When I was little you told me
That all it took was one, brave person
To say that the emperor was naked

You didn't tell me that you'd strip down, too
And sneer at me
For insisting we wear clothes

Zoom

Story Notes:  This story didn't flow right without naming one of the people involved.  So I made up a name.

The night is young. The alcohol is flowing freely. The music is blasting. The beer pong table is occupied, and has been claimed for the next five games. People are standing around drinking and maybe dancing when someone suggests playing a drinking game.

“Kings?”

“No, I don’t know where my cards are.”

“Landmines?”

“There aren't any cans.”

"Flip cup?"

"We don't have a free table."

“Fuck the Dealer?”

“That needs cards, too.”

“Dr. Killabrew?”

“I’m kinda full.”

"Quarters?"

"Where?"

“Let’s play Zoom!”

“Yeah, we haven’t played that in a while.”

“I’ve never played, how does it work?”

"Nate?"

“Alright,” Nate makes sure everyone is paying attention, then jumps into his explanation of the rules. “The name of the game is ‘Zoom, Schwartz, Pafigliano, and Beederman’. Playing this game is like passing an invisible ball around the circle. There are four things you can say when you have the ball: Zoom, Schwartz, Pafigliano, and Beederman. Zoom passes it to the person you’re looking at. Schwartz returns it to the person who sent it to you. Pafigliano passes it right and Beederman passes it left.

There are three rules. Rule number one: you can’t Zoom a zoomer, but you can Schwartz a schwartzer. If you Zoom a zoomer, you have to drink. Rule number two: you can’t say the name of the game. So if I say ‘Zoom’, he says Schwartz, and I say Pafigliano, you can’t say Beederman or you have to drink. Rule number three is the rule of threes. You cannot say anything three times, either as a group or individually, or you have to drink.

When someone messes up, the person to their left restarts the game. Is there anything left in the keg?”

“I think so,” someone replies.

“Okay. If you mess up four times in a row, you do a keg stand. Are we ready to start?”

“Uh…” The three people who have never played before look nervous.

“Don’t worry. You’ll pick it up. It really isn’t as hard as it sounds.”

“What about nicknames?” Someone who has played before asks.

"Or noonans?" Another chimes in.

“Let’s let them play a few rounds to get used to it,” a slightly more compassionate person suggests.

We split the newbies up. The game is more fun when the people who have never played before are sandwiched between experts. It makes it easier to gang up on them.

“Does everyone have a drink?” Nate asks. Everyone holds up a red cup; each is filled with something alcoholic. “Alright, let’s start. The name of the game is Zoom, Schwartz, Pafigliano, and Beederman. Zoom.” And we’re off.

You Need Help

I'm sitting on my desk, feet on the chair, hunched forward to avoid my bunked bed. My roommate is cross-legged in the papasan chair. She's hunched a little, like she doesn't really want to have this conversation. But she did agree with me that it's necessary. She is here. It just means that I'll have to take point.

I wipe my palms on my jeans and take a deep breath. Our suite-mate is standing in the middle of the room. Her arms are crossed. She's already on the defensive. She knows what this is about.

"Um, do you want to sit?" She raises an eyebrow, not impressed with my attempt to put off the conversation now that I've dragged her in here. My roommate remains silent.

I take a deep breath. "Look, we're just worried about you." That gets a snort. "I heard you in the bathroom this morning. And it wasn't the first time. We care about you. We want you to get help."

She glares at me. My roommate chimes in that she heard the puking, too, and the glare is turned on her.

"This is rich. So you've just decided to single me out?"

"What? That's not it at all!" I protest, standing to meet her. "We're just worried. And we're here for you if you need to talk. But we were hoping you might agree to talk to a counselor or something."

The intervention really did seem like a good idea when we came up with it. And we thought it would go over better with just the three of us. Things have been falling apart all semester. I was sure this would help us heal, become closer. I thought it was a good thing I was doing.

My friend does not agree, and before I know it, I'm the one on the defensive. She's says we have no idea what we're talking about, it isn't anywhere near as bad as we seem to think it is, it isn't any of our business anyway. I protest and equivocate and try to bring the discussion back around to the point which is that she needs help.

Which is when she plays her trump card.

"I need help? Well I'm not the only one. You're such a goddamned hypocrite, cutting yourself and telling me I'm the one who needs help."

That silences me. It would silence my roommate if she'd been anything but an observer.

"You think I didn't know? I'm not as stupid as you think I am. Stop using me to make you feel better about yourself."

There's nothing to say to that. Nothing that wouldn't escalate the argument even further. I spin around, grab my keys and phone from the desk and leave the room, slamming the door as hard as I can behind me.

My rage is white hot. She reversed our positions so effectively, that I'm suddenly running through all the things she was screaming at me only minutes before, mentally screaming them back at her. She has no idea; none at all.

Except maybe she does. Maybe I am a hypocrite, demanding that she seek help when I refuse to seek any for myself. Confronting her didn't help, but could leading by example?

I've hardly made the decision when I find myself outside the office of the school's counselor. I use the momentum of my rage to knock on the door, make an appointment. Then I call my mom and confess everything. It's an insurance policy of sorts; she'll make sure I keep the appointment.

By the time I hang up the phone, I've managed to wander into a corner of the campus I hadn't found before, with benches and a fountain and orange trees. I stay for a while longer. The bubbling water helps calm me down. In fact, I'm calmer than I've been in months. The intervention backfired, but maybe it wasn't a total loss.

x(t) = A cos(wt+b)

A group of us has gathered in my room. This assignment is due tomorrow, and we're fast approaching the point where we start counting down to that due date in hours. But this class is demanding a significant change in how we perceive the world, and so far none of us has been able to make that leap on our own. So here we are, with our notes and books, hoping that together we'll be able to make some sense of this before it comes time to turn in our homework.

"So we just apply this equation, right?" one person asks.

"That's what is says. So we need to know the potential and kinetic energies."

"Well, that should be easy. But I tried that, and the math got ugly and I got scared so I stopped."

"It should be easy. This is the first assignment of the semester. It just can't be that complicated."

As the three of us argue back and forth, a fourth person has been quietly intent on his paper. He finally holds up the drawing he's made. "I think this is the problem. We should be using cylindrical coordinates, not spherical."

"Are you sure? Everything's in spherical."

"Yeah, but look here. See how the forces are directed? I think it's got to be cylindrical."

"Well, it's worth a shot."

We turn our heads back to our papers, sketching and working out the math for a few silent minutes. Then we're quiet for a few minutes more.

"Gosh that's beautiful."

"It can't be that simple, though, right?"

"Weren't you just complaining that it couldn't be that complicated?"

"But it can't be this simple."

"I think that's the point. It is supposed to be this simple and elegant."

"Well, let's hope the rest of them come this easily."

It's a few hours more before we've completed the set to everyone's satisfaction, arguing theory and algebra as we go. But we're ultimately finished sooner than anyone expected to be. There's time to get a good night's sleep, even. We split up, optimistic that this class won't be as hard as we've been led to believe.

It's only the first assignment, though. A week later we're back in the same place, as confused as ever, wondering once again how to convert the presented problem into a simple harmonic oscillator, the only system that makes complete mathematical sense.

Writer's Block

This was bound to happen sooner or later. Actually it has happened before. But never quite to this extent. I haven't written anything for two weeks now. So I'm getting a bit meta in an effort to break through the block and bring my blocks back up to speed.

It's not that I've been lacking things to write about. There are three more alphabet stories to finish (actually, one is finished, but it's the last one, so I can't post it until the other two are written). I have four book reviews waiting to be written, and I'm fast approaching a fifth. And I don't entirely know how far behind I am on the personal blog. January was an unusually busy month.

You'd think with all those topics to choose from, I'd be able to slip back in easily. But the truth is that as my backlog builds up, I'm finding it harder and harder to get started. There's just so much to do. And so I'm falling back into bad procrastinator habits. Ignore the problem and it will go away.

The truth is that it could. These blogs are mostly for me. I maintain them because I want to. But I really do want to. I like writing about books. It helps me retain what I've read, which is especially important now that I'm reading so much. I enjoy looking back on the older posts on my personal blog. It's a great way for me to remember all the fun things I've done for the past few years.

Five years.

It's just a month short of five years since I started the first blog. Well, it wasn't my first blog. I think it was closer to my fifth blog. But it's the first one I've stuck with for more than a couple of months. And I enjoy it. I really do. Writing it, re-reading it, keeping a record of my boring little life. It's been great.

I've started to worry, in the past couple of weeks, that I took on too much. Expanding to three blogs was a big move, and with the writer's block I was starting to think that maybe I couldn't keep up with it. The truth is, though, that I'm not writing three times as much. I'm writing maybe 50% more. And that's a reasonable goal. Especially if I want to eventually get paid for writing in some form or other. Learning discipline is an important first step. Writing even when I don't want to or when I'm struggling to find the words.

So I'm going to keep writing. Once the alphabet project is done, this blog may not get updated as frequently. But I'm hoping to find something to stick here. I'll let you know when I figure out what that is. In the meantime, enjoy the final three college stories. Now I must go write them.

What Happens in Vegas

Looking back on it, I'm surprised I only visited Las Vegas twice during my time as a college student. It was only three hours from campus, an easy weekend trip. And it was easy enough to pull together a group who wanted to go. The simple truth is that there wasn't much reason to leave campus. We were allowed to drink there, so no one had fake IDs. And there's no reason to go to Las Vegas if you can't drink.

So it wasn't until Spring Break of my senior year that I finally made the trek to Las Vegas. The year, the pope had moved St Patrick's Day back, to keep it from interfering with Holy Week. Not that that stopped us from celebrating on the actual day. But it did give us a very good excuse for celebrating the entire weekend leading up to St Patrick's Day. Us and the rest of Vegas.

We piled as many people as we could gather into a few cars and stuffed ourselves into hotel rooms, using every scrap of floor to keep the hotel costs down. We got drinks at Fat Tuesday's, the cheapest way to get drunk and stay drunk all day long. We bedecked ourselves in green and spent our time wandering around the strip, taking in the sights and general chaos.

The truth is that this trip stands in my memory as a blurry series of vignettes, with no real time order. We all managed to maintain a nice buzz for the entirety of our trip. It was fun, but it doesn't make for coherent memories.

I know that my dad gave me some of my step-mother's money, for reasons I still don't understand, and I used it to win a fair amount of money at the roulette wheel, betting on my birthday.

I know that we weren't the only group of students from our college who had decided to spend St Patrick's Weekend in Las Vegas. We encountered the other groups from time to time, our numbers swelling and dwindling throughout the days and nights.

I know that we spent some time by the pool, but that's not where I got sunburned. I got sunburned during an ill-advised walk from the main strip to the northern end of the strip, when I and a few others needed a break from the ceaseless party.

I know that we tried to get our friends, who had been dating a month, drunk enough to get married and forget about it, while they tried to do the same to me and Kevin. No one got married that weekend, but we all did later.

I know that we played and won beer pong at the Irish bar, and the frat boys from other colleges were very upset to be beaten by girls.

Beyond that, I have only a a sense of contentment. Drunk and surrounded by friends, on the verge of graduation but with the real world still far enough away to be ignored. We explored the city and celebrated everything.

Voodoo

Notes: This story describes a hazing tradition that my class was among the last to participate in.  The administration killed it during my junior year of college.

The first hint that something is wrong is the time of the meeting.  Dorm meetings usually begin at 10:30, but we are told to be in the courtyard at 9 PM sharp.

The upperclasswomen spend the majority of the day drawing on the concrete courtyard with sidewalk chalk.  They refuse to answer any of our questions about what they are doing and why.  Eventually we stop asking and content ourselves with watching.

A large star takes up most of the courtyard.  Each point contains a name, three of which I recognize.  They belong to a sophomore, a junior, and a senior currently living in the dorm.  The fourth is a student who graduated the previous year.  No one seems to know anything about the fifth person, Suggs.  The space between the points of the star is filled with drawings: a rose, a keg of beer, meat, sports equipment, and a little black dog.  These are the symbols of our dorm, though I've never really been able to figure out the dog.  The pentagon in the center of the star is filled with a psychedelic swirl of color.

By the time we congregate in the courtyard, apprehensive and already tipsy, clutching cups of Ice House, the drawing has been completed.  The rest of the dorm members are already there, standing around the star.  This is strange, too.  Usually the upperclassmen remain in their rooms while the frosh announce the meeting, shouting ever louder until the entire campus must know that all of us will soon be drunk and rowdy.

We are directed to stand around the chalk drawing.  It goes without saying that we should not stand on it.  We group together, sipping beer, waiting, wondering what will come next.  A sophomore walks to the center of the circle, stands in the middle of the star.  This is the sophomore whose name is written in one point of the star.  He begins to tell a tale.

Years ago, there was a student named Suggs who lived in this dorm.  Now Suggs, he liked to party.  And on his birthday, he wanted nothing more than to drink and have a good time with his friends.  Unfortunately for him, his friends had all chosen to major in engineering and had too much homework to accomplish that night.  They turned down his invitations to drink and let loose, promising to make it up to him that weekend.

Dejected, and with no one willing to share a drink or a game of beer pong, Suggs retreated to his room.  Once there, he drank himself into a stupor and passed out.  Meanwhile, his friends slowly began to come around.  They realized that it was their good friend's birthday and that a celebration was called for.  They would have a much better time partying with him than struggling with a problem set that, if they were to be honest, they would probably never finish.  Minds made up, they grabbed a bottle of alcohol and trooped up to Suggs' room.

Of course, Suggs was already unconscious.  Try as they might, they couldn't wake him.  But by now they were committed to celebrating his birthday, whether he participated or not.  So the group found a large, wooden rack, tied Suggs to it, and proceeded to carry him from dorm to dorm, laughing and drinking and inviting the other students to shower Suggs with birthday presents.

When Suggs awoke the next morning, he was still strapped to the rack which had been left in a field on the eastern edge of campus.  Hungover and dirty, he eventually managed to free himself.  Back at the dorm he found his friends who were still laughing at their prank.  But Suggs didn't find it funny.  In retaliation, he placed a voodoo hex on them, and on all the residents of the dorm, all the people who ever would live in the dorm.  The only way to counter this hex, the sophomore concludes, is to sacrifice one freshman every year to relive Suggs' humiliation.  The names in the star belong to previous frosh chosen for this honor.

The story teller points to the frosh who has been chosen as this year's Sacrifice.  Hands immediately grab him and lift him up.  He is carried over to a rack of wood propped against the benches.  He is tied down.  Goggles are placed over his eyes.  The upperclassmen produce cans of whipped cream, bottles of chocolate and strawberry syrup, sprinkles and cherries.  We watch while the Sacrifice is transformed into a "birthday cake", though a sundae seems to be a more accurate description.  Should we try to free him?  Are we expected to join in?  With no direction, we simply hang back and drink our beers.

Finally, the upperclassmen exhaust their supply.  The other male frosh are directed to pick up the rack.  Quickly, they chug the remainder of their beers and step forward to lift the Sacrifice.  There are enough of them that this is an easy task.  They will have to carry the rack and the Sacrifice around to the other dorms.  Presents must be collected from each dorm if we are to escape from the hex for another year.

The females are excluded, warned to stay back.  "Be glad you're a girl," the seniors tell us as we follow the group of frosh guys, carrying the Sacrifice on their shoulders, to the dorm across the courtyard.

The residents of this dorm have prepared.  A tarp is laid out on the ground, near a balcony.  The guys walk over to it and begin to lower the rack but are immediately ordered not to.  They must stand and hold up the Sacrifice, while the residents of this dorm throw their presents down from the balcony.  The festivities begin with a tureen of soup.  It might be a day old, and it might be a week old.  I'm glad I'm outside the splash zone.  The soup is followed by more food, stolen from the dining hall over the past week.  Condiments from the sandwich bar help larger items stick.  Some things aren't meant to stick and instead bounce off one or more bodies before landing on the ground.

The supply of food seems endless.  Upperclassmen are hooting and hollering while our guys try to avoid the spray.  Finally they give in and stand still, resigned to their fate.  It's like the first few minutes after stepping outside into a rainstorm.  At first you try to avoid getting wet, but soon enough you are soaked to the bone a little more hardly seems to matter.  But this rain of rotting food is infinitely worse than mere water.

Eventually, this dorm runs out of things to throw and we move to the next dorm.  It's a strange parade, with the freshmen out in front.  The rest of us trail behind, trying to avoid stepping in whatever is dripping off Sacrifice and his bearers.  The sophomore who began the evening has a bottle of water, and as we walk he does his best to rinse the worst of the mess from the Sacrifice's face.

There are seven dorms to visit in all.  The "presents" seem to get more creative as the night goes on.  Bags of flour and coffee grounds are split and sprinkled over the guys.  Eggs are thrown.  Juice and milk are poured.  Between each dorm, the sophomore rinses the Sacrifice's face.  He is able to breathe, but he cannot move or avoid the "presents".

At the end of the circuit, we return home.  Another tarp has been hastily set up and the guys know what to do by this point.  They position themselves under the balcony.  This dorm, our dorm, is worst of all.  The men who live here have been through this themselves.  Every thought that began "I'm glad they didn't throw..." has morphed into "We should totally throw...!"

Someone drops a fish.  It doesn't stick, just makes a sloppy thwack as it hits one of the guys supporting the Sacrifice and slides off to the ground.  Someone saw the flour and coffee grounds and upgraded to kitty litter.  The soup here is weeks old, as is the chunky milk.  They have been preparing for a long time.

Finally, the guys are allowed to set the Sacrifice down.  They prop him up near the side of the dorm and loosen his bonds.  The upperclassmen have everyone pose for pictures.

"We should get out of here," one of my friends says as the first camera flashes.  We turn to her and realize what she means.  I look back at the guys, covered in putrid, pinkish-brown, vomit-inducing gunk.  They have their arms around each other and are laughing as the cameras capture the results of the evening.  One looks at me and I see a glint in his eye, the beginning of an evil smile.

"RUN!"

I'm the slowest member of the group and it's obvious that I'll be brought down first.  We're only halfway to the nearest dorm when I'm tackled, squealing, to the grass.  The other girls don't slow down or look back; they're trying to make it indoors before the other guys catch up to them.  But there are twelve guys and only four of us.  No one stands a chance.

Eventually we all make it back to the courtyard.  We're laughing and jostling each other, trying to ignore the unique stench rising from our skin, our clothes, the courtyard.  "Hurry up and shower," the dorm president commands us, "then meet in the lounge in fifteen minutes.  The night is only just beginning."