Author: Jason McGathey

When Melissa’s 21st birthday arrives, bringing with it an invite down to the Alpha Delta Pi sorority house that she calls home, we can scarcely pass this opportunity up. The agreed upon plan is to meet them there at 9, at which point we will all but certainly head out barhopping en masse. Up until this point, in the early evening, Damon’s running errands of some sort around town, while I am chilling out back at my apartment. With me I have my good friend and former coworker Clif, mostly because he’d asked what I was getting into, and I saw no reason not to invite him along.

This will turn out to be a great decision, though also somewhat complicating things in the process. It’s always fascinating to think about certain nights which would have turned out completely differently if you didn’t have this one specific person with you…or the flipside, wondering about outings that went sideways due only to the presence of a single random character. Fortunately this birthday excursion falls into the former category, and will go down as one of my more fondly recalled occasions of this entire era.

Until Damon shows up, Clif and I are playing the Nintendo 64 that I still have lying around, mostly the Mario game – you could call this ironic retro fun, maybe, but this unit is only a few years old, and I don’t have anything else. And when Damon does roll in, he’s smiling as though already knowing what sort of night this will be. Which might not take any outrageous insight to forecast, except that as we climb in my car and motor on down to campus, we’re about a half hour late in arriving.

Also, things have not quite gone as planned with this whole Alpha Delta Pi experience. When we first learned that Melissa was accepted into a sorority, right down here along this murderer’s row of such on 15th, we thought our meal ticket had just been punched to an endless bounty of available young women, ready to throw down at a moment’s notice. However, the first strike emerged almost immediately, which is that she had somehow chosen what has to be the nerdiest sorority OSU offers. For example, they once booted a girl out of here simply for being too slutty (as an amusing sidenote, Melissa brought that chick over to our apartment once, right after this happened, to drink and play cards; when this girl started crying about the treatment she’d received, and quoted how many dudes she slept with – a number in the 30s, if I recall correctly – Lisa, in the sweetest turn I personally have ever witnessed from her, attempted consoling the girl, gently informing her, “that’s not very many! Trust me, that’s not too bad!”).

Point two arrived directly on the heels of the first, which is that most of these girls simply don’t like Damon and me. He and I have subsequently gotten a kick out of dropping by every so often, just to rain on various parades and confirm that, yes, they still hate us. He rates a couple notches higher on the benefit-of-doubt meter simply by having a sister here, but I have never been considered anything less than an out of touch buffoon to them. There are a couple exceptions, most notably Melissa herself, but this has by and large held true, even through an influx of fresh bodies every year.

Parking curbside, we approach their stately, almost southern plantation looking building at 94 E. 15th Avenue. A white brick structure with huge columns supporting it, three stories tall and track lit from the outside like an ancient Roman arena, this could have been the ideal location for countless nights of debauchery, if only these girls weren’t so lame. But who knows, maybe tonight is the night we change all that. At the very least, we figure it is bound to prove interesting.

A couple of girls we don’t recognize are sitting on the front porch, so the three of us continue on past them and inside these massive living quarters. Shrugging out of our coats, we take a moment to appraise our immediate surroundings. A small army of chicks are running around from this room to the next, some gabbing, some still getting ready for the big night.  For once in our lives, we don’t see too many guys crowding the picture, but this is tempered with the knowledge that we’ll never get anywhere with these girls anyway. Indeed, Clif’s presence has changed nothing, as the reception wavers uniformly somewhere between dirty looks to outright indifference. As such, and considering nobody’s ready to leave for the bar yet anyway, we decide to dip back outside, and try our luck with those girls on the spacious front porch.

“You could tell within 5 seconds of walking in that we weren’t hitting it,” I observe, about that living room scene.

“I know!” Damon agrees.

As it turns out, introducing ourselves to these two, we learn that they are ADPi girls as well – but from some Indiana chapter. They’re slightly more pleasant, but only by comparison, would be thought of as rude in virtually any other setting. Soon enough, they stroll away from us as well.

“What the fuck?” Damon wonders, after they disappear from sight.

While it’s possible our reputations precede us to some extent, that theory collapses when considering out of state sisters who are just here for the weekend – there’s simply no way they even know who we are. Therefore I have to assume the same about them as I do these local pledges, that there is a bit of an ageism bias here, whereby we are considered, at a whopping 24 years of age, as a couple of weird “old” guys lurking about their scene. And Clif at 26 or whatever is pretty much ripe for a nursing home.

This has always been my assumption, a major factor in the frosty treatment. Yes there is a bit of a jackass shtick we bring to the table, which they surely aren’t enthralled with, but I would maintain we kept this in check until long after it was established they already didn’t like us. However, my ageism concept also soon suffers a major hit, although in this instance it’s a mostly positive development. With nothing better to do, we three return indoors, where Clif unexpectedly runs into some Vince guy he knows. Who is dating one of these sorority sisters, Tonia.

Tonia, perhaps not so coincidentally, happens to be one of the few exceptions, as far as somebody who doesn’t just tolerate but has actually hit it off with Damon and me. Although come to think of it, I’m not sure if this proves or disproves any of our theories. She’s a short blonde, ever so slightly chubby, with lively blue eyes and, despite wearing braces, a beautiful, captivating smile. A sweet, alluring face that either looks curious or devilish, I can never decide which. Though given to frequent bursts of know-it-all behavior, we find this more amusing than off-putting, possibly because it’s well known that she too is skating on thin ice with many of the sisters in this house. Many find her nauseating, although I suspect jealousy plays a huge part – she’s not just attractive and driven in that whole Tracy Flick-esque sense of the word, but also seems to have ruffled a few feathers by being quoted in Rolling Stone a year or two ago, in some “life on campus” article.

As for Vince, he too seems pretty alright to us. An Asian-American with slicked back black hair, he’s arrived at Columbus via Philadelphia and is reportedly quite a bit older than Tonia, or even us. Someone whispers that he is 30, but if so he doesn’t look it. Whatever the exact figure, he’s somewhere in Clif’s age range, as the two of them once worked together, at one of Clif’s many, many jobs.

So the five of us are hanging out, lounging around the living room furniture as others continue bebopping around the house, still getting ready for tonight. Not everyone is accompanying Melissa’s great 21st birthday brigade, but as a sizeable portion are, which means that many, like us, are waiting for the guest of honor to emerge. And to think that we’d been sweating it, for arriving a half hour late.

“I should have fucking known better,” Damon curses, shaking his head.

In an exceedingly small sub-category, there is exactly one figure stomping around the grounds, whom everyone else likes but we do not. Or rather, it’s not that we don’t like him, more that we feel he is undeniably quite annoying, and can’t believe that nobody else feels this way. Although even so, to his credit, once again we are admittedly talking about someone whose annoying behavior is more hilarious than it is loathsome. This would be Jeff, a tall loudmouth lunkhead we have met once or twice before.

“Come on people, let’s go! Let’s go!” he continues to declare, prowling the premises.

A more detailed picture begins to emerge, once we learn that Jeff and Vince are in fact roommates. For some inexplicable reason, though, the girls all seem to think that Jeff is okay, while most allegedly can’t stand Vince. This apparently has something to do with an incident where he came here drunk and was pissing all over one of the bathrooms. Like I was saying, he fits right in with us.

Bored with this, Damon and I decide to get up and wander around the ground floor ourselves. Though we’ve been upstairs plenty, that area is probably a wisely avoided war zone right now, as the territory occupied by women getting ready is often comparable to parachuting behind enemy lines – and perhaps nowhere more so than here. As we make our rounds, I make various mental notes, about details I’ve possibly missed before.

A word about some of the landscape is in order, then. There are, in essence, two living rooms on the first floor.  One is a more subdued effort, with trophies and built in bookcases, a trifle outdated and musty smelling, the kind of setting where you’d sit around and meet someone’s grandparents when they dropped in from out of state.  The other, which is where we’d congregated, went light on the furniture, but does have a piano in the corner and is more conducive to large crowds of people standing around.  During one previous visit, Damon and I got on this juvenile kick of hiding those trophies in various places around the house. Although at a glance it appears they have all been discovered and returned.

“Come on people, let’s go!  Let’s get a move on!” Jeff is hollering, it never lets up. Even in casual conversation, he has but a single, ear punishing volume, or so I thought until he began this even louder shouting routine just now. Still, I really can’t fault the guy. At least he’s actively trying to get everyone rounded up and the hell out of this house.

Though the minutes continue to pass and we now find ourselves hanging out in the hotel restaurant sized kitchen, leaning against an island in the middle, my enthusiasm hasn’t wavered any. I’ve been pumped all evening, possessed by this feeling from the outset that something great would happen tonight. And it does, which is so often the case when these rare, static electricity hunches overtake me. Although this does lead me to wonder, if it’s a true premonition or whatever, that a terrific turn of events was soon arriving, or rather if thinking this is what causes such to happen.

I tend to lean toward the latter, but the caveat is that it has to be something you truly believe, not just some weak “thinking positive” mindset you’re attempting to paste onto your thoughts. At this moment in time, however, absent any definitive evidence, all we have is our usual idle chitchat, in this still fairly exotic setting, while we continue to wait.

“You know what would be funny,” I’m telling Damon, as we brainstorm ways to continue irking these girls, during future visits, “is if we brought in some hookers.”

He laughs heartily at this notion, and it is admittedly a hilarious one even to me. If they hate us now, bringing some ladies of the night with us next time, preferably some really scuzzy, older and grizzled types, at least for the purposes of this theoretical thought exercise, now that would really rattle some cages. Maybe two or three apiece, draped all over us, as we kick back and sip rotgut wine in their living room or something.

At long last, however, the crowd begins thinning out. It had long ago been decided that our first destination will be Quarters, formerly known as The Jailhouse, up on Lane Avenue. Some are walking the half dozen or so blocks north up High Street, while still others are committed to driving there. In the latter camp, Vince and Tonia are kind enough to approach us, and offer to give Damon, Clif, and me a lift. We thank them and politely decline, however, as the three of us are still waiting on Melissa to emerge. Clear up until there’s almost no one left in the house, and Damon asks one of the few remaining sisters what’s taking her so long. This is when we learn that Melissa had already left without us, some fifteen minutes ago.

The three of us don’t get very far, however, traipsing up High, before encountering members of our party. Specifically, we spot Melissa and three of the other girls, hanging out in front of the iconic campus McDonald’s, which has been here since at least the 1980s. “Speh some change?” Damon asks, in a raspy voice, as we approach them. The ladies all laugh at his joke, and soon enough fall in beside us as we continue walking toward the bar.

At Lane Avenue, Clif and I alone manage to cross the street while everyone else gets hung up at the light. Looking back, I can see that loudmouth Jeff, despite his endless clarions to get the troops moving, must have actually left the house after almost everyone, or else gotten sidetracked – he has just fallen in with the rest of our group, behind us. So as Clif and I are just talking our sweet time approaching Quarters, allowing the others to catch up, we happen to glance up at this gyro place next door, spot Vince and Tonia seated at a table in there, having just ordered a late dinner. Then decide on this whim to pop in there and join them. Part of the attraction is that, even from here, the food smells too good to resist.

Although all I wind up ordering is a cheeseburger and a Mountain Dew. Vince and Tonia haven’t gotten their food yet, so it isn’t as though we’re holding them up any. Clif sits chatting, mostly with his old buddy Vince, who stills seems mostly chill and kind of funny, even. And then from out of nowhere, we are suddenly joined by Jeff. He too spotted this table in the window, and could not resist its fragrant allure.

Not that I’m paying much attention to him. Rather, as on previous encounters, I’m feeling like this Tonia actually digs me somewhat, and that I just might be able to pull this off if playing my best game. Assuming the very unfortunate circumstance of her someday breaking up with this Vince character, of course, of course. But at the very least, I think I’m developing a decent idea of what makes her tick. She’s one of these people who has to command everyone’s attention, and therefore the best strategy is to ignore her. To that end I grab a USA Today and sit there reading it intently, while everyone else converses – which openly and unmistakeably intrigues her as much as it drives her nuts. Maybe this doesn’t happen often, but it’s always satisfying when it does, to have this notion about what would work with somebody, and to see that panning out.

But there’s still much work to be done, if indeed I’m not entirely delusional to begin with. And I’m doing myself no favors with a clumsy streak, i.e. spilling my Mountain Dew all over the place. Lacking enough napkins at the table, I grab Jeff’s paper bag in desperation, which his food just arrived in, and use that to soak up the last of it – though he sits gasping, he doesn’t utter a word of protest. The USA Today might have been a more obvious choice, but I couldn’t resist this latest piece of jackass shtick, and everyone else saves Jeff finds this hilarious.

What can I say, I am kind of feeling “on” with the comedy tonight, and can tell that Damon is in the same zone. After finally arriving next door at the bar, I reconvene with him so that he can brief me on any relevant developments. While he would admittedly not quibble with just about any girl in the entire entourage, he’s set his sights on this Katy chick, with whom he has already developed a rapport with in their short time here.

“Where’s Katy? Where’s Katy?” he keeps asking, as we sit at the bar itself for quite some time, determined not to lose track of her.

I’m also onhand as he dispenses an early lesson to Melissa, advising her that at some point, she is going to have to start turning down the shots, or else this is going to be a very short night for her. Quite naturally, however, she listens to none of this, and is subsequently one of the first people to throw in the towel on her own birthday extravaganza, thoroughly blasted and puking in calling it a night. She does, however, throw her arms around me, and drunkenly declare that she is so happy that I made it. “I told Damon, he’s gotta come!” she slurs.

But we’ve got other concerns, and I don’t even notice the specific moment of her exit. Among the peculiarities grabbing our attention is that this place is dead, despite it being a Saturday night, a far cry from the glory years of The Jailhouse or even the early days of this Quarters enterprise. In fact, it’s entirely possible that our entourage represents the only patrons this bar has right now. A group which clocks in at, as far as we can determine, just us five guys, surrounded by about 30 sorority chicks. Some of this is understandable – unlike bars most everywhere else in the known universe, campus establishments do most of their business during the week, with Thursday being the peak night; come Friday, and especially Saturday or Sunday, half the kids have driven home to be with their family, long distance boyfriends/girlfriends, and so forth. Still, a prime weekend night would have never been quite this lethargic, even just a year or two ago. Not that we are complaining the least bit about this phenomenal ratio, at what amounts to a private bash.

“This makes up for all the sausage parties I’ve been to over the years,” I tell Vince, over top of some frantic hip-hop beat. With not a single soul on the dance floor, the music their house DJ is pumping out bounces off the walls like molecules fired from an atom splitter.

“Oh, absolutely,” he agrees, sizing up the field.

Much of the decor seems the same as those Jailhouse days, so I’m not sure about the reasoning behind the name change. Quarters has floor to ceiling poles, spaced about two or three inches apart, lining the dance room like an actual jail cell.  Dark lighting aplenty, broken up only by the flashing colored pin spots sweeping said dance floor, unless you counted the garish neon signs mounted behind the bar, beckoning you forward toward your favorite intoxicant.   And, of course, a requisite pair of pool tables, tucked safely downstairs, away from all the commotion.

At some point, Clif and I decide to drift downstairs and avail ourselves of this last refuge. And this basement is also exactly as I remember: exceedingly musty, wooden planks on the walls bowed ridiculously inward, the concrete floor uneven and cracked. Yet none of that really matters, so long as there’s enough room to shoot.

Racking and breaking, despite announcing this scene change to nobody, we only get to a place where one of us has sunk two balls before Jeff comes loping down here after us. Vince and Tonia are right behind him, an inexplicable development – albeit one cracking me up as I picture the scene upstairs. Unless you count the help, Damon now has about….twenty-nine sorority chicks, all to himself. Maybe twenty-eight, depending upon whether Melissa is still here or not. And maybe this was a stupid idea to begin with, venturing down here, but I’ve never had a ton of success drooling over chicks, I do far better just hanging back and acting normal, as though not even noticing they’re here. Whomever I cross paths and bump elbows with, it’s great, it just feels natural, and I can make things happen then. Besides, apart from the birthday girl herself, I would still maintain that my most realistic option is down here in the basement right now anyway. And indeed, despite her boyfriend’s presence, she certainly appears to be laying it on extra thick in getting me to pay attention to her.

Nonetheless, Jeff remains an unavoidable sideshow, one it is physically impossible to ignore. As soon as he arrives down here, having already boasted of his billiards prowess at various points tonight, he feels the need to prove it.

“Alright, me and her,” he announces, pointing at Tonia, “against you guys, and I’ll give you those two balls as a handicap.”

Glancing at one another, Clif and I just shrug before casually agreeing to his terms. We have not the first clue what mayhem lies off in the distance, and that this will eventually wind up as but merely the second (and a distant second at that) most memorable table game of the night. As for Tonia, she is only sheepishly, reluctantly drawn into Jeff’s brash orbit, and he very nearly pulls this off. What happens is that the game gets down to where there’s just an 8 ball on the table, and Jeff scratches when shooting it. Awesome. Totally fucking awesome.

Back upstairs, regrouping with Damon, we assess the current situation. As the only male up here for quite some time (unless counting the lone guy bartending, flanked by a pair of women back there, or the isolated DJ) he’s been enjoying quite the field day.  Cheerfully hopping from one table to the next, he’s really come alive since we left him. Discussing matters, it occurs to us that as among the few who are over 21 years of age – a field further weakened with Vince being spoken for and neither Jeff nor Clif demonstrably doing much to pull in any ladies themselves – we should be playing this angle up to our full advantage. He and I are at least attempting to work the field, although his methods are typically a lot more over the top or at least forthright than mine. And on this note, he has a flash of insight leading to one of his most brilliant gambits ever: we will buy rounds for all the ladies here, yes – but the rounds in question will actually be nothing more than tray after tray full of Pepsis.

And this strategy works like a charm, ridiculous or not. It’s a safe bet that most if not all of these girls have acquired multiple drinks already, by whatever means, and are too drunk to tell the difference. Now they like us just fine, sure. Who knows, maybe this was just the icebreaker for the ages that we needed, and will win them over forevermore.

There’s no reason to think beyond the present tense, however. By now, Clif has had the good sense to join us, for this hilarious and borderline surreal piece of theater. Damon’s big idea is that if he springs for a tray full of Pepsis, dispensed into normal looking cocktail glasses, and then casually walks over to some random table with them, that the girls will come flocking, assuming that these are shots. Which is in fact exactly what happens. From this distance, Clif and I are nearly pissing ourselves with laughter – right before we launch into action with trays of our own. And the bartenders quite naturally don’t give a shit, are possibly even relieved that these underage students are going gaga for soft drinks, and continue dispensing refills for free beyond this point.

This glorious turn evolves into two of us hanging at the table while a third guy retrieves the next tray, taking turns on rotation. Meanwhile, these girls have fleshed out the remaining chairs around it, with still others hanging on us, throwing their arms around our shoulders like long lost best friends, asking if they can please have another one of these “shots.” They are at one point as much as three deep, swarming in a circle around these tables, clamoring for another of these delicious concoctions.

Jeff is nowhere to be seen while this is going on, which is really just as well, and he may have already left. Meanwhile Vince and Tonia are among the handful trifling with the dance floor at this point. And once this shot onslaught runs its course, a handful more fall into formation out there, as Clif and I stand just off to the side, surveying the action. Tonia keeps bending over and shaking her ass mere inches from my crotch, yet though I continually glance over at Vince to gauge his reaction, he appears oblivious to her shenanigans. She soon grows bored, however, either due to the lack of drama or the attention paid to her, and with a phone number shouted in my ear before they disembark, these two are also gone.

And then it’s hard to say what happened. So much for that notion of a permanent icebreaker, obviously. Because one moment Damon, Clif and I are cracking up and high fiving over beers at the bar, the next it seems we turn around and the entire OSU chapter of Alpha Delta Pi is gone. The OSU one, yes. Because by whatever improbable turn of events, the three of us find ourselves in the company of no one else but…four girls from that Indiana chapter. These chicks are in the same boat as we, for everyone else they were with took off without them. And it’s right here that the night takes its next dramatic turn.

“I know this party on Norwich we can hit,” the skinny, somewhat whiny one named Darcy tells us.

“Don’t let her out of your sight,” Damon whispers to me, jabbing a finger in Darcy’s direction. He has to dip into the restroom before we depart, and, quite correctly, recognizes this as the best opportunity we’ve had all night, likely in many a night.

Not that we have anything to worry about. These ladies cotton to us alright, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that they are lost without our navigation. Darcy has a street name, sure, though I get the impression she has no idea where it’s actually located. Assuredly, they could have found their way back to ADPi without us, but this big city is mostly foreign and possibly somewhat dangerous to them, they would rather not brave it alone. Having a few harmless dorks like us around is a compromise they can live with.

The seven of us weave our way a few blocks northeast, and almost immediately stumble upon a throbbing scene at this house on Norwich. No one bothers checking the address, and in fact might not even possess such. Darcy and the one quite large girl – we never learn her name – are both convinced that this has to be it, and so we approach the place.

Not that getting inside the house will prove to be very easy, as by my estimation there must be a thousand kids, easy, crammed onto and within this property. This is by far the biggest party I have ever seen contained at somebody’s residence. But biggest doesn’t necessarily mean best, and it truly is a physical challenge to wade our way through this crowd. If it were just us three guys, we probably wouldn’t even bother, unless in a seriously determined mood. The girls wish to be here, however, and as we ask random passerby about a keg, the consensus is that there’s one buried deep within the recesses of the back yard.

Front yard, front porch, back yard, back porch, the living room and kitchen and all the other rooms in between, we navigate this jam packed maze to that potential treasure chest awaiting at the end. During this process, somehow the strawberry blonde, Chrissy, and I become separated from everyone else. Black lights are flickering in the sticky hot swamp of a living room, and for whatever reason, though normally not even a move that would ever occur to me, I take her hand, lead her through these bodies, with the rap music so loud in our ears it is almost attacking us as a physical presence.

It’s hard to explain, but though I hadn’t been paying her any more attention than the others up until that moment, from this point forward, we just click. I’m sure she appreciates my little chivalrous turn, guiding her through the land and all, and yet it isn’t until we come up for air on the backside of this house that we can really even talk. Chrissy instantly reminds me of a Natasha Lyonne with somewhat reddish but mostly blonde, curly hair. Otherwise quite similar in appearance and personality, or so it seems to me, down to the soft though plenty curvaceous figure, the wide eyed yet mishievous countenance, the husky voice and sarcasm and bluntness. She’s quite attractive, yes, and I would most certainly love to hook up with her. And while she doesn’t spell out any particular interest in me, I get the impression this interest is just as swiftly reciprocated.

When we had made it as far as the kitchen, where some conventional lighting blessedly awaited us, I had risked a look behind us, and could glimpse Clif making his way, with Damon and the objectively hottest of the four Indiana girls, Amanda, a bit farther beyond. And no clue about the other two whatsoever, although they did seem the ones most likely to know a familiar face here. Now, with Chrissy and I having stopped for a moment, these other three catch up to us, and I take a moment to fully appraise Amanda’s appearance. In much the same manner as I had, Damon, the lucky bastard, seems to have somehow connected with his randomly appointed sidekick in identical fashion, in the time it took to cross the house. Amanda’s skinny and has a sweet, innocent look to her, sandy brown shoulder length hair, and what Damon and Clif and I, in whatever private conferences we are able to manage, has to be about the tightest ass we have even seen.

But I’m not complaining in the slightest. Chrissy is 100% my type, which makes tonight’s absurd chain reaction of unlikely occurrences all the stranger. As a mostly reunited mass, though, we have no choice except to confront and resume the purported end goal of this quest. The line is considerably intidimating, however, and as we continue moving in the vague direction of where we were told the keg would be, fifteen, twenty, maybe thirty minutes might pass – time stands still out here, which only serves to make the passing minutes impossible to gauge. A little red bucket and a Salvation Army bell would come in handy right now. Although, who are we kidding, it would take nothing short of an ambulance siren to part these masses, and even that might not work.

“I’m gonna take a piss,” Clif eventually declares, tapping out of this slow shuffle and disappearing once more into its dark inner recesses.

But wait, what is this? Land ho! After untold minutes crossing this vast sea, a keg at last appears before us, the confirmation that we have indeed stood in a line all this time and not simply swayed around the back yard for no reason. Only for the four of us to reach it, and discover…there are no cups. We have been to who knows how many collective keg parties, and it never occurred to any of us that this might be a concern.

What now? A thousand impatient nineteen year olds burn holes in the back of our heads, we’ve got to think fast. But really, there’s only one thing we can do. “Fuck this,” we say, with slight variations. I take Chrissy’s hand once more, steering her away from here, and spotting my maneuver, Damon does the same thing in grabbing Amanda’s.

Darcy and the other one have not been spotted anywhere for quite some time, in fact none of us are certain they even made it as far as the house. Plus, we have no idea what became of Clif. But then in retracing our steps, we find the other two girls waiting basically right where we left them, on the sidewalk, as though knowing things would turn out exactly like this. Except they are much more impatient now, and Darcy’s whining even more than before.

I get it, though. The air has grown downright chilly, dropping farther with every minute, and none of them have coats. In the meantime, we’ve got to continue standing here under the flimsy assumption that my friend will magically reappear. As we continue to stand around and shiver here, I can feel each tick of the second hand on my watch, knowing full well that our chances of sticking with these girls are exponentially decreasing with each.

“What do we do?” a distraught Damon whispers to me, and we are always on such a similar wavelength that it’s wordlessly communicated exactly what he means, also that I get it.

Pressure compounding, it closes in and begins to wrap around us like a fog. The girls are talking about partying some more, but are clearly on the brink of saying goodnight if we intend to keep standing here. But then, by some miracle, at what is near to the last possible minute, here comes Clif skidding out of the crowd and onto the sidewalk.

Not that we are out of the woods just yet. Continuing back to High Street and then south upon it, Darcy won’t stop complaining – it’s too cold, it’s too late, they’ve got such a long drive back to Indiana at the conclusion of this weekend. Now that Clif has returned, she has instead turned into the largest threat, with the potential for wrecking whatever potential this night still holds. Even the 4-3 disparity in theoretical pairings isn’t quite the black cloud that her presence is.

And yet they continue to hang with us, in fact it is agreed we’ll get some carry out beer and then figure out where to drink it. Whatever their reservations, Clif’s apartment is one option being tossed around, for he at least keeps his pad tidy and lives in a nice part of town. Whereas I am worried that any potential female guests would take one look at my ghetto apartment and turn right back around.

Our first thought is to acquire beverages at the UDF on the corner of Frambes. We suddenly realize it’s past 1am, however, which means that this option is out, and the only other is to pay through the nose for to-go brewskies from some bar. The Out-R-Inn is conveniently located right behind here, and once our eyes settle upon it, we instantly recognize that here lies the path forward. It’s decided that Damon and I will stroll over there to purchase the required essentials, while these underage girls wait behind. And Clif. Chrissy is wearing my coat by now, and we don’t really expect them to bail on us, but leaving him in their mix as “collateral” seems like a good idea all the same.

After we return with a case of Natty Lite apiece, our miniature mob continues moving down High. At this juncture Darcy’s complaints have now morphed into bitching about all their fellow traveling sisters that ditched them, and wondering what became of those girls. Finally arriving back at the sorority house, however, we encounter a handful of local ones who are still awake, and tell us about some frat party farther down 15th that they intend to hit. Once again we are somewhat hanging back and just taking cues from our ladies, and when it seems obvious that they really want to check this out, we stash the beer in my car and walk up to the street to that fraternity.

As far as I can recall, this is my first ever visit to a frat house. In a truly momentous night chock full of memorable revelations and developments, our time here will rank right up there near the top of the list. I feel as though we have passively hated upon frat boys our entire lives without really taking the time to know any, or understand their people’s culture. This isn’t going to turn into a full fledged defense of the boneheaded bro lifestyle or anything, but…I think there’s more to the story here than maybe we ever realized. Also that this particular story is maybe filed disconcertingly very close on the bookshelf to ours. Just on a higher shelf.

But as we knock on the front door of this massive though faceless manor, one I would struggle to pick out in a photo lineup from all the others on this row, some out of the loop seeming frat brother answers. He’s either just gotten home or just awakened from a nap. The girls are all in front of the pack – us three guys stick to the back – and one of them asks about a party.

“Uh….yeah….but I’m not sure if it’s started yet, we weren’t going to let people in until 2:30.”

“Can we come in now?”

“Hold on, let me check,” he says and shuts the door.  Damon and I exchange amused grins and raised eyebrows – here we were, always trying to con girls into coming to our place, whereas these cats wouldn’t even let them in unless the timing was right.  Slick, very slick.  The kind of slick that throws parties which begin at 2:30 in the morning.

He comes back moments later and, having just learned there were already about thirty people in his basement – imagine that – the dude says okay, sure, we can come on in. Even so, it immediately becomes apparent to us that while all these females are quite welcome, us men are bound for a much frostier reception. This is totally our initial impression, that it’s cool we brought some women and everything, but don’t expect cordiality, and in fact it may be best, hint hint, if we just take a hike.

At least up until the night’s next strange twist rears its head. I’ve been marveling for years at just how many people Clif knows, seemingly everywhere I go with him. And that scenario has already occurred once, much earlier tonight, when he unexpectedly crossed paths with Vince. Only to repeat yet again at this of all places – some Cory guy, who is a fraternity brother residing in this household, used to work with him. He sees Clif and is borderline giddy, shouting his name with enthusiasm. And from this moment forward, we are suddenly golden.

I don’t harbor any ill feelings about the initial cold shoulder. In fairness, we typically act pretty much the same when unfamiliar dudes crash our parties. Now that we are brought into the fold – if not exactly anywhere near their equals – I can see that we’ve also been 100% wrong about this entire scene. Much like most of the popular kids in high school turned out to be, we eventually learned, it seems that by and large…these dudes are basically doing the same shit as us, running the same kinds of games with the same attitudes. They’re just doing it at a much higher level.

I still don’t believe that it was any form of bitterness, jealousy about how successful these characters have been with this crap; I think it’s more this blind assumption that this was a very cheesy, shallow existence, and that these fratholes were just some extremely lucky dumbasses. A perception aided in large part by endless depictions of such in movies and TV shows, sure. But let’s get real, here. They are members of a prominent organization smack dab in the heart of this internationally renowned juggernaut of a university. A lot of these guys have brighter futures than we, a lot of them are probably really smart.

And if they’re not smart, they’re at least clever. Again, to hate them is ridiculous, because an awful lot of this smacks of our stunts – if only we were a little bit better at them. This was obvious before we even set foot inside here, like that junk about not allowing a bunch of hot women into their house before 2:30am. University policy is also giving them a huge leg up, too, for example in permitting alcohol inside fraternities, yet outlawing it within sororities. In other words a policy all but shepherding the ladies to their doorstep.

I’m much more interested in the similarities I detect, however. For specific examples, as we’re now gathered in the quote unquote basement – which is just an exquisitely furbished rec room – there’s this table game nearby, charred around the edges. An incongruous sight, even here, and I just know there’s a story here, one that I must ask Cory about.

“Hey, why does that foosball table have burn marks all around the edges?” I inquire, after we’ve each grabbed a cold Miller Light from this ice filled trough behind their bar.

He turns his head to glance over at it before calmly explaining, “oh, we stole that from Papa Joe’s as it was burning down.”

Whoa. If true, and nothing about his casual delivery makes me doubt this in the least, then this is an amazing little piece of local history that not many people can possibly know about. Papa Joe’s was a campus instution, a pizza shop on High that went up in flames a few years ago, taking the Waterbeds N’ Stuff next door with it. Suddenly, I know that I absolutely must play on that table tonight. But first, other curiosities await, like the life-sized traffic light propped up in one corner – I never realized how large these things truly are, for they do not appear as such when dangling above your car in an intersection. Yet I never quite get around to asking about its origin, because Cory can’t resist telling me how they acquired this fully functional Pepsi machine.

“We stole that from the student union hall,” he tells me, chortling as he casts his mind backwards to this sequence of events, “it was funny, we told the kids working there that we’d come to fix it, but we had to take it with us.”

“No way,” I marvel, grinning in admiration at their demented brilliance.

“Yep,” he nods, “they even helped us load it onto our truck. And what was funny was we called the guys at Pepsi a few days later and told them we lost our key to the machine, so they sent a guy out here to give us a new one and we got, like, sixty dollars’ worth of change out of it.”

Clif is overhearing this too, of course, and we’re both laughing so hard that our stomachs threaten to split open. Only when we at last compose ourselves are we able to contemplate this matter of the legendary foosball table. With Damon off wandering around, to fully inspect the landscape, he and I are left to try out this piece of Papa Joe’s memorabilia, enhanced by this unexpected bonus of Chrissy and Amanda cheering us on, courtside.

Following a couple games of this, they leave to play Damon and someone else over at the pool table. This is when a couple of the preppier looking residents walk up, to challenge us to an exceedingly high stakes foosball game. High Stakes: what this means is that, according to them, there’s a house rule involving something called a bun run. If either side manages a 10-0 shutout, then the losing team must run a lap around the exterior of this massive house. With a fully naked bottom half.

Well, we can say that it’s only totally obvious what happened in retrospect. Sure. That’s why Clif and I agreed to this madness. But it must be said that they surely play these same rules against one another all the time, I don’t sense that this was invented out of thin air just for us. Only problem is, we are quite bad at this game, when compared to them. And even then, if we really wanted to press the point for a ready escape hatch, then an opportunity presents itself with the score 7-0 in their favor. One of these guys knocks the ball into his own goal, which seemingly lets us off the hook.

“Doesn’t count,” he says, however, as they drop the ball back into play. And so we play on without any protest, with two possible opposing reasons for doing so – either that we are feeling so confident in our ability to score one goal, or else we are feeling so unconfident in our ability to win this argument, in their house. I know for me, it’s a little of both. I do enjoy a good challenge, yes. But also recognize that they are hellbent on making us look like fools, and the best thing we can do is take our medicine like men. I’m not going to be found whimpering, and begging them not to humiliate me. We’ll just go along with this, and whatever.

Ten minutes later, Clif and I are in their foyer, taking off everything from the waist down. Which is admittedly a little less mortifying than it otherwise might be, when considering that this is actually far from the first time that I have run around outside naked. “You guys can keep your shoes,” they tell us, and does help, considering this Ohio weather isn’t exactly tropical at 3am in the beginning of March.

It also serves to hasten our pace considerably, as we dash out the circumference of their sizeable estate. I take off first across their front yard, figuring this would be preferable to staring at Clif’s skinny black ass in front of me. At all the doors and windows, the guys huddle around and snicker, check our progress, while the chicks generally laugh outright and point. Panting, I arrive back at the front door only moments before Clif, where I’m relieved to discover what is my actual worst and only true fear – that they would lock us out to further perpetuate the prank – is fortunately unfounded.

We grab our clothes and quickly dress, and if there’s a silver lining to this, it’s that no one in our little party is even aware that this went down. Chrissy and Amanda are still playing pool with Damon, while Darcy and the other girl left shortly after we arrived here. Better yet, when I finally encounter Damon again, it turns that they’ve just finished their games and he’s been looking for me. While Clif and I were outside, some serious scheming had transpired in our absence, and Damon has me follow him into the nearest restroom for a complete lowdown.

“That Chrissy says to me, I really like your friend Jason, how hard do you think it will be for me to hook up with him?” Damon laughs, “I didn’t want to tell her, well, basically, if you drop your pants…”

“Yeah,” I chuckle. But then he continues, explaining that Chrissy had just pressed onward, bluntly stating the deal in what I can so vividly picture, without even being present, her very Natasha Lyonne-esque manner as she blurted this out.

“So she tells me, I’ll hook you up with Amanda if you hook me up with Jason,” Damon explains, chuckles again as he adds, “sounded good enough to me! Only thing is, she asked me how we were going to get rid of that Clif guy.”

On the surface our new blueprint seems somewhat sinister, even though technically nothing has changed at all. The plan always was for me to run Clif home after this, and that’s exactly what we intend to do now. It’s just that there’s the added wrinkle of these women at the end of this odyssey, for Damon and me, so long as we don’t blow it.

When he asks me what I think we should do, I rub my chin for a few ponderous seconds before saying, “I could drive him home, say I was going home myself but that you were gonna stick around here and party with the girls some more. Then you could ride with them in their car, meet me at my house.”

“That should work,” he nods in agreement, as we exit the restroom to set these wheels in motion.

I feel bad for lying to Clif, but at the same time, can’t think of any way to spin the truth that would be less harsh. Hey dude, those chicks wanna hook up with us, but they said you gotta go. Would that be somehow better? And as I’ve stated, his outcome would wind up the same no matter how we played this. I’m sure there are some really hardcore types out there who would say, no man! You draw the line in the sand and tell those chicks, bro! It’s one for all and we stick together as a team! But that’s just silly. It’s now almost 4am and he would be wanting a ride home soon anyway.

Even so, it does bother me, as I’m convinced that this wouldn’t have panned out in quite the same manner if he hadn’t gotten us accepted into that frat party. Maybe things unfold in a basically similar manner, particularly as Chrissy and I were already bonding at the first house, who knows. I think we probably do end up in bed together either way, but not this immediately, and the part about Damon and Amanda doesn’t happen at all. So this is kind of like you’ve made it to the World Series, but then the day before it starts, you release one of the key guys who got you there.

As we climb into my car, I don’t get the impression he suspects anything. More just wistfulness, as though wishing he could remain behind with Damon to party some more as well. Although he does ask me, when we are nearing his apartment off of Henderson, if I think we will meet up again with Chrissy and Amanda down the road, if Damon or I had managed to get their digits and so on. Here I have to conjure up on the spot another diplomatic but technically true response, in this case muttering something about, uh, yeah, I’m pretty sure we will make something happen with those girls.

Flying across town back to my apartment, I’m not sure it’s a good sign at all to see that they haven’t arrived yet. Damon does after all have a key here, and for that matter I have an actual roommate, Big Paul, who may or may not be present – as has been increasingly the case, I’m not exactly sure where he is at the moment. He could be locked in his room or out still carousing on the town. Whatever the case, he missed one hell of a night with us – even though once again, I am grateful he skipped this one, as that too might have thrown off the dynamic just enough.

But then I’ve no sooner popped all of these Natty Lites into the fridge, when this trio magically materializes. And in no time we’ve got beers open, the living room disco ball spinning for good effect, and are playing a card game at the coffee table, Asshole, which I’ve not quite gotten into, though these college age females sure do love it.

For whatever reason, inspired by a show we’d seen awhile back, Damon and I get on this kick reciting the lyrics to Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night, in particular anything to do with the word shaky. That was his keyword of the night and we are destined to repeat it. So yeah, extreme weirdness, but these girls aren’t bothered by our peculiarities in the least. Damon for example cannot remember Amanda’s name for the life of him, but as she keeps talking about an upcoming trip to Florida, he continues to call her Florida instead. But I think she mostly digs that. And you know, weirdos or not, I believe we have absolved ourselves in spectacular fashion tonight – maybe some of those frat guys are banging hotter chicks tonight, but these two look pretty damn good. We went into the belly of the beast and still emerged to bring them home with us.

Not that we’ve sealed the deal just yet, mind you. For now we must at least feign some passing interest in this card game, even if doing so requires blurting out nonsensical song lyrics. A typical exchange therefore passes with a sequence very close to this.

Shaky shaky shaky shaky, I might be singing, to pass the time, in a facsimile of Neil’s high pitched warble.

Bruce Berry…Bruce Berry, Damon would add.

“It’s your turn,” one of the girls tells one of us.

Shaky shaky shaky

“Go. I’m the president, I make the rules here.”

Bruce…Bruce…Bruce…

“Okay, my new rule is, there’s no cussing.”

Shaky shaky Bruce Bruce

Bruce Berry…Bruce Berry

“Alright,” Amanda finally demands, after so much of this, “who is this Bruce Berry, anyway?”

“Bruce Berry was a real hard worker,” I explain.

“Yeah, he used to load an Econoline van,” Damon adds.

These two are the picture of puzzlement, attempting to find any pieces whatsoever to snap together about what we’ve just said. This reminds me of a very similar conversation, actually, during the Y2K New Year’s, over at Alan’s cousin’s place. One of the girls we were playing cards with there, in response to mine and Alan’s thoroughly bizarre, music related “conversation,” had sighed and said, I can never figure out what guys are talking about. Regarding this moment tonight, Damon will later tell me, “you know what it is, man, is we move so fast, bouncing from topic to topic, I don’t think these girls can follow what we’re saying.”

Maybe, but I don’t think that always applies, and certainly not in this instance. My take is that in situations like these, when you are attempting to get with a girl for the first time, progress must move in a spiral motion if you hope to get anywhere. Now that we’ve gotten them to the house, with basically just one last hurdle remaining, we have to spend x amount of time focusing on anything else in the universe except sex. Or at least put up a solid front of pretending to. And this card game, even the Bruce Berry nonsense, is as good as anything else.

I fully expect to take Chrissy upstairs with me tonight. It feels impossible to derail that train at this point. Assessing Damon’s chances is a little trickier – Amanda seems to like him alright, yet Chrissy had made it sound as though she would have to do some convincing to sway her friend. And Amanda does look killer, slender and tan, wearing these tight black pants that perfectly frame her magnificent behind. Chrissy is a really attractive girl, too, near the top range of my all-time list…but man, if Damon manages to pry the panties off this Amanda, then I will really be impressed.

Everything is moving in the right direction, though. After the card game has either worn down or the girls have grown tired of our singing, Chrissy asks me, “hey, do you have a TV in your room?”

“Yes ma’am,” I reply.

“Let’s go upstairs and…watch some TV,” she suggests.

Who am I to object? The two of us begin making this move, as Damon pulls out the couch bed for himself and Amanda to climb into. Upstairs, though flicking on the television, Chrissy and I otherwise immediately abandon this pretense and begin making out, then transfer this action to the bed. Less than six hours after meeting this girl from IU, I begin yanking off her clothes, and she mine, with those other two downstairs hopefully making similar introductions to one another.

Up here, our top halves are fully naked now. She has some killer breasts, which I explore in detail, then begin kissing her belly. Only when I start to unbutton these beige colored jeans she’s wearing does Chrissy throw up the first stop sign of the night. “Let’s…chill out with that,” she tells me.

“You don’t want to take this any further?” I ask.

“Not today,” she says.

But that’s cool. This is only a temporary roadblock. And right around this time, I realize, amusingly enough, that birds are chirping outside my window. Which is when I glance over and discover that it’s daylight outside now, too. And here I have to be to work at 9 o’clock this morning. We soon fall asleep, and I grab a couple hours of shuteye before making it over there.