It was December 2009. It was a cold night. A cold-as-a-witch’s-tit type of night. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky - the full moon and the stars provided that rare time when everywhere seems like it’s covered in a blue, hazy glow. It was a weeknight and Towson, MD was quiet and sound asleep. 

Pan down from this beautiful panoramic of the night sky. A 5’6” pumpkin-pie haircutter fuckboi is longboarding down a hill - staring at the stars with a Camel Light in his mouth like Samuel L in Jurassic Park, a Kurt Kobain-esque discount flannel unbuttoned to reveal a stained white v-neck undershirt underneath, with a KFC chicken bucket tucked under the arm. He is drunk, tired, and sad. Being drunk and staring at the sky when on a board that is going down a hill very fast, he loses his balance, flies into the air, and lands hard on his back. The chicken has been catapulted out of the bucket and all over the parking lot. He then lays on his back and doesn’t move. He whispers ‘fuck the world’ to himself and doesn’t get up for a full 20 minutes.

That fuckboi was me.

REWIND. It’s August 2009 and I’m entering my junior year of college. I was taking a class called Film 2, which is a big deal for film majors. You make your first major film and its shot on 16mm film, so not only is it the first big endeavor you undertake in school, but its expensive. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had in my life, but extremely hard, tiring, and scary.

Film classes are usually filled with the ugliest dudes God was cruel enough to allow to be born onto this Earth. And then there is usually like one girl in the class who is really into Anime and that shit. So, no offense to my Anime-loving audience, but its not exactly something that attracts me to a girl. So, basically, my point is that I was lurkin’ on girls that were in my Gen Ed classes and not film class. 

So, you can already probably tell where this is headed - THE MOST GORGEOUS GIRL EVER is sitting in the front row of the Film 2 class. I’d never seen her before and no one else had either. I thought she was a mirage for a minute.

Her name was Emma. She was from San Francisco, went to college in Oregon, which had an exchange program that allowed you to go to another school for a semester somewhere else in the United States. She chose Towson University because I guess she always wanted to experience New Jersey without having to actually step in New Jersey. Anyway, after just staring at her all class, I fell in love. Absolutely in love. She was the cutest.

I was too scared to talk to her. Plus, every dude in the freaking class was in love with her too.

Our teacher told us that The Charles was playing Annie Hall for one night only and told us all to go, since it rules. I’d never seen it, so I asked anybody else if they were going, but everyone was like, “UHHH fuck that shit man. I’m going to the Greene Turtle for 2 for 1s.” I wasn’t 21 yet, so I planned to just pre-game to some Tegan & Sara in the parking garage across from the Charles, get some popcorn, and rage to a Woody Allen film. I’m so cool. JK I’m really lame.

As I was leaving class, Emma came up to me and asked me if I was going to see Annie Hall. I told her I was and she asked if she could go with me, since she didn’t have a car and had no idea where it was. SO HOLY MOLY.

We went to the movie and it was seriously the most magical thing ever. Annie Hall is one of my favorites of all time and I remember looking at her during the movie. She was hunched over, nibbling on this small little cup of popcorn with her glasses on, laughing at every joke. My heart harp was plucked.

The next class, we had to do a class shoot. Like we shot a small scene as a class so we could learn the equipment and everything. The script was about a guy and a girl at a bus stop at the end of the world and the guy convinces her to dance with him since the world is ending. Yeah, I know, dumb. But, hey, they don’t call Towson University a mediocre public university for nothing.

Emma and my close friend Eric were the actors. They spent the whole class goofing around and whatnot. At the end of class, he went as far to call dibs on her. I could tell he really liked her and he wasn’t exactly the best with girls. I saw that they were having a good time and that would really make him happy, so I whispered fuck, gave God the middle finger, and said “Shit, fine, okay.”

Anyway, to make matters worse, I found out she lived in my building too. Both of us being film students, we were both alcoholics and always ran into each other drunk. But, since my friend called dibs, I tried to be purposely unfriendly. Like a dickhead.

He asked her out to the bar a couple of times, but she just considered him a friend. Word to the wise girls, if a guy texts you everyday and asks you to do stuff one-and-one, he’s not just trying to be your “friend.” And if you consider him a friend, tell him that PLZ. 

ANYWHO, like three months go by. It’s December. My friend Taco was crashing at my place a lot since he was commuting. I was working on four films trying to get them finished before they were all due in a few weeks. I had them all on an external hard drive and was editing them in the living room. I took a nap and Taco used my laptop to check his Facebook. But, in doing so, he pulled the hard drive off the table and onto the ground. It died. All my work for the whole semester. Gone.

So, after admitting that I was indeed fucked, I did two power hours with rum until I was drunk enough to somehow think that I somehow had the intellectual prowess to fix the hard drive. I needed the tool to open it that comes with the drive, but I didn’t have it. But you know who did? Emma.

So, I knocked on her door and told her my whole story. Anyway, as you can guess, the drunken operation on the drive failed. So I went long boarding with a KFC bucket and almost killed myself.

Anyway, she had four films to edit and I had four to edit. With way too little time to do that. So we made a pact that we’d edit our films together, tell each other what we needed to fix, wake each other up through power naps, and provide encouragement when the goin’ got tough.

We edited at her place and I practically lived on her couch for a week and a half. We sat next to each other non-stop. We’d get breakfast, edit, go to class, come back, edit, get dinner, come back, edit, go to the liquor store, come back, and edit. And we talked while we edited, about everything. I felt so comfortable with her, I told her things I have literally told no one else in my entire life. 

She had seven roommates and they were all awesome. The apartment was for all the exchange students from American schools, so there was a girl from NYC, a girl from Nebraska, a girl from Guam. And she had all this Guam food. So good.

Anyway, after a week and half of spending so much time together, naturally, things got intimate. All the fear of making of move went out the window because I was so crazy about her and in the back of my mind I knew she was leaving at the end of the semester. But, we made the most out of it. I was in Parkville after a wedding in that big blizzard that year and I dug my car out with a boogie board to get back to Towson to see her. Every moment was precious.

We woke up together the morning she had to leave. We went to the post office with all her stuff and mailed it. Then, the airport. Vividly, I remember coming up the ramp to the airport and the sun blasted into our eyes. That stupid Fireflies song came on, but we sang our hearts out to it. We pulled up and I helped her carry her luggage. I kissed her goodbye. I cried.

We kept in contact very frequently for about five months. We’d send each other stuff. I sent her some poop books and a dinosaur puppet. She sent me a Tegan and Sara shirt. But, I haven’t seen her since. She met some British superstar soccer player in Oregon who is like really good-looking and they’re dating now. We say hey every once in a while and she’s doing really well.

For the next six months, I was a fucking wreck. At the same time, my roommates had to move out and were replaced with the previously described Bear, Otter, and Goat. So, I buried my feelings and crushed dreams in lots of alcohol, drugs, and trying to hook up with every girl within a four foot radius. Those stories will come soon.

But, looking back, the relationship reminds me of something Josh Ritter said in an interview once about summer relationships. Summer relationships are always the best because you know from the start, they’re only going to last so long. Someone is going to go back to school or something. So every moment of that relationship is precious because the entire time, there is a ticking clock limiting that enjoyment. We enjoy candy because there is only so much of it. If there was an endless supply of candy, well, we wouldn’t enjoy it as much.

The relationship was much like a summer relationship. There was no worry for the future. The entire time we spent together was in the moment. It was innocent. It was precious. Because we both knew it was going to go away. But, if there was no time limit, the variables change. All the insecurities, difficulties, concerns, and problems never come up. Because there is no need to worry about them. But, putting up with all that bullshit is what defines love I think. Love is when dealing with all that bullshit is a no-brainer because you need that other person in your life that badly. 

But, I don’t know what else to call the feeling I had when I walked down the airport back to my car, knowing I’d never see her again. I felt like I was in a movie. It was something out of a movie. I don’t know what to call the feeling I had at the end of every two hour phone call. Maybe, I don’t have to classify it. I don’t have to call it anything. I just know I liked it. Very much. And I’ll remember her, those feelings, and that moment for the rest of my life.

If you have ever lived with me or seen me on a regular basis for any period of time, you’ll know I go through intense, weird phases that last about a week. This week, for example, I’m obsessed with Gordon Ramsay and the art of cooking. Last week, it was attempting to assemble the greatest trivia team Baltimore has ever seen. Well, for an entire summer when I was 19, I was obsessed with g.g. allin. So, when you are trying to be like a guy that would shove a microphone up his ass and cut himself on stage, you do as g.g. allin would do and go to a house party where the guy who rents the house is known by everyone in the area as Satan.

That’s right. Everyone called him Satan, because well, he was fucking Satan. Covered in white power tattoos, always in a wife beater and cargo shorts, with a Ed Norton-esque goatee, fucked up on a cocaine/prescription-pills/keystone-light cocktail - he lived in the shittiest, most fucked up house I’ve ever seen. Allegedly, someone in his family owned it, they decided to move to Florida, and rented it to him. Inside, shit was just thrown everywhere. Every piece of furniture in the house was broken. Holes were punched everywhere. Racist epithets were spray-painted all over the walls. There were no ash-trays in the entire house, people just ashed their joint/cigarette/blunt/chlamydia discharge wherever they happened to be. Of course there was a beer pong table in the basement. There were like ten couches in the whole house, you could tell that the guy got couches off craigslist just for parties. The carpet no longer looked like carpet, but dried piss and spilt beer that was held together by spit and dog hair. The entire place just looked like a Slipknot song.

FUN FACT: Satan can actually be seen in National Geographic’s documentary on White Supremacists. He’s in the background laying into a punching bag at the MD White Power Gym they go to. 

Anyway, I had been drinking all day with my friend at Honeygo Park and decided to go to Satan’s house. We had to get our own beer first though, since, just as you imagine, Satan is a strict B.Y.O.B-sort-of-guy. I had a fake ID that was seriously the worst fake ID on the planet. It was a Pennsylvania ID and the colors were wrong. It’s supposed to be blue and yellow, mine was green and orange. On top of it, afraid that I look so young, we photoshopped a James Franco beard onto my picture. I don’t know why we thought that would be a good idea, but again, I thought going to a guy named Satan’s house was a good idea.

We figured that if the ID would work anywhere, it would work in this shitty liquor store in Middle River where everyone said they never get carded. So, of course, with my luck, the guy asks me for my ID. I pull out my shitty ID and he looks at it a few times and screams “THE COLORS ARE WRONG MAN!” So, out of my ass, I deliver the worst, most idiotic possible lie/response: that I left it on my dashboard once at the beach and the sun changed the colors. He then looks at me, pauses for a minute, and then lets out an “OHHHHHHHH” as if I said the most logical possible answer to his concern. The ID worked. The next time I went in there, he again asked about the changed colors, but I explained, “Don’t you remember me? I’m the guy who left it on his dashboard…” And he bought it again, and from then on, he remembered me as the guy that left his ID on his dashboard.

So, we get to Satan’s house. You can tell that the house has just become a haven for underage kids to do as many drugs and drink as much booze as they could so they could still wake up for school the next day. The party was exactly what you would expect it to be like: the same four guys screaming at each other over beer pong, Satan walking around looking like he was going to sprout wings and horns at any minute, kids throwing up in the kitchen sink, bongs everywhere, kids having sex on every flat surface in the house, kids having sex with multiple partners in the same night. I’m not going to act like I didn’t have fun, but it was equally as horrific as it was exciting.

Well, as I’ve said, when at Satan’s house, you do as Satan does - you try to find the most batshit crazy girl in the entire fucking place. 

And, I did. She was screaming non-stop, punching dudes for no reason, she kinda looked like she was doing a Jim Carrey stand-up special on crack. Anyway, I talk to her, get her number, and we start talking/hanging out.

She was a nice girl, but a little ‘outside the box.’ Like a typical night of hanging out, she would at least head-butt me once, walk somewhere on all fours, laugh tyrannically at nothing, and slap me a few times. But, she was unexpected, she was exciting. I dug it.

Anywho, she was at school and this baby squirrel crawled up to her. So, she kept it and made it her pet. Instead of leaving it at home in a cage, she decided that she wanted to take it everywhere with her. When in class, she’d stick it in her cleavage and it would chill between her boobs while she was in English 101 or whatever. I guess she took the squirrel with her to school for a couple days until she had a test to take. I guess the test was a really tough one, for when she left class to pull the baby squirrel from her breasts - it was convulsing and in cardiac arrest. I imagine that when she leaned over to write, her boobs pushed together, crushing the fragile frame of the baby squirrel inside. After trying to perform CPR, the baby squirrel tragically passed.

That night there was a funeral, so I went. She lived in some god-forsaken area way into the wilderness. Across the street from her house was an abandoned ranger station, so we decided to bury it there. We put the squirrel in a cigarette box and walked across the street with candles. It was pitch black and our candles kept going out. Weird noises started. We felt like we were in Blair Witch. Somehow, saying a few words over the casket turned into Satanic humming until another weird noise scared us enough to run back to her house and watch the Notebook.

Shortly after, I found out that the girl used to date Satan. This, and the constant head-butting, were starting to get old. I got lunch with her a few days later and her mouth started bleeding. Like blood started pouring out of her gums. Like a lot of it. Like a Satanic amount. I never called her again.

So, moral of the story, you know how they say never pick up somebody in a bar? Well, that for sure is damn true about Satan’s house. 

I guess there is something to be said about living a little wild at times. Something to be said about going through phases. It keeps you alive. Too much of it, you end up like Satan. But, just enough of it, just a little hint of it, like when Gordon Ramsay adds a hint of garlic to some vegetables, adds some pop to your life. It keeps it moving, keeps it fluid, keeps it new. Which is important.

I’ve been in about eight to ten bands. None of them lasted longer than like a month. Basically, I’ve spent a good chunk of my energy that past oh, five years, trying to be Conor Oberst. Well, I’m not Conor Oberst - hence why I’m writing a blog in my underwear right now with pizza on my chest.

So, I’m continuing the Erin story. I think I’m just going to knock this whole story out in this post. Sorry, for the length. I’ll get back to the music thing in a second. Let’s recap, first. I’m thinking about transferring to an arts school, decide not to transfer upon finding a smokin’ hot alt-girl on Facebook, subsequently send an awkward Facebook message, only to meet her at a party, but it all works out and we hit it off, and we pass out in separate beds after a night of mediocre weed and Donnie Darko.

Trying to be Conor Oberst, I had enrolled in a music theory class. Erin, trying to be an Urban Outfitters Edie Sedgwick, also enrolled in a music theory class. We had different teachers but, hey, it worked out perfectly as an excuse to visit her dorm and study. The night after the party, I walked across campus and met her at her place. At the time, and I know this sounds foolish, I thought destiny really came through this time. I thought everything was too perfect. I met the girl I was smitten with, she was even better than she seemed on fucking Facebook, she was gorgeous, absolutely awesome, and most of all - she liked my doofy self. 

She was pretty bad at music theory. I was helpin’ her understand it and she pulled out her homework assignment that she had started on. I looked at it and it was completely correct. So, I was like, “See, you understand it fine!” But then she said, “No, my ……” Odd Pause. “Friend at UMBC did it for me. He’s a music major. And he has his own solo folk thing. He wants to be Conor Oberst.”

FAST FORWARD.

About two months later. I’m in the backseat of a car. I’m absolutely shitfaced. In the backseat with me, laying in my lap is the equally shitfaced Erin. Next to her is her roommate. In the passenger seat is Erin’s brother. In the driver seat is Erin’s ex-boyfriend. They dated in high school, broke up during high school. He’s the lead singer in a popular Baltimore band that is targeted at 14 year old girls. It was the first time I met him, but I knew he was for the longest time because girls would always “ooh and ah” about him. So, naturally, I hated him.

He drove up to Towson to try and get back with her, but it ended up with him driving us to go buy cigarettes, while I smoked his weed in the backseat, and made fun of him about “what it’s like to be loved by 14 year olds” while he drove. He dropped us off and left. Walking away from the car, Erin givin’ me that look, I felt like the king of the world. Like LeBron James pre-Miami.

REWIND.

It was a long pause between “my” and “friend.” But, being really naiive, I let it go. I go home and tell Costa about how this is the greatest girl on Planet Earth. He tells me to be careful about this girl and that he doesn’t trust her. Being the stubborn asshole I am, I refuse to listen to him. 

Thanksgiving break comes, so everyone goes home. But over break, nonstop we are talking. I was already making a mix CD for her. LIKE JESUS. I take mix CDs very seriously. Serious as a heart attack. I’ll spend like two days making one. So, if I give you one, it means well, I AM DROP-DEAD smitten with you. I gave her a mix CD, she gave me one. This part of the relationship is like the montage part of the movie where the dude is buying flowers and prancing around to a Dave Matthews song. Everything was perfect.

BUT, of course, being life, it was not perfect. You see, one of Costa’s best friends was her RA. Seeing what was going on, he did a little bit of an investigation. He knew that some dude always came over her place. And that dude was her boyfriend. Her boyfriend she didn’t bother to tell me about. So, I know this part through Costa, but it went down like this: the RA went in and asked her point blank what was going on between us, to which she replied that she would date me if she wasn’t dating someone already. He then told her that I didn’t know about the BF and that she should, well, let me know. Costa told me, but again, being an idiot, I refused to believe it. LIKE THE MIX CDs!

Well she did. I went over to hangout and her roommate called me her boyfriend’s name, Steve. She acted like it was an accident and everyone started giggling. She apologized but it was clear that it was orchestrated. She didn’t even tell me herself. So, I said “Ah, fuck” and went home.

Obviously, the relationship kinda soured at that point. I’d still go over there a lot to hangout because I liked her roommates a lot. But, it was never the same. I was hurt. I don’t wanna brag, but I feel that I’m pretty good at controlling my emotions, acting rationally, forgiving people, not holding grudges. But, this was a pretty big hurt.

Winter break came, she went home, so I didn’t see her for two months. We didn’t even talk really, except once, when she complained about her boyfriend. I was in complete friend zone.

FAST FORWARD.

We are leaving the car and go to her dorm. We go in and its just us, her roommates are outside jokin’ around with the security guard and eating a pack of cigarettes. We talk for a bit and then she texted me while we were talking. I looked at it and read it. I remember it like yesterday: “IF I MET YOU WHEN I WASN’T DATING STEVE I COULD HAVE LIKED YOU A LOT. VERY MUCH. PLEASE REMEMBER THE PREFACE.”

That’s all she needed to say all along. In a total 180 though, next thing I know we were laying in the same bed, cuddling. Her roommates all came back to see what was going on. She slept on the bottom of the bunk and her roommate jumped on top and was talking to us. She then asked me what I thought of Erin and I told the truth, “I think she is the most wonderful girl.” That went over well. But, then she said, “Sam, be good.” She was right. I got up and grabbed her roommates cigarettes. Her roommate jumped down from the bunk and said “HEY WAIT FOR ME!”

We go outside and start eating cigarettes. We talked for a bit and then she asked if I loved Erin. I said no, of course. And then she said that it was pretty obvious. So, I went home.

I would go over there a few more times and I’d sleep over in Erin’s bed, but strictly that. For example, I got a call at 4AM begging me to come over and that she had a bad night. She just wanted me to spend the night. So I walked across campus only to be greeted at the door by two dudes. They asked if I was Sam, I said yeah, and they signed me in. They walked with me to the dorm and when we got there, she told them to leave. And I spent the night and talked her through whatever Taxlo-nightmare story she had.

But, it was weird. While we were friends, there was something going on. Like once, we all met up at THE DEN, as mentioned in a previous story, and I started talking to a girl. Erin slapped my drink out of my hand. I still don’t know how to define what was going on.

The entire time she was still dating that kid. And the entire time, Costa told me I was just her ‘Towson boyfriend.’ Which, I didn’t want to hear anything about. But, I guess he’s right. When she felt lonely and her boyfriend couldn’t come, I was the guy she called. And I came every time.

Anyway, this thing went on on-and-off for two years. She eventually broke up with that kid and then later got back together with him. But, broke up with him again. I hated him so much cause, well, he was my nemesis for this girl. I finally met him though after the second time they broke up. It was her birthday, so I went and he came too, because she decided to have a big hipster band concert for her birthday in some heroin basement. So he came and was skateboarding and acting like a dickhead. He ran into me mid-ollie, so he introduced himself.

There he was, the kid I hated. I expected he was going to be this dude, this cool dude that was a presence, like somebody to be reckoned with. He was like five inches shorter than me, had a bad lisp, and was kinda dirty. And he looked a lot like me. Like uncanny-looked like me. So, as I introduced myself it was clear he knew who I was. And he said, “Nice to meet you Sam” in a way a cowboy would say “Nice to meet you” to the cowboy that killed his parents or something.

Anyway, Erin and me drifted apart and we didn’t even really talk for like six or seven months. I ran into her and it felt like in a movie when two people who used to be really close meet each other and try to sum up ten years of their life in two minutes. We said we’d have to catch up but we never did. She had blue hair now.

And that’s why I don’t want to be Conor Oberst anymore.

Seriously though, I’d like to say I learned from the experience, but I let the same thing happen to me a year later. And, I’d like to say I learned from that time, but nope. It happened a third time. 

So here’s the emotional tie-up. This is the part where Carrie Bradshaw would explain what the relevance of the episode was. BOYS, never get wrapped up in a girl that has a boyfriend. Don’t be that guy. Don’t stick around and get stuck in the friend zone. Don’t stick around to be used. There are plenty of fish in the sea. And quite simply, if you get that girl to breakup with her boyfriend for you, odds are another guy won’t have that hard of a time convincing her to breakup with you for him when the time comes.

If you do get hurt in a situation where someone uses you, don’t feel sorry for yourself. Don’t feel like you have it bad. Because, basically, no one gives a shit about you. This sort of thing happens all the time to people, and while your story may be important to you, people are worried about their own situations. So, don’t feel bad if it happens. It’s nothing you did. It’s just sometimes, people get hurt. And you are ultimately going to be one of those people every once and a while. Also, when your friends tell you they don’t trust a romantic relationship, listen to them.

So this wraps up Erin. I still think she’s a great person and well, I’d be a totally different person if I never met her. 

I started going to the club a lot after this, which moved me into a different phase of my life. I was no longer in the pouty, I hate everyone phase. Which, thank god. I kinda credit the whole experience from Erin to get me outta that. Anyway, thanks for reading this shit. Up next is a late night, weed-apocolypse hookup with a girl from high school; meeting a dude who all of Baltimore calls ‘Satan;’ driving to NYC in the middle of the night on GG allin night; a girl who kills a squirrel in her breasts; and Emily - the next girl I would fall completely head over heels for.

I’m doing something a little different for this one. I just watched a documentary on the porn industry and the issues it raised about sexuality, especially the differences between male and female sexuality, have me thinking about this story. This story doesn’t really fit thematically with what I have been writing - I have been mainly focusing on the more naive and younger experiences, but this story takes a huge leap forward in time to one of the darker stories of the dirt I have done. But, as I am mainly writing this for myself, I feel that this is a good time to write it, personally. And I apologize, this one isn’t going to be too funny. Because, well, there’s nothing really funny about it.

Let me set the stage. I am twenty. At this point in my life, my personal motto was simple - drink lots of four loko, flirt with every girl at the party, and get naked with one of them by the end of the night. I was a giant hormone and I looked like a walking erection.

Costa decided to have a house party at his place, so I went. If I remember correctly, the party was actually Four Loko themed, which basically means, “Don’t even bother coming if you got to go to church in the morning, cause we’re not messing around tonight.” While reading this story, I want you to put on your favorite Lil B song, cause that appropriately captures the soundtrack to this party. And the party was good, there were a lot of people and everyone was having a great time.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I found the only white girl at the party and convinced her to go up with me to the loft of the house, which was Costa’s sister’s room. We got caught, since that room was off limits. She was embarrassed. I didn’t care because I have no shame. Yet, she distanced herself a bit after the incident, obviously feeling weird about it.

The night goes on and the sun starts coming up, so everyone leaves or finds a place on the floor to sleep. Anyway, we are both awake and we go up to another empty room in the house. It’s like 7AM and we start messing around on the floor. After a bit, she says, “I can’t do this.”

I’m not saying the following dialogue is an exact quote of what was said, but it’s gosh darn close:

ME: Why not?

HER: Then, I’ll be a slut.

ME: Why would you be a slut?

HER: I just met you tonight.

ME: I don’t think that makes you a slut. I think it just means we like each other. It’s fine though, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.

HER: But, I want to though.

ME: If you want to do it, then why not? What’s stopping you?

HER: I’ll be a slut.

After a bit more of this back and forth, she got up and left. I said goodbye and I rolled over on the floor and fell asleep. I woke up a few hours later, drove home, and went to work.

Now, you’re probably thinking - “OK, so? What’s the big deal?” Well, I’ll tell you what is the big deal.

As this blog is about my college life, I break it down into four periods. The first is from Freshman year to early Sophomore year, aka the Sulking-in-My-Room-Listening-to-Bright-Eyes-Period. The second is brief, from early Sophomore year to the spring of Sophomore year, aka the I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-At-This-Frat-Party-Right-Now-But-I-Kinda-Dig-It-And-I-Can’t-Stop-Tapping-My-Foot-To-This-Sean-Kingston-Song Period. The third period goes from Spring of Sophomore Year to Second Semester Senior year, aka the I-Wonder-How-Much-Alcohol-I-Can-Inject-Into-My-Bloodstream-And-How-Many-Girls-I-Can-Show-My-Erection-To-And-Still-Pass-My-Classes Period. The final period lasted for the end of my senior year, aka the One-Woman-Man/I-Drank-Three-Beers-And-I-Just-Want-To-Go-Home-And-Go-To-Sleep-Even-Though-Its-10:30PM Period. This story occurred right at the pinnacle of the third period.

Whenever I would drive home from wherever I passed out, I would play the Four Tet Remix of Born Ruffians’ I Need A Life. And as this song played, I would reflect on the dirt I had done the previous night. Previously, I felt accomplished, almost successful when driving home. Each girl was a new conquest. I was more interested in seeing if I could hook up with her, not really the act of hooking up itself. 

Driving home this time, I really thought about what she said. And I realized, that everything I was doing was just a big ego trip. I was disgusting. As a male, you are constantly reenforced that the more chicks you get, the more manly you are. There’s a certain rockstar vibe about men who get lots of girls, like Marlon Brando and stuff. I wanted to be that rockstar, I wanted to be Marlon Brando. 

I have two points to make. The first: males are constantly encouraged for hooking up with lots of women. In the eyes of others, the higher the number of women a guy has been with, the better. On the other hand, women are treated the exact opposite. If a guy is juggling four girls at the same time, that is considered cool. If a woman has four guys at one time, she is a slut. If a man has been with twenty girls, the response would be positive. He’s a man’s man. If a woman has been with twenty guys, the response is negative. She’s a slut.

In the case of this story, I was the fucking slut. I was the one who had the same exact thing with another girl the previous weekend. I was the one texting multiple girls whenever the girl in this story went into the other room. I was the slut. But, that’s fine. Because, I’m the guy.

Second, I am still fascinated that she thought she would be a slut for hooking up on the first night. She never once considered that I too was doing the same thing as her, hooking up with a stranger on the first night. She never once stated that I would be a slut as well. But, she’s probably right. If we did hook up and I told another guy about it, he would probably refer to her as a slut. On the other side of the coin, that wouldn’t be the case for me, as I am the guy. It is a strange inequality. It is completely unfair. I don’t understand how this double standard has come into existence. And I don’t understand why people keep up with this tradition.

And why is it that there has to be a cap to sexual interaction? Some people like sex, as long as they are being safe about it, who cares how much they do it and with who? More power to them. I play a lot of frisbee, no one calls me a frisbee slut for playing a lot of frisbee. I like beer, I drink it a lot and I drink a lot of different beers from different breweries. I’ve never been called a beer slut.

I don’t remember her name. For the life of me, I can’t remember. I’ve never forgotten any girl’s name ever, beside hers. I can remember to this day driving home and realizing, I had no idea what her name was. And as I Need A Life played in my car, I realized that was exactly what I needed. I wasn’t going to find that sticking my Four Loko’d tongue down some poor girl’s throat. People often are like, I just want to be single so I can do whatever I want. Don’t. It’s fucking stupid. It’s just a perpetual pissing away of nights on people you will act like you didn’t see when you cross paths months later getting a Chick-Fil-A sandwich from the university union. Relationships are way better, they deliver much more.

Next time, I’ll be back with part two of the Erin story. Bring your tissues.

Okay, let me make it clear in case you already haven’t noticed, I’m a weird dude. My roommate and I used to have a crush on this indie girl that lived in the room next to us, so we would stand by our door and play Cat Power acoustic covers on our guitars as loud as we could, in hopes she would hear it, be impressed, and I guess come over and profess her love to us.

Anyway, of course, that never happened. So, then we resorted to getting drunk enough to get the courage to knock on the door - but then that just turned into a game of one guy knocking, the other dude would run in our room and lock the door, leaving the asshole who knocked out to dry and run down the hall and hide before she opened the door.

Eventually, somebody needed a tampon and didn’t have one, so I happily volunteered to find one and used that as an excuse to knock on the door and have a legit reason to talk to her. Luckily, it was her who opened the door. I tried to act all cute and said something like, “This is weird, I realize that, but, do you have a tampon I could borrow. I’ll bring it back.” She gave me one and that was the end of it - until about two weeks later she sent me a Facebook message: “UM, so what exactly did you do with that tampon lol?” And that is where our story begins - with a weird, awkward Facebook message.

So, back to when I was 18. Pumpkin-pie haircut. Gator shoes. Just freaking weird. Just plain weird. Yeah, you remember.

Anyway, I’m sitting in my room, probably listening to Bon Iver mashups or something stupid. I’m living in an eight person apartment and its only Costa and me there for the weekend. All the others were gone on a road trip to Boston in the middle of November to go see the Towson girl’s volleyball team play a game, turnaround, and come home. That’s it. They did nothing else, but drive 10 hours, get out of the car, watch a game, get in the car, and come home. And none of them even knew anybody on the team, really, except for one. Costa and me didn’t want to go cause we aren’t autistic, but no one was around Towson, on top of it being the weekend before Thanksgiving, so there was nothing really going on.

We were so bored that we decided we were going to go see James Bond, but then we ended up talking about Dragonball Z and missed the last show time. Costa then said that he might know about this house party that is probably pretty lame. But, what else were we going to do besides sit at home, eat our a tub of our roommate’s frozen sherbet, and watch Gladiator while playing beer pong alone?

This moment marks one of the most important decisions of my young adult life - I put on a neutral colored shirt. You see, at this point in my life, I took a long hard look in the mirror, saw I was wearing a child’s medium wolf shirt with orange corduroy pants and realized something - I looked like a fucktard. So, I started making an effort to dress better and take care of myself. If anyone knows me, they know this phase eventually derailed into never showering and wearing the same flannel for a week, but at this point, I was serious. I freakin’ subscribed to GQ. So earlier that day I went to the place where you go to dress nice - H&M. I went with Costa and he insisted that neutral colored shirt is a man’s equivalent to a little black dress. So, I got this $10 grey, neutral colored shirt.

It was still in the bag, so I did the put-it-in-the-bathroom-while-you-take-a-shower-trick to iron it. And I cuffed my pants. And wore black socks. But I still had those fucking gators. Nonetheless, we print out google maps directions, we got in my car, and we were off!

We show up to the house and the place is packed. We were not expecting this. The party is great. Even my awkward self didn’t have a problem talking to people and generally enjoying myself. Costa and me go downstairs and I scan the room, checking out this new place. There is a beer pong table. There is a flip cup table. There is an urn of jungle juice. There is some lacrosse dude in a DMB shirt about to throw up. Just a regular college party. And then - WAIT A SECOND. There she was.

REWIND.

The usual. I’m sitting in my room, sulking, listening to Broken Social Scene, thinking I am the only one who ‘gets me.’ Blah blah. I am seriously considering transferring from Towson. Like legitimately going through the process. My mindset is I need to get out of Baltimore and go someplace where the kids watch Annie Hall as much as I do. But first, I decide to do a study. Facebook had a thing for a while where you could search for people with similar interests at your school. So I type in a few of the most obscure, miserable folk bands I like and two people come up consistently. One is this dude named Martin, he’s a model, in a band, looks cool, has a oddly protruding adam’s apple. Kinda looks like a jewish Justin Timberlake. Eventually, he would become my arch-nemesis, but that’s another story for another time.

The other was this girl - Erin. I’m infatuated. She’s gorgeous. She seems awesome. My dream girl. So, I do what I do best. I lurk. I lurk till my little fingers fall off and I can’t take it anymore! I send a Facebook message.

And not just any Facebook message. Like the worst, creepiest, I’m-begging-you-to-reject-me message. The kind of message that would only work for a Jonas Brother or something. I forget exactly, but it was something like: ‘Oh hey you have a cool taste in music, we should hangout ROTFL LOL LMAO IM GUNNA GO KILL MYSELF NOW KTHNXBYE.’

She responded! And we had a little chat about towson guidos, but that was that. I would lurk her page once and a while. Okay, a lot. But, hey! Everyone has an internet crush every now and then. Right? Right guys? Riiiiiggggggggghhhht?

FAST FOWARD TWO MONTHS

So there I am, in my neutral colored shirt and these ashy, neon-green gator boots I used to wear. And there she is, the girl I have been habitually lurking on via the internet. I just try to blend into the surroundings. I kind of figured if I stood in one position, she wouldn’t notice me, like in Jurassic Park if you don’t move the T Rex can’t see you. But that doesn’t work when you are making awkward glances at the person you are trying to hide from every thirty seconds. Eventually, she catches me. But the look back is good. Like so good that Costa turns to me and says “Do you see that fucking girl with the scarf and the vampire makeup looking at you like that?”

I get a tap on my shoulder. It’s her. She screams, “I KNOW YOU! YOU ARE THE KID FROM FACEBOOK!” And I try to play it off, but she screams it so loud, everyone hears, and it inspires some football douche to walk out of the jungle juice line to turn to us and say, “OH, awkward Facebook meeting, huh?” And then turns around again, like he’s above it all. I felt like George Costanza in every Seinfeld episode ever.

Anywho, we hit it off. We talk about bands, music, and our mutual hate for the mainstream and Towson for at least three bathroom trips. And if you’ve ever seen the line for a bathroom at a house party, that is a LONG time. She was there with her friend, who was plastered, and she wanted to go. This is the worst thing to happen! I didn’t want this to end, this conversation. This was literally the best thing that had happened to me in college at this point!

And then, out of nowhere, I took a page out of what I had for the last year subconsciously picked up on from guidos talking to girls when they got rolled out of their taxi after a night at bourbon street, “I GOT WEED. WANNA COME BACK TO MY PLACE AND SMOKE?” I didn’t have any weed. I didn’t even know how to pack a bowl. But, I said it. And they both were ecstatic. I got her number and I told her to wait for me to pull up in my car and she could follow me to my place.

I had no idea what I was doing. It was the neutral colored shirt talking. I grab Costa, who was talking to a girl, and said, “HEY! HEY! We gotta go right now! Like right now!” And Costa was like, “NO, um why, come on dude?” And I said, “I got two girls coming back to our place. LIKE TWO REAL, LIVE GIRLS!” And in a heartbeat, Costa said SEE YA to the girl he was talking to and we ran outta that place as fast as we could.

We drive back and the girls follow us. But, we gotta find weed. So we call our roommate who always has a stock somewhere hidden. He answers in freaking Boston, leaving the volleyball tournament. He says we can have some. I was IN LOVE with this girl and Costa thought her friend was really cute. We thought this was going to be the most magical night of our lives. We felt like we were in a Zac Efron movie. AND WE WERE ZAC EFRON.

We sign them in and we head up to our place. The neutral colored shirt is firing on all cylinders, doing all the talking. I tell both of them to go in the bathroom, turn on the hot water, and we’ll be in there in a second. They go in and as soon as the door closes, Costa and me embrace, jumping all over the apartment, doing a weird dance, singing ‘WE’RE GONNA GET LAID!’ over and over. After a minute of that we settle and realize the task at hand. How to pack a bowl. We both had no idea. We get a piece of paper, drop the nugget on the paper, and stare at it. We then just start picking at it, holding pieces up to the light and making judgement calls on whether it belonged on the bowl or not based on whether we would put it on a pizza or not. I have no idea how long this took, but it couldn’t have been quick.

We go in the bathroom and Erin’s friend is tired. She says she’s good and goes out on the couch, leaving Costa, Erin, and me in the bathroom. Erin takes the first hit and Costa looks back and forth and says, I’ll be right back and leaves. This gives Erin and me more time to chit chat.

We come out and there is Costa, holding her friend asleep, rubbing her hand. I never have found out exactly what happened, but Erin thought the worse. I’m positive Costa didn’t do anything Jerry-Springer-worthy cause he’s a good dude with a good heart, but Erin didn’t know him and I was worried she’d want to leave. But the neutral colored shirt stopped talking and the weed starting talking, so the only words that came out of my mouth were “DONNIE DARKO.”

But it worked. Costa took care of her friend, allowing us to watch Donnie Darko and talk about more music. We both got sleepy from the mids we just smoked and kinda fell asleep during it. It killed the moment. She ended up spending the night, but sleeping in my roommates empty bed.

The next morning, we got breakfast and I dropped her off at her dorm, which was on the other side of campus. I came back to the dorm, where Costa and me pieced together the entire night. I gotta say, some of my fondest memories of college are the long talks with Costa, where our young selves would talk for hours about the normal things of life and try to piece it all together. 

Despite all those talks, and we still have those talks, Costa is one of my best best greatest friends - I still am not sure what love exactly is. Some people like to put love into an exclusive sense. They can date someone for months and still not say it. They want to be able to say when they die that they only loved one or two people. Others use it a lot, to a point where it loses meaning. I’m not sure when to use it. I think that love can be instant. As soon as I saw this girl, I was obsessed. I couldn’t get enough of her. This story will continue on, and I will finish it in increments later, but I was legitimately obsessed with this girl for a year and a half-ish. I felt the same way at the beginning as I did at the end. When I see her now, which is rarely, I still get that “HOLY SHIT feeling,” not as intense, but briefly. 

So, I’m going to go out on a limb and say this - I WAS IN LOVE WITH THIS GIRL at this brief moment in time. Not like, TRUE LOVE, but enough love to make me go crazy. There’s no point in acting like I wasn’t. I have admitted way more embarrassing things on here, from Mad Dog to crashing into the hood of a car on a skateboard. There’s no point in avoiding it. I was.

I try to have a life meaning or a moral or whatever at the end of all of these posts, to tie it up and make it something a bit more mature and significant than a self-righteous collection of every girl I had a crush on when I was drunk. I’ll tie this up fast, since this post is already long.

1 - Life goes by really slow. This feels like forever ago, I’m a completely different person. I look back on it as if I was a young kid, like I would as when I was in elementary school. But it was only two-three years ago. Everyone says life goes by quick, but I feel the opposite - that this feels about two-three-years-worth-ago. 

2. Facebook messages rule. I was always shy about it and thought it was embarrassing, but who cares. Its just an extension of real life. Its no different than walking up to somebody in a bar or talking in a bus. A stranger is a stranger. If they don’t respond, they probably would react the same way in a bar or bus and aren’t worth the time.

3. Your best friends can help you make sense out of anything. There is nothing more valuable than best friends.

Anyway, this story is a real emotional roller coaster and I’m going to spread the story out. But, I guess I need a cliff-hanger to keep you interested and waiting for the next one. So here it is. The cliff-hanger - In a month after this event, we’d be spending the night in the same bed together. But, here’s the twist - there’s a boyfriend. And I have no idea about him.

I got really into skateboarding for a bit. I started wearing flannel and a beanie. The skateboard came naturally, I guess. I never really liked doing tricks, but I did like going down hills really fast. The only problem was I hadn’t gotten the stopping/braking thing down yet. I tried going down this really big hill once and I couldn’t stop, ran into a park car, and tumbled over the hood. Luckily, my 5’6”/120lbs frame did nothing to the body of the car. But, nonetheless, that is where our story begins - slamming face first into a car. Metaphorically, of course.

I was a sophomore in college and just turned 19. I was sitting in my room, probably wearing an ugly grandma sweater, playing guitar, and pretending I was in a folk punk band playing at Local Highrise or something pathetic like that, when my roommate Costa walked in and said these fateful words - “DO YOU WANT TO GO TO THE CLUB?”

I had never been to a club before. My only experience with the club was from this terrible R.Kelly phase I went through once. I had only been to a few house parties too and usually there I would just stand on the deck, make eyes across the room to whatever girl showed me attention/was just weirded out I kept looking at her, and eat cigarettes till it was time to go home.

After trying to make an excuse not to go and failing, I said - sure. The next thing I know, I’m showering, actually caring what my hair looks like, and ironing my clothes. 

The club was The Den. It was located by Johns Hopkins and was this small place on top of a 7-11. It was small, everything in it was jet black, they had beds in the corner, one window A/C unit for the whole joint. That sorta place. Rumor was that they didn’t card though, all you needed was a college ID to get in. We literally knew nothing about ordering drinks, so Costa asked his sister what to order and she responded: cranberry vodka & long island iced tea.

We show up at The Den and the line is ridiculous. Seriously, every underage kid in Baltimore must have been trying to get into this place. To top it off, it was freezing and none of us brought a jacket, of course. After standing in line for about an hour, we question or sanity and consider going to Taco Bell. But, a little voice keeps up is line -“No one is leaving, this place has to be awesome if no one is leaving.”

Just as we begin to agree to wait ten more minutes, the door bursts open and a pack of plastered boys and girls stream out of the door like ducks in a line. They stumble down the steps, each one looks like they just finished walking across the Sahara desert. The caboose is the drunkest girl I have ever seen in my life. She walks down the steps, debit card in hand, and stumbles around the sidewalk for a minute, aimlessly. She then flops down on the curb like a dead tuna, drops her debit card, and vomits like a cat coughing up a fur ball. Like you could see a ball of vomit moving up her throat. As everyone looks in disgust, her friends pull up in a taxi, scream “FUCK YOU GIRL,” and drive away. Too intoxicated to even know what is going on, she rolls over into her vomit and continues to puke. No one bothers to help her. I don’t know what happened to her, but I looked away for a bit and she was gone. I think somebody just drug her out back and euthanized her on the spot like a horse with a broken leg after the Preakness, but this is just speculation.

Needless to say, this re-energizes us. We decide to stick it out. Another thirty minutes go by and the line is rolling now. There is hope. However, this brings my initial fear back to the surface. If anyone knows me, I look very young for my age. My pumpkin pie haircut does me no justice. And at 19, I did not look a day over fourteen.

I was afraid that I would look to young and they’d turn me away. My plan was to stand between Costa and Phil, flash my college ID, and walk in. Granted, the bouncer has not stopped anyone all night, but still - I look like Haley Joel Osment in the Sixth Sense. I was convinced the bouncer would see me, start laughing, and make take a walk of shame as the only kid turned down by the one club in the city that doesn’t fucking card anybody.

I’ve never been a lucky man and of course, as the line is rolling, the bouncer stops the line right at me. I am nervous, my friends are inside, and I am alone - looking like a fourteen year old who is waiting around the corner of a 7-11 for the dude he gave money to to come back with menthols. The bouncer, who looks like a fat version of Keenan Thompson with corn rows, has yet to really even look at my face, constantly scanning the line for knives and people vomiting. After a routine scan, he sits down on his stool and begins to turn toward me, this is it, the moment of truth…

BAM! The door suddenly busts open and some Johns Hopkins lacrosse mother fucker in a polo is thrown down the steps. The bouncer inside comes out, literally ready to kill this kid. He looks like a fat Kel Mitchell. Thats right, this club had two bouncers who looked like overweight Good Burger employees. This makes the moment even more terrifying.

The lacrosse kids taunts Fat Kel while Fat Keenan Thompson holds back the enraged bouncer. Finally, the lacrosse kid runs away after Fat Kel makes another move, leaving the two bouncers on the steps in front of me. 

Fat Kel turns to the crowd and says, “I apologize everybody, that is a side of me that normally doesn’t come out. I am lovable teddy bear at heart.” The two bouncers joke for a minute, but then Fat Kel turns and looks at me.

“WAIT A MINUTE, are you drinking?,” Fat Kel asks of me. I am like a deer in headlights. My worst fear is coming true. I just stood in the freezing cold for two hours for this. This humiliation.

“No. I’m driving,” I responded.

“Well, why do you even want to come in then?” Fat Kel asks.

Then, like an angel sent from god, Fat Keenan Thompson turns to Kel and says, “Man, all the time I drive your drunk ass all over the place, givin’ this man shit about being responsible.” He then opens the door - “Come in man, I have love for the designated drivers of the world.” He then lets me in, Phil & me in only. I run up the steps, not looking back. I felt like one of those zebras where the lion has his teeth in the zebras ass, but somehow the lion trips or something and the zebra lives.

I enter. There it is - THE DEN. I walk straight to the bar and the bartender looks at me, “What do you want?” I stumble over my words. I have no idea. I look at all the bottles behind her, I recognize nothing. I turn over my shoulder, Fat Kel is back inside with a flashlight, scanning the crowd. My immediate reaction is he is looking for me. I turn back to the bartender and manage to get two works out - CRANBERRY VODKA.

I throw a ten dollar bill at her, grab the drink, and run to the corner to hide. I finish the drink in two gulps, wipe my mouth, and take it all in. At this point, it is almost 1AM - less than an hour till the place closes. Costa comes up to me and screams, “MAKE THIS HOUR COUNT.”

I do. I walk to the bar for another cranberry vodka. As I walk, this punk looking girl gives me the eyes. LIKE THE EYES. LIKE THE WHO-THE-FUCK-ARE-YOU EYES. And in the dark of the den, I think this is one of the hottest punk girls I have ever seen. I look back at her, and look away. It probably seemed like I was teasing her, but not really, I just didn’t know what to do because I am awkward.

Regardless, I now have no fear. I think I am a king. I’ve been in this place for not even two minutes and the best-lookin’ girl in the club is lookin’ at me! This kind of thing never happens to me. I walk up to the bar and order another cranberry vodka with the most confidence I have ever had in my life.

Five cranberry vodkas later. Each time I go for another, the girl continues to give me the eyes. On the fifth time, she finally grabs me and asks me to dance. I had never danced in a club before. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know how to grind. So as Usher played and I stood in a puddle of sweat, I danced with the best-looking-girl in the club, trying to think of puppies faces exploding due to shotgun blasts and that “Nothing Compares to You” music video to avoid any erection.

I don’t know if this was because I was nineteen and a freaking idiot or what, but out of every girl that I have danced with since, this girl danced insanely. Like even outdid Spanish girls who know how to clap their ass and stuff. I thought I was going to legit have an Andy Samberg jizz-my-pants-moment, until I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Costa and he began to scream in my ear - “SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM.”

But the only thing is he never stopped. He continued to stand behind me and scream my name into my ear for the rest of the night. Talk about distracting. But, thank god.

I got the girl’s number outside and then we had the normal, we just-grinded-on-each-other-whats-your-name-talk. I asked her what school she went to and she said College Park, with an undecided major. She was really cool and needless to say, I was excited.

We get home, all of us plastered on cranberry vodkas, chanting “WE MADE THAT HOUR COUNT.” The girl and me texted all night and were really hittin’ it off. We both liked Neutral Milk Hotel and crap. After a bit, I decide to fall asleep on the toilet, as I vomit up cranberry juice, phone in hand. I awake to phone still in hand, with a message. “Hey, I like you and I was afraid to say it, but I don’t really go to College Park. I’m in high school.”

I actually did go on a date with her once, later. And we still chit-chat sometimes, she’s a cool girl. But, regardless, the night for me is one of the fondest memories I have of growing up in teenage years. You only get to be a naiive idiot once, and for me, this night symbolizes everything beautiful about breaking the rules, playing with the stuff adults always hide from you - you know, the stuff you gotta learn for yourself.

When you’re naiive, everything is always magical, when everything is new and exciting. When you get older, a little bit of the magic starts to rub away. Whether it is Santa Claus or chugging a cranberry vodka in the corner of a club. I gotta say, I miss that magic. I know I’ll never sit in the backseat from a club again, grinning ear to ear, trying to piece together what happened. Because, now, I’d probably be the one driving, I’ve already experienced this sorta thing plenty of times now. Four years in college is a microcosm of life really, childhood to a Freshman and old age to a senior. 

The people who owned the Den eventually got caught and it closed up a few months later. It was the end of an era. I haven’t ordered a cranberry vodka since, but sometimes when I’m home alone, I’ll go to the 7-11, buy a bottle of cranberry juice, and make myself a few, secretly.

I don’t think that I’ve made it a secret to anybody that I talked to Liz Lee once. Well, not like we had a conversation, but she was on ustream once and she answered a couple of my questions about your run-of-the-mill-hipster stuff. And there were a lot of questions being asked! But since my questions were the only ones not about the color of her pubic hair, mine got answered.

And before you think I’m pathetic for being on the ustream for some girl with a MTV show that appeals to 14-yr-old girls, I must make it clear that during this entire time I was sitting on a crusty old couch, eating stale cherrios out of a box, while jamming to Caribou with sportscenter on mute and pounding Mad Dog. And that is where our story begins, just like most of the stories in my life, with a bottle of Mad Dog and an online relationship.

Flashback with me - I’m 18. I like to think I’m not alone in that if I saw my 18 year old self at a party, I’d probably be like, “OMFG, gawd damn, you ugly pumpkin-pie-haircutted motherfucker, please stop talking or go die, promptly.” I was just introduced to drinking and pretty much the only booze I liked were Bud Selects, Mad Dog, and Absolut. At 18, I had the same taste in booze as what I imagine what one of Mickey Rourke’s chihuahuas would want to drink after a rough day.

I was in college, but I was late on the Facebook train. I insist my lack of friends during my freshman year had nothing to do with the neon-green gator boots that I insisted on wearing everyday, shopping exclusively in the kids section of Goodwill, the Laura Dern-esque face of pain I would make after every sip of beer, or that Phil & me would never leave the room because we were too busy wrestling/spooning - BUT RATHER the fact that I had a MySpace in a Facebook world.

I had my whole I-hate-everyone-cause-I-think-I’m-punk-and-smarter-than-everyone douche bag thing holding over from high school. While I rebelled against Confederate flag waving, Kenny Chesney fans in high school, I was now exercising my angst against New Jersey guidos by sitting in my room, listening to Broken Social Scene, and sulking.

Naturally, like every coming-of-age movie, I thought that I WAS THE ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD WHO FELT THIS WAY. Out of the 20k kids at Towson, I was somehow narrow-minded enough to think that I was the only kid on campus who knew who Tom Waits was. Which, actually is kinda true if you don’t count the theater department, but you get my point. Instead of wearing a polo, getting in a cab to Bourbon St, and getting drunk enough to get the courage to ask some girl to grind with me to some Usher song - I was more concerned about watching The Life Aquatic, sulking in my dorm room, and believing I would never find anyone who ‘gets it.’ And by anyone, I mean a girl who I could mean mug mainstreamers with, go to indie shows, discuss pitchfork reviews, & fall in love. So, like if J.Mascis wrote a Taylor Swift Song. (SIDENOTE - I apologize for all the music references and T.Swift and J.Mascis kinda look alike).

But, one bright sunny morning, I got a myspace message from a random girl. But, not just any girl - a kinda punk looking girl who liked the same music I did, the same movies, same humor, same everything. Needless to say, I was smitten. For once, I felt like there was hope in the world. After a couple myspace conversations, the myspace friendship faded away, though. She did not live anywhere close to the wonderful Towson, MD and I finally made some friends, thus no longer dependent on a now extinct social network site for any human interaction. 

Three years, lots of bad booze, bad films, and bad decisions go by.

I am living with the before-mentioned Bear, Otter, and Goat and was likely coming back from the library either drunk, high, or coked up on whatever fun dip I might have snorted. Or a combination of the three. The elevator door is open and I run to catch it. It’s important to note that this elevator is probably the slowest elevator in the world, so catching it is a big deal. Like so slow, some Jersey girl once tried to finish giving me a handy before it reached the bottom floor while holding a pizza, but that is another embarrassing story for another embarrassing time.

I can tell the person inside it is hitting the close-door button, but I stop it in time like an asshole. Inside is her - the girl from myspace. After making the most awkward face imaginable and a weird sound that can be best described as a cross between the first syllable of a Woody Allen joke & an owl that has been hit with a rock, I turn away and see that the 6th floor is selected. That is my floor. The myspace girl makes an awkward reaction herself and clicks the 4th floor. Which, makes no sense. She was the only one in the elevator, she clearly hit the 6th floor button. We say nothing, she gets out on the 4th floor, and my mind explodes.

Two months later - after a screening, subsequent trip to Bourbon St, and a heartfelt conversation with a good friend outside a Royal Farms that lasted an entire pack of cigarettes, I came home as the sun was coming up. As I got home, I was drunk enough to have a sense of courage, but sober enough to remember by MySpace password. I logged onto my account, left untouched from its 18-year-old-state and looked at her profile. Her last logon date was that day. Everything on her profile was completely removed from what I remember from staring at it three years prior - except one thing, the About Me had been simply changed to “I REMEMBER YOU.”

I sent the most important myspace message of my life at 20 years old, still drunk from the Mecca of everything I once hated three years ago - Bourbon St. The next day she responded, from her room down the hall, just a few hundred feet away. She knocked on the door, I opened it, and there she was.

The resultant story between us is another story in itself, for another time. However, in short, we got in a big argument and we don’t speak anymore. The friendship officially died I suppose when I deleted her from Facebook, which I guess is a fitting ending. But, after deleting her and hurting her feelings, I really felt bad about it. She wasn’t responding to my dumb texts because well, she’s a better and stronger person than me. At this point, she was still living in the apartment where we met and I was living in a different apartment. So, one night it was nice out and we were bored, so I convinced my friend Daniel to take a walk to the old place where we used live. I secretly hoped I’d run into her.

We walk through the woods and see it. The old parking lot where we used to park, play frisbee games, skateboard, do all kinds of things was leveled, replaced with mud and bulldozers. The woods we used to go into and explore are cut down, slaughtered. The hill we used to sleigh ride down, replaced with a building. The building where we used to live - did a lot of growing up, where most of these stories take place - looks like a figment of its old self. Very drunk, I wept. Then anger set in and I peed on everything. I peed on all the construction equipment that was demolishing my old home. After my bladder ran out of piss, I remembered why I walked there in the first place, I miss her, and I weep again.

We walked away and I took one last look at the place. I haven’t been back since. I haven’t seen the myspace girl since then except for once when I was driving, she was in the car behind me and I saw her in my rearview mirror. I thought it was fitting. Cause sometimes you just gotta move on whether you want to or not. Ultimately memories are just memories, nothing more. The past is the past, the future is all that matters. And pissing on a bunch of construction equipment isn’t going to do anything to change that. All that matters is that next myspace message you are going to send, not the ones that are still hangin’ around in your inbox.

Okay, first - some ground rules. I am not telling these stories in any type of order. Also, I am not using anyone’s real names. K!

IF anyone knows me, they know that I went through a weird phase in which every night I would get absolutely shit-tanked, walk to the library, and try to fill my brain with as much knowledge as possible. The favorite topics were time travel, Stan Brakhage essays, and Constitutional law. But, first, some back story.

You see, I lived in a college apartment. I had the unfortunate circumstance of having my three roommates leave for various reasons - one never even made it because he never put down his deposit due to a severe bout with swine flu, one ran out of money, and one thought he was going to be deployed to Haiti, before the Marines told him “oops, nevermind” and he pursued employment as a suit salesman at a Nordstrom. This left me with three random roommates. In short, they were three of the most obscure and disgusting people I have ever met. The exact sort of person one would expect out of an individual who could not find anyone to live with and left his living arrangement up to the random lottery of the university housing office. I named them Bear, Otter, and Goat after their respective skull structures and behavior. More on them another time.

Anyway, to be quick,  I shared a room with Goat, who happened to be a chronic masturbator, a theater major, had a fake british accent/fedora, a big Tom Petty fan, and would burn paper and watch it burn. Needless to say, I tried to be in my apartment as little as possible. Thus - the library.

Being underage at the time, alcohol was a huge commodity. To always have a supply, I’d have someone buy me a handle or two of the cheapest vodka on the planet - McCalls. At $8 a handle, the shit was so bad that when you drank it, you would have back pain the next day. That’s right, along with a hangover, you had to suffer through severe nerve damage.

This all occurred during the Spring semester of 2010. During this time, I was suffering from acute heartbreak. Like I felt so bad, I didn’t even feel like eating a burrito bad. This heartbreak began in December, fell head over heels, girl moves away. The whole series finale of Friends/last-kiss-at-the-airport-thing and everything happened. More on that later. I know I sound like an idiot, but the whole thing seriously did mess me up for a bit, so I dealt with it the best way I knew how - excessive booze.

Like anyone else, after drinking a few vodka/lemonade cocktails, I would drunk text. Usually around 10PM, I’d send the same text to every girl in my phone - “Hey.” From the few that would respond, I would text my little fingers off until I would convince one of them to let me come over and “hangout.” 

The poor girl this time, let’s say, was Christina. Christina was having a slumber party with two of her friends, who were in high school. She was sophomore in college, I’m pretty sure, but lived at home in her parent’s basement. They were bored after watching a ‘Charm School’ marathon and wanted me to come over.

I don’t want this thing to be graphic or of a pointless, derogatory nature. I want it to be about the absurdity of life. So, I will skip over the middle of this story, featuring the acquirement of finger nail clippers, the subsequent finding of a condom vending machine, the resulting plot to get change for the condom vending machine from a Taco Bell, the resultant purchase of tacos and a crappy condom, or the realization I had not showered for a week. But, it is important to just know that a lot happened between ”come over” and “I’m here.”

An hour later, I finally get to the girl’s house. I come in and Christina is sitting on her bed with one friend, lets say Betty. The other girl is half-asleep on the floor. As I swayed down the steps to the basement, tacos in hand, I was convinced I was in the opening of a porn.

Anyway, Christina was being shy and it did not help matters that her high school friends were teasing her about me being there. I didn’t help matters by eating taco after taco and only stopping to make sarcastic remarks. After two episodes of 16 and Pregnant, the girl on the floor and Betty finally pass out. Christina and me cuddle for a while, which leads to kissing, etc. etc.

I don’t want this thing to become a bro-tastic-all-the-girls-I-get-with-thing, but to be frank, girls is sadly what I spent the majority of my energy on for three years. Needless to say, we go out to my car which is parked in front of her house and I finger banged her till the birds started chirping. And hence the name of this autobiographical blog. We stopped because she said her dad had to wake up for work. So as I said goodbye, I realized something terrible. I COULD NOT FIND MY BEANIE.

If you go on my Facebook, if you look at every picture of me over the last three years, there is a 99.9% chance I am wearing this nasty, ashy, shitty Colin-Farrell black beanie. Don’t ask me why, I really don’t have an answer. I guess the answer is that I will begrudgingly admit that I am a hipster at heart, but anytime I left without it, I felt naked, and I don’t like feeling naked in public. I will write a story about the life of this treasured beanie later, concerning my acquirement of it, the reasons for first wearing it practically, its rise to prominence, its eventual death to a mosh-pit of hipsters in a heroin warehouse in East Baltimore, and its replacement by another beanie stolen from the head of a bassist of a New Mexico noise-punk hardcore band. But another story for another time.

Anyway, I beg Christina that she HAS to go back inside and find the beanie. She refuses, saying her dad is waking up, I have to go. But, I do not budge. I get out of the car and threaten to honk my horn until her dad comes out if she does not go inside and retrieve my beanie. She called by bluff so I start walking to the back of the house and the entire time she is slapping me not to, like every woman does to Tony Soprano in the Sopranos. THIS BEANIE IS IMPORTANT. Finally she agrees to get the beanie, so I hide behind a tree in her backyard till she comes back out with it. I drive home, wash the shit out of my hand, brush my teeth like a madman, and go to sleep like a baby.

Christina text me a lot after that to come hangout again, but I never responded, like a child. It’s one of those things where I completely forget about it, but I’m sure makes her feel like crap. I later texted her a year later-ish and she said that the night I just described was ‘weird’ and she thought she did something wrong, but she didn’t. I was just an immature a-hole, drinking cheap vodka, going to the library, and trying to find something to stick two fingers into like a dickhead, not caring that the thing I was treating like a puppet was a human being with feelings.

This routine ended a month later, when I started an online myspace relationship in 2010. Anytime I look back on this period, I always think what-the-fuck-was-I-doing. And I always feel like a jerk for taking advantage of people. And I can honestly say, I’ve changed from the experience, I’ve grown up. And I guess that is what getting library-drunk at 20 years old is all about.

I have always thought that personal blogs were awful. I’ve always felt that anyone talking about his/her day on a blog was ‘not-cool.’ And, I’ve always been concerned about being ‘cool.’ 

For 21 years, I have dreamed/expected to be somebody and do something important. Yet today, as I picked up my cap and gown and the “first-world-problem-omg-college-is-over scare” really kicked in for me for the first time, I have finally realized there is nothing particularly special about me. I will get a job, work, retire, then die like every other dude with a bachelor of science degree from a medicore public university.

But, I am a weird person. I can say confidently and proudly that I am weird. And even if I do die as an average white guy in a hospital from a generic cause of death, at least I can say that I lived as a weird average white guy who later died in the hospital from a generic cause of death. And being the weird person I am, I feel I can confidently say that I have a backlog of weird stories from my weird-average-guy life.

I have a poor memory from the binge of drugs and alcohol I’ve subjected my brain to the past four years. For my own personal fulfillment and preservation of sacred history, I have decided to write every weird, nasty, terrible, shakin’-my-head story from college before I forget them. I’m not going to pretend that any of these stories are particularly special or really that entertaining, but I can guarantee that they are weird, in an average guy kind of way. But, I wouldn’t have them any other way.

Enjoy!