Days as a Freshman: 167

Mood: frozen

“Grace, you’re soaked” Rebecca tugged on my shirt and spoke into my ear, keeping her eyes on Justin and Sasha. The tension between them was palpable; I knew she could feel it too. “Why don’t you at least change your shirt? You can wear one of mine.”

I didn’t want to leave the living room. I didn’t want to leave Justin alone with Sasha. But Rebecca was right. I was practically dripping alcohol. Like I had just jumped into a pool full of Jack Daniels.

“Let’s just run into a room. I’ll wear my long sleeve and you can wear the camisole I have under it. It’s fine.” Rebecca kept pulling on my arm, her jitters obvious in the repetition of her actions. Even tipsy, Rebecca couldn’t let her guard down. She knew something was off. She knew something was crackling in the air, and she wanted to leave before the match was lit.

“I have to…” I looked up at Justin. “I have go change.”

“What?” Justin blinked. He looked at me as though it surprised him I was still standing there.

“I have to go change. Everyone spilled stuff on me.” Read More »

Days as a Freshman: 100

Mood: Total crap

“Here. I got the last piece.” Justin set a giant piece of chocolate cake in front of me and walked over to his own seat. “We’ll share. How ‘bout that?”

“This is huge!” I poked a fork into the inches of frosting.

“Please don’t tell me you’re one of those girls.” Justin sat down and leaned across our small corner café table, scooping up a piece with his own fork. “You don’t look like one of those girls who doesn’t eat stuff because she’s all caught up with being fat or whatever.” He shoved the piece into his mouth, “how can you not enjoy something like this?”

Poking the cake again, I stopped myself from admitting that sometimes I was very close to being one of those girls. I wasn’t fat, but I wasn’t thin either, and consuming a giant piece of chocolate cake at 11:30pm on a Monday was not how I usually did things.

But it also wasn’t usual for me to be caught up in a school-wide scandal, or sit inches away from a tall, attractive guy who liked to smile at me. Read More »

Days as a Freshman: 92

Mood: Happy to be home

“Hey!”

I waved at a group of kids standing around a small red Toyota, feeling a pang of anxiety as the car continued to stay small, no matter how close I came to it. This was going to be a tight fit.

“Hey! She makes it at the last second, as always!” Jonathan opened up the trunk and started to push things around in the back. “Thought you were gonna walk home.”

Grabbing my overstuffed bag, Crystal’s boyfriend heaved it into the last remaining empty space in the trunk, pushing it against other bags and backpacks to make room for the door to close. As he jammed the bags together with his elbow, I cringed, thinking about all the clothes, make-up, and hair products that might be exploding all over the insides of my suitcase.

“Thanks again for giving me a ride,” I said, stuffing some loose brown hair into my winter hat. “I would have been stuck here.”

“No prob, bob.” Slamming the trunk, Jon smiled and walked around to the driver’s seat, motioning to the two other people already in the back, “it’s probably gonna be a tight squeeze, but it’s only like 2 hours. We can make it.” Read More »

Days as a Freshman: 90

Mood: Guilty

“Do you have any gum?”

Stacey shifted in the brown leather chair, straightening her blazer. She had dressed for the occasion, opting to go for “mature and classical” instead of her usual “fake and preppy”.

I was sporting my standard jeans and long sleeved shirt look, being under the impression that the Dean of Student Life didn’t really care about our clothes.

“Here.” I reached into my giant purse and pulled out a half-crushed packet of gum. “You sure you want to be talking to Dean Carlon with stuff in your mouth, though?”

“Do you have any gum that hasn’t been through the washing machine?” Crinkling her noise, Stacey stared at my hand like I was passing her a dead rat. “And I was gonna spit it out before going in there anyway. I just have this horrible taste in the back of my throat.” Begrudgingly taking a piece of gum from the pack, Stacey slipped it behind her shiny pink lips and bleached white teeth. “I always get a gross taste in my throat when I’m nervous.”

“Should we be nervous?” I took a piece of gum myself and started to chew quickly, realizing that my jaw had answered my question for me; we should be very nervous. Read More »

Days as a Freshman: 88

Mood: Not good

“How long did you stay?” Rebecca threw a pair of socks into her suitcase and looked up from her underwear drawer. “Did you listen to their entire conversation?”

“I had to! I didn’t want Public Safety to know I was sitting there!” Standing by Stacey’s mirror, I poked around her jewelry, moving pairs of pearl earrings and fake diamond bracelets in an attempt to find a ring of mine that had disappeared a few weeks ago. Stacey was big on barrowing without asking.

“Did they talk for a long time?” Closing one drawer and opening another, Rebecca continued to pack her bag. She was leaving early for the Thanksgiving holiday, a fact I had not received well. Three whole days living in a room with Stacey by myself spelled absolute misery.

“The cop said they had heard about a party at the Soccer House the night before, but of course Sasha denied it.” A flash of jade stood out from the mess of cubic zirconium, and I carefully began to untangle my ring from one of Stacey’s cheap necklaces. “He got all mad at the cop. Said they were being unfair…staking the house out and stuff. He said it wasn’t politically correct.” Read More »

• A fetish fair in NYC? Awesome! Not awesome: Men are forced to wear a “two-inch strip of leather up their backsides”…can’t they make it 4 inches? (NY Mag)

• Remember that book you read back in high school, 1984? It’s finally here in the form of…Gas Station TV! (freep.com)

• Schools are no longer allowing emotion through its doors! Bueller…Bueller? (chicagotribune.com)

• At least Britney isn’t this bad…we hope. (CBS6 Albany)

• I’m not usually into violence, I just thought lions as a whole had it coming. (You Tube)

Guys, if any of you are reading this, you may want to stop right now.

Seriously. Honestly. Look away.

No? Alright…

A Russian woman set her ex-husband’s penis on fire last Wednesday while he sat naked in front of the TV, enjoying a nice glass of vodka.

“I was burning like a torch” the injured man is quoted as saying (undoubtedly through a waterfall of tears), “I don’t know what I did to deserve this.”

No word on how she did it, but the ex-husband’s prognosis does not look good. When asked about his chance of a full recovery, a police spokeswoman admitted it was “difficult to predict”.

I’m not quite sure how one recovers from a burnt penis.

Reuters is reporting that the attack happened after the divorced couple spent three years living in the same apartment, a common occurrence in Russia where “property costs are very high”.

Perhaps Mr. Naked had sat spread-eagled in front of the TV one too many times. Perhaps he had a nasty habit of finishing off the house vodka. Or perhaps he was a horrible person. Read More »