I went to my friend's sorority formal. I bought a dress online and got a spray tan and I bought a new can of hairspray. I listened to her roommate talk in the thickest southern accent I've ever come across. I drank four energy drinks. I put on foundation three shades darker than I should have. I put black eyeliner in my waterline. I posed for photos. I did the sorority squat. I had a sugary seltzer. Despite all of the prep and procedure, I still felt like eleven-year-old me who cannot seem to shake this looming sadness umbrellaed over my life.
Whilst at the formal, I awkwardly asked for no chicken or ground beef to the Moe's caterer. I got something nacho adjacent, stale tortilla chips holding up only lettuce and shredded cheese. We sat at one of the round tables and I wanted to sit in between my friend and her roommate so I didn't have to interact with someone new next to me but they are best friends so they sat together and I went to the right of my friend next to an empty fold out chair. Then a guy in an unflattering tux sat down in the seat next to me. I deduced the tuxedo had to have been from his senior year prom; the buttons of the shirt barely holding on to cover his early-stage beer belly.
He asked me my name. I obliged. Awkwardly, I'll admit, but nonetheless. I start stabbing my finger with one of the sharp edges of the Moe's tortilla chips that I hadn't eaten.
Within the base-level interrogation I get from the boy whilst he shoves and entire soft-shelled taco down his esophagus, he manages to conclude that I am not in this sorority, nor do I go to this University.
I decide to give him the answer he's so desperately seeking:
I go to Alabama.
Oh I love Tuscaloosa. You must go out all the time.
Yeah -
And then I start lying. This is not the first time I've done this exact thing. For some reason, deep in my bones, I refuse to admit that I have never once gone into any of the establishments on the Strip besides the Waffle House. So I just lie. I explained to him that my fake ID (lie) got lost (lie) in Rounders (lie) after I spent all my money on the cover (lie) so now I don't have a fake ID on hand (truth) and I'm mad about it (lie).
I've been to some frat parties, I will gladly admit. None were worth noting, for I left after thirty minutes of subpar party conditions and no real reason of being there. The most entertainment I got was simply studying the frat guys themselves, so I would converse with them just to pick at their brain or whatever is left of it after the coke and the galaxy gas.
At the formal, the dance floor was full of tiny cohorts of two to three girls and their dates. And then my friend and her roommate and me all not standing close enough to look natural and we all had these weird glow stick things that were squishy so I kept messing with mine. The band on stage was just a bunch of forty-year-old men singing covers of songs from the 80s and then Eminem. At the very end, they played Dixieland Delight and out of habit I sang the Alabama "version" (whatever that means) and the surrounding Auburn students looked over. And then I realized THEY had a version of the song that was exactly the same except they say f Alabama.
And for some reason this has stuck with me for six months.
I spend every single second on campus listening to The Beach Boys "Pet Sounds" and I stare at the buildings or the sky or my dirty shoes. And I can't tell if it's making me sad or happy and if I hate Alabama or love it or am totally indifferent to it.
I think I enjoy it. Maybe when I graduate I'll have a tell all about my boring lifestyle and how I was scared to gain the freshman fifteen so I lived off of only yogurt and how my favorite class used to hide from our professor at the top of every class and how I have so many writing pieces saved on this computer now that I have no more storage and how my advisor forgot to tell me I almost graduated and how my wired headphone's sound bleeds so everyone who walks by me can hear The Beach Boys.
-A.K. (college advisor)
