Something was wrong with the world.
It was Friday night and I was in my dorm room- by myself. I was bored to sitting on the Internet, searching articles and sites about things I’m "in to," and staring at my AOL Instant Messenger buddy list. I seemed to always put up an away message that said, "I'm out and about right now, catch me later," when actually I was right there on the computer, bored as hell and wishing someone would Instant Message me. Then I'd realize everyone else was cooler than me and I was the only one on IM at that moment. I'd be right there, waiting; I sound about as corny like Richard Marx.
Maybe it was all a coincidence. Maybe everyone else was sitting there waiting for someone like me to IM them and save them from the tragedy called boredom.
But then there is the bastard thing called "idle."
Yes folks, that was the worst: the idleness. The whole world seems to crumble when your "buddy" turns a shade of gray. I know I live a sad, sad, life.
I was reading a trashy, but not so trashy, romance novel my best friend gave me when I realized it was nine p.m. and I had yet to have dinner. I rolled back my closet door and looked at the small mound of non-perishable, carbohydrates-filled food that I kept stashed in my closet. And something happened in that moment: I saw heaven.
Actually, I just saw that I had a cup of "Cup Noodles" there; my favorite, Chicken Salsa flavor. Five minutes later I was blowing off the steam of my spicy fake chicken flavored dinner of ramen noodles. I took a bite, burnt the roof of my mouth, and mumbled an obscenity.
There I was. I had on my sweatpants and an old "Hard Rock Cafe" T-shirt from New York. My socks were white but mismatched. My hair was gross, my glasses were perched on my nose, and the ramen noodles were burning my mouth. My book was in lap and my roommate had gone home for the weekend. The sound screams, laughter, and drunk college kids echoed in the hallways.
So, what’s wrong with this picture: me.
And that's when it happened. I started thinking (I know, tell the president) maybe, just maybe I should, I don’t know, go out?
But drunk, flirting, loud, obnoxious college kids weren’t what I wanted to deal with. I didn’t want to hear people brag about what sorority they got in to, who they made out with last night, who’s got a keg, and who’s got extra tickets to the John Mayer concert tomorrow night.
I like John Mayer, but I wouldn’t be caught dead in that college fest of rabid, drunk, groping PEOPLE!
I didn’t go out and be normal because, I wasn’t normal.
I liked to speed walk to class and come back to my dorm, sit at my computer and stare at the screen as if I turned away I'd miss the meaning of life.
I got out of class everyday around 2:45 p.m. That gave me time to get back, get a snack, and get ready for the one true love of my life: "General Hospital." I did homework and ate dinner and watched TV in the evenings; then I would go to bed and get up and start the vicious cycle again. That wasn't so abnormal.
It was those damned weekends! What was I supposed to do with my time?
My best friend went to a different college; it wasn't far, but I couldn't spend every damn minute of the weekend with her! I could have gone to Krispy Kreme, but then I'd just be fat. I'd be fat and bored: bad combination.
So, I did nothing. I stayed bored. I sat there. I needed a change.
Maybe I could join a sorority like my roommate did. No, the "Rush" season had already rushed by. We had this big-ass neon yellow sign that said "An awesome Alpha Delta Sigma Pi Trig Calculus Cosine Algebra Divide Ellipse lives here." It annoyed the crap out of me. But what annoyed me more was the AWFUL sound of some old school rap song coming from the halls. I needed out of that hell, and bada bing-bada boom, there was a knock at my door.
Maybe Satan himself was knocking on my door; pitch fork, horns and all.
Like the moron I was, I didn’t look through the peephole and swung open the door. Instead of Satan being there two guys and a girl were smiling at me. Then their smiles dropped, like they had just been told the party didn’t have beer. This was definitely worse than Satan.
"Um, hi." I stood there holding on to the door like it was a Knight's shield. Where was my sword when I needed it?
"Yeah, hi. Um, what are you doing tonight?" The guy was cute, but short. He had light brown hair that was growing out; starting the "I don’t care but really I do" look already.
I shrugged. "Nothing, why?" I was acting like I knew these people. I didn’t know these people.
The guy smiled and crowded the space in my doorway as if he was coming on to me. "You should come out and party tonight. There’s a building event, it's fun! We are RA's from the 3rd floor..."
Just then a feminine arm slipped around his stomach and across his chest to his shoulder. "No you aren’t!"
The guy looked over his shoulder and smiled. "Shut up, Daph." He mouthed something to her, and let her pull him out of the way and they started flirting in that way only couples do.
"So you gonna come out?"
And that’s when I realized who was standing before me. The guy from my Literature class that I kinda-sorta had a crush on, even though I had never talked to him. He sat in the middle-back with the other "Greekies," as I called them.
I defined male Greekies as individuals that wear certain flip-flops, a good pair of jeans, and button down shirts rolled up at the elbows. Worn Abercrombie and Fitch hats on their head and anything brand named was acceptable.
The sorority girls also sat in the middle-back and the brand named thing went with them also. The female Greekies wore flip-flops also, denim skirts and their beloved "sorority event" T-shirts. Their perfect, occasionally highlighted hair was usually pulled back in a ponytail. And you can never forget the tote bags hanging over their shoulders and the cell phones pressed to their ears and the cigarettes occasionally dangling from their fingers.
So there he was, the man of my Chaucer and Shakespeare dreams. I didn’t even know his name, and now he was standing there, crooked smile and curly hair sticking out from under a "made to look like it was 10 years old" hat.
All the while he was standing there, looking at me, and only me, not paying attention the couple behind him, I just stood there, looking like a bum that got beat up by a drunk and then went to tell someone and got hit by a car.
The only excuse I could muster up was, "Um, I have homework to do."
I. Am. So. Lame.
He laughed a tiny bit, and smiled. "Come on, what's a sorority girl doin’ in her room on a Friday night?"
They thought I was a sorority girl. But how? Why?
My roommate's sign: the sign someone had pasted to the door like one of those orange reflector sticker strips mom made you wear on Halloween and messed up your whole costume. I wasn’t a sorority girl; I was the farthest thing from it. And now, they wanted me to join them and party.
I was so excited, so nervous, so anxious, so scared. They wanted me! I felt like Sally Field when she said, "You like me, you REALLY like me." But this wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want THEM to like me. I wanted to be my independent self. I wanted to do whatever I pleased. I wanted to be able to be content with the fact that if I didn’t have plans on a weekend.
Just before I said that wasn’t ok. I wasn’t content. I was getting confused and it showed. "I uh, I uh..."
He didn’t look like he was gonna give up. My roommate had said that some guys might come by this weekend but I was watching General Hospital at that time, so she had about .02% of my attention. I thought to myself, Maybe this was my chance. Maybe this was my chance to get out. What the hell? I should do it.
My dream lover thought so, too. "You uh, You uh- Go change, we'll be down stairs."
Then the door shut. I was so damn close to squealing like I had just gotten my first phone call from a BOY! Instead I locked the door, ripped off my clothes and went like a freaking tornado through my closet looking for something to wear.
Tonight was my night.
I felt like opening my door and screaming down the hallway, "I am woman. Hear me roar!" So yeah, the whole "hear me roar" thing was a stupid idea, and I'm glad I never did it.
Seven minutes later I found myself in front of the full length mirrors on my closet door looking myself up and down. For a seven minute makeover I looked hot and felt like modeling. This wasn’t the prom, but it was just about as exciting. I thought I looked acceptable in my skirt and top and grabbed my purse and headed out the door.
This was it. It was the starting of the new me and I was terrified.
Maybe I shouldn’t go, I thought; just stay there, lock the door and never answer it again in my life!
The next thing I knew I was out the door and my flip-flops were flapping on the steps down to the first floor. FLIPFLOPS! What had I done!?
"Hey, you made it!" How the hell did I get out there? I was just walking and now I was there, outside my building, with all the other "cool" people. "We're gonna make a stop by The House before we might go to that party everyone is talking about. But we might just chill." I loved how they called it "The House."
I shrugged and rolled my eyes. "Whatever."
"Hey!! She's here!! By the way, I'm Justin. That's Trace." There was my guy, my crush, Justin.
I was acting like he was freaking New Kids on the Block member. I felt my face go hot and I KNEW I was blushing. I smiled despite it. "Nice to meet you, I'm-"
That blonde girl pushed her way through Justin and Trace and stuck her hand out at me. "And I'm Daphne."
I wanted to say, "as in Duck?" but that would have been rude. Instead, I put my hand in hers and shook it. Then Trace put his hand to his forehead, pointed to me and looked like he was half having a migraine and half trying to do a Physics problem. Well Physics and a migraine are pretty much the same thing. "Let me guess. Wait. Shit..."
The Justin guy started doing that same Physics problem look and then his eyes lit up like he had had an epiphany. "Karen?! Is that it?"
"Close enough." It wasn’t a complete lie My roommates name was Karen and my name was Erin.
Soon I was following the three of them to a old black jeep Cherokee that had Dave Matthews Band sticker our college's logo and the Greek letters of a frat stuck to the back of the car.
Justin drove and Trace sat in the passenger seat making me and Daph sit in the back. I turned to her. "So what sorority are you in?"
"Tri Delta."
I wanted to go into the depths of the Greek Alphabet but I thought discussing that might seem a little odd. So I sat in my seat, being a quiet as possible. Even though I didn’t look it, I was flying by the seat of my pants that night. I didn’t have a damn clue what I was doing and didn’t give a rat's ass about anything.
We pulled into "Fraternity Row" and made our way to The House. People were scattered about in the small lawn, beer in hand, talking, doing what I guess people do at frat parties.
"I thought we were just "chillin'", I didn’t know there was a party." I said. Oh god, I even did the Dr. Evil quotation-hand-motion thing with the word ‘chillin’. This was bad. What the hell was I doing there? I didn’t deserve to be with cool people.
"Party? What?! This is no where close to a party. You must haven’t gone to many events yet." Daphne said to me. I didn’t have a clue about anything so I just smiled and followed them into the house.
Most the people around were guys, a few girls. As I walked into the house I felt as if everyone was staring at me; as if everyone knew I wasn’t supposed to be there. They all knew I wasn’t "Karen." They were gonna burn me at the stake or hang me at the town square. I was an impostor.
"Wanna beer?" I guess it was a rhetorical question because the next thing I knew a red plastic cup was shoved in my hand. Trace and Daphne went scampering off somewhere. I was left alone with my cute obsessive crush, following him around like a lost dog because I really had no idea what I was supposed to do.
"Wanna go out back?" He smiled that lopsided smile again that I was starting to like way too much. I shouldn’t have liked this guy. He was a "Greekie" and besides this rare occasion, I didn’t associate with them. "It's probably quieter out there." They had some music blaring from a stereo and it was a little loud.
"Out back" was nice. It was big enough for the boys to throw a football around. It was well lit and there were three guys out there smoking. I walked beside him, him still holding on to my arm, guiding me like a child and I started to feel like one. I saw him out of the corner of my eyes turn his head and smile at the guys, wink, nod, do something and they all started to laugh. So, that’s what this was about. The wink and nod could only mean one thing: Sex.
I decided to humor him and let him lead. Oh ho ho, Mr. Justin was soooo sure he was getting laid tonight. I almost started to laugh because if he so much as kissed my cheek I'd hit him. But he was taking me to a hammock and I like hammocks, so I was more than willing to go out there and talk.
I sat down and got use to the awkward feel of sitting in a hammock. I was sitting, feet on the ground, swinging a little. He sat down next to me and that's when I noticed he smelled good. So, maybe if he kissed my cheek I'd just glare at him.
I rotated the beer cup in my hand. I wondered what he would do if I told him I didn’t like beer; or if I told him I didn’t really like alcohol and that I didn’t drink that much. He'd probably faint.
I watched him, again, out of the corner of my eye. He took long, slow swallows out of his beer bottle. Finally, he said something.
"So what’s your real name?" I was immediately taken off guard. I turned to look at him and he was smiling, beer bottle an inch from his lips.
"What?"
He took a swallow and smiled again. "You’re in my Lit class. You wear baggy jeans and a tanktop thingy to class everyday. You are not a sorority chick. So what’s your real name?"
"Wait a minute." I was a little offended. How the hell would he know if I was in a sorority or not? For all his stereotyping self knew I could be the head of a sorority.
He knew. I knew. I was gonna have to face it. There were stereotypes with all kinds of people. Greekies, nerdies, jockies, potheadies, and even little boring me. Some people just knew how to hide it better than others.
"Waiting." He laughed again, kicked his neck back and finished his bottle. He did that "ahh" thing after he swallowed and tossed the bottle towards the house, carelessly.
"Erin." Now I was turning shy, smiling that little smile that I do when I flirt. Oh great, now I was flirting.
He nodded, and shifted a little in the hammock so he was more sprawled out. His arm's stretched out with one ankle resting on a knee. "You look like an Erin." I felt small curled up on my side compared to him.
I didn’t know what to do or say. Was that some sort of compliment? "Thanks?"
He nodded again, and smiled at me genuinely. "It's nice to meet you Erin."
"You too, Justin."
In next few minutes the normal, what I call, "bull shit convo" took place. Where are you from? What are you majoring in? What classes are you taking? You know what I'm talking about. It's the bull shit you have to get out of the way before you decide whether you really wanna get to know the person or not.
He was a communications major, like everyone else at my school, it seemed. He was taking some of the same types of classes I was. He was kind of boring. He was the regular college dude.
I told him about myself. I had transferred to English after a hellish first year in the Business dungeon, but I still wasn’t sure if that’s what I wanted to do. I told him and where I was from and some other things, and for some reason during it all when I told him that I really liked to write stories he turned to me with his eyes sparkling with interest. "Really?"
"Yeah."
"What do you write?"
When I brought my eyes to his I noticed how they were staring at me. Either he was a really really good performer or he was genuinely interested in me. It still didn’t mean he was getting a roll in the hay, at least not from me. "Oh everything, really. Short stories mainly. I have an idea for a novel but I just haven’t committed to it yet."
He started to laugh. "Trashy Romance novels?"
"Everyone always says that, especially Guys!"
He shrugged and put his hands up in defense. "Hey, we just wanna read about some sex."
I hit his shoulder and he did didn’t even budge. "No, you wanna watch some sex. Or have it."
"I won’t argue with that."
Then that dreaded silent thing happened where you run out of things to say and you’re both really quiet and you notice every movement the other one makes. Its almost as bad as when you are talking to someone on the phone and its just silence and you have to say, "Are you there?" I hate that.
I decided to break the silence. I turned to him and asked the question that had been on my mind for an hour, "If you knew I wasn’t a sorority chick, why invite me out?"
He bit his lip a little, then cringed. Obviously he didn’t want to tell me. "Honestly? We really were looking for Karen. Adam asked you because he didn’t know if you were Karen or not, then he got distracted by Daph and I was about to tell you to tell your roommate, who I'm guessing is Karen, that we stopped by. But I just, I don’t know. I figured you were standing there in your sweats on a Friday night, you looked a little bored, and I thought, maybe she wanted to do something. Plus I smelled ramen noodles. Friday night, 9 ‘o clock, pizza maybe, but not RAMEN noodles. Those are for cram sessions."
"So is pizza!! And at 50 cents a meal I can eat ramen anytime."
"That’s what I'm talking ‘bout."
He knew he had to be kidding. "Oh I'm sure you have to worry about a 50 cent meal."
He looked at me, almost glaring. "I bet you think I’m some rich snob."
"You’re not!?" My voice was sarcastic, but in all honesty I thought that he probably was one.
"Snob maybe, rich, no. I got to school half with a scholarship, then the other half working every summer in high school, my mom paid a lot but she's not made of money."
"Don’t frats cost lots of money?"
"That's where my dad comes in. He and my mom don’t speak to each other much, divorced, long time ago, and he offered to pay for my college but I wanted to pay for it myself. It just, I wanted to do something for myself, so I did. So Dad chipped in and paid for my fraternity dues. I mean, without him, I wouldn’t even be in a frat. I wouldn’t have even thought about rushing. But one day he called me up and said, ‘Son, when I was your age...’ It seemed like a cool idea."
"So he wanted you to follow in his footsteps and become a member of his frat so he could relieve his college life through you?"
"Good way of putting it." He pointed to me, and I felt right at home, chillin with the frat boys. Next thing you knew we'd be playing tag football in the backyard and discussing where we were gonna get the keg.
The next question wasn’t one I expected a big answer from but I was just trying to keep the convo moving. "So are you glad you joined?"
"Oh Yes. Well sometimes…"
He drifted off and I knew that this was one of those, "Yes, no, maybe so, I don’t know" answers. "You don’t sound so sure."
He looked up at the porch where the three people that were smoking before were now just two and then back at me. "Promise you won't tattle."
"Cross my heart and hope to die." I hadn’t said that since I was 10.
He looked down at his shoes. He looked extremely vulnerable, and that was comforting. To know that one of "them" could get just as nervous about simple things as me made me feel not so alone in the world. "Sometimes no. I mean I love my brothers and I've had more than a great time. I just feel like I ALWAYS have to be at a party, drinking, laying a girl. Now don’t get me wrong, I'm as perverted as the next guy, but I'm not a player."
I nodded and shifted my position on the hammock. "Actually yeah. Sometimes, don’t repeat this cause it would ruin my image, I wish I had rushed, or joined some type of club so I could meet more people. I have one best friend and a couple of people I can order pizza with and play cards, but that's it. And I haven’t met any guys, which just kills my parents and my sister. I'm gonna grow up to be 50 and live alone and write, like you said, trashy romance novels and have 20 cats!"
"Well that’s not true." He said sure of himself.
"How would you know?"
He mocked me and I wanted to bitch slap the bastard. "'I haven’t met any guys.' Bull shit. You're here with me aren’t ya?"
I pushed my hand against his chest and made a "guh" sound like he was some sort of disease. "You so wanna get laid."
He laughed and pinched my side. "Who doesn’t?"
"I don’t. I'm not attracted to you at all."
His mouth dropped and he moved so rapidly on the hammock I thought it might flip over and I’d land on my face.
"Oh that is such BS! You are so attracted to me!" He was getting close and I pushed him away. I wasn’t use to guys coming on to me. I wasn’t use to guys- period.
"And you are so egotistical."
He nudged me and now all of his right side was touching all of my left side. Which base was this, second? "Oh come on, admit it. You stare at me all during Lit."
I crossed my arms over my chest and looked straight ahead. If I looked at him I knew I would smile, and then my cover would be blown. "Full of it."
"Yeah, full of what? You’re full of shit." He mocked my position and crossed his arms over his chest. It was then when I decided to not take this abuse anymore. He was going down. He was going to get the worst part of me that a man possibly could: the eight-year-old in me.
That’s right, I pulled out the pout, the droopy eyes, the pitiful punches in the arms and the most dreadful thing one could say. In my perfected childish voice I whined, "You’re meeeean!"
He just laughed and before I knew it he had his arm around my shoulders, pulling me straight into his chest. At first I didn’t know what was going on. I thought he was about to cop a feel or something, but no. In stead he patted my head and said, "Can I give you a noogie?"
Oh hell no.
"WHAT?!"
I sat up off the hammock and almost lost my balance. Hammocks are cool, but kind of a torturous device to get in and out of.
"Ya know… a no-"
I looked at him and cut him off. "I know what they are, what the hell are you on?"
His laughter stopped and looked at me seriously, "You." It occurred to me what was happening It was a monumentous occasion and all I could think was how incredibly cheesy that was. "Oh my god. Please stop."
Even though it was cheesy, I didn’t want him to stop. He was flirting with me. A Greekie, a popular guy, was flirting with little bored Erin. He must have been drunk or something because this was just me! My highlight for the week wasn’t a crazy keg party or awesome seats at the football game. My highlight was going to the grocery store, or that feeling on Friday after your last class. I liked to watch General Hospital in the afternoons and I panicked anytime I missed CSI. I liked to write things and play board games. And here he was flirting with me.
Then it dawned on me that he probably wanted sex. All guys do, it seems. So much for the "He likes me, he really likes me." speech I was about to pull out.
He stood off the hammock, stretched and yawned. When he snapped back into a slouched posture he smiled at me and asked, "You wanna go driving or something?"
What he meant to ask was "You wanna go driving or something and then I can get you in the back seat and love you right, hot momma."
I searched for an excuse to not allow him to "love me right" and I saw the beer bottle he had thrown laying in the grass. "You've been drinking."
He gave me this crazy look and rolled his eyes. "Oh I had one beer! You can even drive if you want. I know for sure you are sober. The grass is probably the drunkest person here, thanks to you."
Opps, he caught me. I had secretly been pouring the beer out of my cup and into the grass while we talked.
I bit my lip and here came that shy smile thing again. "Sowwy, I don’t wike beer." Yes its true people, I'm just a pathetic, flirting female like everyone else. It really is a shame.
He laughed a little and walked with me out of the back yard. "Let me guess, you don’t drink at all."
"What? I just don’t like beer." They had a big trash bin there so I threw the grass's red cup in there and was glad to get that thing outta my hands.
"Right..." He said that in that sarcastic male voice that grated on my nerves, ugh. "I hate you."
"Why thanks, Erin. I love you, too." He was sarcastic again, but that’s not what caught my attention.
Here I was conversing with this guy. An hour before I wouldn’t have been caught dead with someone like him. Maybe it was my teeny crush that got me here, but still, I had learned a lot about other people so far, and I was ready to learn more. There was a lot I didn’t know about the Greekies and a lot I had misjudged. There were also a lot of similarities I had refused to look at before.
The night wasn’t turning out so bad. An hour ago I had few friends and ramen noodles. I was noodleless now but at least I had one more friend, and you can always buy more ramen.
"No, no. That’s great." He smiled and I realized we had reached his car and he was handing me the keys. He smiled when I took them and then winked.
He wasn’t a good winker. Guys should never wink. It's not smooth, and it's not gonna make a girl's heart flutter. It makes her think you have a tic, or an eyelash in your eye.
I pushed him ever-so maturely because of the wink and walked around to the drivers side. "Get in the damn car."
We got in the car and I turned up the John Mayer that was playing on his stereo. Greekies weren't the only people that liked his music. I wasn’t gonna try to hide the fact that I liked John Mayer anymore, just because Greekies were fond of him, too.
As I backed out he asked, "Where are we goin?"
At first I didn’t know, and then it dawned on me. "To buy me some more ramen noodles."
He chuckled and it became quiet as the music filled the car.
Out of nowhere, he blurted, "Can we go by KK too?"
"KK, as in Krispy Kreme?"
"Duh, what else?" He said like I should know. Oh I knew what KK stood for, I just didn’t know if HE knew what it stood for.
I realized then, this was meant to be. This was meant to happen to me. I was supposed to go out that night. I was proud of myself. I had done something about my boredom and had been offered an amazing reward in the end.
A little after 12:30 that night he dropped me off at my dorm. We had switched drivers at the grocery store because he was afraid of me driving his car when I got more interested in the people being pulled over in the left lane than the stoplight ahead of me. There's nothing like slamming on breaks to impress someone.
That night I didn’t get to hit him but I did get a hug and a phone number and a screename. Yay, buddy number 56. I also got a promise to hang out again, and he told me to sit by him next time in class. The crush had paid off. Plus, I had a half-dozen glazed donuts, a food lion bag full of Salsa Chicken Cup Noodles and a new outlook on college life.
No matter how different I was trying to be or trying not to be, I was pretty much the same as everyone else. It had been imbedded in my brain since I was about three years old, but for the first time I really got it. I wasn’t so different from the Greekies. Hell, I even owned a denim skirt and occasionally wore flip-flops. I knew not every Greekie was like I imagined. Justin sure wasn’t, Trace and Daphne were pretty cool people, and there were more out there that had their own lives and personalities. I had grouped these people together. Yeah, they shared something in common, but they were just as different from everyone else as I was.
My dorm room smelled liked Salsa Chicken when I returned and it wasn’t a pleasant. Then, when I added Justin's name to my buddy list, he was idle. My donuts weren't as fresh as they had been 10 minutes ago, but it was ok. Everything was ok, and for once the world, or at least my tiny portion of it, was right.
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