then, just then, the smallest inkling of a feeling of
complete inadequacy started to flare up inside of me.
He
was a professional of some sort, I guess, since he had never actually gotten
around to telling me what his job was. He was also much older and almost too
handsome. What could he ever see in the long-term with a twenty two year old
like me? Well, someone he thought was twenty two. I was lying to him.
Particularly, a girl who allowed herself to be dragged, vodka bottle in hand to
a frigging Alpha Delta?
This
line of thought sort of brought me down for a second, and I took one last look
at my phone before turning it off. No, I wasn’t going to punish myself for
being young. Perhaps that was what he liked about me.
Jess
was holding two cups out in front of her while this guy who definitely didn’t
look confident to stand trial, let alone serve alcohol at a party, sloppily
sloshed a suspiciously light-colored punch into them. I took mine a little more
quickly and greedily than I usually would. My depressing thoughts had left me
ready to cut loose for a while.
“Let’s
find the band, Jess,” I said.
We
followed our ears down a narrow set of stairs, where the smell of pot was
suddenly so thick it made our eyes water. Whatever, I thought. There was also
some sort of smoke machine going, pumping a fine mist all over the throngs of
kids convening on a makeshift stage lit mostly with beer lights and mixing with
the thick haze of beer smell and pot smoke.
We
were making our way closer to the “stage” where a band with a sign above it
that said “Pussy Wagon” was thrashing out some quick-riffed 80’s style garage
punk, when it happened. Pushing through the crowd towards me, who was it that
should appear but either the first or the last person I wanted to see here
depending on how drunk I was and I wasn’t quite drunk enough yet. It was my old
boyfriend Carlos.
Great!
I should have guessed he’d be playing here tonight. I’d managed to not see
Carlos for four months, except for that one social night during orientation
where he’d tried to kiss me, and this is when it happens: when I’m on the verge
of drunk, feeling inadequate for the guy I’ve somehow got interested in me, and
in the dark basement of a frat house.
Carlos
had a band in which he played bass called Carlos and the Bulge.
Seriously.
They played some fairly decent, spiky
instrumental dance-punk, and Carlos’s bass lines were the undeniable attraction
of the music. We had dated for the entirety of senior year, and I had felt like
I was walking on a cloud then, even though I never let Carlos get any further
than a kiss. I was just too nervous about getting too committed at an early age
and stealing him away from his music.
When
it had come time to go to college, we had been planning on going together, and
staying together. However, Carlos and the Bulge were taking off in a much
bigger way than I’d ever thought. It wasn’t jealousy or anything. I just
started to feel like I didn’t fit in. I like music but it isn’t my life. And I
can’t quite relate to people who have that sort of driving obsession... I want
to settle down in one town and not travel everywhere. Maybe that is because I
don’t have a passion like that. Unless you count
frisbee
golf. I don’t really have anything that I
know I would rather do more than anything else for the rest of my life. But
hell, I’m still a virgin. In my own opinion, I haven’t even explored the most
basic human experience.
He
didn’t seem hurt though because he already had another girlfriend a couple
weeks later. I didn’t cry… How could I when she looked like a horse... I felt
bad really…
“Hey
space cadet, look who it is!”
Jess
grabbed my arm. As if I needed help noticing Carlos walking towards me with a
big, goofy smile on his handsome face. He was wearing the typical uniform of
this kind of band – tight jeans, tight black T-shirt, a few facial piercings.
Somehow Carlos transcended that look for me though, and tonight, whether it was
the booze or not, he looked impossibly handsome. Until I looked and realized
that his jeans had gotten even tighter since high school. His balls had to be
yelling, ‘I... Can't... Breathe!’
“Hey,”
I managed before one of the most awkward hugs I’ve ever experienced.
Carlos
was hot and sweaty since he’d already played a set, and his arms wrapped around
me a lot tighter than I was expecting. I could feel his privates against me.
The side hug would have been much more appropriate. I sort of wanly let it
happen, and stepped back, glaring at Jess to leave me alone for a minute. Or
that she let this happen. I was confused.