7th
My weekend as a freshman
Part 1: Thursday Night
I walked into Wayne Manor with Eliza around 11:00 for a rousing edition of Malt Liquor Thursday (MLT). Our first discovery of the evening: there was no malt liquor. The drink of choice (in fact, the only available drink) was Busch Light. We passed.
At 11:05 a boy in a navy blue polo shirt and cut-off jean shorts (‘jorts’ as it were) appeared in the hallway. There was another boy standing next to us and his eyes got wide, like he was silently telegraphing a message to the rest of his comrades…FRAT STAR TO HOME BASE: WE HAVE JORTS.
“Hey man,” he said admiringly, “are those jean shorts?”
“Yeah,” said his friend. “These are jean shorts.”
I left.
Total time spent at party: about 12 minutes.
Part II: Friday Night
If there’s one thing you can count on in your frat party Friday night, it’s thematic variety. There were three section parties this week: the ‘SigEp Saloon,’ the DKE ‘Hurricane Hanna’ party, and Maxwell’s infamous annual ‘School for Girls’ debacle.
Full disclosure: I didn’t really go to either of the latter two. I walked by DKE’s section, scanned the blue celophane window decorations and streamers, and kept walking. You see, I have this frat party x-ray vision that allows me to extrapolate exactly what I would have seen if I had gone in: crowded hallways, flushed freshmen, rooms with lofted beds crammed with people playing beer pong and other people pretending to be interested in watching them, and if I was really lucky a girl in a ralph lauren dress vomiting in the grass outside.
As for Maxwell House’s School for Girls, I went last year and it’s absolutely as trashy as it sounds. On my way past this year, I saw a swarm of girls in short plaid skirts and tied-off white blouses tottering in on uncomfortably tall heels. I saw a couple of guys go in too…dressed in their normal cargo shorts and polos. Holy male dominance of the duke social culture, batman.
Anyway, the one party I actually attended was SigEp’s ‘saloon’ themed shindig. Besides the swinging saloon doors in all the hallways and the appearance of frat boys in bandanas, it was pretty standard fare. The common room was converted into a dance floor, complete with epilepsy-inducing strobe light and loud, bass-heavy renditions of such crowd favorite tunes as APPLE BOTTOM JEANS BOOTS WITH THE FUR (WITH THE FUR) and I KISSED A GIRL AND I LIKED IT THE TASTE OF HER CHERRY CHAPSTICK.
When we got there around midnight, Eliza, Andrew^2, and I picked our way through the throngs of people clustered in the hallway drinking beer (and talking about drinking beer) to Kevin and Zach’s room. The boys treated us to some, er, juice (I asked Zach what was in it and he shrugged…always a good sign) and we settled in on Kevin’s bed to watch the festivities. A steady stream of freshmen came in and out—including lots of guys with their hands on the small of a girl’s back asking Kevin if there was ‘anything besides beer for her.’ (Who says chivalry is dead?) Several of them took the time to let Kevin and Zach know that they were AWESOME YOU GUYS ARE SO AWESOME THIS PARTY IS AWESOME MAN AWESOME.
After a while we went out of the room to visit other friends of ours/scope out the rest of the events. Spotted: pack of freshman sitting on a futon having a loud, emphatic and totally drunk conversation about their college essays. In the winning line of the night one boy lifted his solo cup and proudly proclaimed, “mine was about how I don’t think I can be summed up in one essay!”
A little later, Kevin ran out to get beer for one of the basketball players and I wandered off in the rain to eat vegetarian gumbo with a measuring spoon. The night sort of devolved from there.
Related aside: frat parties are the one thing on the planet that I believe stereotypes are 100% correct about. Every ridiculous frat part you’ve seen on TV or in a movie or book is EXACTLY LIKE A REAL FRAT PARTY. True story.
Anyhow…
Total time spent at party(s): 2.5 hours plus gumbo eating time. Mmm.
Part III: Saturday…afternoon
One of the least explicable parts of Duke is tailgate. I simply can’t explain it to people who don’t go here because it just doesn’t make any sense. But here’s a breakdown, just so we have it on the record:
Every time there’s a home football game, the student body partakes in a pre-game tailgate in the parking lot outside the stadium. There’s football game-esque food and music. But that’s about where the normalcy ends. Because a Duke tailgate is also characterized by absurd costumes and gratuitous drinking. In the middle of the day. There’s basically no shitshow on the planet that can match it.
While I admit to having done tailgate in all its glory before, this Saturday I went dressed in my normal clothes, chronicle photographer in tow. We got there around 3:30 and the place was already drenched with beer. And when I say ‘drenched’ I mean there were puddles of busch light on the ground and people tossing half-full cans upside-down into the crowd. And since it had rained all morning and was very humid, beer was actually hanging in the air. The photographer started snapping photos of me as I walked around surveying the festivities. There was me with the kids drinking bagged-wine, me with the girls in plastic-wrap dresses, me leaning over a trashcan filled with beer. Pretty soon, random people started approaching us. “CHRONICLE!’ screamed a girl in a cut off t-shirt and plaid knee-socks. ‘CHRONICLE!” her friends cheered. “CAN WE TAKE A PICTURE WITH YOU?” Sure, we said. And so there it was: me with my arms around the shoulders of wasted sorority girls. I have another of me with a boy in a cow suit. A little while later we tried to venture deep into the heart of the crowd, only to be repelled by people tossing beer above their heads to the tune of Paper Planes by M.I.A.. Now dripping with beer, we decided this was probably a good time to make our exit.
Total time spent at party: 25 minutes.
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So that’s it, folks. My weekend as a freshman. Or sophomore. Or junior. Or senior. Whatever. A weekend at Duke. It was mostly trashtacular, always absurd, and occasionally glorious.
Until next time, your favorite undercover reporter is signing off. Good night…and good luck.
