If the title of this post looks foreign to you, then read these first.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
And now here's...
Chapter 3
“Dan, I just read your first article. I didn’t know you were so graphic!” That was just one of five or six texts concerning my first column I received on that Wednesday night as I was sitting in the office of
The Stamford Advocate, where I interned as a sports writer.
I spent many hours in that office taking calls from coaches, writing game recaps, and writing feature stories about high school sporting events and athletes
1. I traveled all over Fairfield County and covered high school football, soccer, and field hockey games. This experience vastly improved my writing and interviewing skills, but in doing so it also created an unforeseen problem for me. The problem being my attraction to many of the good looking high school girls that I repeatedly interviewed
2. Have no fear though, my professionalism superseded my libido. I also don’t have that much game, but that’s a different story.
My responsibilities that night were very minimal. I sat around the office and waited for 7-8 high school soccer coaches to call in their results. Based on the statistics that they provided I wrote brief game recaps and typed up the accompanying box scores. That was it. I was caught off guard when my LG flip phone began vibrating more than the office phone was ringing because I didn’t know that
The Mirror came out on Wednesday nights. I always assumed that it was a Thursday thing, probably because I never had any classes late on Wednesdays.
Late classes were against my method of having fun in college while still being successful academically. The unwritten weekly social calendar was arranged in such a way as to maximize the amount of drinking nights. Mondays and Wednesdays were off days, ($2)Tuesdays, (Thirsty) Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays were game days, and Sundays (Fundays) were optional. While late classes were against my personal policy, so too were early classes because, like most college kids, I liked to sleep in. Therefore I always arranged my class schedule by balancing those two factors. By not starting my days too early and not ending them too late most of my classes landed in the 11 o’clock a.m. to three o’clock p.m. range. Being done with class at three o’clock afforded me with the opportunity to go to the library to finish a paper or project by five or six o’clock. That way, while the slackers and procrastinators were in the library all night, I was out partying. From what I can tell the library turned into quite the social scene on some nights, but as far as I know they never served any adult beverages there.
The general sentiments I received that night via text were what I expected; laughter combined with a little bit of shock. My friends were largely shocked because I did not necessarily give off a misogynistic aura. I was always loud and opinionated, but never to the extent where I was the life of the party. Trust me, I have much more self-respect than that.
I also wasn’t much of a womanizer. I was much more of a good guy than a bad boy when it came to girls. My plan of attack, if you could even call it that, was to become friends with a girl and attempt to take that friendship to the next level. As I hope you’ve learned, this isn’t the best course of action if you are looking to score with a large quantity of girls. My excuse is that I was looking for quality, not quantity. Whatever, it helps me sleep at night.
I understood the surprise that my friends initially felt because my persona going into senior year was not what people generally associated with the “He Said” writer. Upon hearing about my new role, one of my friends said, “I just don’t see it. It’s not your style.” I expected him to be excited, but you know what? He was right. I went to class, got good grades (graduated cum laude, what’s up?), didn’t drink beer for breakfast, and didn’t approach hooking up with girls like hurdles on a track. It should be noted that I was marginalized, by my friends no less, because I didn’t fit a stereotype.
I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t have a few butterflies in my stomach as I walked to class that Thursday. The first edition of
The Mirror had saturated our campus. Issues could be found by the hundreds at the entrance and exit of just about every academic and administrative building around. I’m not sure if any other contributing writer would admit this, but the paper’s main purpose was distraction. Kids were sure to grab a copy before heading to class so that they could be entertained, if only for a few minutes. The three components of
The Mirror that best served this purpose, entertainment by way of distraction, were the Campus Crime Beat, the College Crossword Puzzle, and the “He Said/She Said” column.
The Campus Crime Beat was successful because it showcased what kids were getting in trouble for on campus. Whether it was an intruder on campus, the amount of beer that was confiscated from a dorm room, or a kid caught cranking it in a computer lab
3. There was also an element of humor in this section because the violations were written by Public Safety and thus put into proper terminology. This meant that the word “bong” would be replaced by “marijuana smoking device” and so on.
The College Crossword Puzzle was a syndicated piece that was strictly a time-killer during Thursday and Friday classes. I don’t even think that too many kids took the time to check and see if their answers were right the following week. I mean, you have to be really committed to a crossword puzzle to save it for an entire week just to see how well you did.
The “He Said/She Said” was widely read for its potential for humor. The first issue of the year was especially critical because there was that new sense of hope that the writers would be funny, similar to the hope that fans of all 30 teams feel on the opening day of the Major League Baseball season. In this instance, the first impression was everything.
Although I had received positive feedback from a handful of friends the previous night, I still anxiously awaited to hear how the student body would react to my first installment of truth serum. My anxiety only increased when I realized that people would soon start recognizing me because my picture was placed smack dab in between my words.
Jackie and I had been called down to the Barone Campus Center, where
The Mirror’s office was located, earlier that week for a photo shoot. In years past, the picture had said a lot about the personalities of the “He Said” writers. The “He Said” writer my freshman year wore a black, short sleeve shirt with the word “College” on it. If that wasn’t playing to the stereotype, I don’t know what is. Sophomore year the “He Said” writer wore a basic long sleeve shirt and crossed his arms, presumably to hide his gut. As I’ve already discussed, the “He Said” during my junior year wore a Red Sox jersey, crossed his arms, and smirked. I wanted to sort of get into the “He Said” ‘character’ for my picture, but unfortunately this plan fell through, despite some intriguing ideas. Tim suggested that I have the picture taken of me on the toilet, pants at my ankles, while reading an issue of
The Mirror. During the actual photo shoot, I suggested that Jackie get on her knees as to show the back of her head over my crotch region. She unfortunately declined.
A few days earlier I asked a fashion forward female what I should wear and her advice really put things in perspective for me. She said, “Wear something plain. That way it’ll never go out of style.” I know nothing about style or fashion, but once she said that I pictured those 1970s yearbook pictures that you always see and thought about what it would be like to look back on my picture 20 years later. Once this thought entered my mind I immediately knew what to wear: my orange Syracuse University t-shirt that was a staple of my game day attire at the Carrier Dome. Unfortunately the back of the shirt, which read “Real Men Wear Orange”, would not be shown in the picture, but I was proud of my decision either way because I’ve always been a big proponent of the advice, “remember your roots.” There’s just something about recognizing where you came from and how that environment shaped your being.
The reaction I received from the members of my class that night at the bar was overwhelmingly positive. Seemingly everyone I knew told me how much they loved my first column. Even acquaintances that I was no longer on a verbal hello level with broke from the status quo to express the enjoyment they received from reading my work. My overt explicitness seemed to be the overriding impression as many of the comments I received were centered on a few of my more daring lines. One of my male friends said, “I can’t believe you wrote leave your mark on.... or in the freshmen girls. Like you could do either.” Others were amazed by my decision to use the Grand Canyon as a way to characterize the vagina of a girl that gets around
4. Drunk and reveling in my early success, I told most of the people that applauded my efforts that my first column was just a taste of what was to come. Shortly thereafter I realized that I had set the bar extremely high. I mean, I had had a few months to write and revise that first column and now I would have less than a week to churn out column number two. My uber self-confidence didn’t allow me to doubt my abilities even for a second although the hype around my column was now greatly increased. Thankfully that night and corresponding morning provided all the inspiration I would need to keep the buzz alive
5.
During the first few weeks of school I had my eyes set on dating a girl in my grade named Kristen. She and I had been very into each other during the fall of our junior year, but we didn’t exactly get the chance to completely consummate our feelings because she went abroad to Australia in the spring. Kristen was short, rail thin, extremely tan, and she had huge, almost bug-like eyes. Her straight, brown hair had a few blonde streaks mixed in and it went well past her shoulders. I thought she was good looking, but detractors later told me that they thought she looked like a tired, old Asian woman.
She was guarded from the get go, but the more we hung out the more she opened up. Breaking down her walls was not an easy process. I felt like Andy Dufresne with his rock hammer at first
6, but the more I chipped away the more interested I became. I soon found out that her shyness was just a defense mechanism. Behind the façade was a girl with incredible depth that was fun to be around. She was just desperate to connect with someone, but scared to open up to the wrong guy.
Although I had expected things to pick up where they left off, they didn’t. It might have had something to do with the fact that while I was at a party with Matty K at Kristen’s house in Long Island that summer I ended up hooking up with her best friend from home
7. Either way, by this point she was very much into this kid that she had gotten to know while in Australia, but still had the audacity to lead me on. She was my number one target every night at the bar. After things fell through with her, which they did virtually every night, I would move on to plan B; Jackie. Now before I go on, let the record show that I was probably Jackie’s plan B (possibly even her plan C or D) just as she was mine. Having history with a girl almost guarantees one, if not many, relapse hookups. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that once a guy hooks up with a girl he knows that there is always a chance that it can happen again. Once the seed has been planted, perhaps literally, he knows that she is attainable.
That being said, Jackie and I had hooked up a few times by that point. Due to this, I spent a considerable amount of my time at the bar talking to her. Normally people would have paid no mind to our innocent dalliance, but this changed with our columns at the forefront of conversations among our classmates. That night, the first barrage of “Oh my God, It’s He Said and She Said!” ensued. I’m not sure how many people knew that we were even hooking up, but the mere sight of us together incited this mundane observation to be pointed out by far too many people.
The bar where the majority of the Fairfield senior class congregated 4-5 days a week was called The Seagrape. It was a dumpy, old, disgusting bar, but it was the only one within walking distance of the beach houses where most seniors lived. Going to The Grape, as it was commonly called, was almost like a rite of passage for Fairfield seniors. Underclassmen were welcome at beach house parties, but they were shunned if they even thought about entering The Grape.
The bar inside The Grape was rectangular in shape and right in the middle of the building, so you could get the attention or one of the bartenders from any of the 4 sides. Like most bars though, the male bartenders served every attractive female first, so you usually had to get two drinks at a time. There was an ATM by the door on the right hand side that rarely had any money in it. Opposite that was a lobster tank filled with live lobsters that you could pay $5 to attempt to scoop out with a claw as well as a Golden Tee arcade machine.
In the back right of the bar was the men’s room which had an old school, stadium style trough that got real sloppy on weekend nights. Against the back wall were two dart boards that required manual scorekeeping on small green chalk boards. The back left corner of The Grape extended awkwardly for about 20 feet. It was there where the entrance to the women’s room lived. A wooden bench stretched along the entire left wall of the bar and many people left their coats near the women’s bathroom during the winter.
As the last call bell rang that Thursday, Jackie and I stumbled our way back to her house just like we had the previous night. Her house, which she shared with three other girls, was in an area known as ‘the point.’ The point consisted of a group of 15-20 clustered houses that were the most coveted by rising seniors. This area was the most sought after because of its prime location. For starters, The Grape was right across the street, so pre and post bar parties were a plenty in these parts. There was also a spacious wooden deck connected to the four houses closest to the water that served as the party capital of Fairfield beach. In order to gain entry into the point you had to pass a gate that was always open, but ‘monitored’ by security guards that did less work than cardboard cutouts would have done. When it came to Saturday day drinking, or senior events, the point was where all the action was.
After getting some action in Jackie’s bed I made the 0.7 mile trek back to my house in the morning. Although I thought that I left her house in a socially acceptable manner (I don’t mean to suggest that I did or didn’t) leaving a girl’s place at the appropriate time is always a guessing game. Sometimes the girl wants you to stick around to cuddle, get breakfast, etc. and sometimes she wants you to leave as soon as possible. It’s a topic that’s never really talked about between people that hook up, but it certainly should be. In fact, there should be a general rule of thumb, or an agreed upon protocol to adhere to. Avoiding the awkwardness of staying too long or leaving too early is something that you’d think both parties would be concerned with. Obviously there are many variables, but waking up in bed with a chick is oftentimes sobering in more than the literal sense. Thankfully on this particular Friday morning I had the “I have to go to class” excuse in my pocket, so Jackie and I avoided any sort of pre meridiem uneasiness.
Evidently the AM etiquette was on Jackie’s mind throughout the weekend because she placed the first of many column related calls that Sunday afternoon as I was supervising a number of intramural flag football games and suggested that we write our second columns on the morning after. I ok’d the topic, but not before making a few
not so sly comments about the morning afters that we had shared together. She said that she didn’t want us to get too personal
8, which was fine by me. I had plenty of other personal experiences from which to pull from as well as a number of general observations that I wanted to share.
The hot term at the time was “walk of shame.” This phrase was meant to describe a female’s walk back to her domicile after spending the night at a lucky gentlemen’s pad. The shame not only being connected to her regrets about what and with whom she did things, but also in her being forced to walk somewhere in the same clothes that she had gone out in the night before. Seeing a girl all dolled up in high heels walking across campus or away from the point was a frequent and hysterical occurrence.
I aimed to connect with as much of my audience as possible with this column because sleeping in bed with a member of the opposite sex is something that most college kids experience. Almost everyone has been through those morning moments where all you want to do is forget about who you hooked up with, make a b line for the toilet, and fall asleep comfortably in your own bed. While most people can relate to this general awkwardness, each year of college seemed to have its own intricacies that added to the experience. Therefore I geared my words towards members of each grade to provide a year by year breakdown of the morning after.
The Mirror on September 19th, 2007:
The Morning After
Ahh the morning after. It can either be as awkward as possible or you can thrive. When you wake up, roll over and say, “Who are you?” you know you either settled for a wildabeast to break out of a slump or it was $1 pitcher night at the bar. Every guy gets that one track mind where he’ll do anything to get some and unfortunately alcohol makes wayyy too many females doable.
You know the type, better known as “the six pack” where you wouldn’t do it sober, but once you slug a few you can’t keep your paws off of her.
The worst are the chunky girls with huge knockers, or as I like to call them Heffers - yes from Rocko’s Modern Life. Doesn’t it seem as if almost all overweight women are incredibly well endowed? It’s gotta just be the fat, right? Well anyway, these jumblies blind our little man’s only eye and he can’t see all those pounds she’s packing elsewhere.
But, don’t worry guys, you gotta slay a few dragons before you get to the princess.
Freshmen- Sleeping on an all girl floor can be a recipe for disaster. And that recipe is what you left brewing in your stomach all night because you were in bed with a girl. Get out of there before your mental ticker starts counting down the seconds until the Hershey Factory opens.
Sophomores- I think the term walk of shame was created for the walk from Kostka to Jogues. Whatever you do, don’t cut through the BCC. It seems tempting, but not even Angel the maintenance man can clean you up in time where you wouldn’t get noticed.
Juniors- If you get with a girl on a futon, don't pretend you are still asleep when a house mate comes downstairs for breakfast. Say good morning and toss him the remote that was lying on your sack.
Seniors- If you don’t live at the point you better bring your road grays with you to the bar because you are going to have a heavy dose of away games this year.
And for the rest of you who haven’t experienced the awkward hookup yet, it’s the second week of school so I will go ahead and assume you know your roommates schedule better than you know your own so you can have some solo study time with your right handed tutor.
That’s all for now.....my roommate has History until 3:15.
1- I wrote an article about a sophomore running back named Silas Redd, who is currently the starting running back and best player on Penn State.
2- I came realll close to Facebooking one of them.
3- That actually happened
4- We had countless nicknames to describe girls that we didn’t know freshman year and the Grand Canyon was one of them. Some girl that lived in our building was whoring herself out in the first month of the year. Not literally, but the nickname seemed apropos. Other nicknames included “Basketball Girl”, “Walks with a purpose”, and “Fan Girl”.
5- If this thing ever gets published I’m sure this chapter will end here.
6- If you haven’t seen
The Shawshank Redemption (1994) then stop what you’re doing right now and go rent it. Or just turn on TNT because it airs there about 200 times a year.
7- I expected to hook up with Kristen that night, but we only made out for about 10-15 seconds because she said that there was a kid at the party that expressed feelings for her recently and she didn’t want to make him upset. As the night wound down only Matty K, Kristen’s best friend from home that “she couldn’t wait for me to meet”, and I were still partying. Matty K had a lott of whiskey, so he soon passed out, which left me and Kristen’s friend alone. For some reason we went outside and laid down on a hammock. She made the first move and we made out for a while, but I stopped and told her that I couldn’t keep going because I liked Kristen so much. After a minute past she went in for the kill again and we made out for a little while before I again stopped her and told her that I liked her best friend too much to do anything further. It should also be noted that Kristen’s best friend had a boyfriend of over a year at the time.
8- She actually took a pretty good shot at me in her column that week.
Please let me know what you thought of this chapter (and the previous two). Post a comment or send me a text, tweet, or email. The more feedback I can get the better it will be for you (and me) going forward. And when I say feedback I mean both good or bad (there's already been a little of both). If something confused you or you think needs to be explained better don't hesistate to let me know. If you particularly enjoyed something (a line, a story, a reference) then let me know.
