Tales from the Lost Semester - Volume 7

Stupor Bowl XXVII

There are many different degrees of the phrase “going away to college”. For some, it means packing up their meager possessions and driving halfway across the country, with their only return visits home planned for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Summer (if that). For others, it means driving from their parent’s house to community college, if only to log enough class time and good grades to get them out of that situation faster than you can say “this is still my house, so my rules still apply.” For me, I fell right into a happy medium – I was close enough to home where I could make the round-trip drive in a full state of highway hypnosis, yet far enough where any suggestions of coming home multiple times a month could be easily squashed without guilt. It was even more of an ideal situation when I didn’t have my car down at school with me – however, once the two-tone brown 1982 Ford Fairmont known as the Beast on Wheels hauled my ass down for Hell Week, somehow I knew I was setting myself up for more requests to come home for various family obligations. Not long after the Lost Semester began, this theory held true as I was called home to attend my Stepmother’s birthday dinner. Now, normally I wouldn’t so much as bitch at the prospect of heading up to Chicagoland for some much-needed quality food – given I was starting to realize that the MPB house was going to offer me a steady diet of cardboard-quality pizza, grade D lunchmeat, soggy French fries and lukewarm Hot Pockets, a chance to fatten up on the good stuff was tantalizing to say the least. However, this particular weekend happened to coincide with the first big bash to be held at the MPB house with yours truly as a resident – the Tri-Delt Initiation Party.

A little background is required here. I mentioned earlier that U of I’s Greek system was busting at the seams – over 50 fraternities if I’m not mistaken – and that there were only half as many sororities, which resulted in a rather precarious social situation for most fraternities when it came time to plan each semester’s social functions. Within those approximately 25 sororities was a pool of about 10-15 that shallow young men like myself and my brothers were willing to consider partying with. And of those 10-15, there were 3-4 that everyone would agree comprised the upper echelon of overall desirability. Simply put, Tri-Delts were on that short list. And now, our house, the place I lived, was going to be full of approximately 100 cute, drunken Tri-Delts, along with inordinate amounts of booze and dope…and I was going to miss it. Damn my luck! But, being the dutiful son I am, I swallowed my pride (and my desire), got in my Fairmont and headed home for a nice, quiet weekend that did not include 100 good-looking girls, booze, and/or dope. From what I understand, I missed a hell of a party. It got to the point where, as part of the entertainment, the revelers had taken it upon themselves to completely destroy a fellow member’s car – during Hell Week we had pushed this piece of shit from the back of the house to the front during a snowstorm, and at that point everyone thought it was just being abandoned. I guess nobody told the guys who threw cinder blocks through the front windshield that the owner had got it running and had agreed to sell it for upwards of $500, a king’s ransom to any college student. Good old alcohol – works every time.

But I am not here to bore you with the details of a party that I missed – where’s the fun in that? This tale begins around 2:00 on Sunday – Super Bowl Sunday, no less – when I arrived back on campus, sufficiently fattened up from the previous evening’s meal. As I parked my car, I wondered what we’d be doing for the game – Buffalo had made their third straight Super Bowl and we were all curious to see if they could solve the up-and-coming Cowboys. I imagined a few friends, a few beers, a few bowls – you know, basic Sunday stuff. Imagine my surprise when I walked into Room 23 to find CS, Phelps, Big O and Pops standing around a large cooking pot from the kitchen filled with water, a 2-liter bottle halved in the middle with the slider from our bong inserted into the cap, and a big bag of marijuana. My brilliant powers of deduction told me that it must be time for gravity bongs! It would be yet another new experience for me, but as we all know I was anything but shy.

As soon as I walked in, CS perked up and yelled out, “Rock Chiseler! Perfect timing – you’re up!” I think we’ve pretty much established at this point what happens next. After three quick passes through the group, our new piece of paraphernalia has gotten quite a workout. At one point, one of our other friends who had his girlfriend visiting from out of town stopped by our room to see what was going on. Upon seeing our set up, he darted out of the room and was back in less than two minutes. “I told her I was going to take a shit” he said, and proceeded to rip through a few GB’s of his own. This was the norm in Room 23 – it was where the “happy” people met, and the more who wished to be happy, the merrier.

Once we were sufficiently ripped, one of us amazingly remembered that, oh yeah, the Super Bowl was coming on soon! Our friends at the Nevada House had graciously offered to host a get-together (Seeds was a big Cowboys fan – I always find it odd when people born in one area of the country worship a team in another; very, very odd. Of course, I digress). Given that we were stoned and that Nevada House was light years away, we soon set out on the long trek in the late-January weather so we could get there in time for kickoff.

We finally got to Nevada House shortly before the game began. The party itself was a fun time – there were a lot of people there who were a lot shadier and a lot less interested in sports than I was, but everyone was having fun, getting along and enjoying the game, so my mates and I did the like. The boys at Nevada House were nice enough to get a few kegs for our enjoyment, so I threw down my three bucks, grabbed a cup and began to drink. And drink. And drink and drink and drink. Shit, I had been drinking from kegs since junior year in high school, and I was on the hockey team, so of course I could drink with the best of them. Coupled with the 4-5 gravity bong hits I had ingested earlier that day, I was starting to develop a lovely glaze that made an otherwise unbearable game somewhat entertaining.

By the time halftime rolled around, I was well on my way to a banner night of inebriation. The game was essentially over (Cowboys 28, Bills 10), so the fact that my vision was starting to become a little blurry didn’t seem to worry me too much. As the network moved to its coverage of whatever horrible halftime activities happened to be planned, Seeds suggested that a few of us head back to his room for a little extra partying. I wobbled back with the group (CS, Phelps, Pops) to Seeds bedroom, and as we made ourselves comfortable, he produced a 3 foot glass bong and a large sack of goodies. Without further hesitation we began to pull tubes. And pull. And pull and pull and pull…

I have never been exposed to the inner workings of filmmaking; sound mixing, storyboarding, screenwriting – these are all foreign concepts to me. However, as the second half kicked off, I believe that I received an excellent insight into the film editing process – one that involves having non-sequential, incoherent scenes and concepts flash in front of the editor’s eyes, leaving them to work their fingers to the bone in trying to assemble them into some rational order so that the story can be told and, more importantly, understood. The second half of Super Bowl XXVII was my sloppy, garbled, unfinished masterpiece. More beer at the keg…girl talking to me, but I don’t reply…CS passing a bowl…Touchdown Cowboys!...more beer, this time spilling down my shirt…Touchdown Cowboys!...close my eyes just for a second…Leon Lett!... hazy, blurry, fading…

Somehow, miraculously, I snap back into coherence, look up at the screen and see the graphic: “Final score – Dallas 52, Buffalo 17.” This was my cue. “I gotta go,” I say to no one in particular. I took the general lack of protest as confirmation that yes, J, it is time for you to go. I proceed to stumble outside and contemplate the long, cold journey home. The frigid air proves to be my savior, jolting me back to the point where the part of my brain that had shut itself down in sheer defense for the past two hours suddenly came to the realization just how drunk the rest of me was. My only major concern on this long journey was crossing Lincoln Avenue, the one busy street that provided no aid to pedestrians in the way of a traffic light. Seeing as Nevada House was only 5 houses from said street, I concentrate all of my resources on the Herculean effort of making it across, preferably alive and uninjured. I stumble the first two steps…

BAAAAAARF!

Holy shit, didn’t see that one coming – there went my second half drinking binge. One more house passed…

BAAAAAARF!

Crap, how much did I drink? It sure looks fucked up in the snow. What is that in there? Did I eat anything today?

BAAAAAARF!

Anyone who has been wasted to the point of vomiting has probably gotten to that glorious moment in the process – the moment you realize that yes, this is indeed all I have to offer. Final score – three vomits before Lincoln Avenue. At this point, that other part of my brain – the one that controls areas like blinking, breathing and digesting food – fired itself up and went into “homing device mode” and dutifully guided me back to the MPB house. I finally made it back to my lair – cold, drunk, stoned, hungry, yet safe. After playing a video game and sleeping my way through Monday classes, it was comforting to know that I was able to return from the comforts of home right back to business as usual during the Lost Semester.