Middle- State College

My parents bought me a new car, as promised, the weekend before I was to move into the MS dorms. I didn’t particularly care for the dorms but my mom insisted that they were a necessary experience during college and bought every gadget and item you could ever want. This promised “experience” started with meeting my roommate, Cary, who looked like a bitch, and talked like a Jersey whore. I could tell this was going to be a great year.

I could tell that Cary did not come from a wealthy family from the way she was looking at my belongings as I unpacked. Her eyes looked like they were going to pop from their sockets as she asked me if my Zac Posen bag was real. I had to fight the urge to tell her that the handbag cost more than her college tuition this year because I was still trying to be nice. At least at that point I was.

My parents left after helping me move into the dorms. They tried to take me to another dinner with Cary but I firmly declined, knowing that there were several “welcoming parties” that would require my attendance. In retrospect I probably should have gone to dinner.

Cary was disappointed that I declined on dinner. I could tell she was eager to go to the fancy restaurant my parents had offered. I didn’t really care what she thought, but to make it up to her I agreed to let her attend a welcoming party with me. It was being thrown at a frat and I was eager to get a taste of college life, without going home to my parents’ house afterwards.

Getting ready for this party entailed; putting on clothing that made me look hot, taking two seconds to check my make- up, and one spritz of body spray. Total time: fifteen minutes. Cary on the other hand was only half finished curling her hair after fifteen minutes, which pissed me off. I never spent a long time curling my hair. What’s the point when some guy is going to pull it until its straight when you’re mid- fuck?

I threatened to leave without her if she wasn’t ready in five minutes. Exactly five minutes later I left and made it all the way to the first floor entrance before I heard Cary’s nasal voice shrieking after me to wait. I waited, because I was still trying to be nice.

It wasn’t until she caught up to where I was standing that I noticed what she was wearing. She had on a tight purple dress that only a call girl would wear, and her black hair was in a messy ponytail due to the fact that I did not allow her to finish curling it. Her shoes were obviously patent leather pumps that I swear I had seen a stripper wear on a documentary about prostitution. I didn’t say anything but made a mental note to keep my distance at the party, just in case her skankiness decided to rub off.

We arrived at the party a few hours after it had started and immediately I took some of the molly that I had brought with me. Someone I met in the hallway shared a line of coke with me, and the frat boys kept my red plastic cup full of beer all night. The party was impressive, from what I remember, and thankfully Cary disappeared into one of the boys rooms early on. I didn’t worry about her, or go looking for her. I figured she could find her own way home. I was too busy trying to find a guy at the party that didn’t still have training wheels on his dick. My search yielded no such person, and I stumbled back to the dorms with a few other girls who lived in the same building. The RA’s did not look pleased when we signed in at the door. It might have had something to do with it being 4:30am, or that we were almost too drunk to stand, but they let us through. I remember going to sleep in my clothes and thinking about how great it would be if Cary just disappeared.

Unfortunately, I was not so lucky.

The next morning was supposed to be our first day of classes. I was informed by a very solemn RA that Cary was hospitalized early in the morning “due to an overconsumption of multiple substances.” Really? It’s the first party and you already fuck yourself over? The RA said that Cary would be back within the week, most likely, and if I needed to talk to anyone there was a counseling center on campus. I asked her if I could talk to someone about having the room all to myself and transferring Cary somewhere else. The RA did not look pleased, and walked away.

After that I got dressed and headed to some unmemorable class, where the professor talked like a fag. This was only entertaining for about ten minutes, at which point I put on my headphones and started reading the textbook in order to learn the material.

Once class was finished I decided to visit the cafeteria for lunch and as I expected I was served by someone my own age, who had no food experience. They made me a crappy sandwich, which I only ate half of because it tasted like cardboard with ranch on it. In the back I could see the old, weathered, “lunch lady” types washing dishes or some shit. From the look on their faces I would venture to say their lives sucked. I left to go to the remainder of my classes, collect the syllabi, and listen to the professors go on and on about their dull classes and rules. Then I went back to the dorm to sleep because I was still kind of hung over.

Beaner’s Coffee House

“Who do I have to blow to get a white hot chocolate that is actually white?” I asked the woman. She apologized and made me another cup. Once again my “white chocolate” hot chocolate looked and tasted just like the “milk chocolate” hot chocolate I had gotten the day before.

Whatever. I went and found a place to sit.

I hated the yuppies that came in the coffee shop and asked for drinks not by name as they are posted on the board, but by specific characteristics. “Soy mocha latte, skim, no whip,” wasn’t something real coffee connoisseurs said, only the posers said those things. I just wanted a simple fucking drink from the goddamn menu posted on their earth toned wall. Is it really that hard?

I was at the coffee shop to write. It was too hard to do it at home, too distracting.

Someone had told me to write about what I knew best. I probably shouldn’t have written about the people I know in my life but for once I was taking someone else’s advice and the writing was coming along well. Little did I know, the one time I followed someone’s advice, it would be my downfall.

My parents named me Kristen after someone famous they knew that was way before my time. I was to attend Middle State College in Michigan, where I was born. Not that I had much of a choice. My mom really wanted me to go there because she went there. She even wrote the essay for me, filled out the application and everything. All I had to do was sign the form. I wanted to be an art major but my parents said I would never make any money and chose business for me instead. Some of the classes I had to take my first semester sounded pretty gay. So I stocked up on enough Adderall to make myself care, just in case.

Other than that my life was pretty good. My boyfriend and I had broken up before graduation in the spring which at first was kind of shitty but it meant I got to hangout/ fuck any one I wanted at all the parties over the summer which was pretty awesome. There was no guy I liked in particular, which was convenient since most of them would be going to schools across the state, or even across the country, so I probably wouldn’t see them much. I hoped there would be decent, (read: not pussy-whipped) guys at Middle state. Preferably, guys that did not belong to a frat, and had some semblance of hygiene.

I left the coffee shop because I had dinner with my parents and I needed to shower the smell of burnt coffee, and sugary flavor syrups out of my hair. As I was walking out I ran into a friend of mine from high school, Eliza. Eliza was very petite up top, with small boobs, narrow shoulders, and a round face, all of which would have been beautifully complimented had they not been paired with her giant ass. It wasn’t just her ass that was big, it was pretty much everything from the waist down. It was a shame because earlier in our high school years we were friends, and then her bottom half exploded, at which point I we drifted apart. As freakish as she looked I agreed to go to the bar with her after I had dinner with my parents that night, hoping that her startlingly disproportionate body would make me look that much hotter from the male perspective.

Dinner with my parents followed the same routine. They both worked a lot and I rarely saw them, but everyone knew who they were. They ran a successful medical equipment business and I was the heir to their perfectly sterile throne. It would be an understatement to say I wasn’t thrilled about it. However my parents needed to feel respected as long as I wanted their money.

They asked me a series of arbitrary questions about my excitement for college, my class schedule, what I was doing over the weekend. Same shit, different dinner. I replied with my usual responses which were formulated to be exactly what they wanted to hear. They both nodded their heads with enthusiasm while I fed them these baseless lies. Their faces glowed with pride as we finished our meal.

In exchange for such a performance, and because I was attending the college of their choice I found it was only fitting for them to purchase me a car. I asked, and without needing to cite any reasons for why the car they bought me two years ago wasn’t adequate, they obliged. Just like that.

I excused myself from the presence of my parents after the main course partly because the random questions were giving me a headache, and partly because I’d rather drink my dessert. I met Eliza at a bar called Austin’s where we flashed our fake ID’s and immediately downed several shots named after various body parts. I didn’t particularly like Eliza, mostly because she talked almost non- stop (even more after she’d had a few drinks), but I did like her as my wing woman. That is, until she projectile vomited across the bar, spraying at least three people with her vomit, including the bartender, who kicked us out.

Eliza had gone over the line of normal drunkenness and had decided to lift up her skirt and urinate on the sidewalk as we exited the bar. I allowed her to do so in hopes that she wouldn’t leave any fluids in the cab on our ride home. For a moment I actually felt bad for her as she fell walking up to her front door, but that moment passed, and when I was done laughing at Eliza I was grateful that I wouldn’t be seeing her, or anyone from high school, until next spring.

Awesome.