Charming, but single

Like many colleges, mine featured large strips of bars within walking distance of popular student apartments. My favorite little cranny of bars featured five establishments of dubious quality wherein Jagermeister-fueled students sought refuge from the storms of studying and being adults. It was a gem of an area, because you could hop from bar to bar all night, send someone to the convenience store for a case of beer before the bars closed and run by a pizza place on your way home. This meant that by the time everyone wandered the short walk from the bar to the Designated Late Night Apartment, stopping to crash a party in progress or possibly to swim in a stumbled-upon pool, rations had been secured and the party could continue.

I’d just returned to the South from my summer internship and College Roommate decided that my being back in town for a whole day was cause for celebration. As if we really needed one. To the bars we headed, selecting one of my least favorite of the bunch (my age and non-Greek status meant I hated two of the bars in this area, which were packed wall to wall with the underage fraternity and sorority pledges who truly wear on your nerves when you are a college senior). We probably picked it for the ridiculously priced $2 pitchers of beer.

I’d missed my friends and our Thursday through Saturday (and sometimes Tuesday and Wednesday) evenings of socializing. And since it was between semesters, attendance at all of the bars was down and a random mish-mash of people came to this particular bar, which made the evening a little more fun than normal – more room to move, to sit, to be. There was dancing. And vows that I would never, no never, leave again for almost three whole months. And drinking of beers in plastic cups.

I was dancing with this guy I knew marginally because we were in the communication school together (in different concentrations) and saw each other in the halls. We also possibly had some mutual friends. He was a little taller than I am with a goatee and glasses, a year or so older than I was. I remember looking at College Roommate and shrugging my shoulders as we all shuffled our flip flops across the dirty floor, dancing spastically to a spectrum of classics like “Jesse’s Girl” and whatever marginally offensive rap song about shaking the body part du jour, as if to say, “Him? No I don’t know where he came from either?” After a few songs, he’d put a hand around my neck, pulled my face to his and we were kissing. And we pulled back, looked at each other, laughed and returned to making out. Because after countless beers and at age 21, I didn’t need many more reasons to kiss a boy.

We hugged and parted ways at the end of the evening, our friends lightly ribbing us, though they’d probably all done the same thing, if not that night. We didn’t exchange numbers. This never bothered me.

When school did start a few weeks later, I remember awkwardly smiling as I passed him in the hall a few times, but we never kissed again. Truth be told, I doubt we ever talked again.

Flash forwarding a few months, I was flipping channels on the TV screen when I saw a familiar face. It was Random Drunken Make Out Guy, now an advertising rep for a local cable company, encouraging businesses to increase their sales with cable advertising. I was only mildly mortified when this commercial would air – pretty much all of the time, by the way – and my friends would giggle and point out that he was my Random Drunken Make Out Guy anyone who would listen. I’d think, “Surely, this only happens to me. Because of course MY Drunk Guy ends up on the TV. Surely, I am the only college student to endure such mild embarrassment on a regular basis.”

But time passed and I found many more Random Drunken Make Out Guys in the bars, including, but not limited to, an ROTC guy who was swung me around on the dance floor and almost sent me careening into a pool table with his exuberance and later pushed me up against the fence that surrounded the outside deck while he kissed me in front of all of my coworkers, some older guy from Pittsburgh, a friend’s ex-boyfriend and a slew of guys who left me thinking, “How the hell did this happen?”

Like The Dentist.

Fresh out of dental school, he was at the bar with some friends and I ended up making out with him – that is all, Scout’s Honor – in his car in the parking lot. This turned out to be quite problematic for me later, as he had a girlfriend, but I challenge you to determine if an unmarried person has a significant other by looking at him or her. Chances are you can’t. I certainly couldn’t and it wasn’t really my responsibility to ask the guy who was flirting with me all night if he had a girlfriend who, say, happened to be good friends with one of my coworkers, who happened to find out later and call me on it.

Oh, hindsight.

I never called him, especially after I found out he had been seriously dating someone. My friends teased me mercilessly for my Dentist and homewrecking ways. I was mortified when a pal reported that she could barely keep herself from giggling when she unknowingly scheduled an appointment for dental work with him.

But in every college life, a few bad decisions must be made. I’ve outgrown my Kissing Anyone phase, though it was fun while it lasted.

So you can imagine my horror a few days ago when I looked up to a familiar face on the TV screen to see my Drunken Kissing Dentist in a commercial for his own dental practice. Oh, and did I mention His Girlfriend from our Night of Tonsil Hockey is also a dentist, his wife and his partner?

Em-barrassing.

The moral of the story: Making out with me will make your dreams of being in substandard local television commercials come true.