This is the story of how I got in trouble. Until this night, my life had been a pre-Yoko Beatles single. This is how I became a mid-'70s Rolling Stones bootleg.
Late fall, sophomore year. I'd been sleeping all day in my room in Topliff when a friend burst in and woke me up --
"Alex I'm so sorry but my friend's formal date fell through at the last minute and she really wanted to go but I don't know what you're doing tonight and --"
"Uh, totally, sure, I'll go."
"Oh my God thank you so much!" She told me where to be and when as the door closed behind her.
I was not a worldly sophomore. It was my first formal -- and this wasn't just any sorority. As I learned it freshman year, the female hierarchy wasn't even composed of stereotypes, but received wisdom -- practically protons and neutrons (some attractive, others not). This house, I dutifully knew, was the coolest, or at worst the second coolest: The sweet girls who drink too much!
Ironic distance is easy now. At the time, I was just pumped. I wasn't a senior yet: For better or worse, "cool girls" wasn't yet in quotation marks for me. And I knew almost none of them. This was an opportunity, I thought. A test.
The sun had just set. I fell back asleep.
At the last possible moment I scrambled out of bed and threw on nice clothes. I didn't have time to eat dinner. Actually, I hadn't eaten all day: It had been the recovery day for my weekly all-nighter. I resolved to find food before the drinking really started, knowing quietly that that would be impossible.
I tightened my tie down the stairs and walked fast toward Wheeler. Dartmouth, as ever, was perfect-looking at night. The air was sweet, everyone seemed to be walking somewhere important; I supposed I was, too.
I skipped up the stairs in Wheeler, still barreling toward a precipice I couldn't see. What was in my head then, in those weeks? I know I was excited, like all new sophomores, that I actually knew people around campus. What a comfort that was. My freshman year was typically uncertain; I hadn't anticipated Dartmouth's social intensity.
You laugh to think of it: I thought the steepest learning curve was going to be academic.
I found the room. My date, her roommate Liz "The Voice" Vaughan '08, and Liz's date Caleb Ballou '08. Then and now, Caleb broadcasts Don't Worry About It at the highest voltage ever measured. If he weren't here, there would be two Student Assemblys.
This phase of sorority formals could be called the pre-pre-game. Shots were downed, some toasted to Will McMahan '08 and "what he's missing!" I was his replacement date. Then "Yay, formal!" and "Sophomores, baby!"
I had much too much liquor, especially for an amateur -- and mega-especially for a guy failing to follow his mom's eat-before-drinking regulation for the first time ever. Then it was time to go. On the way out, Liz insisted that I eat whatever food they had, which turned out to be six Pepperidge Farm Mint Milanos. I stuffed and we bounced.
We made our way to the sorority basement, the pre-game, such as it was. Liquor sloshed through a hundred or so well-dressed, good-looking, totally unfamiliar students.
Not my crowd, not yet; these girls preferred frats harboring athletes or frats that haze dudes into notoriety.
And here they were: the weight-trained, the pledge-educated. I'd heard the stories. Two guys strongly encouraged to finish a huge bowl of beer between them, enough beer to guarantee vomiting. Thing was, they had to throw up into the bowl. And keep drinking.
I can't moralize. That story is extreme; others, usually rather safer, merely impress with their creativity. After all, 19 is the proper age to cross all kinds of fun unpleasantries off your to-do list, Drink Beer Until Vomit included. And these guys, they're not all beaten spouses. Some aren't kidding themselves when they say their pledge term was fun. Nonetheless, with the worst of them there's a visible diminishing, a light gone from the eyes.
None of which was on my mind in the sorority basement that night. I'd already had too much to drink, and I was in the kind of mindset you can no more excuse later than see the error of at the time. Namely, these fellows can't intimidate me! They think they can just stand there with their -- with their bulbous... delts -- and keep me from living my life! I don't see his name on this Tequila! Why, then, must he act as such? Give me that glass --
That, or I was anxious because I didn't know anyone. The end result doesn't change.
The last thing I remember is the approach of a tall, senatorial member of Phi Delt: A blessing, I actually knew this guy. He had two shots for each of us.
Out like a light; the rest is silence. Hours pass -- no one knows how many.
Will he wake up? If so, where? With whom? Having done what? Tune in next Mirror.
