In December of my freshman year, I was young, stupid, and about to hit the peak of my functioning alcoholism. I’d spent my first semester becoming a regular at a multitude of frat houses, and a semi-regular in my afternoon lectures. I’d mitigated the need to go to my morning political science class by finding a boy to share his notes with me and I was on top of the fucking world.
While most college students were busy preparing for exams in the week before finals, my best friends and I knew there was a more pressing issue than passing English Comp: holiday-themed date parties. Because we were both hot and fun, my three best friends and I had secured invitations to the elusive “Naughty or Nice” themed date party, hosted annually by a top-tier fraternity. Subsequently, we spent more time preparing our outfits for the party than we did making outlines for our upcoming final, but my friend Nicole felt conflicted — not because she cared about school, but because a guy she’d been hooking up with all semester (let’s call him Pete) also had a date party that evening. The struggle is real.
As soon as she was invited to the “Naughty or Nice” date party alongside the rest of us, Nicole texted Pete, in part, to make him jealous, but mostly to hint he’d better get his shit together and invite her to his party. Instead of being a decent human being, Pete gave the ultimate dick response, “Cool. Have fun.” He then explained he wouldn’t be attending his own fraternity’s party that night because he would be “too busy studying,” which Nicole was stupid enough to believe. Pete had spent the entire fall semester stringing her along. He texted her when he wanted to hook up, treated her like a princess for days, then ignored her when he thought he had a chance with someone else. She couldn’t seem to pull the plug and forget him for good (even though he clearly sucked and we all hated him) so she accepted his lame excuse, and that neither of them would be attending his date party.
Spoiler alert: he lied.
Sans invite from Pete, the four of us attended the Naughty or Nice party with no reservations. It. Was. Everything. Dressed as slutty Santa and slutty Santa’s slutty helpers, we paraded through our favorite frat house, downing shots of cheap vodka and dancing on elevated surfaces to Christmas tunes. As the token Jew in my group of friends, I made sure to get twice as drunk as my friends, in the true spirit of Christmas and goodwill towards all, obviously.
As I usually do, when the night was at the peak of fun, I decided to pull a classic Irish exit and leave the party for another frat. I was having a blast, which meant I was far too drunk, and probably on the verge of making a terrible decision, so I recruited Nicole to head to our second favorite fraternity, which happened to be on the opposite side of campus. While we were waiting in line for a pledge to take us to destination #2, Nicole had a brilliant idea:
“Let’s go check in on Pete!”
Of course, this was a terrible fucking idea. Not only was I more fucked up than Whitney was that time she got into that bathtub, but Nicole tends to gravitate towards the “crying, overly emotional” end of the drunk bitch spectrum. However, drunk Pearls knows no limits and is, apparently, a crusader for justice against dickhead not-boyfriends. I obliged my lovestuck friend. Plus, Nicole had convenience on her side, seeing as Pete’s frat house was across the street.
Despite Nicole’s repeated calls and texts to him as we made our way across the street, Pete was unresponsive. I subscribe to the notion that the only excuse for ignoring me (or my friends) is death, which is why I often send the police to my boyfriends’ houses if they don’t call me back within twenty minutes. I could tell Nicole was getting upset that Pete was obviously blowing her off, so I took action.
“Hey, there’s a date party going on. Are you guys on the list?” the bewildered-looking pledge wearing reindeer ears at the door asked us as we marched to the entrance.
“Fuck off, pledge,” I said, grabbing his clipboard from his hand and throwing it on the ground. I grabbed Nicole’s hand and pulled her past the door.
Once inside, Nicole and I were women on a mission. We tore through the house as if we were pirates pillaging a village. We showed no mercy on anyone who tried to stop us, or question why we were there or who we were there with. At one point, I’d acquired a handle of Smirnoff from some kid dressed as Buddy the Elf…by grabbing it out of his hands and running away very quickly when he tried to chase after me. Whatever.
About fifteen minutes after our entrance, Nicole was frantically crying, in fear that Pete may have been in his room with another girl. I was frantically taking pulls from the Smirnoff bottle, in fear that I would become sober five days down the road or so. Finally, Nicole realized that if he was, in fact, avoiding the party, there is only one place he could be: the cold dorms.
Nicole and I took off like Apollo Ono, weaving out of the basement and up the three flights of stairs to the cold dorms. We flung the door open and attempted to search for Pete, only to realize that it would be impossible, because it was a fucking cold dorm. It was pitch black and quieter than a deaf prom. Naturally, I flipped all the lights on.
“Pete, where are you, mother fucker!? We know you’re in here, you dick, and you’re going to come out, stop being such an avoidant little bitch, and apologize,” I yelled, racing up and down the rows of bunk beds as if I were an SS soldier searching the barracks at Auschwitz.
“You fucking crazy bitch,” I heard coming from a corner.
I turned and met Pete’s gaze. He was clearly wasted, and was scrambling to put his pants on after springing out of his bed, which happened to have a girl in it. To this day, I don’t know who the girl was, and I don’t care. She wasn’t Nicole, and that’s all that mattered.
“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!” Nicole cried, hysterically. She started running out of the cold dorm and I had to stop her.
“No, don’t let him do this to you,” I told her before turning to Pete. “Apologize to her now, you fuck!”
At this point, we’d obviously woken up everyone who had been asleep, and had caused such a ruckus that half the chapter had gathered. I was surrounded by a mass of drunk, angry, middle-tier frat boys, who were demanding I leave the house, immediately.
“Whatever, fuck you, fuck this house, you’re all a bunch of fucks. You throw lame parties and you roofie girls,” I yelled, chasing after Nicole.
Before I left the house, I started looting their living room as if I were the miscrients of New Orleans rioting after Katrina. Upon leaving, not only had I stolen a handle of vodka, but I’d managed to sneak out three intramural trophies as well as a relatively important-looking plaque. I found Nicole in the front yard, crying hysterically.
“Fuck them. Besides, we won. Look, we even got a trophy,” I said, handing it to her. We took turns smashing the paraphernalia we’d stolen, while we finished the vodka.
I woke up the next morning with a massive hangover and a string of text messages from various boys in Pete’s fraternity, Pete included. They’d all given me a variation of the same message: “Fuck you, don’t come back, you’re out of control.” I couldn’t find a fuck to give.
Monday morning, I received an e-mail from the chapter president, banning me from the house, date functions, philanthropic events, and social events, indefinitely. I printed it out and framed it. Hours later, the president sent me a friend request and a message apologizing for banning me, and asking me out for drinks, as he was eager to meet “the legend that is Pearls Hilton” in person.
Nice Move252
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