Snippets from the weekend October 7, 2007
Posted by charmingbutsingle in Being Southern, College was Fun, Friends, Weekend Updates.7 comments
Early afternoon, Saturday, Beer One:
“What did I do before all of this technology?” I asked as leaned back in my chair-in-a-bag with a beer at a tailgate on Saturday afternoon.
I’d just typed out a couple of e-mails and text messages alerting some friends to my location and simply could not remember how we ever pulled off elaborate tailgates without cell phones and e-mail. I picked my phone off of my lap to send out one more message when The Lawyer interrupted me with an answer.
“Um, you paid attention to your surroundings?” she said, nodding to the people gathered around me.
I giggled and put down the phone, as she’d clearly made her point about my technology. (Though, I might add, she can’t be completely anti-technology, as she did run with me to watch a critical play on a nearby tailgate’s 32-inch high definition flat screen later that night.)
—
Late afternoon, Saturday, Beer Four:
“Is it weird that I feel awkward that I’ve made out with two guys at this tailgate?” The Lawyer asked me, motioning to two friends of a friend’s boyfriend.
I paused.
“Nope,” I said. “It would just remind of going out to any bar, any night years ago. Pretend we’re still in college.”
—
Late morning, Sunday, Glass of Water:
“Hah, the menu says ‘$3.99 entitles you to all of the champagne you can drink’,” said The Lawyer.
“Oh yeah?” I said, scanning the brunch section. “Well, I always feel entitled to all of the champagne I can drink, so that won’t be a problem.”
Evidence of the fun we had July 5, 2007
Posted by charmingbutsingle in College was Fun, Friends, General Clumsiness and Related Stupidity, Really. Bad. Habits..12 comments
I was helping my brother and his fiancée clean their apartment and load their moving truck today, which is something I cannot yet write about, as the realization that my younger brother will suddenly be a more than 10-hour drive away from me as opposed to a five-minute drive from me has not yet set in and I’m really not in the mood to cry. Again.
As I crawled across the floor wiping down their baseboards – my brother’s fiancée had a long checklist of things to clean in order to ensure that their full deposit was returned – I was reminded of moving out of one of my college apartments.
College Roommate and I lived in a two-bedroom apartment near enough to campus and our favorite bars. We were party girls for sure. We hosted a few small parties and a slew of late-night, post-bar, pre-dawn gatherings. We were young and social. It was not uncommon for us to get visitors even on nights when we stayed in and watched TV. And our apartment refrigerator and pantry were stocked with our favorites – cranberry juice, boxed wine, Pasta Roni, bottom shelf vodka, Chinese food (leftover from Sex and the City marathons) and half-pints of ice cream (ditto).
We made the somewhat critical mistake of letting our friends smoke the occasional cigarette in our living room. (We might have smoked a few ourselves.) We foolishly thought this smell would somehow go unnoticed and that somehow traipsing intoxicated 20somethings through the place at all hours of the night would not lead to lasting spills or stains.
We were wrong.
A few weeks after we moved out of the apartment, we received our deposit check and a letter outlining why exactly the more than $300 we’d paid in a deposit had been whittled to only $36.
“You would not believe why we didn’t get more of our deposit back,” College Roommate told me over the phone.
“We cleaned the place up, I said. “Kind of.”
“First reason? Heavy smoke smell,” she said.
“Eh, I’ll give them that. We did let people smoke in there,” I said. “Is there another reason?”
“Yeah. Red stains on the carpet,” she said.
We paused.
“Vodka and cranberry?”
“Yep.”
“Well, we’re pretty predictable, aren’t we?”
“It is our signature drink!”
There are songs about all of them, Part 6 July 2, 2007
Posted by charmingbutsingle in College was Fun, Dating, Friends, General Clumsiness and Related Stupidity, Men, Songs I Can't Get Out Of My Head, There are songs about all of them.9 comments
Friday night I went to see an 80s cover band with my girlfriends. As is probably required by all 80s cover bands, pretty early on they played “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake, which caused me to erupt into a fit of giggles.
It was 1999. I was a freshman in college and I’d hung out a few times with Computer Guy. I don’t actually remember how we met, but he was a year older than I was and had a single room in a huge guys’ dorm across campus. My second semester roommate in the dorm was a touch of a hermit and I looked for chances to escape in the evenings during the week because she was constantly around. (She went home each weekend.)
(Three quick funny stories about my second semester college roommate, who was a preacher’s daughter from a small, small town. Story No. 1: I always went out to a bar with a group of friends on Thursday nights. She didn’t go out much. One Thursday morning while we were getting ready for class, she said, “Oh, I’m going out tonight to [Popular Campus Church Group for Baptists], would you like to come?” I politely declined. She wasn’t pushy about me going, but she did say, “Don’t get worried if I’m not back until late this evening.” Come 9 p.m. I was sitting on my bed, about to apply my make-up when she came back and said, “Oh, you decided to stay in?” And I smiled and said, “No, I haven’t left yet.” She was slightly mortified. Story No. 2: Another night I was halfheartedly writing a paper when Computer Guy sent me an instant message inviting me over to watch a movie. It was around 11:30 p.m. when I slipped on jeans, a stretchy T-shirt and some shoes and my roommate said, “You’re leaving? We have class tomorrow.” And I said, “Oh, I’m going to study biology with [Computer Guy].” And she looked at me, standing there in my best “Comfy Chic” outfit and said, “Aren’t you going to bring your books?” I paused, realizing that I had only my keys and my school ID to get back into the dorm, and said, “Oh, we’re going to use his books.” And, bless her soul, I think she believed me. Story No. 3: A few years later I tagged along to a happy hour with some friends. As I was introduced to the large group of attendees, one woman said, “[Charming]?” She had bright red dyed hair and was wearing a tight tank top and sipping a margarita. It was my innocent little roommate, who came out of her shell sometime after she lived with me and put up with my antics. To this day, I don’t think my friends believe me when I tell them about how quiet she was when we shared a room.)
Dating in college (at least in my experience) was less dinner and dancing and more dorm room movie night and making out or (when I was a little older) shots together and sloppy making out in the corner of a bar. (Nothing says true romance like a shot of Jagermeister with a Bud Light chaser.) My courtship with the Computer Guy is marked by a lot of movies I’ve never finished watching, some fantastic back massages and a failed attempt at learning to drive a standard in the parking lot of his dorm.
Computer Guy and I hung out right at the beginning of file sharing and mp3 downloading and he had a most fantastic collection of pirated songs, organized by type and mood. One night we skipped the movie altogether and he reached over and turned on some music for our make out session.
Which brings me back to White Snake.
“What are we listening to?” I asked, placing my hands on his shoulders and pushing my face back from his.
“That song where Tawny Kitaen is in the video,” he said, reaching around my neck to pull me back to him, clearly annoyed that I was more concerned with the song than the kissing.
I wasn’t through with my inquisition.
“You have a Whitesnake playlist?”
“It’s not a Whitesnake playlist,” he said, getting huffy. “I have an 80s playlist.”
I accepted this answer and we went back to our kissing.
Flash forward a few years to a night of guy gossip with my girlfriends. We were telling embarrassing hook up stories and songs we listened to with guys – Dave Matthews was a popular choice for sure. I said, “I once hooked up with a guy to that song by Whitesnake. You know, the one with the woman writhing on top of the car?” thinking that surely – surely! – someone else had a similar experience.
My friends’ jaws dropped. Crickets chirped in the background.
“So, your date thought, ‘Sweet! Chicks dig Whitesnake!’ and decided to put the moves on it to you?”
“Um, well, not exactly.”
“How does that Whitesnake song even fit? Here he goes again on his own – as he makes out with you?”
“That’s not why …”
“Was he like all into hair metal bands or something? I mean, we went to college in the late 90s, so that must’ve been very weird.”
The conversation continued like this for several minutes. And my friends have never let me live my Whitesnake Make Out down.
Computer Guy and I haven’t seen each other in years. He moved before he finished school and we occasionally saw each other when he would visit town.
But every time I hear Whitesnake, I’m reminded of his small dorm room, movies left half-seen and sneaking through the stairwell exit into his dorm late at night. And I always wonder if, like a drifter, he was just born to walk alone.
Blasts from the Past June 25, 2007
Posted by charmingbutsingle in Backstory, College was Fun, Dating, Friends, General Clumsiness and Related Stupidity, Men, Really. Bad. Habits., Single Girl Cliches.13 comments
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.
