Further reading: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. Also check out the official Livin' Large FAQ, Cast List, Flow Chart 1.0, Flow Chart 2.0 and Parts 1 and 2 of the Livin' Large Epilogue.
Well, this is it: the final installment of Livin' Large. Many thanks to everybody who has been following and enjoying the series. You people drove this series. I guarantee this story would have been much shorter and much less interesting without all the encouragement. And for the people who have just wanted it to be over for one reason or another, consider your wish granted. Mat's tale is near the bottom, so if that's why you're here, scroll waaaaaaay down.
The Larry Bird shorts
Between my sophomore year in high school and my junior year in college, I probably wore my Larry Bird shorts more than 1,000 times. Easy. Maybe even close to 1,500. This is mostly because I wore them at night when I was chilling out or whatever.
Unfortunately, the graphics and lettering weren't stitched on. It was one of those iron-on numbers. Now, if I had washed them using a gentle cycle and maybe let their air dry, they might have lasted. But I was a teenage male. That meant my method of doing laundry consisted of jamming everything I wasn't currently wearing into the washing machine, choosing the maximum strength cycle, pouring in about half a bottle of detergent, pressing start, and praying that overloading the washing machine didn't cause it to break or explode.
So, naturally, after a great many washings -- but probably far fewer than they deserved -- the Larry Bird parts of the Larry Bird shorts peeled off completely. Once they had been reduced to nothing more than a pair of faded navy blue shorts, I tossed 'em.
The VHS basketball video collection
I still have it. Oh yes. In bags and boxes and stuffed into an entertainment center in my spare room. I need to convert those bad boys to DVD. I should probably do it soon before they're lost forever. It just takes so much damn time. Maybe next year. Of course, I seem to say that every year...
Bonus story: Evil Ted
By now, most of you know about Evil Ted, my pickup buddy and occasional contributor to Basketbawful. Even though he isn't part of this story, how we met is related to the end of my college career. Shortly before I finished my second degree, I started looking for jobs, mostly in Chicago. I had a couple jobs in the queue -- one a public relations position, the other an hourly technical writing job -- when I got a callback for an entry level tech writing gig in the Chicago loop. I drove into Chicago for the interview, which was conducted by the senior tech writer at that company...none other than Evil Ted.
I remember only two things from that initial interview. First, ET actually asked me, "If you were a tree, what tree would you be?" When I hesitated to answer, he said, "A horny maple, perhaps?" That was my introduction to ET's rather strange brand of humor. The second thing I remember is rocking the hell out of the interview. I drove back to school utterly convinced that I had that job in the bag. And because the opportunity with that particular company had impressed me so much, I immediately called the other two companies I had interviewed with and turned down their offers. That was on a Thursday.
On Friday morning, ET called me at precisely 8:13 a.m., waking me up in the process. "Hi, this is Ted," he began. "I wanted to thank you for coming in yesterday, but I'm afraid we won't be able to use you at this time. However, we will keep your resume on file in case there's another opening in the future."
Oh shit.
I wigged out. In less than a day, I had gone from what I had thought were three guaranteed jobs to none. There was only a month and a half until graduation. And I had recently become estranged from my mom, so I didn't have the option of moving back home and looking for a job when the school year ended. I either had to find a job or, well, that was the only option.
That same day, several friends got together to celebrate getting jobs. I felt like such a schmuck. I went home that night and spent the evening preparing 50 or so resumes and cover letters, which I dropped in the mail the next morning. That was on a Saturday.
On Sunday morning, I decided to write a thank you letter to Ted for the interview because, well, that's what I had been taught to do. As I was writing it, I suddenly came to a horrifying realization: I had used an old version of my resume and cover letter template the previous day. That meant the contact information -- home address, e-mail address, phone number -- were all wrong. Even if any of those 50-plus places wanted me to come in for an interview, they wouldn't be able to contact me.
Now I wigged out a second time. But even in that wigged out haze, I decided to go ahead and write that thank you letter. I pulled out my printer with shaking hands and immediately dropped it to the ground, where it broke into pieces that, like Humpty Dumpty, could not be put back together again. I stormed out of my room and stalked down to the dorm's computer lab. I cranked out the thank you letter, jammed it into an envelope, and stuffed it into the outgoing mail box at the dorm's post office. Then I set about looking for other job openings.
On Monday morning, my phone rang at about a quarter after 8 a.m., waking me up yet again. It was Ted. "Yeah, so things have changed, and I was wondering if you wanted to come in for a second interview."
Hardly believing my own luck, I said, "Yes, absolutely."
When I arrived on Wednesday morning, ET said, "You're going to talk to a couple of the managers, but first, we need to talk about something." ET pulled my thank you letter out of his pocket. Two things were circled with red magic marker. One was his name, which was misspelled. The other was the company name, which was also misspelled. Because I hadn't expected to ever hear from ET again, and because I had been so wigged out about the botched resumes and cover letters, I had written that thank you letter in haste without giving any though to actually proof reading it. Bad, bad, bad mistakes for a would-be technical writer.
"Should I be worried about this?" ET asked.
Head prickling with sweat, I replied, and this is an exact quote, "That is a terrible faux pas. It won't happen again."
"That's all I needed to hear," ET said.
I then interviewed with a lovely woman named Leanne (after which I was certain the job was mine) and a seemingly scary guy named John (after which I was sure the job was not mine). ET and I had a wrap-up chat, during which we uncovered our mutual love of Larry Bird. Then I made the long drive back to school.
The next morning, ET called and offered me the job. I accepted, and I've been with that company ever since.
As a postscript, ET later admitted that I had been his first choice based on qualifications but that he had extended an offer to a female applicant because he thought he would be more comfortable working with a woman (less intimidating). Only she turned down the offer shortly after ET had called to say the company didn't need me, which forced him to call me back the next day for the second interview.
"Thank God she turned me down," ET once said. "Hiring her would have been a big mistake."
I agree.
Aimee (and other random stories)
When Mat moved out a week into the second semester of my freshman year, I was thrilled for several reasons, not the least of which was that I suddenly had a single room. And that meant unlimited time alone with Aimee, if I could ever get her to visit me at school. That dream died a couple weeks later when Aimee broke up with me.
At the time, Aimee was pledging a sorority, and there was a dance. Apparently, it was important to attend the dance with a guy who was pledging a frat at the same school. So she planned to go with some guy that wasn't me. I found this out via her roommate, Latrisse, which led to some ugly words first to Latrisse and then to Aimee. One thing led to another, and suddenly I was single again.
But I wasn't buying it. After all, Aimee had said she loved me. I figured she was just confused and needed some time. Besides, we'd already made plans to attend the Residence Hall Formal at my school a couple weeks later. She agreed to keep up her end of that bargain, so Nathan and I drove down to Indy, picked her up, and brought her back to my school. As was customary, I presented her with a corsage. When I tried to get sentimental about it, she reminded me, "You do realize going to this dance doesn't mean we're back together?" Talk about a buzz kill.
We went out do dinner with my friend Joe, his girlfriend, Andrea, his girlfriend's sister, and the sister's date. We went to dinner at -- of all places -- Olive Garden. (Sorry, Nancy.) Then there was the dance. Let me just say it's really, really awkward to spend the night dancing with someone who recently broke up with you because she had been kinda-sorta cheating on you. But here's the funny part. At one point in the evening, we ran across Susan, who was newly single and there with her friend Josh (who was even more hopelessly infatuated with her than I was). Susan asked what was up with Aimee, and I said we were there as "just friends." So Susan asked for a dance with me, at which Aimee grabbed onto me like I was the last lifeboat of the Titanic. The girls stared at each other for a few seconds until Susan broke the tension by saying, "Maybe later, then." Aimee may not have wanted me...but she didn't want Susan to have me either. It was an all-around rotten time. And it was one of the last times I saw Aimee that semester.
So I was rid of Mat and had my own room, but I was much more miserable than I had been during the first semester. I moped through those months in a haze, particularly after Susan started dating Stu. I did end up going on one date. I had a study buddy named Jen, and in the process of calling her I'd gotten friendly with her roommate, Miranda. I asked her out for the Saturday night of a major party weekend at my school. (Hint: it revolves around a go-cart race.) She agreed, and we were having a pretty good time (even though I almost threw up after a ride on the Gravitron) until we stopped back at my dorm for a s'mores roast. Some lonely guy who lived at my dorm started whining to us (but mostly her) about not having anybody to hang out with. Feeling sorry for him, Miranda invited him to join us for the evening. He happily agreed and didn't leave our side for the rest of the night. I was pissed -- particularly in light of how Aimee had rejected me -- and we didn't go out again.
Summer came, and I went back home to a new step-father, a new house, and a new temp job with the Kokomo Parks and Recreation Department. It was a real joy, let me tell you. Four days a week, I had to use a push mower to trim sections of the many parks in Kokomo -- believe it or not, that little burg has 27 parks! -- and one day a week I had to help empty garbage drums at the parks. Trash duty. It was the worst. Basically, another guy and I had to life these 55 gallon cans over our head and shake the hell out of them over the edge of a garbage truck until all the trash fell out. Only the cans were rusty, full of holes (out of which leaked a horrifying substance we dubbed "trash juice"), and covered with giant, biting ants. Oh, and there were bees, too.
Another note about the trash runs. Two things you found lots of in park trash cans were dead pets and porn. Apparently, people who didn't want to bury their deceased pets or pay a vet to take care of the remains would simply drive by the park and dump them into a trash can. This happened all the time. Furthermore, in the pre-Internet porn era, guys who wanted a quick peek at tits would simply buy a dirty magazine, flip through it at the park, and then throw it away. I kid you not. These magazines always ended up in the back of the park trucks. There were hundreds of porn magazines stashed behind the seats of those trucks...which sure helped pass the time on breaks.
(Funny side note: One week, one of the KPRD guys and I were riding on the back of the trash truck when we saw this total hottie reading by herself under a tree. The guy, Jason, said, "Hey, maybe I should go ask her out." To which I replied, "What are you going to say?! Hey, baby, I don't pick up trash every day. Most of the time, I mow grass!" He cracked up...and didn't ask the girl out.)
Anyway, a week into the glorious summer break, Aimee called me up and asked me out. When we got together, she said she loved me, had made a mistake, and wanted to get back together. So back together we got. For a whole two weeks. That's when she (again) hit me right between the eyes. We were talking on the phone one night, and I suggested doing something or other the next night, to which she replied, "Oh, right. Uh, I'm going to be busy tomorrow night." When I suggested doing whatever it was the night after, she said, "Uhm, I'm actually going to be busy for about a week. And we probably won't get to talk much, maybe not at all."
For a week?! Whaaaaaaaa...?! Apparently, she had -- like her roommate Latrisse -- gotten addicted to online chatting during her second semester and met some dude who attended school at the Citadel. He had immediately made plans to visit her over the summer...plans she intended to let him keep. She explained that he maybe kinda-sorta thought the trip was romantic, and she wanted to spare his feelings by not revealing that we had gotten back together. As you can probably guess, that went over with me like a dead cat sandwich, so we broke up yet again.
I ended up spending the summer mostly just working and hanging out with friends, and semi-dating Cindy. Right before school started back up, Aimee and I got together, and she told me she intended to remain single during her sophomore year. I said fine, and that I would more than enjoy my freedom. Which I did, for about a week. But after a steamy game of Truth or Dare, a date with Cindy the Woman, and a made date with Susan, Aimee called. Or, as BadDave would put it, summoned me. And, sucker that I was, I went.
And we got back together.
I will say this. It wasn't the worst mistake of my life. In fact, that sophomore year ended up being the best and happiest year I spent dating Aimee. We never broke up. We had great times...times you get to share with another person only once in a lifetime. It wasn't all violins and roses, but it was close. To me, anyway. I'm sure BadDave remembers it differently. But I felt like the things we shared that year not only justified all the bad things that had happened before but also foreshadowed a long and happy life together.
Things started going bad the next summer. Originally, I was going to work at my college and live with BadDave over the break. But that failed for a couple reasons. First, BadDave got taken down by a stat curse. He had spent most of our sophomore year mocking me for spending so much time with Aimee, for letting her keep me "prisoner" on the weekends, while stating and restating emphatically that he would never let a woman control him that way. Well, guess who else was staying at school over the summer? BadDave's girlfriend. And guess who expected BadDave to spend every night with her? Yup. In the two weeks I stayed at school, BadDave and I hung out exactly zero times.
(Side story: Earlier that year, during a rare visit from Greg, I had -- at his urging -- invited over some girl we had met in a chat room. The beast, a girl named Annie, came over and threw herself at me, basically offering to be my NSA sex slave. I turned that offer down, and if you'd seen that monster, you'd know why. Anyway, the first night of living-with-BadDave-but-not-really-living-with-him, I was skulking around the apartment by myself feeling annoyed. I opened the front door just as someone else was opening the door of the apartment across the hall. It was Annie. "Matt!" she squealed. "I can't believe it! What luck! Now I have somebody to hang out with!" I said, "Uh, yeah, I'm busy." She said, "How about I make you dinner sometime?" I said, "Uh, sure, just knock." And I never answered that door again. Fortunately I moved in a couple weeks. The funny thing is, years later, when visiting BadDave at the dorm he was an R.A. at, I ran into Annie again. She was now a senior dating a freshman at BadDave's dorm. Not all that surprising. Freshman guys will have sex with almost anything that isn't tied down or on fire. And if it's on fire, they'll probably put it out and have sex with it. Anyway, I digress.)
Then, out of the blue, my grandma got sick and was diagnosed with cancer. It didn't look like she was going to make it, so I moved home to be there for her and the rest of my family. (Fortunately, Grandma 'Bawful pulled through and is still with us today.) But money was an issue, so I ended up getting two full-time jobs. By day, I moved furniture. By night, I stacked piles of newspapers onto wooden skids and then pulled those skids from one room into another. Basically, I was working from about 5 a.m. (or earlier) to midnight (or later) at two very physically demanding jobs. Aimee got off work around 1 a.m., so I met up with her for an hour or two, got an hour or two of sleep, and started over the next day. I did that for the rest of the summer. It nearly killed me.
I basically became a zombie. I shuffled from place to place doing what I had to do, but my brain was usually a blank slate. If I wasn't working or actively engaged in some kind of activity, I would fall asleep. My body got beaten up. I ended up with busted ribs, a torn shoulder muscle, countless ugly bumps and bruises, and aches and pains of every variety. But I was in a situation where I either earned money for school or I didn't go to school, so I endured that schedule...even as it wreaked havoc with my personal life.
Aimee and I barely got time to see each other as it was, and I was barely alive when we did see each other. Naturally, she began to feel neglected. One night, I even fell asleep while we were making out. "Okay, this is getting ridiculous," she said. She wasn't wrong.
I worked right up to the day I moved back to school. I literally got off work, loaded up my car, and drove to my dorm. BadDave had already moved all of our stuff back into the room from the on-campus apartment he had been staying in. But he wasn't there, having opted to spend the night at his girlfriend's place rather than try to arrange the mess that was our room. The place was a shambles. I spent maybe five minutes trying to move things around before I just broke down and started crying. Looking back, I think I was having a nervous breakdown. Three months of getting only a couple hours of sleep a night combined with working two physically grueling jobs had literally almost destroyed me, both mentally and physically. I was a mess. And I had let my relationship with Aimee fall into disrepair.
It didn't seem to matter at first. We were still together, and things seemed mostly normal. But the drifting apart process had already begun, and it continued over the course of the first semester and into the second. Sure enough, we broke up about midway through the second semester. I found out from her sweet mate, who had developed a crazy crush on me (that's a story in itself), that Aimee had started dating someone else before we had officially broken up. I never found out whether the "before we had broken up" part was true, but she was dating the guy. And she ended up going to Mexico to hang with him over the summer. Oh, and he was two years younger than I was, which really pissed me off for some reason.
I turned my attention to Susan, but as you know from the second part of this epilogue, that didn't work out. So by the time Aimee got back from Mexico at the end of the summer, I was open to pretty much whatever. We spent a weekend together at my school, taking advantage of the fact that I was now an R.A. and therefore had my own room. We even went out dancing with Susan and Brett, and Aimee made sure to impress upon Susan that we were an item in a way that only a girl dancing up on a guy in a crowded club can.
We might have officially become a couple again, but Aimee was spending the semester in Washington D.C. That was fine by me, because I was really into Susan. The only problem being, of course, that Susan was dating someone else and preparing to move to Seattle. When she made plans to see her boyfriend, Torrey, over our fall break, I made plans to visit Aimee in D.C. What a disaster that was.
So here's what happened. I made plans to leave on a Wednesday night after a major Statistics exam. That morning, I was driving to Kokomo to pick up some things Aimee wanted from her parents' house when my car broke down. I ended up walking five or six miles until some guy in an old pickup truck offered to drive me the rest of the way to Kokomo. I had the car towed to my mechanic, and he told me that some kind of air flow module was busted and that my car wouldn't be repaired until they could special-order the part. Suddenly I had no way to get to D.C. But I was determined.
My grandparents drove me back to school. The clock was ticking. I looked into airfare, but the cheapest ticket I could find was $700. I didn't have that kind of money, so I looked into Greyhound. There actually was a bus leaving my town for D.C. that night at 7:30 p.m. My exam began at 7:00 p.m. I figured that gave me 20 minutes to take the exam, after which my buddy Jeremy (who would be waiting outside) would drive me to the bus depot. Nooooo problem.
Problem. The T.A.'s giving the exam didn't hand out the test form until almost 7:20. I now had five minutes to take the exam. I did the only thing I could think of: I checked every C on the Scantron form, handed it in, and left. I thereby disproved that particular Urban Legend by failing the exam. Yay me.
The Greyhound trip lasted 24 hours, during which time I had to transfer buses seven or eight times. I sat next to every freak you could imagine and some you couldn't. One woman had bloody bandages on her feet and started to punch me when I tried to sit down (it was the last seat left on the bus). There was one guy who told me his best friend had recently been eaten by a bear while he was forced to watch. Another dude said he was a construction worker and claimed that he had just seen a man get disintegrated by touching a damaged electrical box. "All that was left," he said, "was boots and dust.” At one stop, this hillbilly family came in with eight or 10 garbage bags that were acting as their luggage. They stowed them in some seats and then walked off the bus. While they were gone, some people kicked their bags into the aisle and took over the seats. When the hillbillies returned, a brawl broke out and the bus had to be evacuated. It rained the entire trip.
By the time I reached D.C., I was exhausted. Aimee had convinced me to rent a room so we could have privacy. Only she ended up not staying with me. And she was so busy with school that we barely hung out at all. Except for one day of sight-seeing and one night of pub crawling, I felt like I was more or less on my own. And then I had to take the Greyhound back to Indiana. By the time I returned, I was ready to shoot myself in the head.
The semester ended and Susan moved away. Shortly after that, Aimee came calling. She told me she had made mistakes, that she hadn't treated me the way I deserved. I told her hell no she hadn't, and that I was done being her whipping boy. She said it wasn't going to be like that anymore, that she was going to show me what love was. It was pretty dramatic. And I believed her, so we got back together once again. For most of the rest of that semester, things were great. In some ways, they were even better than that fabled sophomore year. Aimee was putting her all into our relationship. She wrote me letters. She made a huge deal out of my birthday. She made a couple surprise trips to see me. When I got stuck doing R.A. duty over Spring Break, she came and stayed with me, even jumping in to help clean up a hallway that got flooded when a pipe broke.
I really thought we had finally become the couple I had always wanted us to be. Aimee had never been so sensitive, so loving. We started to talk openly about life after college. Marriage came up. There was one little snag. We were both about to graduate. Because my R.A. job was earning me a full ride, I had decided to attend grad school. But there was more to it than that. During the first semester, BadDave -- who was an R.A. at another dorm -- told me that he was going for a Staff Resident position. Staff Residents were basically the bosses of the R.A.'s. I had no interest in doing that at my dorm. Why take on the extra responsibility? I had enough on my plate. But then -- and this shocked the hell out of me -- BadDave laid down some trash talk. The implication seemed to be that maybe I wasn't up to the task...that maybe I wouldn't even be able to become a Staff Resident if I wanted to be. He further suggested that I hadn't put in the same amount of work at being an R.A. as he had.
To be fair, he was probably right about that last part. I was a good R.A., but BadDave took it all much more seriously than I did. Which makes sense, since he's now in Residence Life. But even though I didn't care, I couldn't stand by and let a challenge go unanswered, even if it was a gentle challenge from my best friend. I went for the Staff Resident position at my dorm and I got it. But, when the position was offered, my dorm's assistant manager asked me as a personal favor to only accept if I honestly planned to stay at least one more year. In other words: don't back out.
I agreed. But Aimee didn't like that. She wanted to go straight from undergrad to law school, and she wasn't planning to stay in Indiana to do it. But I was bound by my word...plus I had been accepted into a graduate program. We came up with a compromise. I was holding off on going to grad school and instead use my fifth year to complete a second undergrad degree. She would live in town and work that year, after which I would get a job wherever she was going to law school. I'd support her through law school, and then she'd support me through grad school. It was a good plan. And, like many good plans, it was destined to fail.
A few weeks before the end of the school year, Aimee dropped a bomb on me. She rather casually mentioned that she'd be living in Texas soon.
Once I'd picked my chin up off the floor, I said, "Wh...what? Texas?! What are you talking about?!"
"Oh, you know," she said, "I got that law internship in Texas. I told you that."
"Uh, no you didn't. I'm pretty sure I'd remember something like that."
"No, I know I told you," she said. "You must have forgotten."
Not friggin' likely. But that was that. She moved to Texas. We kept in touch. She told me about some guy she was dating, and how he broke her heart, and how the situation reminded her of that Jewel song Foolish Games. This made me want to throw up. In fact, it still does a little bit.
During my fifth year, out of bitterness, I started dating like crazy. Friends said I should install a revolving door in my room. I wish I could say that being off the leash was rewarding, but it wasn't. I was pulling out of the funk around Christmas time Aimee returned to Indiana to visit family. We spent a week or so together, capped off by a weekend in my staff resident apartment. She professed her love to me and vowed to finish her next assignment (she was at that time doing travelling consulting) and then move to my town until I graduated, after which we would start a life together. She seemed so earnest that I bit, hook, line and sinker. I remember watching her drive off and thinking, "It's finally going to happen."
Can you believe I fell for it again?
Aimee had promised to call me when she got to where she was going, but she never did. I knew she hadn't died, because her parents would have contacted me. I had to conclude she had chosen not to call. So I tracked her down. This was before you could Google people and places of employment, so it took me two weeks to find her through the company she was working for. She was staying in a hotel in Minnesota. I called her room dozens of times, but no one ever answered and she never responded to my messages. I just kept calling, more out of anger than anything else. I wanted answers.
After a couple of hundred calls, the woman at the front desk said she felt bad for me. "Are you...with...this woman?"
"Supposedly," I said.
"Well," she began, "then you should probably know, she's staying with a man. And I'm pretty sure they're together. Like, you know..."
"I get it," I said.
"I'll tell you what," she said. "I'm going to tell her it's an emergency and she has to take the call. Hold on."
I held on.
"Hello?" It was Aimee. She sounded suspicious.
"Hey babe," I said, and it took every ounce of free will not to scream or sound angry. "Man, I was starting to think something bad had happened to you."
"Oh, well, I'm fine," she said.
"I love you," I said.
"Thanks," she replied.
"Thanks? Don't you mean 'I love you too'?"
"Sure," she said.
"Say it," I demanded.
"No. Why are you trying to force me to say it? It should come naturally."
"Because I know you're there with some guy, and that's why you won't say it, why I haven't heard from you in weeks. Right?"
She didn't reply. I unloaded holy hell on her and hung up. Then I ransacked my room. Chairs, couches, tables, trash cans...everything went flying. And once I calmed down, I was fine. Like, I felt better than I had felt in years. That's one of the funny things about relationships. You never know the last straw is going to be until it gets dropped on your back. But when it happens, you know. You just know.
However, the story wasn't quite over. A few months after I moved to Chicago, I got a phone call from Aimee. "Guess what?" she said. "I just moved to Chicago!"
She came over to my apartment and made her pitch. "I moved her to be with you," she said. "Please take me back."
I didn't take her back. I had moved on. It was over. I think Aimee had difficulty believing that, and even more difficulty accepting it. Which isn't surprising. She probably thought I'd keep taking her back forever and ever. I had told her that before with words, and I had taught her that with my actions. But our relationship was finally and irrevocably over. A couple months later, she moved back to Texas.
Over the course of Livin' Large, there have been two schools of thought: that Aimee was a bitch and that I was an idiot to keep getting back together with her.
Regarding that first school of thought: yes, Aimee did a lot of stupid and even cruel things. However, I don't think that made her a bad person. In fact, the situation reminds me of the fable of the scorpion and the frog. In case you don't know it, here it is: a scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too." The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?" The scorpion shrugs and says, "It’s my nature."
The point isn't that Aimee was a scorpion, simply that it was not in her nature (at that time) to commit to things. She constantly wanted new experiences, to meet new people and do new things. When she had an impulse, she followed it. When she tried to live a more conventional lifestyle, things didn't work out. Because she loved me and saw me as someone worthy of spending her life with, she tried to fight her nature. I also tried to make her change her nature through persuasion, manipulation, etc. See, my nature was to seek stability, which ran counter to her desire for freedom from commitment.
Any relationship predicated on the need for one or both people to change on a fundamental level is doomed to failure.
As for why I was "stupid" enough to keep taking her back, well, I was brought up to believe that if you loved somebody, you had to be willing to sacrifice anything to be with them. I hadn't yet learned that love alone can't sustain a relationship, and that sometimes loving someone means letting them go for the good of everybody involved.
Aimee and I kept in touch for a few years, but eventually it all just faded away. I still keep in semi-regular contact with her parents, whom I have always thought the world of. Particularly her father, George, whom I've written about on this site and consider one of the top three men I've ever known. But I never ask them about Aimee, and they never tell me anything about her. It's like an unspoken agreement or something. A high school friend recently told me she's currently working as a viticulturist in California.
Believe it or not, I did have a brief e-mail exchange with Aimee a year ago. I received an auto-generated e-mail from a high school reunion Web site that somebody had just searched for my name, and that person lived in the last place I remembered Aimee living in. A few days later, after her birthday, I received another auto-generated e-mail that the person who had searched for my name just had a birthday. So I figured what the heck, and I sent a short happy belated birthday e-mail to her last known (to me) e-mail address. A few days later, I received a brief response, basically saying hello and asking what was new with me. I sent a long reply...and never heard back.
Maybe it's better that way.
Mat
After dropping the Shelly bomb on him, Mat and I never spoke face-to-face again. I saw him at various times, like when he was riding his bike around campus or hanging out at the local bars (always with an unreasonably hot girl in tow).
Susan spoke to him once. She and her roommate Jen (who was mildly obsessed with Mat) ran into him at a party. Jen asked if he remembered me (this was during my sophomore year). Mat said, "Yeah, that guy's a loser." Then Susan (according to Jen) went off on him. I always appreciated that.
Mat spent his freshman season as a redshirt. In the ensuing three years, he went on to become one of the school's greatest basketball busts. Here was a seven-footer with Shaq size who simply could not play. Watching him try was like watching an elephant attempt to ice skate up hill. Mat had no feel for the game, no sense of how to play it. The physical skills were there. He just didn't get basketball.
During his senior season -- by which time he was playing alongside another future NBA All-Star -- Mat made token appearances in 13 games, averaging 0.5 PPG (on 33 percent shooting), 0.5 RPG, 0.1 APG and 0.0 BPG in 2.5 MPG. And that was his best statistical season.
When I finished my first degree after my fourth year, I went ahead and walked through the graduation ceremony (mostly because my mom insisted on it). There were two lines of graduates going into the building. By some strange twist of fate, Mat was standing almost directly across from me in the other line. Some guy behind me remarked to his buddy, "Hey, look, it's Mat [Last Name]. They dude actually graduated?" The buddy replied, "Apparently. But I don't see any honor cords on his gown." Then they both burst out laughing. That was just one of the many jokes Mat was the butt of during his college career.
I lost track of Mat after he graduated. However, I was back on campus a year or so after I graduated and happened to be in a bar where the men's basketball coach was doing a radio show. He mentioned that Mat was playing pro basketball in Africa. "He told me he scored 25 points last night," the coach said. "I was shocked. I don't think that kid scored 25 points while he was here. And that includes practices!" And the running joke continued.
In 2003, Mat showed up to the annual midnight magic event for a men's basketball alumni game. And here's the shocker: Mat played 20 minutes and finished with eight points, 2 boards, an assist and a steal for the white squad. Despite his best-ever performance in the name of his former school, the black squad won 47-44.
A few years ago, when Basketbawful was still very new, I decided I wanted to do a post about Mat. Yep. Just one post. I still have the draft in an old Microsoft Word file titled "The Worst Basketball Player I Ever Lived With." It's awful. I basically tried to cram the entire Livin' Large series into about 1,500 words. It lost a lot of its charm, mostly because it was hard to provide perspective and context to a lot of the situations. But that isn't why I failed to complete it. Originally, I wanted input from Mat himself. So, to that end, I spent a few weeks trying to track him down on the Internet.
After quite a bit of effort, I finally found an e-mail address. In my initial e-mail, I didn't explicitly state that I was his former roomie, but I used an address that was basically my first and last name followed by a number. I figured either he'd put two and two together -- although, admittedly, math wasn't among his strengths -- or he wouldn't. I basically said I was interested in knowing more about his college experience and asked whether he could share stories, stats and maybe some pictures with. To my great surprise, Mat replied two days later. He said he'd be happy to share the information with me, but that he was busy coaching a girl's basketball team in Europe. He promised to send me a lengthy reply the first chance he got. A week or so went by and I didn't get any e-mails, so I sent a short message asking if he still intended to write back. He replied the next day that he would as soon as he got a chance. This went on for a month or so until he simply stopped replying.
I was bummed. I had been this close to getting inside information from the protagonist of my story...and it fell through. I kept searching for information about him on the 'Net, but I never came up with anything substantial about his college career or his life after.
So I sat on the story. I would go back to it every so often and give it another try. But it quickly became apparent that I could never squeeze the entire saga into one post. That's when I got the idea of doing a series. By that time I was working for Deadspin. I pitched the story, it got rejected, and so I sat on it yet again. Then, this summer, I sat down at my computer and started fresh.
Oddly enough, writing the Livin' Large story helped me find out that Mat is currently (it appears) an MMA fighter. It seems fitting. Although the one fight I saw was rather sad, I can only presume that someone with his size and strength can probably kick some major ass. Then again, it sure seemed like someone with his size should be able to grab a rebound, so who knows.
I also came by what appeared to be Mat's current e-mail address. Yes, I sent an e-mail. Yes, I explained who I was and why I was writing. No, I never heard back. I figure that either he never received the e-mail (bogus address?) or he actually heard about or read some of the Livin' Large series and wanted nothing to do with it. It's too bad. I would have dearly loved to get his feedback, even if it was negative. In fact, especially if it was negative. I think Mat deserves his chance at a retort. And if I ever hear back from him, he can have it. I will post whatever he has to say, completely unedited, on this site.
Just don't hold your breath.
In the final analysis, Mat and I were, simply put, a bad match. I suppose that, had I been less into studying and more into partying, I would have loved living with him. Plenty of freshman men in our dorm thought I had the best possible situation. I'm sure Mat was just as unhappy with me as I was with him. He was the villain in my story, and I was the villain in his.
The school
I love my school. To this day, I still bleed school colors. So many memories...fountain runs, studying in the engineering mall, saying "hello" to people on the Hello Walk, sand volleyball outside my first dorm, the giant map in the memorial union, the late and lamented Stripe Shop, the brick buildings, the way the campus came alive on football weekends, Breakfast Club, the bars that are gone (like Kazoos and T.A. Toms), sitting in Harry's with BadDave from noon until close munching the free popcorn and drinking toxic amounts of beer, working out and balling at the Co-Rec, working for the school paper, climbing the clock tower, intramural sports, the residence hall formals, on and on and on again.
Those were and always will be some of the best years of my life. I will always feel like my life, my real life, began in college. I can't imagine having gone anywhere else. I imagine most people feel the same way.
And yet...sometimes I think about what-ifs. I actually received a full ride from Indiana State University in my original chosen major of journalism. Obviously, I chose to go elsewhere. Now most people, when they imagine having chosen another path for themselves, they tend to think, "Wow, I wouldn't have done this thing, or I wouldn't have met that person." What I usually think is this: had I gone to ISU instead, I likely would have met people who would have become my friends for life, made a different best friend, and fallen in love with other women. Those people are out there right now...people I would have shared the best times of my life with. But I'll never meet them. We'll live and die never knowing the other person's name, or if they even existed at all. That always gets me for some reason.
Of course, if I'd gone to ISU, I never would have lived with Mat, and there would have been no Livin' Large, maybe even no Basketbawful. So even though rooming with Mat was the worst five-month living experience I ever had, I'd say things worked out for the best in the end.
Labels: college stories, game over, Livin' Large
Further reading: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. Also check out the official Livin' Large FAQ, Cast List, Flow Chart 1.0, Flow Chart 2.0 and the Livin' Large Epilogue: Part 1.
Sorry, folks. Once again, the epic length of this epilogue is forcing me to post one more installment after this one. Finishing this installment drained me.
Future NBA All-Star
Future NBA All-Star -- hereafter referred to as FNAS -- went on to lead our men’s basketball team to a 29-5 record, a conference title, and an appearance in the Elite Eight. That's where his dreams of a national title ended at the hands of a superior team with its own future NBA All-Star. FNAS had his worst performance of the season during that final game, and many people assumed that the opposing future NBA All-Star had shut him down. Not so. Did that guy play great defense against FNAS? Yes. Did the team, which really was comprised of superior players, have the defensive schemes and personnel to make FNAS work like hell for everything he got? Absolutely.
But what's less well-known is this: FNAS strained his back in the previous game, and that injury, more than anything else, held him down. I had season tickets that year, and I attended every home game but one. (In a painful bit of irony, the one game I missed was the one Larry Bird attended back when he was doing scouting work for the Celtics. The next day, there was this big picture of Bird on the front page of the school paper. I wanted to vomit.) I had watched FNAS do some truly amazing things. He really was the best college player in the country that year. I still have scars on my hands from all the high-fives I threw during those games. And let me tell you: FNAS was hurt during that Elite Eight game. He wasn't moving right. If you had watched him at all that year, you could tell he was laboring just to get up and down the court. Now, this is where someone (Cortez?) is going to call bullshit or faking or choking or something. But I will die believing that FNAS's injury is what doomed him that game. Not the team, necessarily. They might have lost anyway. But the Other Future NBA All-Star did NOT shut FNAS down.
Sure enough, FNAS left school after that season. He was unanimously named the conference player of the year. He won the John R. Wooden Award and the Naismith Award. He was also named the USBWA College Player of the Year. Not surprisingly, he went first overall in that year's NBA draft.
Like I said, FNAS was amazing during his final year in college. I honestly believed that the sky was the limit with him. Maybe he couldn't be the next Jordan, but I thought he could maybe be a better version of Dominique Wilkins. That didn't happen. Not even close. Don't get me wrong. He had one helluva career. He averaged a shade over 20 PPG over 11 NBA seasons. In fact, he ranks (yes I know this is a dead giveaway but whatever) 42nd all-time in points per game. That's right. All-time. He was named to two All-Star teams, and he won an NBA championship (although it was as a bench jockey).
Not too shabby, right? And yet when I think about FNAS, I can only think about what he didn't do. He never owned the league. Never even came close. He was never one of the top ten players in the Association. One year he ranked 16th in MVP Award Shares, so I guess you could argue that he was at least in the top twenty for a while. But, in my most humble opinion, that wasn't nearly good enough for someone with his talent.
Ultimately, I think the problem was attitude. The guy was a competitor. He wanted it. No question about it. He had some big games. In one matchup against the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls -- one of the great defensive teams of that decade -- he went shot-for-shot with Michael Jordan. Both men finished with 44 points, but MJ's team won 104-100. And that sort of defined his career: always coming up a little bit short. (It's probably worth noting that Scottie Pippen didn't play that night. Chances are, Pip wouldn't have let FNAS drop 44.)
Yeah, he wanted it, but not in the same manic, "I would step on your grandma's throat to beat you" kind of way that the great players do. FNAS wanted to be the best, but he just didn't have a bloodlust necessary to make it happen. Is that his fault, or is it a case of "either you have it or you don't"? We'll probably never know.
Taco Bell Jennifer
I have no idea what became of her. I called her once to check on her during the second semester of my freshman year, but nobody answered the phone and there seemingly was no answering machine. This was before Caller ID, so I doubt she was screening her calls. My guess is that, since she had dropped out of school to support Matt, she simply moved back home.
Cindy
Cindy eventually forgave me for leaving her dangling for a month after I decided to date Aimee instead of her. As Cindy put it, "How can I stay mad at you? You're my best friend."
A word of warning to men of the world: beware when a woman dubs you her best friend. In my experience, it almost always means the exact opposite of what you want it to mean. For instance, if you're completely head over heels for a girl and she calls you her best friend, she means "friend" in the most literal sense of the word. And your friendship is so valuable to her that she will never, under any circumstances, consider you anything more than that. On the other hand, if you're attached or have decided you absolutely don't want to date the girl for whatever reason, being named her best friend means she wants you and may be willing to do anything in her power to bend you to her will.
Anyway, Cindy and I remained friends. During the summer following my freshman year, Aimee and I got together and broke up and got together again and broke up again. Bad times. The end result was that I was single for most of the summer, and I ended up spending a lot of time with Cindy...which led to a little blowup with Aimee.
It was Fourth of July weekend and my mom was throwing a party at our new home. (She got remarried that summer and we moved into his house because he had a kickass in-ground pool.) Mom suggested I invite my friends, which is what I did. Including both Cindy and Aimee. I know that seems like madness, and it kind of was. But I thought I had it under control. Cindy was leaving for vacation the next day and could only stay until 1:00 p.m. because she had to back. Therefore, I told Aimee not to show up until 1:30 p.m. I figured that give me a perfectly safe half-hour window. What a sucker.
Cindy showed up around noon, by which time the usual suspects (Gauvin, Greg, Hornbuckle, Mikey/Statbuster, etc.) were already there. I greeted Cindy with a hug, at which time she told me, "Guess what? I packed last night, so I can stay for the whole party!"
Uh oh.
I barely had time to register that little nugget of brain lightning when Aimee rode up on her bike. Now, it's important to mention here that I had told everyone that it was a pool party. However, nobody showed up with bathing suits. Nobody, that is, except Aimee. And, since she figured she'd be getting right into the pool, her hair was tied up in a bun, she hadn't really put on any makeup, and she was wearing an old pair of athletic shorts and a huge t-shirt over her bathing suit.
Cindy, on the other hand, had dressed up and was in full makeup. This, of course, embarrassed Aimee to no end: her primary competitor for my attention was essentially showing her up not only in front of me, but in front of my entire hometown social group, all of whom were on the porch and watching with morbid curiosity.
Aimee was pissed. She dragged me into the garage and let me have it. "I can't believe you invited HER here when you knew I was coming! And nobody else is wearing a bathing suit! And I look like complete and total crap!" On and on. I got why she was upset, and under other circumstances I might have cut her a little slack. But repeatedly breaking up with me on a whim was one thing. Now she was screaming at me in front of my friends like I'd just eaten her puppy. No way could I let that go.
"You gave up the right to choose my friends," I said, "when you broke up with me. Again." And I had a few other choice words to say, after which she jumped back onto her bike and pedaled away in a huff.
When I returned to the porch, everybody took an unspoken vow of silence about what had just happened, but I could tell that Cindy felt that I had chosen her over Aimee this time. Which I kind of did.
After that, Cindy and I started semi-dating. I say "semi" because I refused to close the deal. We would hug, hold hands, wrestle around playfully, get in those little pre-foreplay tickle fights, etc., but every time her face hovered into the vicinity of mine, I pulled back. The bottom line was, in my mind, once I kissed Cindy, it was ON. I honestly wasn't sure I wanted it to be on. Sure, I'd spent most of my high school years wanting to date her, and she'd proved sweeter and more dependable than Aimee. But the spark was missing. And I was waiting for it to appear. The thing about sparks, though, is that they're either there or they're not.
So the summer passed. Aimee and I sort of got back together and then sort of broke up again, after which she told me she had no intention of having a boyfriend going into her sophomore year. She was in a sorority now, Delta Delta Delta, and she wanted to leave her options open. "Okay," I told her. "But know this: I'm not waiting around for you. I'm going to date around too. And trust me, I won't be single for long." Bold words, but I believed them.
Meanwhile, Cindy was still working on making her best friend her boyfriend. I actually had made a long-term date plan with her. Early in the summer, when Aimee and I had briefly gotten back together, she had convinced me to buy tickets to a concert featuring both Celine Dion and Michael Bolton. I know: gak. Love gives you The Dumb. Anyway, the concert got canceled and rescheduled for September, only Celine (thankfully) canceled and was replaced by Yanni (oh God no). Since I was stuck with the tickets anyway, I invited Cindy to the concert. She said yes without even thinking about it.
Leading up to that, I invited Cindy to my school for a day visit during my first full weekend back at school, the infamous Truth or Dare weekend. BadDave's memory of this was slightly askew, because I actually drove to Kokomo to pick her up and brought her back. We arrived right as Dave was leaving for Truth or Dare: Part II. Dave immediately liked her for whatever reason.
We had a nice, almost romantic day walking around campus and just hanging out. That night, we ended up back in my room, and we once again started wrestling and tickling and all those other little accidentally-on-purpose games that usually lead to something naughty. But once again, I pulled back. Cindy stood up and walked to the window. With her back to me, she said, "Do you think your roommate would mind if I spent the night?"
Whoa.
You have to understand, Cindy was a good girl. Like, God was probably her best friend more so than I was. The fact that she was suggesting, on her own, spending the night, was like a sucker punch to the nuts. And I realized in that very moment that I did not want to date Cindy. Not now, not ever. It just wasn't going to work. The only thing we really had in common was each other. We didn't like the same things. We didn't do the same things. And that wasn't going to change. In fact, those differences were only going to become more pronounced over time as we slowly matured into the people we were going to be. I had to end this.
"Well," I said, totally ignoring what she said, "I guess I should take you home now."
She didn't like that answer, but she complied. As we headed down the highway toward Kokomo, she broke what had turned into an uncomfortable silence. "I'm conflicted," she said.
"Huh? What do you mean?" Another word of warning men: if you don't want the answer to a question, do NOT ask it.
"Because," she continued, "at times, it feels like there are two sides to me: Cindy the friend...and Cindy the woman."
After missing a beat, I said, "So, how 'bout some music?" And I turned on the radio. We drove the rest of the way back to Kokomo in complete silence.
When the concert came around, I was dating Aimee again but didn't want to tell Cindy. Yeah, yeah, I should have learned my lesson. Only this time, it didn't really come back to bite me in the ass. Unless you count having to go to that concert. I tried to get out of it. I told Cindy I had an exam. She said she'd drive and I could study on the way. I told her I was sick. She said she'd take care of me. I offered to give her the tickets so she could take someone else. She said she wasn't going with anybody but me.
And we went. We had lawn seats, and I pulled a real superdick move: I laid out our blanket, laid down on it, and immediately fell asleep. I slept through the entire concert. Cindy got the hint. There was no romance in our future. Not together anyway.
But we remained friends. In fact, Cindy thought so highly of me that, when she got married two years later -- yep, she worked fast -- she demanded that I be in the wedding party. Eventually, I ended up being an usher. "I really wanted Scott to make you a groomsman, but he refused," she said. "And since you can't be a bridesmaid, an usher was the best I could do."
It was totally bizarre. I was single, owing to the fact that Aimee had recently broken up with me yet again. And here I was, ushering at the wedding of the girl whom I spent years wanting to date in high school...and whom I might have ended up marrying had things gone a little differently.
We kept in touch up until a few years after I had graduated. She even had me to her house for a family dinner once (by which time she already had two children). The last time I saw her was at Highland Park in Kokomo. She was there with her five -- yes, five -- kids and her husband. I was there with Gauvin. We chatted about what was going on in our lives and then we were left with...nothing. The years had stripped away pretty much everything we ever had in common...which, in the end, was only our shared experiences. That was the last time we ever spoke. I doubt we'll ever speak again.
Susan
Aimee and I broke up early into the second semester of my freshman year. As fate would have it, Susan became single about the same time. I figured this was my chance to make something happen. But, as was the case with women to that point in my life, I moved reeeeeaaal slow. But we were spending a lot of time together, and we even had become pledge parents in APO. Then came Easter weekend. My mom, who had just started dating a guy named Wally, had plans and actually told me not to come home for the holiday weekend. When Susan found out, she invited me to come home with her. I thought that was it. I thought I was in.
But when I showed up to her place for the ride to Indy, there was a guy in the front seat. It was this complete douchebag Australian guy who had recently moved into Susan's social group. His name was Stu. And he was apparently dating Susan.
Fuck.
To make matters worse, Susan and Stu were in the newly dating phase, which meant loads of PDA, and I was forced to watch. Temporarily. Because it was more than I could stand -- after all, I was still sort of reeling from getting dumped by Aimee, and now even my mom didn't have time for me -- I retreated to Susan's mom's guest room and spent most of the weekend reading The Big Three by Peter May. Meanwhile, Susan and Stu drank and partied and played cards with Susan's mom and brother. My hermit-like behavior earned me a reputation as stick-in-the-mud loser with Susan's family, and I can't blame them. Stu was the douche, but I was the one acting like a douche. Not my greatest moment.
After that weekend, Susan and I really didn't talk for the rest of the school year. I became a single pledge parent in Susan's absence, and our pledge daughter, Lisa, came to resent Susan. Which didn't matter, since Susan wasn't around, not even on initiation night.
Then, during the last week of school, Susan called me with news. She and Stu...were getting married. Apparently, Stu was having Green Card problems and would be sent back to Australia if he didn't get married. So Susan had agreed to tie the knot. I went apeshit and told her she was acting like a crazy person. She said I was being rude and asked me to be happy for her. I said no way. We ended things on a bad note and I honestly figured I'd never hear from her again.
Then came the Sunday night of the first full weekend of my sophomore year. This was two nights after Truth or Dare and one night after Cindy the Woman. BadDave and I were chilling in our dorm room when the phone rang. It was Susan.
Since she had been the bigger person and called me, I decided to be nice about her marriage to Stu. "So, how's married life?"
"Oh, Stu and I didn't get married," she said.
"What?! Why not?"
"Long story short, he was an asshole and I really shouldn't have been marrying him anyway," she said. "So we broke up and he went back to Australia."
"Wow. That's...news." It was all I had.
"So," she said, "Are you dating anybody?"
"No," I replied. "Aimee and I got back together over the summer, but we broke up again."
"Cool. You wanna come over to my place?"
And of course I did. I went over. We drank a few beers (which I never did at that time...only for Susan). She told me the full story about her breakup with Stu, which I won't bore you with since it's pretty boring. It got late, and she said she was tired. She walked me down to my car. I suggested we go on a date the next Friday, that I'd take her out to dinner. She smiled this special little smile and said yes. Her face floated up to mine...and I didn't kiss her. Why? Because, frankly, I wasn't really sure that she wanted me to. Ultimately, Aimee was my only real dating experience, and I didn't have the confidence in myself to take what I wanted. But I figured that, if things went well on Friday, we might end up doing more than kiss.
When I got back to the dorm, I was pretty high on myself. On Friday, I had been dirty-danced naked by two chicks, both of whom I'd made out with and one of whom I had gotten touchy-feely with. On Saturday, Cindy basically threw herself at me. And on Sunday, a girl I had crushed on for the entirety of my freshman year had agreed to go on a date with me. I felt like the complete and absolute shit.
Then, late that Sunday night, Aimee called, inviting me to Indy to hang out with her and some friends. And I went. And things happened. I went back to see her again on Wednesday. And things happened again. So, just like that, Aimee and I were seemingly back together. Not that we openly agreed on it, but, well, I had to assume.
On Thursday night, I called Susan and canceled our date. I explained that Aimee and I had gotten back together, so I couldn't take her out. She said it was fine, but I could tell it wasn't.
It didn't put a damper on our friendship, though. We still hung out a lot. We went to APO parties together. She even went to an APO party with me and Aimee, who was in APO at Butler and wanted to find out what our chapter was all about. Boy, that was awkward. Once again, I showed an inability to understand that girls who are sweet on the same guy shouldn't be in around each other.
During my junior year, Aimee and I broke up yet again. Unfortunately, Susan was dating this schmuck named Dave. (Not BadDave.) Fortunately for me, he was enough of a schmuck that they broke up during the second semester. It was my time to move in. So one night, after Susan had aced a really difficult Organic Chemistry exam, I took her out to celebrate. We hit all the campus bars and were having a really great time. I really felt like things were going in my favor until Byron showed up. Byron was in APO with us. He was kind of an enigma. He was black and powerfully built. He kind of looked like a pro athlete. But he had a high-pitched voice and was the biggest, most socially awkward nerd you're ever likely to meet.
He was out at the bars by himself and looking for someone to hang with. Susan was always one to pick up strays, animals and people alike. So she adopted Byron, who proceeded to follow us around from bar to bar. I was livid. So much so that I ended up punching a wall in the bathroom of Kazoos (which, sadly, no longer exists) and hurting my hand. We closed out the bars. Susan lived in an off-campus apartment, and I said I'd walk her home.
"I'll go with you guys," Byron said, "then you and I can walk back to the dorms together, Matt."
Fuuuuuuuuck.
So we end up back at Susan's place, where Susan introduced us to her fish. I couldn't even pretend to be interested, so I announced I was leaving.
Susan said, "Nooooo, don't go yet." So I stayed, but I was so pissed Byron had cockblocked me that I just stood there, sulking, while they chatted in the near darkness. (Susan didn't turn on the lights because she didn't want to bother her roommate.)
Byron announced that he had to use the bathroom before we headed to the dorms. As soon as the bathroom door closed, Susan gave me this look, walked up to me, and said, "Is this what you've been waiting for?" That statement immediately trumped Aimee's "You don't have to sleep on the floor" as the sexiest thing anybody had ever said to me.
Then we started kissing like crazy until Byron came back out of the restroom. "Well, you ready to go?" he asked.
"Wait," she said, "I have to show Matt something in my room."
As we walked into her room, I flipped on the lights. She closed the door, smiled at me, then turned the lights back off. Then she knocked me down and we started kissing and grabbing in the dark. I don't know how much time passed, but things came to an abrupt halt when Susan, seemingly out of nowhere, said, "We shouldn't be doing this. You're just going to hurt me."
"What?" I was totally confused. "I'm not going to hurt you."
"Yeah," she said. "You are. We should stop."
So we stopped. I tucked her in, kissed her lightly on the lips, and left the room closing the door behind me.
Byron was long gone. I walked the long, long walk back to my dorm in a stupor. By some strange twist of fate, I walked up to the building just as BadDave was getting dropped off by someone. I don't remember who dropped him off, or what he had been doing. I just didn't care.
BadDave knew something was up. "Dude," he said, "you okay?"
"Yeah, fine. Just tired." It sounded like a reasonable excuse. It was, after all, past 4 a.m.
If things had ended a little differently, I would have told BadDave everything. But I was upset and unsettled. Had Susan and I taken The Next Step, or had things gotten worse between us? I had no idea. So, rather than telling BadDave the story, I went to bed without a word.
Susan avoided me for a few days. She claimed she was sick. I didn't believe her. I passed through those days in a state of heightened anxiety. I was terrified that I had ruined something special. When we finally got together, Susan was as friendly as ever. With an emphasis on the "friend" part. And despite furious efforts on my part, she didn't want to talk about or even acknowledge what had happened. But I wasn't prepared to go down without a fight.
We went out for dinner the next week (she insisted on paying for her half...a bad sign). She had driven, and as she dropped me off at my dorm, I said, "Look, Susan, I know you don't want to talk about what happened a while back, but I think it's pretty obvious we're attracted to each other. We've been close for years. We're both single. I think we should date."
"I don't think that's a good idea," she said. And nothing I could say that night changed her mind. But still I was determined.
A week or so later, we were out at the bars with her roommate, Laurel. At one point, while Susan was in the bathroom, I asked Laurel to tell me whether she thought I had a shot at dating Susan. "I don't know," Laurel said, "you guys are pretty close. Maybe. I don't know." Not exactly a stirring endorsement.
The bar we were in was, as always, backed body-to-body. And although it usually took people forever to return from the bathroom, Susan had been gone way too long. I went looking for her and found her talking to some guy I'd never seen before. I walked up to them.
"Everything okay?" I asked.
"Yeah," Susan said, "This is Torrey."
"Hey man," Torrey said, sticking out his hand for a shake.
Susan spent the rest of the night standing there talking to him. Even when the bar closed and they were kicking people out, they stood there just talking and talking. As we walked out, I said, "Well, I'll walk you girls home."
"No, that's okay," Susan said. "I think Torrey's going to come back to my place for a while."
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
Just like that, Susan was in a relationship again. I was beyond crushed.
The thing was, Torrey graduated at the end of that semester, after which he moved to Seattle. I figured that was a good thing. After all, long distance relationships rarely last. But it turned out that most definitely was NOT a good thing, because Susan had decided to move to Seattle too. Not until after the first semester of the next school year, though. She planned to enroll in pharmacy school in Seattle, but she had to get some of her core requirements out of the way first. Suddenly, I had a deadline.
Aimee and I got back together briefly near the end of the school year, but she broke up with me yet again and started dating some foreign exchange student. She then spent the summer in Mexico...where this guy happened to be from. I spent the summer in Kokomo working for a furniture moving company, hanging out with my friends (including Dave D., who had just returned from the army), and spending my weekends with Susan. Usually I'd drive down to Indy on Friday night, pick her up, then drive to the town our college was in, where we would party and then stay with her roommate (who was going to summer school). Several times there was some semi-sparkage, but I didn't want to put the moves on Susan while she and Torrey were still a couple.
Aimee returned at the end of the summer and we once again got back together briefly. In fact, she came to my school for the first full weekend and stayed with me. I was now an R.A. in the school's nicest dorm, so my room was pretty sweet. Oddly enough, Brett was visiting from Phoenix the same weekend. In one of the truly odd experiences of my life, Aimee, Brett, Susan and I went out dancing together. Brett ended up crashing at Susan's place while Aimee and I went back to mine.
Aimee spent that semester as an exchange student in Washington D.C., so we broke up again and I turned my attention to Susan. We slowly eased into...something. I don't know what it was. It had all the qualities of dating, but we never talked about it and she was still officially with Torrey. I wanted to have a conversation about it, but I was afraid that if I brought it up I would kill this special thing that was developing between us. So stupid. I should have spilled my guts. But I didn't know that at the time.
Susan visited Torrey over Fall Break, so I went to D.C. to see Aimee. It wasn't a good trip. More on that in Aimee's section.
As the semester progressed, the non-relationship Susan and I had got more and more intense. But still I remained silent, even as she prepared to move to Seattle. She had already been accepted into a PharmD program. So it was over, then. She was going to leave me.
One cold Decemeber night after Finals, we were sitting in her living room talking about nothing. Finally, I said, "Susan, don't go. Please, don't move to Seattle. I'm in love with you and I don't want you to go. I'm begging you. Don't move to Seattle."
We had been talking by candlelight, and it was so dark I could barely see her face. "Are you serious?" she asked very, very quietly.
"Yes."
After a brief silence, she said, "Why did you wait until now to tell me that? After I'd already gotten accepted into pharmacy school, after I'd already made plans to move?"
"Would it have changed anything?" I asked.
"Probably," she said.
Then we finally talked. Not about everything, but about enough. It all went back to the "You're just going to hurt me" comment she had made years ago. She believed in her heart that if she started dating me, I would break up with her the second Aimee came back into my life. She was completely and totally wrong about that, but I have to admit, it was a reasonable assumption on her part, considering how often Aimee and I broke up and got back together.
"Why did you wait until now to tell me that?" I said.
"Would it have changed anything?" she asked.
"Probably," I said.
And so, after a few more bittersweet nights together, Susan moved to Seattle. It hurt me in a way I hadn't hurt since the first time Aimee and I had broken up. It might even have been worse, because now Susan was effectively gone forever...and it was in large part my fault. If only I had said something.
The first weekend back at school, I went on a drinking binge. My buddy Jeremy, who had recently come out of the closet, had a couple girl friends visiting from Kentucky. I decided I was going to have sex with one of them. The cold was horrific that Saturday night. We're talking -15 wind chill. But, being idiot college students, we made the mile walk to the campus bars without coats, because you didn't want to be wearing a coat in hot bar.
Jeremy's friends: one was hot and a bit of a prude, one was barely average and kind of a slut. Obviously I went after the slut. A few hours in, we were both tanked and making out on a dance floor. This girl, she kissed with her teeth. It was the weirdest thing. It was like she was trying to eat my mouth. At one point, she whispered in my ear, "When we get back to your room, I'm going to give you the best blowjob ever." I shivered at the thought. If her blowjobs were anything like her kisses, I was going to wake up a eunuch.
When the bars closed, we had to make that long walk back to the dorm in subzero temperatures, only this time we were soaked with sweat. Halfway back, I said, "Screw this" and literally sprinted back to the dorm without them. I did, however, wait for them in the lobby. Jeremy was an R.A. on the fourth floor and I was an R.A. on the eighth floor. The slut was pretty much holding me up on the elevator trip, because I was blitzed out of my mind.
When the elevator stopped at the fourth floor, the slut said, "I'm going to take Matt up to his room."
"Oh no you're not," Jeremy said. "C'mon, Matt, let's go."
When we walked into my room, I slurred, "Fucksh you, Jehremy, You cosht me a blowed job."
"No," he replied, "I kept you from doing something you'll regret tomorrow. Now...bed or bathroom."
I considered the question. "Bathroom."
So Jeremy sat me by the toilet and leaned my head on the seat, which is how I woke up the next morning. Then I began the process of pulling my shit back together.
Susan and I remained friends. She eventually broke up with Torrey, who was an abusive asshole. She also eventually earned her PharmD. She still lives in Seattle, where she has a young son named Gabriel whom she adores. I visited in Seattle a year or so after I graduated. We also saw each other a few times when she was visiting family in Indiana. We drift out of touch, and every four or five years I hear from her again out of the blue. Maybe it'll always be that way. Maybe it won't.
Epilogue: Part 3
Sorry, folks. Once again, the epic length of this epilogue is forcing me to post one more installment after this one. Finishing this installment drained me.
Future NBA All-Star
Future NBA All-Star -- hereafter referred to as FNAS -- went on to lead our men’s basketball team to a 29-5 record, a conference title, and an appearance in the Elite Eight. That's where his dreams of a national title ended at the hands of a superior team with its own future NBA All-Star. FNAS had his worst performance of the season during that final game, and many people assumed that the opposing future NBA All-Star had shut him down. Not so. Did that guy play great defense against FNAS? Yes. Did the team, which really was comprised of superior players, have the defensive schemes and personnel to make FNAS work like hell for everything he got? Absolutely.
But what's less well-known is this: FNAS strained his back in the previous game, and that injury, more than anything else, held him down. I had season tickets that year, and I attended every home game but one. (In a painful bit of irony, the one game I missed was the one Larry Bird attended back when he was doing scouting work for the Celtics. The next day, there was this big picture of Bird on the front page of the school paper. I wanted to vomit.) I had watched FNAS do some truly amazing things. He really was the best college player in the country that year. I still have scars on my hands from all the high-fives I threw during those games. And let me tell you: FNAS was hurt during that Elite Eight game. He wasn't moving right. If you had watched him at all that year, you could tell he was laboring just to get up and down the court. Now, this is where someone (Cortez?) is going to call bullshit or faking or choking or something. But I will die believing that FNAS's injury is what doomed him that game. Not the team, necessarily. They might have lost anyway. But the Other Future NBA All-Star did NOT shut FNAS down.
Sure enough, FNAS left school after that season. He was unanimously named the conference player of the year. He won the John R. Wooden Award and the Naismith Award. He was also named the USBWA College Player of the Year. Not surprisingly, he went first overall in that year's NBA draft.
Like I said, FNAS was amazing during his final year in college. I honestly believed that the sky was the limit with him. Maybe he couldn't be the next Jordan, but I thought he could maybe be a better version of Dominique Wilkins. That didn't happen. Not even close. Don't get me wrong. He had one helluva career. He averaged a shade over 20 PPG over 11 NBA seasons. In fact, he ranks (yes I know this is a dead giveaway but whatever) 42nd all-time in points per game. That's right. All-time. He was named to two All-Star teams, and he won an NBA championship (although it was as a bench jockey).
Not too shabby, right? And yet when I think about FNAS, I can only think about what he didn't do. He never owned the league. Never even came close. He was never one of the top ten players in the Association. One year he ranked 16th in MVP Award Shares, so I guess you could argue that he was at least in the top twenty for a while. But, in my most humble opinion, that wasn't nearly good enough for someone with his talent.
Ultimately, I think the problem was attitude. The guy was a competitor. He wanted it. No question about it. He had some big games. In one matchup against the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls -- one of the great defensive teams of that decade -- he went shot-for-shot with Michael Jordan. Both men finished with 44 points, but MJ's team won 104-100. And that sort of defined his career: always coming up a little bit short. (It's probably worth noting that Scottie Pippen didn't play that night. Chances are, Pip wouldn't have let FNAS drop 44.)
Yeah, he wanted it, but not in the same manic, "I would step on your grandma's throat to beat you" kind of way that the great players do. FNAS wanted to be the best, but he just didn't have a bloodlust necessary to make it happen. Is that his fault, or is it a case of "either you have it or you don't"? We'll probably never know.
Taco Bell Jennifer
I have no idea what became of her. I called her once to check on her during the second semester of my freshman year, but nobody answered the phone and there seemingly was no answering machine. This was before Caller ID, so I doubt she was screening her calls. My guess is that, since she had dropped out of school to support Matt, she simply moved back home.
Cindy
Cindy eventually forgave me for leaving her dangling for a month after I decided to date Aimee instead of her. As Cindy put it, "How can I stay mad at you? You're my best friend."
A word of warning to men of the world: beware when a woman dubs you her best friend. In my experience, it almost always means the exact opposite of what you want it to mean. For instance, if you're completely head over heels for a girl and she calls you her best friend, she means "friend" in the most literal sense of the word. And your friendship is so valuable to her that she will never, under any circumstances, consider you anything more than that. On the other hand, if you're attached or have decided you absolutely don't want to date the girl for whatever reason, being named her best friend means she wants you and may be willing to do anything in her power to bend you to her will.
Anyway, Cindy and I remained friends. During the summer following my freshman year, Aimee and I got together and broke up and got together again and broke up again. Bad times. The end result was that I was single for most of the summer, and I ended up spending a lot of time with Cindy...which led to a little blowup with Aimee.
It was Fourth of July weekend and my mom was throwing a party at our new home. (She got remarried that summer and we moved into his house because he had a kickass in-ground pool.) Mom suggested I invite my friends, which is what I did. Including both Cindy and Aimee. I know that seems like madness, and it kind of was. But I thought I had it under control. Cindy was leaving for vacation the next day and could only stay until 1:00 p.m. because she had to back. Therefore, I told Aimee not to show up until 1:30 p.m. I figured that give me a perfectly safe half-hour window. What a sucker.
Cindy showed up around noon, by which time the usual suspects (Gauvin, Greg, Hornbuckle, Mikey/Statbuster, etc.) were already there. I greeted Cindy with a hug, at which time she told me, "Guess what? I packed last night, so I can stay for the whole party!"
Uh oh.
I barely had time to register that little nugget of brain lightning when Aimee rode up on her bike. Now, it's important to mention here that I had told everyone that it was a pool party. However, nobody showed up with bathing suits. Nobody, that is, except Aimee. And, since she figured she'd be getting right into the pool, her hair was tied up in a bun, she hadn't really put on any makeup, and she was wearing an old pair of athletic shorts and a huge t-shirt over her bathing suit.
Cindy, on the other hand, had dressed up and was in full makeup. This, of course, embarrassed Aimee to no end: her primary competitor for my attention was essentially showing her up not only in front of me, but in front of my entire hometown social group, all of whom were on the porch and watching with morbid curiosity.
Aimee was pissed. She dragged me into the garage and let me have it. "I can't believe you invited HER here when you knew I was coming! And nobody else is wearing a bathing suit! And I look like complete and total crap!" On and on. I got why she was upset, and under other circumstances I might have cut her a little slack. But repeatedly breaking up with me on a whim was one thing. Now she was screaming at me in front of my friends like I'd just eaten her puppy. No way could I let that go.
"You gave up the right to choose my friends," I said, "when you broke up with me. Again." And I had a few other choice words to say, after which she jumped back onto her bike and pedaled away in a huff.
When I returned to the porch, everybody took an unspoken vow of silence about what had just happened, but I could tell that Cindy felt that I had chosen her over Aimee this time. Which I kind of did.
After that, Cindy and I started semi-dating. I say "semi" because I refused to close the deal. We would hug, hold hands, wrestle around playfully, get in those little pre-foreplay tickle fights, etc., but every time her face hovered into the vicinity of mine, I pulled back. The bottom line was, in my mind, once I kissed Cindy, it was ON. I honestly wasn't sure I wanted it to be on. Sure, I'd spent most of my high school years wanting to date her, and she'd proved sweeter and more dependable than Aimee. But the spark was missing. And I was waiting for it to appear. The thing about sparks, though, is that they're either there or they're not.
So the summer passed. Aimee and I sort of got back together and then sort of broke up again, after which she told me she had no intention of having a boyfriend going into her sophomore year. She was in a sorority now, Delta Delta Delta, and she wanted to leave her options open. "Okay," I told her. "But know this: I'm not waiting around for you. I'm going to date around too. And trust me, I won't be single for long." Bold words, but I believed them.
Meanwhile, Cindy was still working on making her best friend her boyfriend. I actually had made a long-term date plan with her. Early in the summer, when Aimee and I had briefly gotten back together, she had convinced me to buy tickets to a concert featuring both Celine Dion and Michael Bolton. I know: gak. Love gives you The Dumb. Anyway, the concert got canceled and rescheduled for September, only Celine (thankfully) canceled and was replaced by Yanni (oh God no). Since I was stuck with the tickets anyway, I invited Cindy to the concert. She said yes without even thinking about it.
Leading up to that, I invited Cindy to my school for a day visit during my first full weekend back at school, the infamous Truth or Dare weekend. BadDave's memory of this was slightly askew, because I actually drove to Kokomo to pick her up and brought her back. We arrived right as Dave was leaving for Truth or Dare: Part II. Dave immediately liked her for whatever reason.
We had a nice, almost romantic day walking around campus and just hanging out. That night, we ended up back in my room, and we once again started wrestling and tickling and all those other little accidentally-on-purpose games that usually lead to something naughty. But once again, I pulled back. Cindy stood up and walked to the window. With her back to me, she said, "Do you think your roommate would mind if I spent the night?"
Whoa.
You have to understand, Cindy was a good girl. Like, God was probably her best friend more so than I was. The fact that she was suggesting, on her own, spending the night, was like a sucker punch to the nuts. And I realized in that very moment that I did not want to date Cindy. Not now, not ever. It just wasn't going to work. The only thing we really had in common was each other. We didn't like the same things. We didn't do the same things. And that wasn't going to change. In fact, those differences were only going to become more pronounced over time as we slowly matured into the people we were going to be. I had to end this.
"Well," I said, totally ignoring what she said, "I guess I should take you home now."
She didn't like that answer, but she complied. As we headed down the highway toward Kokomo, she broke what had turned into an uncomfortable silence. "I'm conflicted," she said.
"Huh? What do you mean?" Another word of warning men: if you don't want the answer to a question, do NOT ask it.
"Because," she continued, "at times, it feels like there are two sides to me: Cindy the friend...and Cindy the woman."
After missing a beat, I said, "So, how 'bout some music?" And I turned on the radio. We drove the rest of the way back to Kokomo in complete silence.
When the concert came around, I was dating Aimee again but didn't want to tell Cindy. Yeah, yeah, I should have learned my lesson. Only this time, it didn't really come back to bite me in the ass. Unless you count having to go to that concert. I tried to get out of it. I told Cindy I had an exam. She said she'd drive and I could study on the way. I told her I was sick. She said she'd take care of me. I offered to give her the tickets so she could take someone else. She said she wasn't going with anybody but me.
And we went. We had lawn seats, and I pulled a real superdick move: I laid out our blanket, laid down on it, and immediately fell asleep. I slept through the entire concert. Cindy got the hint. There was no romance in our future. Not together anyway.
But we remained friends. In fact, Cindy thought so highly of me that, when she got married two years later -- yep, she worked fast -- she demanded that I be in the wedding party. Eventually, I ended up being an usher. "I really wanted Scott to make you a groomsman, but he refused," she said. "And since you can't be a bridesmaid, an usher was the best I could do."
It was totally bizarre. I was single, owing to the fact that Aimee had recently broken up with me yet again. And here I was, ushering at the wedding of the girl whom I spent years wanting to date in high school...and whom I might have ended up marrying had things gone a little differently.
We kept in touch up until a few years after I had graduated. She even had me to her house for a family dinner once (by which time she already had two children). The last time I saw her was at Highland Park in Kokomo. She was there with her five -- yes, five -- kids and her husband. I was there with Gauvin. We chatted about what was going on in our lives and then we were left with...nothing. The years had stripped away pretty much everything we ever had in common...which, in the end, was only our shared experiences. That was the last time we ever spoke. I doubt we'll ever speak again.
Susan
Aimee and I broke up early into the second semester of my freshman year. As fate would have it, Susan became single about the same time. I figured this was my chance to make something happen. But, as was the case with women to that point in my life, I moved reeeeeaaal slow. But we were spending a lot of time together, and we even had become pledge parents in APO. Then came Easter weekend. My mom, who had just started dating a guy named Wally, had plans and actually told me not to come home for the holiday weekend. When Susan found out, she invited me to come home with her. I thought that was it. I thought I was in.
But when I showed up to her place for the ride to Indy, there was a guy in the front seat. It was this complete douchebag Australian guy who had recently moved into Susan's social group. His name was Stu. And he was apparently dating Susan.
Fuck.
To make matters worse, Susan and Stu were in the newly dating phase, which meant loads of PDA, and I was forced to watch. Temporarily. Because it was more than I could stand -- after all, I was still sort of reeling from getting dumped by Aimee, and now even my mom didn't have time for me -- I retreated to Susan's mom's guest room and spent most of the weekend reading The Big Three by Peter May. Meanwhile, Susan and Stu drank and partied and played cards with Susan's mom and brother. My hermit-like behavior earned me a reputation as stick-in-the-mud loser with Susan's family, and I can't blame them. Stu was the douche, but I was the one acting like a douche. Not my greatest moment.
After that weekend, Susan and I really didn't talk for the rest of the school year. I became a single pledge parent in Susan's absence, and our pledge daughter, Lisa, came to resent Susan. Which didn't matter, since Susan wasn't around, not even on initiation night.
Then, during the last week of school, Susan called me with news. She and Stu...were getting married. Apparently, Stu was having Green Card problems and would be sent back to Australia if he didn't get married. So Susan had agreed to tie the knot. I went apeshit and told her she was acting like a crazy person. She said I was being rude and asked me to be happy for her. I said no way. We ended things on a bad note and I honestly figured I'd never hear from her again.
Then came the Sunday night of the first full weekend of my sophomore year. This was two nights after Truth or Dare and one night after Cindy the Woman. BadDave and I were chilling in our dorm room when the phone rang. It was Susan.
Since she had been the bigger person and called me, I decided to be nice about her marriage to Stu. "So, how's married life?"
"Oh, Stu and I didn't get married," she said.
"What?! Why not?"
"Long story short, he was an asshole and I really shouldn't have been marrying him anyway," she said. "So we broke up and he went back to Australia."
"Wow. That's...news." It was all I had.
"So," she said, "Are you dating anybody?"
"No," I replied. "Aimee and I got back together over the summer, but we broke up again."
"Cool. You wanna come over to my place?"
And of course I did. I went over. We drank a few beers (which I never did at that time...only for Susan). She told me the full story about her breakup with Stu, which I won't bore you with since it's pretty boring. It got late, and she said she was tired. She walked me down to my car. I suggested we go on a date the next Friday, that I'd take her out to dinner. She smiled this special little smile and said yes. Her face floated up to mine...and I didn't kiss her. Why? Because, frankly, I wasn't really sure that she wanted me to. Ultimately, Aimee was my only real dating experience, and I didn't have the confidence in myself to take what I wanted. But I figured that, if things went well on Friday, we might end up doing more than kiss.
When I got back to the dorm, I was pretty high on myself. On Friday, I had been dirty-danced naked by two chicks, both of whom I'd made out with and one of whom I had gotten touchy-feely with. On Saturday, Cindy basically threw herself at me. And on Sunday, a girl I had crushed on for the entirety of my freshman year had agreed to go on a date with me. I felt like the complete and absolute shit.
Then, late that Sunday night, Aimee called, inviting me to Indy to hang out with her and some friends. And I went. And things happened. I went back to see her again on Wednesday. And things happened again. So, just like that, Aimee and I were seemingly back together. Not that we openly agreed on it, but, well, I had to assume.
On Thursday night, I called Susan and canceled our date. I explained that Aimee and I had gotten back together, so I couldn't take her out. She said it was fine, but I could tell it wasn't.
It didn't put a damper on our friendship, though. We still hung out a lot. We went to APO parties together. She even went to an APO party with me and Aimee, who was in APO at Butler and wanted to find out what our chapter was all about. Boy, that was awkward. Once again, I showed an inability to understand that girls who are sweet on the same guy shouldn't be in around each other.
During my junior year, Aimee and I broke up yet again. Unfortunately, Susan was dating this schmuck named Dave. (Not BadDave.) Fortunately for me, he was enough of a schmuck that they broke up during the second semester. It was my time to move in. So one night, after Susan had aced a really difficult Organic Chemistry exam, I took her out to celebrate. We hit all the campus bars and were having a really great time. I really felt like things were going in my favor until Byron showed up. Byron was in APO with us. He was kind of an enigma. He was black and powerfully built. He kind of looked like a pro athlete. But he had a high-pitched voice and was the biggest, most socially awkward nerd you're ever likely to meet.
He was out at the bars by himself and looking for someone to hang with. Susan was always one to pick up strays, animals and people alike. So she adopted Byron, who proceeded to follow us around from bar to bar. I was livid. So much so that I ended up punching a wall in the bathroom of Kazoos (which, sadly, no longer exists) and hurting my hand. We closed out the bars. Susan lived in an off-campus apartment, and I said I'd walk her home.
"I'll go with you guys," Byron said, "then you and I can walk back to the dorms together, Matt."
Fuuuuuuuuck.
So we end up back at Susan's place, where Susan introduced us to her fish. I couldn't even pretend to be interested, so I announced I was leaving.
Susan said, "Nooooo, don't go yet." So I stayed, but I was so pissed Byron had cockblocked me that I just stood there, sulking, while they chatted in the near darkness. (Susan didn't turn on the lights because she didn't want to bother her roommate.)
Byron announced that he had to use the bathroom before we headed to the dorms. As soon as the bathroom door closed, Susan gave me this look, walked up to me, and said, "Is this what you've been waiting for?" That statement immediately trumped Aimee's "You don't have to sleep on the floor" as the sexiest thing anybody had ever said to me.
Then we started kissing like crazy until Byron came back out of the restroom. "Well, you ready to go?" he asked.
"Wait," she said, "I have to show Matt something in my room."
As we walked into her room, I flipped on the lights. She closed the door, smiled at me, then turned the lights back off. Then she knocked me down and we started kissing and grabbing in the dark. I don't know how much time passed, but things came to an abrupt halt when Susan, seemingly out of nowhere, said, "We shouldn't be doing this. You're just going to hurt me."
"What?" I was totally confused. "I'm not going to hurt you."
"Yeah," she said. "You are. We should stop."
So we stopped. I tucked her in, kissed her lightly on the lips, and left the room closing the door behind me.
Byron was long gone. I walked the long, long walk back to my dorm in a stupor. By some strange twist of fate, I walked up to the building just as BadDave was getting dropped off by someone. I don't remember who dropped him off, or what he had been doing. I just didn't care.
BadDave knew something was up. "Dude," he said, "you okay?"
"Yeah, fine. Just tired." It sounded like a reasonable excuse. It was, after all, past 4 a.m.
If things had ended a little differently, I would have told BadDave everything. But I was upset and unsettled. Had Susan and I taken The Next Step, or had things gotten worse between us? I had no idea. So, rather than telling BadDave the story, I went to bed without a word.
Susan avoided me for a few days. She claimed she was sick. I didn't believe her. I passed through those days in a state of heightened anxiety. I was terrified that I had ruined something special. When we finally got together, Susan was as friendly as ever. With an emphasis on the "friend" part. And despite furious efforts on my part, she didn't want to talk about or even acknowledge what had happened. But I wasn't prepared to go down without a fight.
We went out for dinner the next week (she insisted on paying for her half...a bad sign). She had driven, and as she dropped me off at my dorm, I said, "Look, Susan, I know you don't want to talk about what happened a while back, but I think it's pretty obvious we're attracted to each other. We've been close for years. We're both single. I think we should date."
"I don't think that's a good idea," she said. And nothing I could say that night changed her mind. But still I was determined.
A week or so later, we were out at the bars with her roommate, Laurel. At one point, while Susan was in the bathroom, I asked Laurel to tell me whether she thought I had a shot at dating Susan. "I don't know," Laurel said, "you guys are pretty close. Maybe. I don't know." Not exactly a stirring endorsement.
The bar we were in was, as always, backed body-to-body. And although it usually took people forever to return from the bathroom, Susan had been gone way too long. I went looking for her and found her talking to some guy I'd never seen before. I walked up to them.
"Everything okay?" I asked.
"Yeah," Susan said, "This is Torrey."
"Hey man," Torrey said, sticking out his hand for a shake.
Susan spent the rest of the night standing there talking to him. Even when the bar closed and they were kicking people out, they stood there just talking and talking. As we walked out, I said, "Well, I'll walk you girls home."
"No, that's okay," Susan said. "I think Torrey's going to come back to my place for a while."
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
Just like that, Susan was in a relationship again. I was beyond crushed.
The thing was, Torrey graduated at the end of that semester, after which he moved to Seattle. I figured that was a good thing. After all, long distance relationships rarely last. But it turned out that most definitely was NOT a good thing, because Susan had decided to move to Seattle too. Not until after the first semester of the next school year, though. She planned to enroll in pharmacy school in Seattle, but she had to get some of her core requirements out of the way first. Suddenly, I had a deadline.
Aimee and I got back together briefly near the end of the school year, but she broke up with me yet again and started dating some foreign exchange student. She then spent the summer in Mexico...where this guy happened to be from. I spent the summer in Kokomo working for a furniture moving company, hanging out with my friends (including Dave D., who had just returned from the army), and spending my weekends with Susan. Usually I'd drive down to Indy on Friday night, pick her up, then drive to the town our college was in, where we would party and then stay with her roommate (who was going to summer school). Several times there was some semi-sparkage, but I didn't want to put the moves on Susan while she and Torrey were still a couple.
Aimee returned at the end of the summer and we once again got back together briefly. In fact, she came to my school for the first full weekend and stayed with me. I was now an R.A. in the school's nicest dorm, so my room was pretty sweet. Oddly enough, Brett was visiting from Phoenix the same weekend. In one of the truly odd experiences of my life, Aimee, Brett, Susan and I went out dancing together. Brett ended up crashing at Susan's place while Aimee and I went back to mine.
Aimee spent that semester as an exchange student in Washington D.C., so we broke up again and I turned my attention to Susan. We slowly eased into...something. I don't know what it was. It had all the qualities of dating, but we never talked about it and she was still officially with Torrey. I wanted to have a conversation about it, but I was afraid that if I brought it up I would kill this special thing that was developing between us. So stupid. I should have spilled my guts. But I didn't know that at the time.
Susan visited Torrey over Fall Break, so I went to D.C. to see Aimee. It wasn't a good trip. More on that in Aimee's section.
As the semester progressed, the non-relationship Susan and I had got more and more intense. But still I remained silent, even as she prepared to move to Seattle. She had already been accepted into a PharmD program. So it was over, then. She was going to leave me.
One cold Decemeber night after Finals, we were sitting in her living room talking about nothing. Finally, I said, "Susan, don't go. Please, don't move to Seattle. I'm in love with you and I don't want you to go. I'm begging you. Don't move to Seattle."
We had been talking by candlelight, and it was so dark I could barely see her face. "Are you serious?" she asked very, very quietly.
"Yes."
After a brief silence, she said, "Why did you wait until now to tell me that? After I'd already gotten accepted into pharmacy school, after I'd already made plans to move?"
"Would it have changed anything?" I asked.
"Probably," she said.
Then we finally talked. Not about everything, but about enough. It all went back to the "You're just going to hurt me" comment she had made years ago. She believed in her heart that if she started dating me, I would break up with her the second Aimee came back into my life. She was completely and totally wrong about that, but I have to admit, it was a reasonable assumption on her part, considering how often Aimee and I broke up and got back together.
"Why did you wait until now to tell me that?" I said.
"Would it have changed anything?" she asked.
"Probably," I said.
And so, after a few more bittersweet nights together, Susan moved to Seattle. It hurt me in a way I hadn't hurt since the first time Aimee and I had broken up. It might even have been worse, because now Susan was effectively gone forever...and it was in large part my fault. If only I had said something.
The first weekend back at school, I went on a drinking binge. My buddy Jeremy, who had recently come out of the closet, had a couple girl friends visiting from Kentucky. I decided I was going to have sex with one of them. The cold was horrific that Saturday night. We're talking -15 wind chill. But, being idiot college students, we made the mile walk to the campus bars without coats, because you didn't want to be wearing a coat in hot bar.
Jeremy's friends: one was hot and a bit of a prude, one was barely average and kind of a slut. Obviously I went after the slut. A few hours in, we were both tanked and making out on a dance floor. This girl, she kissed with her teeth. It was the weirdest thing. It was like she was trying to eat my mouth. At one point, she whispered in my ear, "When we get back to your room, I'm going to give you the best blowjob ever." I shivered at the thought. If her blowjobs were anything like her kisses, I was going to wake up a eunuch.
When the bars closed, we had to make that long walk back to the dorm in subzero temperatures, only this time we were soaked with sweat. Halfway back, I said, "Screw this" and literally sprinted back to the dorm without them. I did, however, wait for them in the lobby. Jeremy was an R.A. on the fourth floor and I was an R.A. on the eighth floor. The slut was pretty much holding me up on the elevator trip, because I was blitzed out of my mind.
When the elevator stopped at the fourth floor, the slut said, "I'm going to take Matt up to his room."
"Oh no you're not," Jeremy said. "C'mon, Matt, let's go."
When we walked into my room, I slurred, "Fucksh you, Jehremy, You cosht me a blowed job."
"No," he replied, "I kept you from doing something you'll regret tomorrow. Now...bed or bathroom."
I considered the question. "Bathroom."
So Jeremy sat me by the toilet and leaned my head on the seat, which is how I woke up the next morning. Then I began the process of pulling my shit back together.
Susan and I remained friends. She eventually broke up with Torrey, who was an abusive asshole. She also eventually earned her PharmD. She still lives in Seattle, where she has a young son named Gabriel whom she adores. I visited in Seattle a year or so after I graduated. We also saw each other a few times when she was visiting family in Indiana. We drift out of touch, and every four or five years I hear from her again out of the blue. Maybe it'll always be that way. Maybe it won't.
Epilogue: Part 3
Labels: college stories, Livin' Large
Further reading: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. Also check out the official Livin' Large FAQ, Cast List, Flow Chart 1.0, and Flow Chart 2.0.
The Epilogue to Livin' Large became so epic in size that I'm posting it in installments. The next installment will be posted (probably) on Monday. Today's installment covers some of the minor characters (minor to this story, anyway.). Refer to the Cast List or Flow Charts for quick references.
Chad
Chad remained the dorm manager for the next few years, but he eventually resigned and started working for the school's alumni association. Ostensibly, Chad left the dorm of his own free will. However, BadDave theorizes that he was gently pushed out the door as part of a housecleaning effort associated with a murder that was committed in that dorm during the fall semester of my fourth year. (At that time, I was working as an R.A. at another dorm.) According to BadDave, it wasn't anything personal against Chad...just a way to wipe the slate clean.
While he was still manager, Chad continued to show favoritism toward student athletes. I know, shocker, huh? This directly affected me only once. I was working at the food service one morning when the Future NFL Football Player came through for some breakfast. And by "some" I mean "heaping piles of it." At that time, portion sizes were set and servers were strictly forbidden to give out extra food. Naturally, Future NFL Football Player demanded more than his fair share. Bad news for him. I was done being browbeaten by student athletes, so I refused his "request." He started cursing at me (loudly) and threatened (even more loudly) to do me serious bodily harm if I didn't give him some extra scrambled eggs. (Should anyone be assaulted for rubbery dorm food? I think not.) Again I refused. Then he started pounding his huge, meaty fists on the counter. Plates went flying. It looked like things were about to get ugly when Chad walked in from his office, which was a very short distance from the kitchen.
"What's going on here?" Chad asked.
"He's asking for extra servings," I replied.
"Give it to him," Chad said.
"But Chad, I'm not supposed to..."
"Give it to him, Matt," Chad said.
And so Future NFL Football Player got what he wanted, which really pissed me off, even more so because of everything that had happened with Mat. But I got my revenge. See, he also liked to toast a bagel every day. His habit was to stick the bagel into the toaster, walk through the food line, go out into the cafeteria to get a table and pour a few bowls of cereal, and then return for his now toasted bagel. Well, if I was working that morning or happened to be at breakfast, I would wait for him to go into the cafeteria and then I'd steal his bagel. I didn't eat it...I just threw it away. He'd come in, discover the bagel was gone (he usually assumed someone else was eating it), and then curse up a storm. Then he'd pop in another bagel and go back into the cafeteria. And I'd steal his bagel again. Then he'd come back to find it gone again, get pissed, put in another bagel, then go back out into the cafeteria. And I'd steal his bagel yet again. That would sometimes go on for six or seven bagels, morning after morning, for months. He never caught on.
There's a reason why they say football players are dumb.
The dorm
My dorm was, to put it frankly, a meat party of sadly epic proportions. Nothing but sausage as far as the eye could see. It smelled like dirty socks. It was kind of dreary. During my freshman year, there weren't even curtains on the shower stalls, which meant that all the sausages caught a glimpse of each other's sausage when they were stumbling around in the morning looking for a shower. There was no air conditioning, so the place was freaky hot at the beginning of the school year. Basically, it was a dump.
But I came to love it.
For my fourth and fifth years, I worked as an R.A. and then as the Staff Resident (the boss of the R.A.'s) at my school's best dorm. (Pure luck of the draw there.) The place was a paradise in comparison, and it had girls, which was a major bonus (one I definitely used to my advantage). But I still had a special place in my heart for my old dorm. I always walk by it when I visit the school for football games or whatever. For the first few years after I graduated, I'd even walk around inside just to soak in the memories (while holding my breath against the dirty sock smell). But times change. Soon they started locking all the doors, so you could only get in with a key card. Sure, I could have gone in the front door, but that's what GUESTS do. I still felt like I was a resident.
Sometime last year, I got an alumni newsletter that informed me that the dorm was now co-ed. Sure, I loved living in a co-ed dorm my last two years, but it felt wrong somehow that my old sausage factory now let the opposite sex live there. I called BadDave to complain, but he was indifferent (or at least pretended to be). He told me to get over it. I still haven't. That place still feels like my home away from home, and I still think of room 329 on NE3 as MY room.
The food service
Yeah, I know. Technically this isn't a "character." But it got brought up during the story and the comments...and I have a few things to say about it.
I worked at that dorm's food service for every one of the five years I went to college. I continued working there for two reasons. First, I was so well-liked by the women who managed the kitchen that I was allowed to work without a schedule. In other words, I could just come in an work whenever I felt like it. (And, more importantly, NOT work whenever I wanted.) That's a pretty sweet deal for a college student. Second, I kept getting raises. My pay went up every semester until I was making close to $8 an hour for just showing up to swipe cards or dish out food. Talk about easy money.
This worked in part because the managers were so desperate for help. When I first started going to college, students had to work if they wanted money. While I was there, that started to change. Parents either handed their kids fistfuls of cash or the kids got credit cards. (That was the beginning of the credit boom. Prior to that, getting a credit card required actual liquid assets.) Either way, many students simply stopped working. And suddenly, the food service didn't have enough employees to operate. They started bringing in temp workers and even high school students just to keep things going. This leads me to two of my favorite food service stories.
The first involves a girl named Keehna. She was a 16-year-old cutie from a nearby high school who needed the job. She was so sweet and innocent that I just new something bad was going to happen. Sure enough, she was quickly taken advantage of (read that: boned into quivering submission) by some schmuck freshman who followed up his conquest by (predictably) avoiding her completely. Because I was still a magnet for these stupid situations, Keehna came to me for advice. Repeatedly. (Yes, I could easily have had her on the rebound, but no, I did not.) One night while BadDave and I were watching the NBA on TNT, she called to whine some more. I needed to get her off the phone post hasty.
"Why," she moaned, "would he sleep with me and then not even want to talk to me? I don't get it."
Normally I would have tried to explain the situation in detail, but the Pacers were playing the Knicks. "It's like this, Keena," I said. "To men, sex is like...candy. It sure is great while you're eating it, but once you're done, you just want to forget about it until the next time you want candy."
She started crying even as BadDave began rolling all over the floor in fits of laughter. For the next several years, whenever somebody brought up a sex-themed question, Dave would look at me and say, in a squeaky voice, "It's like caaaaaandy."
The second story goes like this. It was my birthday weekend during my fourth year. Aimee and I had just started dating again for like the zillionth time and she had actually come to me for a change. For some boneheaded reason, I had agreed to cover a buddy's shift on Saturday morning even though I knew Aimee was visiting and that we'd be celebrating something fierce. I have no idea what I was thinking. Now, employees were usually expected to show up before the meal they were working so they could eat beforehand. For obvious reasons, I opted to skip breakfast and show up at the start of the meal. While I was in the shower (about 10 minutes before the meal was supposed to begin), the phone started ringing off the hook. Over and over. Of course, I couldn't do anything about it because I was in the shower. When I got out, I was pissed because I knew it was this cruddy little high school student who had been made a "waiter captain" and put in charge of weekend breakfasts. So when the phone started ringing yet again, I picked it up and barked out "Hello?" in my meanest-sounding voice
"Hi, this is..."
"I know who it is," I said. "And I know why you're calling."
"Oh, well..."
"Look, there's something we need to get straightened out here," I continued. "Think of my phone like the Bat Phone. Only Commissioner Gordan is allowed to call the Bat Phone. Are YOU Commissioner Gordon?"
"Wh...wha..."
"ARE YOU?"
"No," he squeaked.
"Then do NOT call the Bat Phone. Got it?"
"Yes."
"Good." Then I hung up.
The best part is, even though I was never a Batman fan, I had an old Batman t-shirt (plain black with the Bat symbol on the front), and I wore it into work under my food service polo. When I passed the poor kid on my way into the cafeteria, I dramatically opened the polo to reveal the Batman shirt. "Remember," I said, "You are NOT Commission Gordan."
Dorky as all hell? Yup. But I still love that story.
Greg -- In his own words
Okay, before I continue on, let me clear a couple of Mr. Bawful’s misconceptions here.
1. Contrary to what he believes, people from Kokomo don’t just go to Meijer and Wal-Mart, or sit around singing country songs and talking about Carhartts all weekend. I happen to enjoy the convenience of small town living, coupled with its good location and ease of going to Indy or Ft. Wayne if need be. I actually enjoy living here, and am grateful to have found good paying career (that interestingly enough doesn’t involve either of Auto Manufacturers who have factories here)
2. Anybody who thinks that Kokomo smells bad has never spent much time in New York City in July or August. THAT is an olfactory abomination that takes three trips through the wash to get rid of.
3. I don’t recall greeting Bawful as a “conquering hero” upon his return from college. If nothing else, the rest of us were secretly hoping that four months away would have quelled the Aimee-drama. (Editor's note: Aimee-drama?! This from the same guy who ditched a major "leaving for the army immediately after high school graduation" party I threw for one of his best high school buds because he was "all fucked up" about a goth chick named Becky who I'm not sure ever actually talked to him after high school? As always, I'm not sayin'...I'm just sayin'.)
Opinions? Yes, I certainly had opinions about the whole un-sordid, and decidedly G-Rated Bawful, Aimee, Cindy triangle. However, it honestly wasn’t until reading all of this that I now know exactly WHAT was going on. All the rest of us knew was that Bawful was frequently absent from hanging out because he had to go do “something” with “somebody”. In fact, saying “I’ve got…umm…something…I have to go do” became a well-played and frequently used punch-line for the rest of us, unbeknownst to Bawful. (Editor's note: Actually, I knew that because during our senior year in high school, Greg usually greeted me by saying, and I quote, "Where were ya, man? Oh, wait, let me guess, you were off doing 'something' with 'someone,' right?")
Not having the money to go away to school, I had decided to stay in town and go to the local campus of I.U. to get a degree in History (don’t ask me what I was going to do with it…I had no idea). My third semester there, I had to take a computer class. At that point, I knew nothing of computers. However, I managed at ace the class with very minimal effort on my part. The instructor of the class told me that maybe I should look into that as a possible career choice, so I transferred to IVY Tech which had a more robust Computer Programming schedule than I.U. was able to offer, and due to my addiction to old cars, I still didn’t have the money to go away to school (awwwww, no “conquering hero” return for me (snicker)).
So I completed my A.A.S. through IVY Tech in 1999, and within a few months was offered a position with a Global Leader In Information Technology via a former instructor of mine who also worked there. Now, as much as I do enjoy Kokomo, (I wasn’t born here, so maybe that’s why I don’t view this town with the same jaded eyes as Bawful), I had sent résumés all over the state, even as far away as Arizona hoping to get a career going. It was just dumb luck that I landed a job here in Kokomo. (Editor's note: Statbuster and I refer to Kokomo as "Gilligan's Island" for a reason...because nobody every escapes the island. Except me. And him. Look, it's funny, trust me.)
Oh, there are plenty of stories built up for the last 15 on my end. But this is Bawful’s blog, so we’ll keep the focus on his embarrassment. Seriously, Bawful, when a half-naked girl offers you a beer while sitting on your lap…You Say YES!!!!!!!
Gauvin
After we graduated high school, Gauvin began an epic journey aimless wandering. He worked at McDonald's. He worked at Walmart. He became an electrician's apprentice. He joined the army and was discharged after about a year and a half of service. He worked at a coffee shop. He worked at a bar. He taught himself ot play the guitar, the harmonica, and the Irish pan flute. He learned Japanese. He eventually started going to college in Indianapolis, where his majors vascillated from mathematics to art to philosophy. He eventually graduated with a degree in Philosophy and quickly found out...you can't really get a job with a degree in Philosophy. He futzed around for a few years living the life of a bohemian poet (his words, not mine) and then went back to school for nursing. He graduated in June of 2008 and finally became a contributing member of society. It only took him 15 years to do it.
His biggest impact on the rest of my college career was more about what he didn't do. For most of my first semester, Gauvin insisted that he was planning to join me at my college the next Fall and that we would be roommates. He wasn't really doing anything to back that up, but I accepted it because he was my friend...and because I was 18 years old and an idiot.
My dorm required returning students to turn in their housing request forms for the next year about midway through the Spring semester. I kept bugging Gauvin about it -- I needed him to fill out my roommate form -- and he kept putting me off. The forms were due on a Monday, so I made a trip to Kokomo the weekend before so I could get Gauvin's forms. That's when he told me that he wasn't going to college that fall. He was joining the army instead. Gauvin told me this on Sunday afternoon. That left me with a day to find a roommate for sophomore year.
Nathan
Nathan enjoyed having a single room that second semester, so much so that he signed up for a single room over at the Quad for his fourth and final year. That fact bummed me out, because I asked him to be my roommate when Gauvin bailed on me. And by "asked" I mean "practically begged." The last thing I wanted was to end up with another Mat. Despite my constant harping, Nathan stuck to his guns and refused to room with me. That led to two things: 1) me rooming with BadDave and 2) Nathan's unhappy exile.
See, having a single in a hallway full of friends and people he knew was much more fun than being the only senior in a hallway full of obnoxious freshmen. (The Quad at that time was, pretty much exclusively, a teenage sausage fest.) Nathan could hardly stand it. His solution? He practically moved in with me and BadDave. Sure, he slept in his room at the Quad...but he spent the rest of his free time sitting on a beanbag in our room. Hell, he spent more time there than I did.
Of course, it worked out pretty well for me. My car broke down that year, which meant I had no way to visit Aimee. Enter Nathan. He had a car and nowhere to go. As long as I kept his gas tank filled, I got to use his car almost every weekend. Meanwhile, he semi-lived in my room and got constant access to my brand new computer. Win-win.
There are plenty of funny Nathan stories from that year, like the time he (thanks to BadDave's shenanigans) accidentally shot me in the ass with a potato gun. But my favorite story is one of revenge. Nathan decided to prank me one night, so he programmed my computer to boot up in the middle of the night and play the Star Wars Cantina song at full blast. Ha. Ha. Ha.
I didn't respond immediately. Remember: Revenge really is a dish best served cold. A few weeks later, when Nathan was hosting a roleplaying night in a lounge at the Quad, I asked to borrow his room key so I could use his phone to call Aimee...a totally plausible story. But what I did instead was hijack all of his socks and underwear. Half of them of crammed in his refrigerator, and the other half I tacked to bulletin boards across the Quad. Nathan didn't realize anything was amiss until the next morning...
To his credit, he realized his mistake as soon as he opened his underwear drawer. Amusingly enough, he checked the fridge immediately. I did not intend this, but in stuffing his undies and socks in there, I had inadvertently spilled his milk and orange juice. So not only were his items soiled, there was a huge puddle of sticky gunk under his fridge. Poor Nathan had to spend the next hour or so cleaning up that mess and tracking down the rest of his jockeys.
Nathan graduated and then went to Sweden to attend a Bible school. He didn't really need to learn anything more about the Bible, of course. He went to find a wife. Which he did. But not before this story happened...which I blogged about years ago:
BadDave -- My side of the story
Looking ahead to my sophomore year, I knew one thing with dread and absolute certainty: I did NOT want another Mat situation. Therefore I needed to find a roommate up front. Originally, that roommate was supposed to be Gauvin. However, the day before housing contracts were due during the Spring semester, Gauvin told me he wasn't going to school the next year. He was joining the army.
I was screwed.
I spent the next day asking every guy I knew to room with me, but everybody already had their plans locked up. My only hope was that Nathan would give up on trying for a single room. I was in his room practically begging when Dave walked in.
"Dave, do you have a roommate for next year?" I asked.
"No," he said.
"Be my roommate?"
"Sure," he said.
And that's how BadDave became my best friend. That's how it started, anyway. The friendship is too epic for me to summarize here. But here's his take:
BadDave -- His side of the story story
So Bawful will tell you in the epilogue that he asked me to room, but in my roommate revisionist version *I* asked him. But whatever. The fates aligned, and the long-haired, ex-band slacker and the straight-a, straight arrow goodie became roomies. And at first, it was awkward. My first roommate was The Garrison, and my second was a friend from home.
He was (and is) a great guy, but we were NOT meant to be roommates. So I was really wanting this to work, but expecting it to fail. Hell, Bawful had a single second semester; of course I was going to be worse than that.
However, we both played it cool and stayed nicey-nice, and four things happened to solidify our status from roommate to full-fledged bromance.
1. Intramurals. Bawful and I are pretty devoted team players; we pass the ball, play defense, and basically are fine sharing glory. Our teammates, however, didn't. We had our share of complete non-athletes, but we had a few guys that thought they were the cat's ass. Our most loathed teammates were Joe and Dean. Joe was fairly athletic, but played basketball like Larry Hughes. He never saw a shot he didn't like, and he didn't even let the ground touch the ball. Dean was huge -- 6'7". He played like he as 5'11". A total wimp down low, lazy rebounder, and he took bullshit shots from the outside. Bawful and I found kinship in their douchbaggery. Also, I never did any basketball when we met. As we roomed, I played a lot more, and got pretty good. I was one of the best defenders around, but I had and still have a block outside of 18 feet. It must be mental, but anyways, I appreciated Bawful's efforts into turning me from a human slug to a human slug that occasionally moved around.
2. Nathan. We've talked about him, but in short he was a good friend with lots of quirks that sometimes sent us running.
3. NBA in the 90s. It was a golden age. The Pacers were good. Rivalries were strong. There was post play. And most significantly, TBS and TNT had games, sometimes double headers, Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays! Add on network games on Sundays (and Saturdays after NFL season) and we were in heaven. Lots of nachos and salsa from our hall's convenience store were had. Then we'd follow those up with NBA Live '98.
4. Truth-or-dare night (how middle-school, eh?) and Cindy the Woman. In short, we both had an interesting night with some people, and it's an experience that definitely broke the ice.
If this sounds like a love story, well, it is. I can own that. We roomed together for two years, and we've agreed that they are probably the best years of our lives. Ever day was just freaking fun. Ahhh, college. Over those two years, I taught Matt that the honor's program wasn't worth the effort and that a B was OK. He taught me that I did need to go to class, and graduating under a 2.0 GPA is not good for anything. We were both involved in the hall, largely because Brett was pretty cool and we had good times there. So, after those two years we each went on to be RAs, but in different halls. We both had a great experience, but it put a huge dent in our time together; being on duty 4 nights per week each meant that the bromance was certainly limited.
Right after college, I got married. I know Bawful still hasn't forgiven me, and sometimes I agree. I love the fam and all, but it's reasonable to regret what kind of shenanigans we could have had as heterosexual life partners. Oh well. My wife went to grad school and I made money in the wonderful world of retail management. And we got our first puppy.
By wonderful I mean hellacious. And by retail management I mean car rental. Are you feeling it Evil? Is that a YES?! Long story short, I did what every first graduate does -- I busted my ass for over 70 hours a week for the potential to make a better position, got some promotions only to realize later that my job sucked, screwed people, and didn't pay enough for my work. My wife graduated, and then I worked in logistics for an auto manufacturer. Interesting job, but totally Lumberesque in monotony and Chotchky's in pay.
I finally got a job doing the last think I liked -- in student affairs.
Basically, I now manage RAs and life in residence halls. Working for colleges is much better than the real world, even if students and parents are ridiculous. It's fun, different every day, and occasionally challenging. My wife and I spawned twice; we have an eight-year-old boy and a 6-month old daughter. To further my career, I am now in Scranton, PA (sorry, no Dwight Schrute here). My puppy just died of liver cancer, and that's officially brought life down for a while. She was the best dog ever, and if you're wondering why I'm mentioning it here, you don't live with a dog.
Editor's note: I have a couple things to add to this. First, Truth or Dare story has become roommate legend. It led to me (at that time still a virgin) getting stripped Dirty Dancing style by two girls and to BadDave totally swiping the girl Nathan was after. The game was so epic that it ended one night and continued the next. I was absent (on a date with Cindy the Woman) the second night, but BadDave to this day insists he received a four-hour French lesson from Nathan's would-be girlfriend. I'll let him field questions about that one...but if prompted I might (stress on "might") give details on the first night in the comments.
Anyway, BadDave forgot to mention one key moment in our bromance. It happened near the end of our first year living together. We had gotten closer, but we still hadn't really bonded. Then we both came down with a crippling case of the flu. I have never gotten the flu that badly. We were bed-ridden for almost three days. We literally spent those three days across from each other, stewing in our own foul gasses. On the third day, we had an interview for a summer job at the on campus apartments. We almost literally crawled to the interview together. The apartment manager consented to interview us together. He asked us all sorts of questions, which I can only assume we answered despite our delirium. Anyway, at the end of the interview, the apartment manager said, and I quote, "Well, boys, I like you. I really do. And I'd love to give you a job. I really would. But the problem is, we've already filled all the summer jobs, so I just don't have any openings for you. I'm really sorry."
Dave and I were stunned, but we got up and shook his hand.
"Okay then," the apartment manager said as we were walking out, "I'll see you boys on [whatever the starting date was supposed to be]." Then he closed his office door.
"Wait," Dave said. "I thought he said he didn't have any jobs left."
"He did," I confirmed.
"So why does he want us to show up on the first day of work?" Dave asked.
"Dunno," I replied. "I guess we'll just show up and see what happens."
Which is exactly what we did. Turns out he had hired us, although I'm not sure he realized that. For some reason, those three days of flu-ridden horror combined with the bizarre job interview caused a subtle shift in our friendship. We've pretty much been best friends ever since.
Brett -- In his own words
What the hell I've doing since graduating [college name deleted] in '96?
Its hard to believe that its been over 12 years since I left [college name deleted] (for the first time). I graduated in 1996 without a job -- and frankly I was scared. I had what seemed like big money in debt hanging over my head post graduation. I had an opportunity to live in Japan from a professor in Asian Studies whom I'd befriended but the pragmatic path of economics called me more convincingly than the path than adventure. I worked for my Uncle remodeling houses for a few months while I cold-called companies for job opportunities until I got an offer from Intel Corporation in Phoenix, AZ.
(Editor's note: I had no idea how bad Brett's financial situation was...but I should have. One night we met up in Indianapolis for beers. He pulled out a couple $20 cigars that he said he'd been saving for a night out with friends. Neither of us had a cigar cutter, so he told me to just bite off the tip. I'd never done that before, and I ended up mangling a cigar that had been purchased with the last excess cash Brett had to his name. He was so pissed he swiped the cigar out of my hand and threw it in the street with a growl. I guess you'd have to know Brett to understand how out of character that was for him...I really thought he was going to hit me. Makes sense. I'd just flushed away $20 he could have used to, I don't know, eat or something.)
With Intel, I ran a production line pumping out computer chips for about three years until I got the Jones for school again. Chad [last name deleted], at [dorm name deleted] offered me my Counselor job back -- so I headed to [college name deleted]'s MBA program. After two years of torture, [college name delete] gave me my masters and I landed a job with Arthur Andersen Consulting, in Chicago. For context, this was post tech-bubble and post-9/11; the job market was not good. Arthur Andersen put off my start date for 3 months so I spent a month in Boulder, Colorado riding the Rocky Mountains and 2 months as a bike messenger in Chicago.
(Editor's note: Brett made one mistake here: 9/11 happened after he got that job. He was working downtown on 9/11. We were two of the only people in the Chicago metro area that didn't flee like rats escaping a sinking ship after the terrorist attacks. We met for lunch that day and wandered the deserted streets. It was like something out of a post-apocalyptic zombie movie. Nobody was around, nothing was open. We eventually found a waitress who was closing a diner. She fried us a couple hamburgers and then split. Then it felt like we were the last two people alive. It was weird.)
I started with AA and spent a year helping clients around the Midwest until the Enron scandal. For those that did not follow the scandal. it put both Enron and Arthur Andersen (its auditor) out of business.
(I was freakin' thrilled when Brett moved to Chicago, and it killed me when he had to leave. We had some good times. Kickin' back shots while listening to the doors, riding our bikes around Chicago, drinking beer every day after work at the Berghoff. That fucking Enron scandal didn't only help blow the economy to hell, it effectively robbed me of one of my closest friends. I've only seen Brett a couple times since then.)
Subsequently, I was on the job market again. I landed a job, through some college connections, with United Technologies. I spent four year working with UT helping them improve HR processes out of Harford, CT. I was lucky to working Mexico, Norway, and Singapore during that time. In the end, I missed the lifestyle of consulting. I left UT and started consulting again with IBM. Its been almost five years with IBM where I've focused primarily on ERP implementation (mostly SAP). I've been fortunate to live and work in a few different countries and have totally loved every second. My time at [college name deleted] was always a "baseline"; time I spent thinking about what I really wanted to do. I am lucky that most the answers I uncovered in [city name deleted] served me well.
Nancy
After the Olive Garden date/not-a-date mishap, Nancy and I walked a pretty wide path around each other. Then, one day during the second semester, she called me out of the blue and asked me over to her dorm for lunch. I wasn't doing anything, so I agreed. We shared tasteless pasta and awkward conversation, and then I left. I never found out what compelled her to invite me to lunch.
I don't remember seeing her again until the Fall Semester of my third year. I was at an APO party with my buddy James. He and I were drinking hard and scoping for girls. At some point, I ended up dirty dancing and then making out with this girl, Kristin, whom I'd been eyeballing for a while. Kristin asked if I wanted to go somewhere, and we all know what that's code for, so naturally I said yes. But of course she needed to go talk to her friends first. While she was gabbing with her girls, James came over to slap a few high fives. Then he looked over at the little group and said, "Hey, Matt, that one chick's looking at you funny."
It was Nancy. And she was looking at me funny...and saying something to Kristin, who was suddenly looking not quite as excited as she had a minute ago.
I didn't want the drama, so I told James we should split, which we did. I never saw Nancy again. Nor did I ever hook up with Kristin.
Latrisse
A few weeks into the second semester of my freshman year, I called Aimee's room for our standard end-of-the-night conversation. However, Aimee was out, so I ended up talking to her roommate Latrisse instead. Latrisse "let it slip" that Aimee had recently made plans to attend a school dance (her school, not mine) with some guy who wasn't me. Naturally, I freaked out and said a few things that freaked-out people are likely to say. You know, regrettable things that sound really bad when repeated even though you didn't really mean them. You know? Shockingly enough, Latrisse then let those things slip to Aimee. These accidental-on-purpose slippages led to an ugly phone conversation between me and Aimee that ended with our first of many breakups. And thus I learned what can happen when you get too friendly with your girlfriend's roommate...who happens to have pretty obvious (to everybody else) crush on you.
I saw Latrisse only one time after that, and I admit that I kinda wanted to punch her in the baby-maker. (Sadly, I did not.) Later that year, she apparently met some guy from New Mexico in an Internet chat room. They were a couple in less than a week, sight unseen. Mind you, this was back when 80 percent of the people you met online were either serial killers trolling for victims or cannibals who ate serial killers they met on the Internet. A month-ish after they started dating, he visited her in Indianapolis. After the school year ended, she left Butler (which was a big deal, because she had a pretty sweet scholarship) and moved to New Mexico to be with her new man. The last bit of news I heard (through Aimee) was that they planned to wed. I don’t know whether they ever did.
Epilogue: Part 2
The Epilogue to Livin' Large became so epic in size that I'm posting it in installments. The next installment will be posted (probably) on Monday. Today's installment covers some of the minor characters (minor to this story, anyway.). Refer to the Cast List or Flow Charts for quick references.
Chad
Chad remained the dorm manager for the next few years, but he eventually resigned and started working for the school's alumni association. Ostensibly, Chad left the dorm of his own free will. However, BadDave theorizes that he was gently pushed out the door as part of a housecleaning effort associated with a murder that was committed in that dorm during the fall semester of my fourth year. (At that time, I was working as an R.A. at another dorm.) According to BadDave, it wasn't anything personal against Chad...just a way to wipe the slate clean.
While he was still manager, Chad continued to show favoritism toward student athletes. I know, shocker, huh? This directly affected me only once. I was working at the food service one morning when the Future NFL Football Player came through for some breakfast. And by "some" I mean "heaping piles of it." At that time, portion sizes were set and servers were strictly forbidden to give out extra food. Naturally, Future NFL Football Player demanded more than his fair share. Bad news for him. I was done being browbeaten by student athletes, so I refused his "request." He started cursing at me (loudly) and threatened (even more loudly) to do me serious bodily harm if I didn't give him some extra scrambled eggs. (Should anyone be assaulted for rubbery dorm food? I think not.) Again I refused. Then he started pounding his huge, meaty fists on the counter. Plates went flying. It looked like things were about to get ugly when Chad walked in from his office, which was a very short distance from the kitchen.
"What's going on here?" Chad asked.
"He's asking for extra servings," I replied.
"Give it to him," Chad said.
"But Chad, I'm not supposed to..."
"Give it to him, Matt," Chad said.
And so Future NFL Football Player got what he wanted, which really pissed me off, even more so because of everything that had happened with Mat. But I got my revenge. See, he also liked to toast a bagel every day. His habit was to stick the bagel into the toaster, walk through the food line, go out into the cafeteria to get a table and pour a few bowls of cereal, and then return for his now toasted bagel. Well, if I was working that morning or happened to be at breakfast, I would wait for him to go into the cafeteria and then I'd steal his bagel. I didn't eat it...I just threw it away. He'd come in, discover the bagel was gone (he usually assumed someone else was eating it), and then curse up a storm. Then he'd pop in another bagel and go back into the cafeteria. And I'd steal his bagel again. Then he'd come back to find it gone again, get pissed, put in another bagel, then go back out into the cafeteria. And I'd steal his bagel yet again. That would sometimes go on for six or seven bagels, morning after morning, for months. He never caught on.
There's a reason why they say football players are dumb.
The dorm
My dorm was, to put it frankly, a meat party of sadly epic proportions. Nothing but sausage as far as the eye could see. It smelled like dirty socks. It was kind of dreary. During my freshman year, there weren't even curtains on the shower stalls, which meant that all the sausages caught a glimpse of each other's sausage when they were stumbling around in the morning looking for a shower. There was no air conditioning, so the place was freaky hot at the beginning of the school year. Basically, it was a dump.
But I came to love it.
For my fourth and fifth years, I worked as an R.A. and then as the Staff Resident (the boss of the R.A.'s) at my school's best dorm. (Pure luck of the draw there.) The place was a paradise in comparison, and it had girls, which was a major bonus (one I definitely used to my advantage). But I still had a special place in my heart for my old dorm. I always walk by it when I visit the school for football games or whatever. For the first few years after I graduated, I'd even walk around inside just to soak in the memories (while holding my breath against the dirty sock smell). But times change. Soon they started locking all the doors, so you could only get in with a key card. Sure, I could have gone in the front door, but that's what GUESTS do. I still felt like I was a resident.
Sometime last year, I got an alumni newsletter that informed me that the dorm was now co-ed. Sure, I loved living in a co-ed dorm my last two years, but it felt wrong somehow that my old sausage factory now let the opposite sex live there. I called BadDave to complain, but he was indifferent (or at least pretended to be). He told me to get over it. I still haven't. That place still feels like my home away from home, and I still think of room 329 on NE3 as MY room.
The food service
Yeah, I know. Technically this isn't a "character." But it got brought up during the story and the comments...and I have a few things to say about it.
I worked at that dorm's food service for every one of the five years I went to college. I continued working there for two reasons. First, I was so well-liked by the women who managed the kitchen that I was allowed to work without a schedule. In other words, I could just come in an work whenever I felt like it. (And, more importantly, NOT work whenever I wanted.) That's a pretty sweet deal for a college student. Second, I kept getting raises. My pay went up every semester until I was making close to $8 an hour for just showing up to swipe cards or dish out food. Talk about easy money.
This worked in part because the managers were so desperate for help. When I first started going to college, students had to work if they wanted money. While I was there, that started to change. Parents either handed their kids fistfuls of cash or the kids got credit cards. (That was the beginning of the credit boom. Prior to that, getting a credit card required actual liquid assets.) Either way, many students simply stopped working. And suddenly, the food service didn't have enough employees to operate. They started bringing in temp workers and even high school students just to keep things going. This leads me to two of my favorite food service stories.
The first involves a girl named Keehna. She was a 16-year-old cutie from a nearby high school who needed the job. She was so sweet and innocent that I just new something bad was going to happen. Sure enough, she was quickly taken advantage of (read that: boned into quivering submission) by some schmuck freshman who followed up his conquest by (predictably) avoiding her completely. Because I was still a magnet for these stupid situations, Keehna came to me for advice. Repeatedly. (Yes, I could easily have had her on the rebound, but no, I did not.) One night while BadDave and I were watching the NBA on TNT, she called to whine some more. I needed to get her off the phone post hasty.
"Why," she moaned, "would he sleep with me and then not even want to talk to me? I don't get it."
Normally I would have tried to explain the situation in detail, but the Pacers were playing the Knicks. "It's like this, Keena," I said. "To men, sex is like...candy. It sure is great while you're eating it, but once you're done, you just want to forget about it until the next time you want candy."
She started crying even as BadDave began rolling all over the floor in fits of laughter. For the next several years, whenever somebody brought up a sex-themed question, Dave would look at me and say, in a squeaky voice, "It's like caaaaaandy."
The second story goes like this. It was my birthday weekend during my fourth year. Aimee and I had just started dating again for like the zillionth time and she had actually come to me for a change. For some boneheaded reason, I had agreed to cover a buddy's shift on Saturday morning even though I knew Aimee was visiting and that we'd be celebrating something fierce. I have no idea what I was thinking. Now, employees were usually expected to show up before the meal they were working so they could eat beforehand. For obvious reasons, I opted to skip breakfast and show up at the start of the meal. While I was in the shower (about 10 minutes before the meal was supposed to begin), the phone started ringing off the hook. Over and over. Of course, I couldn't do anything about it because I was in the shower. When I got out, I was pissed because I knew it was this cruddy little high school student who had been made a "waiter captain" and put in charge of weekend breakfasts. So when the phone started ringing yet again, I picked it up and barked out "Hello?" in my meanest-sounding voice
"Hi, this is..."
"I know who it is," I said. "And I know why you're calling."
"Oh, well..."
"Look, there's something we need to get straightened out here," I continued. "Think of my phone like the Bat Phone. Only Commissioner Gordan is allowed to call the Bat Phone. Are YOU Commissioner Gordon?"
"Wh...wha..."
"ARE YOU?"
"No," he squeaked.
"Then do NOT call the Bat Phone. Got it?"
"Yes."
"Good." Then I hung up.
The best part is, even though I was never a Batman fan, I had an old Batman t-shirt (plain black with the Bat symbol on the front), and I wore it into work under my food service polo. When I passed the poor kid on my way into the cafeteria, I dramatically opened the polo to reveal the Batman shirt. "Remember," I said, "You are NOT Commission Gordan."
Dorky as all hell? Yup. But I still love that story.
Greg -- In his own words
Okay, before I continue on, let me clear a couple of Mr. Bawful’s misconceptions here.
1. Contrary to what he believes, people from Kokomo don’t just go to Meijer and Wal-Mart, or sit around singing country songs and talking about Carhartts all weekend. I happen to enjoy the convenience of small town living, coupled with its good location and ease of going to Indy or Ft. Wayne if need be. I actually enjoy living here, and am grateful to have found good paying career (that interestingly enough doesn’t involve either of Auto Manufacturers who have factories here)
2. Anybody who thinks that Kokomo smells bad has never spent much time in New York City in July or August. THAT is an olfactory abomination that takes three trips through the wash to get rid of.
3. I don’t recall greeting Bawful as a “conquering hero” upon his return from college. If nothing else, the rest of us were secretly hoping that four months away would have quelled the Aimee-drama. (Editor's note: Aimee-drama?! This from the same guy who ditched a major "leaving for the army immediately after high school graduation" party I threw for one of his best high school buds because he was "all fucked up" about a goth chick named Becky who I'm not sure ever actually talked to him after high school? As always, I'm not sayin'...I'm just sayin'.)
Opinions? Yes, I certainly had opinions about the whole un-sordid, and decidedly G-Rated Bawful, Aimee, Cindy triangle. However, it honestly wasn’t until reading all of this that I now know exactly WHAT was going on. All the rest of us knew was that Bawful was frequently absent from hanging out because he had to go do “something” with “somebody”. In fact, saying “I’ve got…umm…something…I have to go do” became a well-played and frequently used punch-line for the rest of us, unbeknownst to Bawful. (Editor's note: Actually, I knew that because during our senior year in high school, Greg usually greeted me by saying, and I quote, "Where were ya, man? Oh, wait, let me guess, you were off doing 'something' with 'someone,' right?")
Not having the money to go away to school, I had decided to stay in town and go to the local campus of I.U. to get a degree in History (don’t ask me what I was going to do with it…I had no idea). My third semester there, I had to take a computer class. At that point, I knew nothing of computers. However, I managed at ace the class with very minimal effort on my part. The instructor of the class told me that maybe I should look into that as a possible career choice, so I transferred to IVY Tech which had a more robust Computer Programming schedule than I.U. was able to offer, and due to my addiction to old cars, I still didn’t have the money to go away to school (awwwww, no “conquering hero” return for me (snicker)).
So I completed my A.A.S. through IVY Tech in 1999, and within a few months was offered a position with a Global Leader In Information Technology via a former instructor of mine who also worked there. Now, as much as I do enjoy Kokomo, (I wasn’t born here, so maybe that’s why I don’t view this town with the same jaded eyes as Bawful), I had sent résumés all over the state, even as far away as Arizona hoping to get a career going. It was just dumb luck that I landed a job here in Kokomo. (Editor's note: Statbuster and I refer to Kokomo as "Gilligan's Island" for a reason...because nobody every escapes the island. Except me. And him. Look, it's funny, trust me.)
Oh, there are plenty of stories built up for the last 15 on my end. But this is Bawful’s blog, so we’ll keep the focus on his embarrassment. Seriously, Bawful, when a half-naked girl offers you a beer while sitting on your lap…You Say YES!!!!!!!
Gauvin
After we graduated high school, Gauvin began an epic journey aimless wandering. He worked at McDonald's. He worked at Walmart. He became an electrician's apprentice. He joined the army and was discharged after about a year and a half of service. He worked at a coffee shop. He worked at a bar. He taught himself ot play the guitar, the harmonica, and the Irish pan flute. He learned Japanese. He eventually started going to college in Indianapolis, where his majors vascillated from mathematics to art to philosophy. He eventually graduated with a degree in Philosophy and quickly found out...you can't really get a job with a degree in Philosophy. He futzed around for a few years living the life of a bohemian poet (his words, not mine) and then went back to school for nursing. He graduated in June of 2008 and finally became a contributing member of society. It only took him 15 years to do it.
His biggest impact on the rest of my college career was more about what he didn't do. For most of my first semester, Gauvin insisted that he was planning to join me at my college the next Fall and that we would be roommates. He wasn't really doing anything to back that up, but I accepted it because he was my friend...and because I was 18 years old and an idiot.
My dorm required returning students to turn in their housing request forms for the next year about midway through the Spring semester. I kept bugging Gauvin about it -- I needed him to fill out my roommate form -- and he kept putting me off. The forms were due on a Monday, so I made a trip to Kokomo the weekend before so I could get Gauvin's forms. That's when he told me that he wasn't going to college that fall. He was joining the army instead. Gauvin told me this on Sunday afternoon. That left me with a day to find a roommate for sophomore year.
Nathan
Nathan enjoyed having a single room that second semester, so much so that he signed up for a single room over at the Quad for his fourth and final year. That fact bummed me out, because I asked him to be my roommate when Gauvin bailed on me. And by "asked" I mean "practically begged." The last thing I wanted was to end up with another Mat. Despite my constant harping, Nathan stuck to his guns and refused to room with me. That led to two things: 1) me rooming with BadDave and 2) Nathan's unhappy exile.
See, having a single in a hallway full of friends and people he knew was much more fun than being the only senior in a hallway full of obnoxious freshmen. (The Quad at that time was, pretty much exclusively, a teenage sausage fest.) Nathan could hardly stand it. His solution? He practically moved in with me and BadDave. Sure, he slept in his room at the Quad...but he spent the rest of his free time sitting on a beanbag in our room. Hell, he spent more time there than I did.
Of course, it worked out pretty well for me. My car broke down that year, which meant I had no way to visit Aimee. Enter Nathan. He had a car and nowhere to go. As long as I kept his gas tank filled, I got to use his car almost every weekend. Meanwhile, he semi-lived in my room and got constant access to my brand new computer. Win-win.
There are plenty of funny Nathan stories from that year, like the time he (thanks to BadDave's shenanigans) accidentally shot me in the ass with a potato gun. But my favorite story is one of revenge. Nathan decided to prank me one night, so he programmed my computer to boot up in the middle of the night and play the Star Wars Cantina song at full blast. Ha. Ha. Ha.
I didn't respond immediately. Remember: Revenge really is a dish best served cold. A few weeks later, when Nathan was hosting a roleplaying night in a lounge at the Quad, I asked to borrow his room key so I could use his phone to call Aimee...a totally plausible story. But what I did instead was hijack all of his socks and underwear. Half of them of crammed in his refrigerator, and the other half I tacked to bulletin boards across the Quad. Nathan didn't realize anything was amiss until the next morning...
To his credit, he realized his mistake as soon as he opened his underwear drawer. Amusingly enough, he checked the fridge immediately. I did not intend this, but in stuffing his undies and socks in there, I had inadvertently spilled his milk and orange juice. So not only were his items soiled, there was a huge puddle of sticky gunk under his fridge. Poor Nathan had to spend the next hour or so cleaning up that mess and tracking down the rest of his jockeys.
Nathan graduated and then went to Sweden to attend a Bible school. He didn't really need to learn anything more about the Bible, of course. He went to find a wife. Which he did. But not before this story happened...which I blogged about years ago:
Here's a true story. When I was in college, a buddy of mine went to Sweden to attend Bible school. While he was there, he and several of the other students went down to the town square and sung hymns. Some of the local tough guys didn't like that, and so they started heckling the group, which was comprised mostly of women and the kind of men who go to Bible school -- interpret that however you want. Anyway, my friend confronted them, and, despite the Swedish history of wartime neutrality, one of the tough guys bitch-slapped my friend. But being a God-fearing man well-versed in scripture, he remembered Jesus' advice and turned the other cheek...only to have that one bitch-slapped as well. He turned his cheek again, and he got slapped again. This went on for several minutes, until my friend collapsed into unconsciousness. Afterward, he called me from Sweden -- which, at that time, was something like $153 per minute -- to proudly tell me about getting his ass kicked in front of his friends, just like Jesus would have done! This story always cheers me up.That's one of my favorite stories ever. Anyway, Nathan spent the next several years teaching at a Christian college and spawning offspring. He's now writing for Christian television projects.
BadDave -- My side of the story
Looking ahead to my sophomore year, I knew one thing with dread and absolute certainty: I did NOT want another Mat situation. Therefore I needed to find a roommate up front. Originally, that roommate was supposed to be Gauvin. However, the day before housing contracts were due during the Spring semester, Gauvin told me he wasn't going to school the next year. He was joining the army.
I was screwed.
I spent the next day asking every guy I knew to room with me, but everybody already had their plans locked up. My only hope was that Nathan would give up on trying for a single room. I was in his room practically begging when Dave walked in.
"Dave, do you have a roommate for next year?" I asked.
"No," he said.
"Be my roommate?"
"Sure," he said.
And that's how BadDave became my best friend. That's how it started, anyway. The friendship is too epic for me to summarize here. But here's his take:
BadDave -- His side of the story story
So Bawful will tell you in the epilogue that he asked me to room, but in my roommate revisionist version *I* asked him. But whatever. The fates aligned, and the long-haired, ex-band slacker and the straight-a, straight arrow goodie became roomies. And at first, it was awkward. My first roommate was The Garrison, and my second was a friend from home.
He was (and is) a great guy, but we were NOT meant to be roommates. So I was really wanting this to work, but expecting it to fail. Hell, Bawful had a single second semester; of course I was going to be worse than that.
However, we both played it cool and stayed nicey-nice, and four things happened to solidify our status from roommate to full-fledged bromance.
1. Intramurals. Bawful and I are pretty devoted team players; we pass the ball, play defense, and basically are fine sharing glory. Our teammates, however, didn't. We had our share of complete non-athletes, but we had a few guys that thought they were the cat's ass. Our most loathed teammates were Joe and Dean. Joe was fairly athletic, but played basketball like Larry Hughes. He never saw a shot he didn't like, and he didn't even let the ground touch the ball. Dean was huge -- 6'7". He played like he as 5'11". A total wimp down low, lazy rebounder, and he took bullshit shots from the outside. Bawful and I found kinship in their douchbaggery. Also, I never did any basketball when we met. As we roomed, I played a lot more, and got pretty good. I was one of the best defenders around, but I had and still have a block outside of 18 feet. It must be mental, but anyways, I appreciated Bawful's efforts into turning me from a human slug to a human slug that occasionally moved around.
2. Nathan. We've talked about him, but in short he was a good friend with lots of quirks that sometimes sent us running.
3. NBA in the 90s. It was a golden age. The Pacers were good. Rivalries were strong. There was post play. And most significantly, TBS and TNT had games, sometimes double headers, Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays! Add on network games on Sundays (and Saturdays after NFL season) and we were in heaven. Lots of nachos and salsa from our hall's convenience store were had. Then we'd follow those up with NBA Live '98.
4. Truth-or-dare night (how middle-school, eh?) and Cindy the Woman. In short, we both had an interesting night with some people, and it's an experience that definitely broke the ice.
If this sounds like a love story, well, it is. I can own that. We roomed together for two years, and we've agreed that they are probably the best years of our lives. Ever day was just freaking fun. Ahhh, college. Over those two years, I taught Matt that the honor's program wasn't worth the effort and that a B was OK. He taught me that I did need to go to class, and graduating under a 2.0 GPA is not good for anything. We were both involved in the hall, largely because Brett was pretty cool and we had good times there. So, after those two years we each went on to be RAs, but in different halls. We both had a great experience, but it put a huge dent in our time together; being on duty 4 nights per week each meant that the bromance was certainly limited.
Right after college, I got married. I know Bawful still hasn't forgiven me, and sometimes I agree. I love the fam and all, but it's reasonable to regret what kind of shenanigans we could have had as heterosexual life partners. Oh well. My wife went to grad school and I made money in the wonderful world of retail management. And we got our first puppy.
By wonderful I mean hellacious. And by retail management I mean car rental. Are you feeling it Evil? Is that a YES?! Long story short, I did what every first graduate does -- I busted my ass for over 70 hours a week for the potential to make a better position, got some promotions only to realize later that my job sucked, screwed people, and didn't pay enough for my work. My wife graduated, and then I worked in logistics for an auto manufacturer. Interesting job, but totally Lumberesque in monotony and Chotchky's in pay.
I finally got a job doing the last think I liked -- in student affairs.
Basically, I now manage RAs and life in residence halls. Working for colleges is much better than the real world, even if students and parents are ridiculous. It's fun, different every day, and occasionally challenging. My wife and I spawned twice; we have an eight-year-old boy and a 6-month old daughter. To further my career, I am now in Scranton, PA (sorry, no Dwight Schrute here). My puppy just died of liver cancer, and that's officially brought life down for a while. She was the best dog ever, and if you're wondering why I'm mentioning it here, you don't live with a dog.
Editor's note: I have a couple things to add to this. First, Truth or Dare story has become roommate legend. It led to me (at that time still a virgin) getting stripped Dirty Dancing style by two girls and to BadDave totally swiping the girl Nathan was after. The game was so epic that it ended one night and continued the next. I was absent (on a date with Cindy the Woman) the second night, but BadDave to this day insists he received a four-hour French lesson from Nathan's would-be girlfriend. I'll let him field questions about that one...but if prompted I might (stress on "might") give details on the first night in the comments.
Anyway, BadDave forgot to mention one key moment in our bromance. It happened near the end of our first year living together. We had gotten closer, but we still hadn't really bonded. Then we both came down with a crippling case of the flu. I have never gotten the flu that badly. We were bed-ridden for almost three days. We literally spent those three days across from each other, stewing in our own foul gasses. On the third day, we had an interview for a summer job at the on campus apartments. We almost literally crawled to the interview together. The apartment manager consented to interview us together. He asked us all sorts of questions, which I can only assume we answered despite our delirium. Anyway, at the end of the interview, the apartment manager said, and I quote, "Well, boys, I like you. I really do. And I'd love to give you a job. I really would. But the problem is, we've already filled all the summer jobs, so I just don't have any openings for you. I'm really sorry."
Dave and I were stunned, but we got up and shook his hand.
"Okay then," the apartment manager said as we were walking out, "I'll see you boys on [whatever the starting date was supposed to be]." Then he closed his office door.
"Wait," Dave said. "I thought he said he didn't have any jobs left."
"He did," I confirmed.
"So why does he want us to show up on the first day of work?" Dave asked.
"Dunno," I replied. "I guess we'll just show up and see what happens."
Which is exactly what we did. Turns out he had hired us, although I'm not sure he realized that. For some reason, those three days of flu-ridden horror combined with the bizarre job interview caused a subtle shift in our friendship. We've pretty much been best friends ever since.
Brett -- In his own words
What the hell I've doing since graduating [college name deleted] in '96?
Its hard to believe that its been over 12 years since I left [college name deleted] (for the first time). I graduated in 1996 without a job -- and frankly I was scared. I had what seemed like big money in debt hanging over my head post graduation. I had an opportunity to live in Japan from a professor in Asian Studies whom I'd befriended but the pragmatic path of economics called me more convincingly than the path than adventure. I worked for my Uncle remodeling houses for a few months while I cold-called companies for job opportunities until I got an offer from Intel Corporation in Phoenix, AZ.
(Editor's note: I had no idea how bad Brett's financial situation was...but I should have. One night we met up in Indianapolis for beers. He pulled out a couple $20 cigars that he said he'd been saving for a night out with friends. Neither of us had a cigar cutter, so he told me to just bite off the tip. I'd never done that before, and I ended up mangling a cigar that had been purchased with the last excess cash Brett had to his name. He was so pissed he swiped the cigar out of my hand and threw it in the street with a growl. I guess you'd have to know Brett to understand how out of character that was for him...I really thought he was going to hit me. Makes sense. I'd just flushed away $20 he could have used to, I don't know, eat or something.)
With Intel, I ran a production line pumping out computer chips for about three years until I got the Jones for school again. Chad [last name deleted], at [dorm name deleted] offered me my Counselor job back -- so I headed to [college name deleted]'s MBA program. After two years of torture, [college name delete] gave me my masters and I landed a job with Arthur Andersen Consulting, in Chicago. For context, this was post tech-bubble and post-9/11; the job market was not good. Arthur Andersen put off my start date for 3 months so I spent a month in Boulder, Colorado riding the Rocky Mountains and 2 months as a bike messenger in Chicago.
(Editor's note: Brett made one mistake here: 9/11 happened after he got that job. He was working downtown on 9/11. We were two of the only people in the Chicago metro area that didn't flee like rats escaping a sinking ship after the terrorist attacks. We met for lunch that day and wandered the deserted streets. It was like something out of a post-apocalyptic zombie movie. Nobody was around, nothing was open. We eventually found a waitress who was closing a diner. She fried us a couple hamburgers and then split. Then it felt like we were the last two people alive. It was weird.)
I started with AA and spent a year helping clients around the Midwest until the Enron scandal. For those that did not follow the scandal. it put both Enron and Arthur Andersen (its auditor) out of business.
(I was freakin' thrilled when Brett moved to Chicago, and it killed me when he had to leave. We had some good times. Kickin' back shots while listening to the doors, riding our bikes around Chicago, drinking beer every day after work at the Berghoff. That fucking Enron scandal didn't only help blow the economy to hell, it effectively robbed me of one of my closest friends. I've only seen Brett a couple times since then.)
Subsequently, I was on the job market again. I landed a job, through some college connections, with United Technologies. I spent four year working with UT helping them improve HR processes out of Harford, CT. I was lucky to working Mexico, Norway, and Singapore during that time. In the end, I missed the lifestyle of consulting. I left UT and started consulting again with IBM. Its been almost five years with IBM where I've focused primarily on ERP implementation (mostly SAP). I've been fortunate to live and work in a few different countries and have totally loved every second. My time at [college name deleted] was always a "baseline"; time I spent thinking about what I really wanted to do. I am lucky that most the answers I uncovered in [city name deleted] served me well.
Nancy
After the Olive Garden date/not-a-date mishap, Nancy and I walked a pretty wide path around each other. Then, one day during the second semester, she called me out of the blue and asked me over to her dorm for lunch. I wasn't doing anything, so I agreed. We shared tasteless pasta and awkward conversation, and then I left. I never found out what compelled her to invite me to lunch.
I don't remember seeing her again until the Fall Semester of my third year. I was at an APO party with my buddy James. He and I were drinking hard and scoping for girls. At some point, I ended up dirty dancing and then making out with this girl, Kristin, whom I'd been eyeballing for a while. Kristin asked if I wanted to go somewhere, and we all know what that's code for, so naturally I said yes. But of course she needed to go talk to her friends first. While she was gabbing with her girls, James came over to slap a few high fives. Then he looked over at the little group and said, "Hey, Matt, that one chick's looking at you funny."
It was Nancy. And she was looking at me funny...and saying something to Kristin, who was suddenly looking not quite as excited as she had a minute ago.
I didn't want the drama, so I told James we should split, which we did. I never saw Nancy again. Nor did I ever hook up with Kristin.
Latrisse
A few weeks into the second semester of my freshman year, I called Aimee's room for our standard end-of-the-night conversation. However, Aimee was out, so I ended up talking to her roommate Latrisse instead. Latrisse "let it slip" that Aimee had recently made plans to attend a school dance (her school, not mine) with some guy who wasn't me. Naturally, I freaked out and said a few things that freaked-out people are likely to say. You know, regrettable things that sound really bad when repeated even though you didn't really mean them. You know? Shockingly enough, Latrisse then let those things slip to Aimee. These accidental-on-purpose slippages led to an ugly phone conversation between me and Aimee that ended with our first of many breakups. And thus I learned what can happen when you get too friendly with your girlfriend's roommate...who happens to have pretty obvious (to everybody else) crush on you.
I saw Latrisse only one time after that, and I admit that I kinda wanted to punch her in the baby-maker. (Sadly, I did not.) Later that year, she apparently met some guy from New Mexico in an Internet chat room. They were a couple in less than a week, sight unseen. Mind you, this was back when 80 percent of the people you met online were either serial killers trolling for victims or cannibals who ate serial killers they met on the Internet. A month-ish after they started dating, he visited her in Indianapolis. After the school year ended, she left Butler (which was a big deal, because she had a pretty sweet scholarship) and moved to New Mexico to be with her new man. The last bit of news I heard (through Aimee) was that they planned to wed. I don’t know whether they ever did.
Epilogue: Part 2
Labels: college stories, Livin' Large
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