Being back at my parents’ house for the holidays (aka no man’s land of booty) has gotten me thinking about the utter and simple convenience of hooking up on campus. Proximity of my fratdaddy’s house to my favorite bar, availability of rides from pledge bitches, the fact that he would set his alarm for 8 am on a Friday to drive me to class even when he was off the whole day (chivalry’s not dead when it’s ME you’re sleeping with)…all these things made cuddling up to a warm body every night something I definitely took for granted. Of course, there’s the occasional mishap. Without further ado…
Thursday before homecoming sophomore year: Heaven and Hell mixer. The men were the angels (oh, the irony) and we were supposed to be the devils. Needless to say, there were LBDs, red pumps, and fishnet thigh-highs everywhere you looked. It was like Moulin rouge on crack. After pounding a few (way) too many shots at one sister or another’s pre-pregame pregame, we got to the mixer and headed right to the basement (“hell”) where we made our first, and arguably biggest mistake of the night: indulging in the red punch. Exactly what was in our beverage of choice remains a mystery. Needless to say, after this, everything got blurry. I vaguely remember venturing upstairs into “heaven” and it’s endless blue and white strobe lights and promptly finding someone to grind upon. At some point we ended up in a bedroom, where I realized I was beyond wasted and that this was beyond a bad idea. Before things went too far I somehow gathered my clothes with the exception of my underwear which I’d decided would have to be a casualty of the night and got the HELL out of there (no pun intended). The only sisters from my side of campus that I managed to locate were either in a lip lock with their temporary boyfriends or in various states of consciousness and disarray. My attempts to dial for a saferide were fruitless as I was barely able to see the numbers on my phone.
At this point I had one mission: get home to my bed. I promptly set off on the journey home… alone, with my patent-leather red heels in hand because my countless attempts to walk in them proved to be a losing battle. It was only about 2 minutes before I saw the blur of flashing red and blue lights in my periph. Shit. Thankfully, it was a cute young cop who seemed genuinely concerned for my well-being. He asked me where I was coming from and if I’d been drinking. I immediately began whining, almost in tears, about how drunk and tired I was and how I was all alone and just wanted to go home. He clearly took pity on the pathetic, shoeless creature he saw before him, as he picked me up, put me in the backseat and drove me back to my apartment, telling me to get some sleep and that I should never walk home by myself again.
The next morning I woke up for class still obviously intoxicated. When I jumped out of bed, I remembered leaving my favorite black lace Victoria’s Secret panties behind and it somehow became more of an issue as I regained consciousness. What was worse, weirder anyway, is that I walked halfway across campus, got into a cop car, and stumbled into my building wearing my dress both inside-out AND backwards. WTF?
Here’s the kicker… during the next school year, I was paired with this guy…THE guy for a semester-long group project. We engaged in the typical “gee you look familiar, but I just can’t put my finger on it” (aka, yes, that was me from the Heaven and Hell mixer) banter and the awkward memory I pretended to forget was more hellacious than that night could have ever been. We never brought up that fateful night, but in the back of my mind I was always tempted to ask him if he ever found my underwear.