Tales from the Lost Semester - Volume 2

Where the Happy People Meet…

College is full of important decisions: Keystone Light or Special Export? Study or party? Dorm food or Free Flow? Kam’s or Bub’s? Bong or bowl? However important these decisions were to me during the Lost Semester, none was more important than solving the following two-part riddle:

Should I stay in the dorms with my freakishly tall douchebag of a roommate, or should I move into the fraternity house? And, if I should choose to move into the house, who will I live with?

These are two of the major questions I was asking myself during first semester as I earned a D in Psychology 101 – do I move from the partial freedom of the dorms, where I have started to make some good friends who don’t happen to be in the same fraternity as me? Or do I dive deep into the anarchy that is a fraternity house – a place where the booze flows and the doobage is plentiful; a place where slack lurks around every corner; a place that remains a vile, filthy den of inequity, at least until the next pledge class arrives to be handed their shit duties? Well, given my roommate situation, and given the fact that I was busted in the dorms in week 2 of my college experience with 6 other guys in a room with 4 open beers and had to attend an alcohol counseling class as a result, this decision became rather easy (at worst, I figured I’d get in trouble at the house for having 7 people in a room and not having more than 4 beers).

The second part of this equation also seemed pretty easy. There were several good guys in my pledge class, yet only a few who were willing to make the leap to fraternity house living right away – most of my fellow pledgemates were too interested in remaining at Forbes Hall in U of I’s glorious Six Pack of dorms (where I hailed from – 469 Hopkins, aw yeah) to see if they could break the all time dorm floor record for dollars in damage inflicted during a school year – and two of those making the leap stood out as the logical choices for my roommates: CS, who you might remember as the B student from the Paper Writing Scandal, and a fine young South Sider we will call “Pops”.

For starters, we were the three bona fide stoners in our pledge class – the guys who would attend a line up at midnight (for the uninitiated – that’s where the “sergeant at arms” “lines up” the “pledges” in order to “haze” them by making them do push ups and wall sits while other “actives” look on to laugh at/yell at/ridicule you – so as you can see, there’s a real allure to joining a fraternity) and hang around afterwards so we could pull tubes with our already-initiated friends. We set the bar quite “high” for the ’96 pledge class, and we lived up to our reputations like champs. Naturally, our initial reaction was to have the three of us go in on a room together – we all had the same interests (dope, baseball, booze) and even though it was a 2:1 Sox Fan-Cubs Fan ratio, we felt that it was a match made in heaven! However, late in Semester One, we got word that our good friend (we’ll call him “Silky”) was going on, ahem, academically-imposed hiatus for a semester, leaving a spot open in another room with two sophomores: Sadahara and The Big O. Seeing as Pops was good friends pre-college with Big O, he stepped right into the open slot, which left just me and CS, with room for one more. Enter the wild card – the Miser.

(Sidenote: The Miser was not a cheapskate. Sadahara is not a Japanese guy. The Big O refers not to an orgasm. As I mentioned, I need to leave a little bit to the imagination here – those who know the stories and the people will know exactly who I’m referring to – those who don’t know can either a) do some hardcore research to find out who I’m talking about, or b) let it read like fiction and not give a shit who’s who and what’s what. Some semblance of secrecy must be maintained – YITBOS).

Where was I? Ah yes, our good friend Miser. This is a guy who had the distinct honor of making it through pledgeship by doing the absolute minimum required (which of course led him to be admired by dorks like me who always showed up for weekend work duties). In fact, when CS and I lived with him, he was a lowly neophyte – not a pledge, but not yet fully initiated – more on this another time. He was laid back, easygoing, and liked to party just as much as we did. Did I also mention that he was also a black belt in Tae Kwon Do? Yeah, that’s not a bad guy to have on your side. Rumor has it he had a death cry and everything, but no matter how hard CS and I tried, we never did get the full experience with that (probably a good thing). So now that we had determined who we were all going to live with, the next step became finding a vacant room we could take over. The way it worked in our house was that you “bought” your room from the dudes who lived there before you – each room’s price was set at $500, and you could do whatever the hell you wanted with your room once you bought it. So CS, Miser and I scoured the house for open rooms, finally cutting a deal with two super-seniors who were moving out of…Room 23.

Room 23 – just typing it makes me feel a bit inebriated. Now before revealing any of the happenings that occurred within the hallowed halls of Room 23, I must first paint you the image of the place that served as my bedroom, arcade, hash den and general freak out haven, for only then can I truly take you back there with me. The number one thing you need to know is that Room 23 was officially known as the place “where the happy people meet” – we were happy, alright. Given what went on in there, if you walked in uptight, you were sure as hell to walk out a lot more serene, I can tell you that. Now, close your eyes (opening them only to read each paragraph, of course) and let me bring you there…

As you walk in the door (think Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley), a closet appears to your right, and a pseudo-closet with no walls and a dresser wedged in the corner on your left. Clothes crowd the closet racks and litter the floor. Walk through the entry way, and to your immediate left sits a shoddy entertainment center holding the ever-important stereo. The room is slightly bigger than your average second bedroom – let’s call it 18x18. Directly at the back of the room is a wooden loft, going about halfway up the 10 foot ceiling. First and foremost, this is our sleeping quarters. On top of this loft is bed one, a simple twin mattress (Miser). Under the loft to the left sits a nice, comfy waterbed (somehow snagged by the wily CS). To the right, you find a ratty black love seat, our TV with the divot in the top where the incense cone burned through and a taped-on, cut-out graphic from a Wheat Thins box that states: “Baked, Not Fried!”, as well as the glorious cabinet that contained everything a 19-year-old stoner could ever possibly need. Finally, as you peer into the dark recesses underneath the loft, behind the ratty loveseat, sealed off by the big, comfy waterbed, you see a dark, dank, desolate cave containing a mattress with the bare minimum in sleeping amenities (yours truly). A bagger’s delight if there ever was one. Throw in a few posters, a possible tapestry, an Arizona Cardinals lamp (which I once burned CS with – by ACCIDENT), and a Nintendo, and you’re there, man.

Proper seating for one of our multiple party sessions is of paramount importance in Room 23 – if you don’t have one of 3 select seats, you’ve immediately dropped to the second tier. Also, let me assure you there was no preferential seating treatment for the residents of the room – save for CS, who always seems to nab the waterbed/armchair pillow seat, which is the equivalent of the King’s throne (slick bastard!). In the cutthroat world of Room 23 seating, you had better damn well know the phrase “tic-tac”. A seemingly innocent play on words, its mere utterance ensures that your seat is not thrown back to the vultures on the edge of the waterbed, on the loft, or on the floor, provided you returned in a reasonable period of time. The other two rock star seats are naturally the love seat combo, all but guaranteeing its inhabitants the first game of Nintendo should the general populace agree that there doesn’t seem to be jack shit on TV.

As for TV, while it is always on for visual stimulus or Nintendo playing purposes, the primary mode of entertainment in Room 23 is naturally the music – provided you can find something in my shoebox of CDs (probably numbering around 25 at the time) or in CS’s killer record collection – yes, the turntable is fully functional here in Room 23, and thank goodness, because most of our standbys reside on vinyl. If you happen to be one of the curious folk wandering by Room 23 at any given time, aside from the sweet smells emitting from under the door crack, you will likely hear anything from Abbey Road by the Beatles, to the Grateful Dead’s One From the Vault (much to Sadahara’s sheer pleasure, there is a LOT of Dead to be heard here), to Paul’s Boutique, to the Shaft soundtrack, all the way to Disneyland Records’ Scary Haunted House Sound Effects (what am I saying, I’m not even Chinese! – and yes, I’ll ease up on the inside jokes).

Should you decide to pop in and indulge in the pleasures of the happy person’s meeting place, you’ll no doubt be hungry – well, just pick up the phone and call in a Late Night Special – the medium, one-topping pizza that CS and I made our meal at least three nights a week. Or feel free to stagger in late night looking for a little something to enhance the flavor of that La Bamba burrito you’re about to enjoy. Of course, if the Kitchen Manager passes out drunk or is struggling with a near heart attack because he just ingested 14 ephedrine, you could always steal his key and head down to the kitchen where all kinds of cereal, grade B lunchmeat and canned food goodness awaits you!

Now to the important part. Go ahead and open up that little cabinet of tricks. Maui, wow-wee, what do we have here? Being an experienced craftsman, I’m sure you can appreciate the fine set of tools you see before you. Do you prefer a bowl, a hitter, the Aquapipe, or the purple “Clown Boy” bong (which actually made it’s home up in Room 7 with Pops, Sadahara and Big O, but still took several field trips down to 23)? Take your pick, pick a pack, and go to town. We have an honored ritual here in Room 23 – B.A.B.S.A.B. That is to say, purchase a sandwich sack of goodness and work as a team with your good friends to ensure that it doesn’t last past the end of the evening. There, we’re all ready to go – but who starts it all off? Who gets the coveted Green Hit? And which way will the fun move along? Well, friend, in a place like Room 23, you can bet that there’s a lot of thought that goes into something like this. Here’s the basic process:

• Someone in the room (again, usually Room 23 alpha male CS) assigns a person to serve as starting point.

• Everyone in the room plays the Odds or Evens hand game, holding out zero, one or two fingers.

• The total of all displayed fingers is obtained, and, moving clockwise from the starting point, the number is counted off around the room – if it lands on you, then congratulations – you get the Green Hit!

• The individuals on either side of the Green Hitter play a best-of-1 Rock-Paper-Scissors to determine the direction of the pass.

• Should you lose this match, the individual seated immediately next to you will typically let out a sigh of disgust, letting you know just how badly you suck at Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Yes, Room 23 is deeply shrouded in mystery and ritual, much more so than the goofy shit we experienced during our fraternity initiation (more on that another time). While a sizeable number of our “brothers” had the Room 23 experience at one time or another, there was an elite list of regulars who regularly haunted our den: Me, CS, Miser, Sadahara, Big O, Pops, Ox, Mayo, Phelps, Dirk, Silky, Reggie Taco – good men, every one. Again, I prefer the shroud of mystery here – I don’t know who wants to become a politician in their adult life, and I’m not about to ruin any reputations. Those on this list know who they are – and some names are more easily decoded than others, so those outside of the experience may have some luck putting two and two together and figuring it all out. But rest assured: The key players and their critical involvement in my Lost Semester will further materialize as the stories seep from my brain like the incense/marijuana haze from the crack under the door…of Room 23.