Chapters 1-5
And now for the main event...
Chapter 6
Shortly before the release of my column on Facebook I began hooking up with a girl in my grade named Alyssa. She had blonde, almost golden hair, a wide smile accented by dueling dimples, and inviting brown eyes. She hailed from the outskirts of Boston and thankfully spoke without the accent. She was a laid back, free spirited girl who, unlike me, could easily have lived without a television. In fact, I often joked that she was a wannabe hippie1. I wouldn’t say that she was the athletic type (mainly because I associate athleticism with the ability to play basketball), but she was still fit. She was just more outdoorsy. She had a penchant for running and biking, but I think she exercised more to clear her mind than to stay in shape.
Right around the same time (there was a little overlap) Jackie and I temporarily stopped doing whatever it was that we were doing and we each had our reasons. Mine were simple. 1.) I was really into Kristen 2.) Jackie wanted a boyfriend, which was exacerbated by the fact that her three roommates had them and I didn’t want to date her (mainly because I just wanted to be a college dude) 3.) One night after we left The Grape together to go to a party Jackie ended up hooking up with her ex-boyfriend Kyle (the guy that Kristen had strong feelings for). I don’t know all of Jackie’s reasons, but putting a halt on our hook up situation wasn’t something that we ever talked about. It sort of just happened. Surprisingly our weekly column related conversations were not affected in the least.
I met Alyssa during the fall of my junior year because Matty K was trying desperately to hook up with her friend Rebecca. Due to this, Matty K, Dylan and I soon began hanging out with Rebecca, Alyssa and their friends quite a bit. Now this was also the time that I became close with Kristen, so I didn’t hang out with them as much as Matty K and Dylan did, but I was there enough. Sooner or later Dylan and Alyssa started hooking up on a regular basis (Dylan’s girlfriend was abroad for the semester- collleggge) while Matty K continued to feverishly chase after Rebecca. Alyssa and I got along well, but we only interacted in a group setting. I treated her just like I treated any other girl that one of my friends was hooking up with.
The following semester many of the girls that Matty K, Dylan, and I hung out with went abroad. Kristen went to Australia, her roommates went to Italy, as did Alyssa, and Rebecca went to Ireland. While abroad these girls seemed to play a game of musical chairs among friends. Kristen became close with a group of girls that Matty K and I knew from freshman year2 and Alyssa became close with many of Kristen’s roommates. I swear, girls in college change groups of friends about as often as guys do laundry.
In the first few months of our senior year Matty K, Dylan, and I (and sometimes Greg and Max) spent a lot of time at Kristen’s house before and after going to The Grape. The girls that lived there were a lot of fun to hang out with, but my main reason for being there was to try to re-ignite the old flame with Kristen. Matty K and Dylan also loved hanging out with this particular group of girls and their presence there was amplified by the fact that they lived about 2 miles away from everyone else and the girls’ house was close to the bar. Alyssa, after becoming close with this group of girls (except for Kristen) while abroad, soon became a regular at the pre and post bar scene at their house as well. She was also very much single (not to say that she was easy, but she wasn’t hooking up with anyone) and she and Dylan had no intentions of hooking up again because he was still with his girlfriend.
One night after the bar closed3 in early October a group of us decided to change things up a bit, so we went to Alyssa’s house for some post-bar festivities. The half mile walk was on the way to my house and I was hammered, so I went along. Because it was an impromptu decision the after party wasn’t anything special. Just about 10-15 people casually nursing late night beers and trying to think of last ditch schemes to get some before calling it a night. After about an hour or so I had had enough and decided to go back to my house (which was only 5 houses down) to see what my roommates were up to.
When I got back to my house I found Max, who had just returned from a post bar party himself. He and I cracked some brews and sat on our back deck looking out at the water. Doing so almost always led to semi-serious conversations about girls, our future careers, etc. because of the serenity of Long Island Sound. After about a half an hour of serious male bonding I got a text from Alyssa that said something to the effect of, “Do you want to come back over?” By this point it was pretty late and I knew that most people would soon be calling it quits on the night, so I wasn’t sure what to make of the text. I showed Max my phone and he immediately said, “Dude, she definitely wants you.”
To be honest, I didn’t know what to think. I always thought that Alyssa was attractive, but I never really envisioned her as a potential hookup. For starters, she hooked up with one of my roommates for the better part of a semester, so she was sort of off limits. Also, I was all sorts of caught up in Kristen and I was occasionally hooking up with Jackie.
It was about 2:15 when I made my way back over. Alyssa quickly answered my light, nervous knock and I entered the side door of her beach house and found myself in the kitchen. My anxiety intensified after I scanned the ground level and noticed that everyone that had been there earlier was now gone. The only other person downstairs was Alyssa’s roommate, whose name I had forgotten even though I had met her earlier in the night. The roommate promptly went to bed and Alyssa asked if I wanted to watch a movie (which is college speak for, “Do you want to hook up?”). As we sat down on the couch I was still feeling a bit uncomfortable about hooking up with her because of her history with Dylan, but apparently she had no problem with it as she made the first move 10 or so minutes into the movie whose title I hope you’ll forgive me for not remembering.
Alyssa and I continued to hook up in the weeks that followed, but it was relatively casual (or at least that’s how I saw it). I was still spending a lot of time with Kristen and essentially getting nowhere. Kristen and I shared very personal information (we both routinely said the phrase, “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this before, but…”), but things never sparked again physically because she had strong feelings for this other joker as well. It was almost like I was the guy who makes it to the final rose ceremony on The Bachelorette4 only to walk away empty-handed, just I didn’t quite know it yet.
The Saturday after my column on Facebook was printed our Student Beach Residents Association organized a keg crawl that started at the Pink Box and worked its way up the beach until it got to the point. This was the first of many events that served as an excuse for the majority of our class to drink all day long. It was also still warm out, so everyone was excited to get loaded while basking in the sun. At about 10 a.m. Greg, our house’s resident engineer, or guy’s guy, tapped the keg and “the varsity team”5 started downing suds. People started to show up around 10:30-11 and you could just tell that things were going to get sloppy real quick.
I was crushing bevs like a true college dude, but once Kristen showed up she had my undivided attention. She and I even went into the tiny bedroom that I shared with Tim for about an hour and tried to hash out our feelings. As we sat on the bottom bunk (mine for the first semester) she told me how confused she was because she had such strong feelings for both me and this Kyle character. She also said that she felt as if she was being unfair to me and she didn’t want that to be the case. I told her that she wasn’t being unfair, but deep down I knew that it meant that she was eventually going to pick Kyle. Although I got the feeling that rejection was inevitable, for some reason I still hung out with her for the rest of the day in the hopes that she would change her mind and pick me. I was virtually by her side from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. as we ventured from house to house all the way to the point.
Apparently Alyssa was very distraught about how I hardly paid any attention to her that day, or so her friends later told me. At the time I was so fixated on hanging out with Kristen that I didn’t even think twice about Alyssa. Also, I thought that our hooking up was just casual (is it ever?) and that she knew about my strong feelings for Kristen. Either way I couldn’t stand the thought of someone being upset with me, so I went into full on recovery mode and quickly salvaged things with her.
The following weekend was Columbus Day, so on Sunday night Jackie and I decided to write our columns with that topic in mind. I ended up writing a zinger-less, Fairfield specific article that was admittedly one of, if not, my weakest. Although it’s a paltry excuse, I had a lot going on at the time.
The next day (Monday) Kristen, although lying about it at first, told me that she was going to spend her Columbus Day Weekend at Kyle’s house in New Jersey. I had been trying to prepare myself for the worst, but that news was the coup de grace. Her decision had been made and whether I liked it or not I had to move on.
Now I had hooked up with Alyssa a handful of times by that point, but I still had yet to hang out with her sober6. Although I’d like to think that I did this because I was trying to be a gentleman, I asked Alyssa if she wanted to see a movie mainly as a reaction to the death blow that Kristen had delivered to my feelings the day before (in my defense I did really like her). She said yes and we decided to go the next night (Wednesday) because I was going to Notre Dame for the weekend with Tim and a few of our friends on Thursday.
Alyssa wasn’t much of a movie person, so she gladly let me choose which movie to see. In fact, she claimed that the last movie she saw in theaters was Blade (1998), which I thought was ridiculous. I chose Gone Baby Gone (2007), which was Ben Affleck’s directorial debut and starred his brother Casey.
As we walked into the old school theater on that fateful Wednesday night it appeared as if we had the place to ourselves. It was old school only in the sense that there was no stadium seating available. No stairs to walk up to get a better angle at the screen. Just a ramp that gradually slanted from the door all the way to the front row. The seats were of the boring grayish blue microfiber upholstery fabric variety with the accompanying hard plastic backs and uncomfortable cup holder clad armrests.
Upon second glance I noticed that there were actually two people already seated; Kristen and Kyle. Now I've had some pretty awkward moments in my life, but none were even in the same ball park as that one. I was literally stunned. On my first date with Alyssa? Really? They were seated toward the back of the theater (maybe 3-4 rows from the entrance) and in the middle of the row. After exchanging a quick wave with Kristen, Alyssa and I walked up a few rows and sat a little off center from where they were seated. I did my best to appear unfazed, but I was so overcome with emotion that my body locked up as soon as I sat down. My mind soon followed suit. I couldn’t stop thinking about how awkward the predicament was. Did this seriously just happen? I can’t believe this. Did I even wave? Did Kristen wave back? I’m the most awkward person on the planet. This would happen to me. Seriously, no one else in the theater? You’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t like how they’re sitting behind us. There’s no chance that I can pull off the arm around move now. Does Alyssa even realize how awkward this is? Does Kyle?
That all being said, I loved the movie. Not only is it in my top 5 movies of the 2000’s, but I’m convinced that you could teach an entire college ethics course based on the film’s plot.
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Although Tim and I heard rumblings throughout the fall that as many as 15 of our friends were going to go to the Boston College/Notre Dame football game with us (we booked our flights in August), only two of our friends ended up making the trip to South Bend; Glancy and the Ice Cat.
Glancy was a burly kid from Chicago that played baseball at Fairfield despite being named the Illinois State Player of the Year in Hockey as a senior in high school. He lived with Greg freshman year and was the infamous third “Musketeer.” Glancy lived in my townhouse junior year and practically lived on our couch senior year because he lived 2-3 miles away from everybody else with Matty K, Dylan, and our other housemate from junior year (Pete). He was a bit of a train wreck to live with mainly because of his addiction to chewing tobacco. He left his “spitters” (Gatorade bottles filled with tobacco juice) wherever he pleased. Also, if he owed you any money he would repay you with beer. That was his currency. For example, say he owed you $60 and you asked him for it. He would reply by saying, “Ok, I’ll get you a couple of 30’s this weekend,” and that was that. He was also such a diehard Notre Dame fan that he routinely scoured the recruiting websites and gave Tim and I full reports on the high schoolers that the Irish were after even though we were only remotely interested. That all being said he was the salt of the earth and easily one of our closest friends.
The Ice Cat was a tall, skinny kid from Michigan. Apparently he was a stud youth hockey goalie (before suffering serious knee injuries) and was given the nickname by a TV/radio announcer after making a great late game save as a 12 year-old. Hardly anyone at Fairfield referred to him by this moniker, but it must have stuck at home because his parents bought him a new car during our senior year with, “ICE CAT” vanity plates. He had a nice set of hair (don’t judge me) and spoke with an occasional stutter. Sometimes the stutter was awkward to be around, but no one ever brought it up in front of him because he was too nice of a kid. My thought process was simple. He certainly knew when he stuttered, so what good could come from pointing it out?
He dated one of Jackie’s housemates (a smokeshow) and shortly after our ND trip told me one of the reasons Jackie had for deciding to no longer hook up with me. When it came to gossip the Ice Cat was like an 8th grade girl that sits at the popular table. Apparently after seeing me leave the bar with Alyssa one night, Jackie proclaimed that she would never hook up with me again. Upon hearing this, the Ice Cat asked her if she wanted to put her money where her mouth was. Jackie, convinced that she no longer had feelings for me, confidently agreed. The bet stipulated that the loser would cook dinner for the winner and their housemates. The Ice Cat, a serious Michigan fan, had taken Glancy to the ND/Michigan in “The Big House” earlier in the year, so Glancy decided to repay him by taking him to the BC/ND game. Based on his fan hood this reimbursement made no sense, but the Ice Cat had a cousin that went to ND and he knew plenty of kids from BC that were going to be in South Bend that weekend.
Despite an inspired comeback effort, Notre Dame came out on the losing end of the showdown of Catholic schools. They were having a mediocre season anyway, so the loss didn’t affect Tim, Glance, and I like it normally would have. Had they won, Tim and I most likely would have lobbied to stay and celebrate, but we went with the plan and started drinking our sorrows away on a bus back to Chicago with a bunch of Glancy’s high school friends. Once we got to the Windy City, we dropped our things off at the apartment that Glancy shared with his sister (where we were staying) and headed out to the bars. We raged until about 4 a.m., got some great late night drunk food, and crashed. I wish I was lying when I say that Glancy fell asleep mid cheeseburger bite on an oversized leather recliner.
The next day Glancy gave us an abbreviated tour of the city before our flight home. He showed us the Sears Tower, pointed out landmarks on Michigan Avenue, and took us to a restaurant to eat some deep dish pizza. Between the four of us we figured that we could easily house 3 pies. After we ordered, the Ice Cat, always the gossip queen, asked what my column topic was for the week. I explained how Jackie constantly proclaimed that the girls at Fairfield were much better looking than the guys and wanted to somehow make that a topic. I agreed with her whole heartedly, so I suggested that we simply write about the other gender in broad terms. I would write about the average Fairfield girl and she would write about the average Fairfield guy.
Upon hearing the topic, the Ice Cat offered his services. Unfortunately the conversation soon split. Tim, who regularly read my columns before I sent them in anyway, was more focused on asking Glancy about the city where Michael Jordan won six rings. The Ice Cat bounced a few ideas off of me, but the topic soon changed again once our food showed up. Sure enough, we severely underestimated the thickness of the deep dish and struggled to finish two of the pies.
We left the restaurant with an untouched deep dish pizza and started walking toward the train that would bring us to the airport. As we approached a busy intersection Glancy, who was carrying the full pizza, noticed a homeless man lying on the ground holding a sign that read, “Homeless and hungry.” Knowing that we’d most likely end up throwing out the full pie before getting on the plane, he offered it to the homeless man. Shockingly the poor, dirty, unshaven man in worn out clothes refused, but had the audacity to ask for money instead. Glancy, shocked by the bizarre turn of events, responded with the timely colloquialism, “Sorry pal, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
After sleeping for the majority of the next day I awoke with only a few hours to write my column. Thankfully in our brief conversation the Ice Cat and I had come up with a dynamite opening line. With such a broad topic, the rest just flowed. I swear, sometimes all you need is the first line.
The Mirror on October 17th, 2007:
Oh the Battle of the Sexes
I’ll be the first to say that I’m not perfect, but who are we kidding, you aren’t either, so let’s get right to the judging.
Girls here at Fairfield are all virtually of the same mold, but they generally come from three different areas.
There are two types of girls from Long Island. The first are the guidettes who use more hairspray than John Travolta dressed as a woman7. I mean if you dig beefy muscles and peanuts then my noodle arms and macadamia’s aren’t for you. Without buying you jager bombs, no one else has a shot.
The second are the girls that have been spoon fed their entire lives because their daddy owns the world. These little princesses grew up with millions of dolls and no friends and now they won’t stop talking. But don’t worry, I know a guy from Atlanta that might be able to lend me a few muzzles8. After those are on tight, I’d like to take a brick from each of their castles and throw them at their faces.
Girls from the state of Massachusetts (America’s red-headed step child) might be the worst. I have a soft spot for chicks that rock baseball hats, but the pink Red Sox hats have got to go. No other demographic thinks they know a lot and knows less about their own team than female red sox fans.
While the Red Sox do score a lot of runs, it still doesn’t compare to the amount of times guys have rounded the bases with girls from New Jersey. Considering the amount of times they’ve gotten pumped, you’d think they’d know how to fill up their own gas tanks. Jersey girls think they are God’s gift to the earth because they live ‘down the shore’. When you aren’t laying out in America’s dumpster, you go right to the tanning booth because you think guys are attracted to the color orange.
Girls if any of you wear uggs this year, you are going to get a swift kick in the shins. And don’t get mad, isn’t feminism about being equal to men?
Also, what is the deal with the oversized sunglasses? Perhaps you should wear them 24 hours a day because the sun never sets on a badass, right? Wrong, that’s the worst AIM profile quote of all time. Get your bad ass to the recplex. It’s open until 11.
1 She did own a tie-dyed shirt and occasionally smoked weed.↩
2 We played on a co-ed intramural volleyball team together. Our team name was “The Sledge Hemmers” in honor of the girl that first organized the team our freshman year, Caitlin Hemmer. During warm ups I had the entire team practice their spikes by re-enacting the final sequence in the 2003 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship in which Syracuse beat Kansas 81-78. I pretended to be Kansas guard Michael Lee and everyone else on the team took turns pretending to be Syracuse forward Hakim Warrick. ↩
3 12:30 a.m. on weeknights and 1:30 a.m. on weekends. Connecticut has the worst blue laws in America.↩
4 It’s a fantastic television product and I’m not ashamed to admit it. ↩
5 A self-given nickname that a few of us used whenever drinking was involved. Glancy was the originator of the term.↩
6 In fact, a few weeks later I pre-gamed a sober hang just to take the edge off. I even showed up with a 12 pack in case Alyssa wanted to loosen up a little too.↩
7 Travolta played a woman in the movie Hairspray (2007), which was out in theaters at the time.↩
8 Hard to miss this one, but for those of you that did I was referring to Michael Vick. ↩
