excerpt: College and the Art of Partying

by lonetraveller

Posted to Stories on 2001-12-11 19:12:00

I was lying on the couch in our suite one afternoon, recovering from a long Friday night, when Kile concocted a reason to interrupt me. Kile was the white sheep of the gang on west 11. He was erudite, conservative, career oriented and other frightening adjectives. To AOP, Kile was the foil incarnate. He’d attempt all sorts of methods to get AOPers to redirect their lives toward a more sensible, reasonable reality. Kile interestingly was never wholly repulsed by AOPers like our ex-roommie Colin, he simply felt it was his life-calling to reform them. And he worked with an evangelical zeal.

Kile enjoyed approaching me in circumstances like these, since I’m fairly inarticulate when I’m hungover. So, even though he was a common fool, he’d often emerge from our debates seemingly victorious.

On this occasion, Kile bit straight into the meat ‘n’ potatoes of AOP: sex. Perhaps unnerved that he hadn’t been laid in a long time, maybe ever, he was working overtime to convince himself of the pitfalls of such behavior. Kile’s opinions naturally always made practical sense, at least surfacely. But I never understood why the guy supported them with such adamancy, or even bothered with them at all. I mean if I somehow maintain a stock point of view on a subject, I sure as hell ain’t gonna flaunt it all over the place. It’s embarrassing enough unspoken. How the guy could so passionately defend the status quo, I find an amazing mystery.

Kile started hurling the spears from the get go. “You guys are pathetic. You masochists party like maniacs so you hate yourselves the next day, then justify it by assigning some kind of religious significance to the mess. You spray the fire extinguisher at people and under their doors in total idiocy, and pretend it’s some kind of baptism. I think it’s all out of fear. Fear you yourself are the ordinary person you despise, fear of a real commitment to the opposite sex, fear of graduation, fear of getting a responsible job.”

He had a large whitehead on his forehead, inducing still another fear, that it would spontaneously bust in my room.

“You clowns are always talking about fulfillment,” he continued. “Fulfillment isn’t short term, and it’s not temporary. That’s a contradiction. Anyone can get immediate gratification from a slimy one-night stand. You want a real challenge? Try tendering a long-term relationship. See what it takes to make that work.”

I rewinded a few sentences. Anyone, eh? Stick a pair of eyelashes on that zit and the fucker could make money as a Halloween costume.

“The world is operating way too fast for such nonsense, Kile m’ boy,” I guessed. “You talk like an old man with too few choices. We’re sitting on the one moment in life when the usual can be dropkicked for a short time. You’ve got your entire post-college life to behave like an old biddy. What’s the rush?”

And his choices were limited, by my calculations. It wasn’t staunch discipline keeping the books open on a Saturday night so much as it was a prescription of his physical makeup. But I had to put it to the guy gently.

“The same voice telling AOP to go in the other direction, warns you to stick to the beaten path,” I said. “Each human characteristic, every personality trait seals off a good chunk of our fate. You’re simply genetically built to study on Saturday nights. But I also believe even the yous in the world have some pre-death need somewhere to raise some hell. To bend the rules forth a good tug, then snap ‘em back, in some prig’s face. And what better time than college to exercise that demon from the soul? I fear that young, stoic sorts as yourself are destined to crack somewhere down the line, cheating on their wives or becoming cocaine heads at 45, just trying to complete themselves.”

Actually I wasn’t nearly as eloquent as all that. I spat out the gist of the above, then silently cursed myself for the mess coming out sideways, like an ass-first-birth baby. I can’t talk when I’m hungover and he knew it.

Kile was eloquent, but one-dimensionally, like a lawyer. “You illustrate precisely why one should resist such temptations. If we are bored creatures, with inbred capabilities of going off the deep end, forays into this AOP stuff will only create bigger appetites. My suggestion is to keep Pandora’s box as tightly closed as possible for as long as possible.” The double-entendre surely eluded him.

Restraint. Discipline. Order. How’d he ever survive on the “U,” I wondered? The clown was a poster boy for the Marines.

A last worder like myself chose to let it go. Who was I to even want to change him? People like Kile not only keep the machine well lubed, but also provide the perfect counter to AOP. Subtract everyone like Kile from the formula, and we’d all be Kiles. AOP, PTA— there’d be no difference. It’s just a matter of relativity.

So maybe AOP is not much more than a good shove against these inanimate souls. A part of me (as well as Kile) thinks it’s as shallow as that. But the other half thinks it goes beyond that, seeking some greater purpose or change, attempting to spread the college gospel of frivolous joy and strange enlightenment throughout one’s self and others. What more noble way to pay homage to these sacred stomping grounds? But these are weird times. Serene, untroubled, business-like times. It’s enough to make you pine for any old twisted ideal of campus past. Or to make you take a fist to the fire-extinguisher glass.

College used to be (at least in my romanticized image) fertile terrain for foolish idealisms and wayward directions, a muse for some slanted, wounded vision warring with those mired in the plurality. And it wasn’t until after graduation, when the vision fizzled with futility, that it was finally surrendered to the other side. But times have changed. Students now sign up with the goddamned majority right off the bat without even messing with the futile dream. It’s enough to make you want to take your fist to the fire- extinguisher glass.

It’s not hard to see why the futility gap has been widened to the point of not even trying—why folks en masse are choosing the unblinking path of college, career, family and IRAs in some fucked-up order. For recent history provides a daunting model. I mean, look at the half million at the original Woodstock. All of these “revolutionaries” are now magically dispersed in suburbia, with such perfect markings and blendings it’s impossible to tell who’s who at the community pool. And the fact that these very clowns are at the helm of a culture in possibly its most vacuous, law-filled, complacent state ever, makes a pretty poor advertisement for the lasting integrity of the “visionary.”

It goes to show that the self-preservation powers of society’s core—all that’s reasonably good, that which is purely fucked, and the huge remainder perched in the middle of the road, waiting to be flattened by a truck—are miraculous. The 1960s provided the only formidable challenge the “system’s” ever had—really just a small scuffle—and it rebounded more strongly and invincibly than ever. The beast learned lesson, gained insight, and has adjusted accordingly. Now most threats—any countercultural tendencies—are ingeniously diffused by assimilation. The most unifying musical calls to rebellion in the sixties are now backdrops to every third television commercial. Hard-core rappers telling it like it is quickly give up the fight and join the club with offerings of high-dollar movie contracts. Subversiveness, social deviance is in full remission. Traces occur, but innocuously, where the culture allows it to; yet it’s nonexistent where it disturbs. The modern-day blue haired, makeup-wearing rock ‘n’ roller is as inoffensive as a baby in a stroller—he’s just acting a rehearsed part. And such pandering makes a mockery of true rebellion and directed defiance. The populous has, in unsuspecting fashion, clawed its way backwards to being sleepy, obedient dupes. And the mighty hand of American society continues to mold the “free” mind the way it likes, always lending the impression it was its constituents’ own will.

If not assimilated, the scant groups that do presently veer from the status quo are cannily discredited and discarded by the mainstream by virtue of their fringe element— anti-fur groups, feminist groups, environmental groups, even religious groups. Blandness has become the rallying cry of the streets. It could be that students face possibly the most docile, indifferent, piece-of-shit filled era in the country’s short history. The Beats from the fifties and hipsters of the sixties are far removed what’s from hip now, in fact they’re caricatures, jokes on a sit com. Now hipness, impossibly, is in the mundane. It’s found surfacely, pinned to the face of an empty, charismatic soul detached from an ideal. Taking an immoderate stand on anything, drifting too far left or right or up or down is what’s uncool.

Thankfully, certain folks on west 11 showed some potential otherwise, but the general career-oriented mindset rampant on campus is mind-boggling. Half of these automatons don’t even attempt a discernible variance from the mutual fund generation— their hair, clothes and attitudes nearly parallel mom and dad’s.

It may be far-fetched to pin this perfusion of student apathy on old mom and dad. But maybe the blame can be split. Because it is apparent the great leaders of yesterday’s counterculture who are now running things have ironically proven that any hopes of escaping the prefab ideal passed down from generation to generation are meager. All the boomers’ railings of social injustice; ravings of a more meaningful, spiritual existence; implying of cultural revolution and preaching of self-liberation through hallucinogens are former ramblings of the same country-club fucks who now vote on the board to suspend college students for smoking a joint. These thick pieces of stool have, in full hypocrisy, piled up the crap the young, fresh-minded folk have to slog through today. They frolicked lavishly in a culture brimming with hopes of changing the world for the better; now, far removed from their prime, they’ve become staunch defenders of an even more regulated, inviolable order than the one they inherited 30 years back.

So, minus the illusory substance (and a few actual social upgrades), the 60s turned out to be not much more than one excellent party. Free love and mind expansion, mixed with a healthy dose of challenging the dogs of authority. The great gap of values wedged between generations only garnished the kicks. And campus was the epicenter of activity. It was a time when you could smoke a joint with your philosophy professor and link his lecture on existentialism with current events.

The real pisser is this generation can’t even muster up that. We can’t even party worth a fuck. These days your philosophy professor rats on you to the dean who commissions a drug test, resulting in a two-semester suspension. Alcohol-free fraternities are now the trend of a growing number of schools. Puritanism, 300 years later, has clambered its way back in vogue. So those who do party do it with abashment, guiltily, like they’re violating a moral code. The night before they laughed harder than ever before, dangled from the twelfth floor ledge in the dorm and got laid to boot; the next morning they’re flooded with the damnable remorse of actually having had a good time.

Give me a toilet-flush economy, with nary a job for a million graduates. Give me wars and starvation and oppressed souls realizing their plight, ready to take to the streets. Give me leaders so vile and mad that corruption hives manifest on their bodies. Take this abundance of collegiate zombies and shift the conveyer belt to reverse, far from this fine, doomed university. Give me the glory of shouting for the sake of shouting, the chance to peer through my one goddamned window of dis-opportunity. Let me wade like a pig in mud in the lie of the “dream.” Give me a fuckin’ life sentence for graduation, sell my empty soul to ol’ Beelzebub himself, anything but four years of ordinariness in this hallowed, hollow institution.

Alas, as we students encounter this unruffled social fabric, this nonexistent unifying bond valiantly detaching us from the dead-eyed majority, this lack of thread of discontent woven throughout the student bodies, it’s apparent something’s gotta be done. Hence, AOP. It’s maybe a slice of the sixties mixed with a couple shots of present-day apathy. AOP certainly has no political agenda. It surely strives to make no long-term social impact on the world. But upon the stout seriousness of career direction and the vast proliferation of prudence, it wages a small, discreet war. These are the most dangerous of times, precisely because nobody knows it.

I covered all this in about six seconds of mind time, as Kile hovered over, poised for battle, awaiting a witty or pathetic rejoinder. I felt a certain pity for both of us losers. He wasn’t the enemy, nor was I. Poor Kile anyway was from the classic “dysfunctional” family, giving him every reason to condemn the crap he dealt with while growing up. It’s no coincidence such offspring are conspicuously devoid of AOP participation. In fact, in time AOP waged an informal research on the matter, with the results being as follows: If you regularly see your dad stumbling through the front door in a drunken stupor, smashing things, that’s the last thing you’re gonna want to do when you reach adulthood. It’s those who experience healthy, loving upbringings who desire to get drunk and smash things in college. They just don’t want to make a living out of it. The sad, dysfunctional folk stuff everything along these lines in a box with the label “addiction” plastered on it, and store it in the corner, out of sight. They caustically criticize AOPers throughout college for their irresponsibleness, and study diligently, albeit gloomily. Later in life, when job pressures and divorce loom large, they begin to drink heavily, while smashing things. See, it’s the timing that’s way off.
From College and the Art of Partying. Free viewing:
www.artofpartying.com