Parking Lots, Tangling Knots

I'm writing a book... here's an excerpt. tell me what you thank. 

*"thank" is Urban Youth for think

.....It was the first night I was back on campus, I wanted nothing more to get completely shitfaced.

College much?

I’m not a huge drinker or anything, but I just really felt like letting loose. For the first time in three months, I was finally away from the scrutinizing eye of my parents. For the first time in three months, I didn’t have to feel guilty about drinking. My parents have always given me such a hard time about that stuff. And to be honest, I have no idea why. I mean, they couldn’t really ask for a better son. I worked really hard in high school, have never gotten into trouble, and do pretty much whatever they ask of me. Yet they continue to bother me about drinking.

Meanwhile, I’m pretty much the only one of my friends who doesn’t smoke weed. Yea, I’m that kid. But unlike most “that kids,” I embrace the role. I relish it. Being the kid who doesn’t smoke weed amongst a group of TPC Sawgrass Premium Members is kind of like reciting poetry at a math competition. It’s odd, out of place, yet not completely ridiculed due to its inherent (square) root in academia. And let’s be honest here. E=MCsquared at work is more poetic than half of the stuff in a Shel Silverstein book. And he was one of the all-time greats.

So anyway, I decided that I was going to beat the sobriety out of me like a piñata at a kindergartner’s birthday party. Well, maybe not that brutal. But you get the point. I hope.  

As I returned to my humble abode, I was treated with a rather pleasant surprise—there were around 25 people in 

my barren, not yet decorated apartment, about 20 of whom I had never seen before. To my delight, all of them were consuming some good old fashioned natural light.

Being that NSO training mandated that I had to arrive at campus buzz lightyears before anyone else, I had not actually seen any of my roommates yet. But judging by the raucous marty (mini-party) that was going on in my apartment, I assumed that one of them must have arrived while I was out and about. Either that, or all of these people were posing as humans but in actuality were imposters taking part in some really intricate alien-take-over-the-world scheme. 

Luckily for everyone involved, the latter was not the case. Faster than I could blink 182, I spotted my roommate Cole amidst a throng of girls. From the looks of it, hookup city was about to about to get two new residents. Or maybe even three.  

Becoming aware of my presence, Cole reacts accordingly.

“Yooooo Blake! What’s up? How you been, man?”

He was already kind of drunk. His face was the same color as that dog Clifford from those children’s books.

“

Pretty solid, dudester,” I replied. “Are all these people your security detail? Terrorist threat must not be too high.”

Cole chuckled and proceeded to start mumbling things I didn’t understand. He tends to do that sometimes. As usual, I nodded my head at the appropriate moments in fake agreement, even inserting some timely “Yea’s” here and there. My hero Albus Dumbledore once told me “There comes a time when one must choose between what is right, and what is easy.” Clearly, I made the right choice.

I let Cole meander his way back to the venus flytrap in the corner, grabbed a beer, and started to mingle.

 Mingle. What a funny concept. “Mingling” situations are probably the contrived circumstances created by mankind. Half the time you have no interest in the other person’s answers to your clearly rehearsed question. And if you do, you can’t really pursue the conversation any further (due to the other people in the circle that you have to include in the conversation), or else all the laws of mingling will be violated and the mingle police will come to arrest you. Now, all of these rules and regulations wouldn’t be too bad if you were allowed to actually be funny. However, since every single joke made in mingle city is required to relate to the weather, comic relief is harder to come by than a little bit of sunshine these days. Eh?

 Despite my inward contempt, I mingled. I talked to about 10 different people, none of whom had anything interesting to say. I briefly recall a conversation about horseriding and beer. I’m not really sure how those mix, but college students who try way too hard in social situations usually reference alcohol about every ten words, so that random rollout wasn’t completely ludacris.

Three beers and several “how was your summer”s later, I received a text from my orientation captain, my captain, telling me the location of the NSO party that was going to be starting up in a little bit. Getting kind of bored at my apartment, I figured it would be a good idea to call an audible and to head over to the NSO bash. Plus, the theme was “Martha’s Vineyard”.  There was absolutely no way I was going to pass on an opportunity to be obnoxiously preppy and talk about my father’s yacht in an overly pretentious drawl. Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, move over.

I exited the party rather swiftly. I don’t know about you, but I hate it when people make a big deal about their departure. In basic real person talk, a self-pronounced declaration of leaving a social function could be easily translated as “you guys suck. I’m leaving to go hang out with cooler people” And although that may have been true in that particular situation, honesty is not always the best policy. Just ask Ray Lewis.

I caught up with my group of fellow orientation advisors at our designated meeting spot, and we headed over to the party. I’d tell you about my group in more depth, but it’s really not that important to the story. Consider them very, very minor characters in a television show. Like, the waiter at a restaurant the main characters once went to or something.  I’m not trying to be demeaning or anything-- there were actually some pretty cool people in my group. All I’m saying is that in the grand scheme of things, they were the LMNT to my N'SYNC. 

So we hit up the party. It was a pretty sweet time overall. The house was set up perfectly. There was a smaller room for beer pong, flip cup, and other collegiate drinking games of debauchery, a rather large room which seemed to be devoted to drunken dancing/people awkwardly making out, and an outside area for the keg/liquor. The Martha’s Vineyard theme was displayed in full force. From clearly overpriced sunglasses to “Vineyard Vines” polo’s, even the mega successful, overworked, cocaine snorting father of a wanton son would have been proud.

I got absolutely housed at that party. No, I didn’t black out or anything. I’ve actually only blacked out once in my entire life, but that’s another story for another day. The point is, my inebriation level was just about as high as Justin Beiber’s voice. Excessive, celebratory shot taking could do that to even the classiest of individuals. I mean, who can pass up a toast to “Sexy wives and sons with rich fathers?”

Over the next half hour, I was primarily preoccupied with myself, busting out some dance moves to a number of songs that are in reality subpar, but were elevated tenfold by the party atmosphere (i.e, anything by Lady Gaga). In the words of the esteemed Billy Idol, I was “Dancing with myself.” That may sound lonely, but to be totally honest, I digged it. There weren’t really any girls at the party I was too interested in, so I wasn’t about to go pursue somebody just for the sake of looking cool, and the culture of NSO was one of robust individuality; partying with yourself was far from discouraged. In many ways, it was embraced.

After about an hour of dancing, drunk conversations about absolutely nothing, and poorly organized drinking games, I decided to peace. It was getting late, I was still pretty drunk, and I needed to wake up repulsively early for day two of NSO training. Yes, being 19 and having to wake up at 7:00am  for something that isn’t school is rather disgusting.

Generally pleased with how the night went, I returned to my apartment to find that it was completely empty. Well, not completely empty. There were enough empty beer cans to create the less sober version of the Tin Man.

Exhausted I immediately crawled into bed, thoroughly  relieved to finally enjoy a few solid hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Or so I thought…

_____________________ 

song of the day:

Fearless, Taylor Swift

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCqq48pOZM4