The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 2. Freshman Year - Chapter 2

I got back from my Psych 100 lecture at around 11:30am. Erik and Justin were both sitting on our floor, playing my copy of Battlescar 3, a first-person shooter that Grant Prendergast and I had mastered during senior year, on Tripp’s PlayStation 2.

It was a pretty standard tableau, as I was learning over my first two weeks: Tripp was the only one with a PlayStation on our floor, so our room was a tourist attraction. Erik, who never seemed to be in class, was a constant fixture, but we’d get Charlie Baker, Justin Ryan, occasionally some of the other guys on the floor. I was already growing used to the constant stream of people--I liked it, even; it was a nice change from those long days in high school of sitting around with nothing to do. I had this recurring fear, before I went to college--not all the time, just every so often--that I’d be that guy alone in a room that no one wanted to talk to or hang around with. Seemed silly now, even if my popularity over the past two weeks was centered around a $200 piece of plastic hooked up to a 20 inch TV.

“Hey, dude,” Erik greeted, without looking at me, from the papasan chair, which had been pulled up right in front of the TV, in the center of the room. “Cuthbert said we could keep playing. He had to run back to Studio real quick to pick up his model.”

I looked instinctively over at the shelf above Tripp’s bed, which he had left mostly empty--lone exception being a picture of his obese English bulldog, Sherman, his only framed photo--in anticipation of displaying his first architecture models once they were built.

Tripp always came back from long hours in studio with boundless enthusiasm, an Old Faithful of architecture stories. I came back from one of my classes--intro classes across a wide spectrum, in hopes that I’d be inspired by Political Science, Latin American Studies, Economics, Geology, or Tropical Medicine; two weeks in, it was clear I wouldn’t be--and just wondered where we were going to drink.

And okay, I was eighteen--I didn’t have to figure all of this out now, really. My dad had spent the summer trying to corral me into pre-law--like he did with my brother, Philip, a senior at Yale who was currently blanketing the other Ivies with his own perfect law school application.

My dad, for his part, did not have a law degree, so I didn’t understand his fixation. He’d been a baseball player, very briefly--he tore his rotator cuff his second year with the Padres--and snatched up an MBA from University of Nevada-Las Vegas during those few years of post-baseball, new father domestic depression.

So far, I’d managed to stave off making a decision by agreeing to “look into it” but I hadn’t done anything with that yet. I was Undeclared Liberal Arts, so it was pretty obvious I was going to have to keep law school on the table until the last possible minute, but it all seemed so dull.

Of course, I didn’t have any better ideas. I was smart enough where I could, technically, do everything--I was aimless enough where I couldn’t bring myself to pick anything. I’d always been a writer, and that seemed to be my only vague academic interest, but I’d resisted dabbling in English classes because I knew that was a one-way ticket to comparative poverty. I grew up in Hamlet, Maryland. I wasn’t cut out for being a poor.

My laptop was sitting on my bed, exactly where I left it. I sat down next to it, contorting my body Indian style, and pulled it over to my lap.

I was using Internet Explorer for illicit activity because I knew no one would click on it--not with Firefox sitting at the top of the Start menu, savvy and inviting. I’d deleted my ManFind account the morning after the Patrick ordeal, when I found myself tossing all night, drunkenly paranoid about the whole thing, but reactivated it two days later, when Tripp was out at studio, the PlayStation had gone dark, and I didn’t really feel like attending to myself myself.

I hadn’t met anyone since Patrick. I had a habit of ending conversations abruptly after I’d finished, thoughts of gay congress tossed back into the vault, which didn’t lend itself to many meetings.

Today, I had three messages from eligible torsos.

23, athletic body. “How’s it going? Freshman?”

“Yeah,” I told him. I waited. There was no immediate response, and then he signed off.

46, obese. “Generou$ guy for younger.”

Delete message, block profile.

19, thin, toned. “Hey, what’s up?”

I figured I’d respond to that one, too. “Not too much. Just hanging out.”

The torso responded: “Awesome. What brings you on here?”

What brought me on here. What brought anyone on ManFind? “Someone to debate voting irregularities in the Mexican presidential election with, obviously.”

I sat there and waited, and realized I probably should have said something more contrite, like: “Fucking.”

At this point, I was pretty raring, but with Justin and Erik shooting each other three feet from my bed. Obviously, nothing below the belt, I felt uncomfortable having the sexual overtures that usually passed the time on ManFind.

Instead, “Lopez-Obrador was robbed,” the nineteen-year-old torso replied, and I had to crack a smile at that one--which I quickly repressed, considering how many people were in my room with me. I really shouldn’t have even been on a website like this--someone could catch me at the wrong angle, someone could ask to use my computer before I could close everything out.

Still, this guy had a nice-looking body. We unlocked our face pictures, and he was cute, too--slender, with with tortoise-shell glasses and curly hair, that kind of self-effacing adorableness.

“Student?”

“Sophomore at Loyola,” he said. “What are you up to tonight?”

We had no concrete plans, but Erik had mentioned earlier a drunk bus to Tropical Isle, sponsored by one of the fraternities, and I figured I’d follow him on that. We hadn’t been to Bourbon Street yet, for all of the drinking we’d done over the last two weeks. Fraternities were flush with Katrina settlements, and were pumping money into parties to woo our storm-shrunken class, so we actually hadn’t gone to many bars at all.

“Nice,” he said. “I’m heading downtown too, actually. Heading to class now, but mind if I text you later?”

I gave him my number, we exchanged names. Brandon. Brandon from Loyola.

Loyola was an ideal setup, because it was right next door but might as well have been on another planet. They had their own bars, their own restaurants, their own social scene. The odds of me ever running into Brandon unintentionally were slim.

There 46-year-old morbidly obese gentleman followed up his last request: “You like older?” Which I certainly did not.

“Anyone up for grabbing food?” Erik asked.

I logged out of ManFind, and erased my browsing history, which had become almost second nature by this point. “I could be up for it,” I said, closing my computer.

“Yeah, me too,” said Justin. “One second. His crosshairs selected Erik, flashed red, and he rained down a hailstorm of bullets.

“Fuck you, man,” Erik growled, throwing down the controller in fury as he waited to respawn.

“I have bio at 12:30,” Justin said, looking at his watch, “so we should go eat pretty soon. I’ll text Tripp and tell him where we’re going.”

“I’m free all day, bitches,” said Erik, in mocking falsetto, as he picked up his controller and walked his character down a dim, torch-lit hall.

“You don’t have class?” Justin asked.

Erik shrugged. “They never take attendance.”

Justin’s crosshairs lit up red again. Erik’s chest exploded into a bloody firework.

“Dude, what the fuck,” said Erik, throwing down his controller to the floor again. “All right, let’s get food. I’m starving.”

“Wait, wait,” said Justin. He shot a newly-respawned Erik, and the game ended. Justin started cackling maniacally, pointing at Erik with newly-conjured video game hubris.

Erik shot a nasty glare over to Justin, pure disgust seething on his beautiful face, and then looked back at me. “I’m ready to start drinking.”

“Me too,” Justin said, frantically hitting the X button and unloading lead into someone else’s avatar. “What are we doing tonight?”

“There’s a drunk bus tonight,” Erik said. “Thought it could be fun.”

Justin glanced over at him, then looked back to the screen to murder another player. “What’s a drunk bus?”

“Charted school bus to Bourbon Street,” he said. “Two of them tonight. Zeta has one to Pat O’s, and Lambda Nu has one to Tropical Isle.”

“Which one’s which?”

“Zetas are the rapists,” Erik said, “Lambda Nu has the highest GPA on campus--let’s just let that speak for itself. But I’m thinking the Lambda Nu bus anyway. The Zetas are sketchy, and we’ll probably get bids to Lambda Nu just for showing our faces.”

I grimaced. “Do we want bids there?”

“Oh, God, no,” Erik said. “But rush week doesn’t start until next semester anyway, and Iota Chi doesn’t have anything going on tonight.”

Erik was very clearly angling to go Greek. I guess he had the look for it, the personality. For his part, he played it off as if he was just going around for the free booze--he couldn’t seem that desperate, after all, especially if he wound up going nowhere--but I already knew better than that in the couple weeks I’d known him. Thursday, Friday, or Saturday rolled around, and he’d plot out what fraternities were having which party where, and he had a studied encyclopedic knowledge of them--their president, their reputation, everything.

“Are you rushing Iota Chi?” I asked.

“They’re cool guys,” he replied, noncommittally. “I grabbed breakfast with Charlie’s brother, Chris, the other day--you met him. They seem pretty chill.”

Cool guys. Pretty chill. That was as close as Erik got to affection.

“What the hell were you doing early enough to get breakfast?” Justin asked. His game had ended; he was rolling up the controller, and then put it back under the TV.

“We both play polo, moron,” Erik said, grinning. “We have to be up at the asscrack of dawn. I think Chris Baker wants all of us to go Iota Chi, but I don’t know. He asks about you guys, when you’re coming to the next thing. He’s a great dude but he’s awkward as hell, though, whenever we talk about rush. Whatever. Cool guys, hot chicks, free booze. It’s enough for now.”

My memories of most of the night two weekends ago at Iota Chi were hazy, but I remembered liking Chris Baker, and I remembered the weed, and of course I remembered Matt’s torso. That crazy night where I got wasted and got high and messed around with Patrick ManFind, throwing off all spectres of the goody-goody high school Peter Becker in one fluid motion.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “Let’s go eat.”

Did I think about going Greek? Sure. Maybe. Maybe not. Philip was currently president of the Zeta chapter at Yale, vice president of Inter-Fraternity Council. He had, over the summer, spent considerable time thumping the virtues of fraternity life, before, disdainfully, adding, “It might not be for you, though.”

I was a brotherly knife to the gut but, in all honesty, Peter Becker as Philip knew him wasn’t a fraternity guy in the conventional sense. In any sense, really. Maybe a Lambda Nu, let’s-let-that-speak-for-itself. I didn’t even know if Adam Becker was either, but this collegiate iteration of myself--the drinking, smoking, deflowered one, the one that stood a chance of being friends with some suave, good-looking people--stood at least a fighting chance of being one.

I waited in the hallway for Erik and Justin to grab their wallets.

Erik came back out, looking over his shoulder. Once the door was closed, he said, still too loudly, “Fuck that Barry.”

Barry was his roommate and he was, by all metrics, insane.

He was overweight and agoraphobic and spent most of his time in his room playing World of Warcraft. The rest of us spent the lion’s share of spare time playing Battlescar 3, granted, but that was somehow more cool, more social, less depressing, and even so, we’d leave the room when the clock struck nine, to hit up a fraternity party or one of the bars. But while we were going out, Barry was going to bed--9pm, as a freshman in college!--and needed the room pitch black, which is why Erik so often wound up sitting cross-legged on mine and Tripp’s floor deep into the night, when he wanted to stay up past his bedtime from on-high.

“What’d he do now?” I asked.

Erik grinned in disbelief, shook his head as he continued to process. “It’s the most ridiculous thing. He put a tape line down the middle of the floor, like we’re in a fucking 1980s sitcom.”

I giggled. “He did not.”

Erik pushed the door open, and I peeked in. I could see Barry sitting at his desk, a mound of human, his glasses askew, staring blankly at his computer screen. His half of the room was sterile and empty--a set of neatly-made white sheets, no posters, nothing on the floor. Across the thin blue painter’s tape line was Erik’s side--his bed unmade, comforter wadded up in a ball, and a sea of dirty clothes and books littering the floor, with clear areas as conspicuous stepping stones leading from the door to his desk.

“How’d it get that messy in two weeks?” I asked, as Erik pulled the door shut. He didn’t reply, except to flip me off, and I start giggling.

Charlie and Justin came out of their room.

“Psycho just put down a tape line,” Erik told.

“No!” Justin gasped, eyes wide with shocked giddiness.

We heard the deadbolt in Erik’s room lock conspicuously.

I felt bad for Barry, but I didn’t feel that bad for him. It was one thing to be socially awkward, to be insecure and geeky, but it was another thing entirely to put a tape line down the middle of the floor. I couldn’t ever see myself doing that, even living with someone as messy as Erik.

“All right then,” Charlie said, clapping his hands together. “Shall we?”

 

I ran into Chris Baker and Brett Morton standing in the pizza line in Bruff Dining Hall while the slovenly cafeteria worker slowly cut the freshly-baked pie into slices.

“Always wait for fresh pizza,” Brett advised, as the woman shoveled the slices onto our plates. “It turns to rubber at two minutes after they take it out and, believe me, it’s just not worth it once it’s past a certain point.”

“Always eat at the Bubble food court,” Chris said, looking down sadly at his hamburger.

The Bubble was a white tent in the quad behind Bruff, a massive inflatable igloo masquerading as a student union. The University Center, across the street, had been torn down a few years ago and was lingering in some state of half-complete, with lackadaisical workers appearing on scaffolding to drill or nail something every few days. There was still a big sign out in front of the construction fence, “Coming January 2006,” which seemed wishful thinking, considering it was September.

Construction was, officially, delayed because of the storm, which I’m sure didn’t help things progress, but every building project in New Orleans seemed to be measured in geologic time anyway, hurricanes aside.

Brett pointed at Chris with his thumb. “Well, that’s really the best advice.” He leaned in and told me, sotto voce, as if it was a secret, “They have an Einstein’s Bagels in there. If I had more Wavebucks, I’d be in there every fucking day.”

I followed them into the dining room, where Justin, Charlie, Erik, and Tripp had already reserved a long table near the window, along with two girls I didn’t know.

“Oh, shit, it’s Michaela Birdrock!” Chris said, loudly, theatrically, when we got to the table.

The girl sitting in front of Charlie turned around, a big smile on her face. “Chrissy!” she exclaimed, standing up, launching her arms around his neck.

“Chrissy!” Brett mocked in falsetto.

Michaela shot him a dirty look, and his swagger evaporated when he saw the caliber of woman he had just insulted.

She was just, damn. Not that I was swinging remotely that way, of course. I appreciated her beauty like I appreciated modern art; stunning, didn't want it over the couch. But Michaela. A knockout. Like a Victoria’s Secret ad had spontaneously sprung to life and did a photo shoot in the middle of Bruff Cafeteria. She was a svelte blonde, her hair and face pale, almost ethereally so, a Topaz Mortmain of Tulane University. She had on a navy blue dress, clinging to dear life around her perfect figure, that suggested she knew what she had to offer the rest of us sniveling bastards.

“This is Michaela,” Charlie said, from where he was sitting, next to this girl. “She went to school with me in Dallas.”

“With us,” Chris corrected, grinning, as if he wanted to make sure he also got full credit for introducing her into our social orbit.

“With us,” Charlie repeated, begrudgingly.

“Are you a freshman?” Brett asked, taking the seat across from her, next to Chris Baker.

Michaela looked at him with that perfected hot girl disdain splashed across her face, staring down at him as if she could not imagine a more unwanted scene than Brett Morton sitting near her, eating his cafeteria pizza. “Yeah.”

Then she motioned to the girl next to her--there was a girl next to her; I’d forgotten--and added, “This is Jordan Fleischer, my roommate.”

Jordan smiled politely, nodded, but didn’t seem to bother with niceties before going back to her massive bowl of lettuce--not salad; lettuce.

Jordan Fleischer was not an unattractive girl. She had a slightly droopy-pointed nose, which overhung her philtrum just slightly, and wild dark curls that had been forced into a submissive ponytail with, presumably, great effort. Not a bad-looking girl, but of course anyone sitting in this close proximity to Michaela Birdrock was day-old bread.

Brett, for his part, was still busy scanning Michaela’s body, from next on down, despite her escalating glares and clear proliferating annoyance. He was not subtle.

“Dallas, huh?” he flirted.

Michaela ignored him, instead going back to warmly smile at the people she did know, who were clearly the least likely to conduct a nonconsensual mental strip tease. “What dorm are you in again?” she asked Charlie.

“Sharp,” he told her. “We’re all in Sharp. How about you?”

“Josephine Louise,” she said. “The all-girls.”

She looked back at Brett Morton, from out of the corner of her eyes, but he apparently wasn’t too picky, because he’d moved on to Jordan Fleischer by this point. At the moment, he was surveying the contours of her breasts and then what he could see of her waist. I guess she hit some minimal sort of benchmark, because he brightly said, “So, where are you from, beautiful?”

“Oh, I’m from New York,” she said. “Long Island. Great Neck.” Slight New York accent--not especially thick, not like Fran Drescher or anything, but conspicuous even with just that handful of words.

“Oh, nice," Brett replied. "Must be great being that close to the city.”

“Yeah, it’s fun, I guess.”

"You look like you’d be fun," Brett said, grinning, darting his eyes back at Chris, who, for his part, looked mortified at Brett’s forwardness.

At that precise moment, the polite smile fell off Jordan’s face as she seemed to realize that Brett had intentions slightly more grandiose than small talk. I didn’t know Brett very well but I could already tell her was a wide-net flirter. Flirt obvious, flirt often, trusting that eventually some above-average dolphin would get caught in his sexual tuna net.

"I'm anti-fun, actually," she replied acidly, turning back to her lettuce, dumping a paper cup of brown dressing on top of it. “Really, all types of fun. Not for me.”

She played it cool, but she looked startled, like she’d suddenly discovered she was in a bad neighborhood after dark. She obviously wasn’t the kind of girl who got aggressively flirted with, and she was trying to make eye contact with Michaela, who was swimming in her own animated conversation with the Bakers at the moment, for advice on whether she should feel flattered or harassed, but received none.

“So, um, what’s your major, Jordan?” I interrupted.

Jordan let out a slight sigh, and tossed me relieved appreciation for the lifeline. “Biology. I’m pre-med.”

“Dr. Jordan Fleischer?” I asked.

She smiled, a small modicum of allowed pride onto her face. “Someday, hopefully.”

“I’m pre-med, too,” Brett Morton said. Chris Baker rolled his eyes--I couldn’t tell if Morton was telling the truth or not. He was awfully goofy to be pre-med--I couldn’t imagine him pouring over scientific textbooks, let alone cutting someone’s chest open. “Did you make it to Iota Chi last weekend?”

Jordan frowned, bitter that she had been forcibly dragged back into the conversation with Brett. “I haven’t been to any of the frats yet.” And then she quickly angled herself to draw Chris Baker into the conversation, who she seemed to have correctly pegged as the least lecherous of the two. “I hear your guys’ party was the best of the first night, though.”

“We put on a good show,” Chris said. He paused, gave her a shy, anemic smile, and seemed completely at a loss of things to say. “I think I remember you from our first party.”

“I wasn’t there,” Jordan said, with a malicious little grin. “But thanks for being polite.”

“Sorry,” Chris replied. His face was going a little red at this point. “Well, you’ll have to come to our next one, then!”

I didn’t know Chris Baker well enough to know if he was flirting too, but he was using that same sort of stilted, out-of-control conversation style he used with us when he started talking about rush. But Brett Morton, across the table, biting his index knuckle behind a rapidly proliferating smile, made me suspect he was.

That just made it painful to watch. I never flirted, but even I hoped I could make a better showing that that. I couldn’t imagine having less game than Chris Baker.

“When is it?” she asked.

He looked confused, looked over to Morton, who consciously turned away. He turned back to Jordan: “When’s what?”

Jordan snickered, raised her eyebrows disbelievingly. She didn’t know how to be flirted with, but she certainly wasn’t above judging Chris Baker for his poor offense. “Your next party.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he admitted. He turned back to Morton, his face begging for some sort of reprieve. “Morton, when’s our next party?”

“Week from tomorrow,” Morton said, mouth full of burger, without turning to look at him.

"I'm sure Becker will be there, too,” Baker added, motioning towards me, in another desperate attempt to expand the conversation, to pull himself out of quicksand.

"Yeah, probably," I replied. I looked down at my watch. "Okay, I have to go. Geology lab.”

"Ooh," Michaela said, snapping away from her conversation. "One o'clock with Anan--anan?"

Anantharaman, which I had absolutely no idea how to pronounce either. I wasn’t even sure if there was more of it--it didn’t fit on my schedule. “Yeah.”

"Oh, I had him last year," Chris said, slinking back into his normal conversation style, which was really not bad, considering how awful he was at rushing and flirting. "Easy as shit, but you can’t understand a word he says.”

“You can't understand any of the science TAs,” Brett echoed.

"Want to head over?" she said, grabbing at the straps of her tote bag.

I nodded, and we got up, passed around goodbyes, and left the cafeteria.

So I never anticipated actually being with a girl, in any sense of the word, but walking with Michaela Birdrock was quite possibly the biggest ego boost I’d ever had. Like I was in the presence of greatness. I could just imagine everyone’s head turning, as we walked down McAllister Drive towards the Academic Quad, wondering who that beam of light walking next to that scrawny guy.

People would be envious. They’d think I’d be the funniest person ever, or have a nine inch cock, or have a multi-million dollar trust fund. None of which was true, but I enjoyed the idea that people could be envious.

"I'll never get used to this," she said, wiping the sweat that began beading on her forehead. "I thought Dallas was bad, but Dallas is dry at least."

It was another hot day. The air seemingly completely still, dense and thick and oppressive.

"D.C. gets bad," I said. "You should see D.C. in July--it's awful. But not like this.”

I wasn't very good at small talk. Not like Chris Baker bad, but not very skilled at it. Most of the time, people didn’t care to talk to me, and I didn’t really care enough to push conversation. And I certainly was way out of my element with someone like Michaela Birdrock. Beautiful people intimidated me; I was acutely aware of their socio-genetic superiority, even more acutely aware of where I fell on some Gattaca lower-caste.

I was too harsh, really, on myself. I wasn’t bad-looking. I was spawned from two good-looking parents, but I always felt Justine and Philip had claimed the best of their looks. For my part, I’d somehow wounded up short and thin like my mom, with her old nose and my dad’s dark hair, except it never quite fell into a perfected political coiff like his did. Regardless, I knew I did not have the personality to talk my way into a higher echelon of attractiveness. I had a nice face though, maybe. My mom’s old nose looked better on Philip, giving him some sort of rugged handsomeness, but I made it look okay, maybe.

"So," Michaela chirped, swinging her purse back and forth like a pendulum, "any weekend plans?"

"Going on a drunk bus with Lambda Nu, I think," I said. "Tropical Isle."

"We were doing that too," she said. "I had a Hand Grenade my first night here from Tropical Isle. They're really strong and really sweet, so they taste great but hit you like a freight train. I felt like I was going to puke all over the cab and I felt like shit the next day. Jordan kept telling me to call the EMS, but I didn't." She grinned. "Jordan's kind of a mama-bear. Definitely too worried about everything."

"Yeah," I said. "Crazy. My roommate's pretty chill."

"Who's your roommate?"

"Tripp Callender," I said. "Kind of my height and, um, Mississippi? Architecture major?"

"Oh, yeah," she said. "He was with us at lunch."

"Yeah."

“Jordan’s a decent roommate,” she said. “What’d you think of her?”

“Seems nice.”

“She is nice,” Michaela said. “I love her to death, but she needs to loosen up a little bit. She has, like, one drink when we go out.”

“College is still new,” I suggested. “Everyone eases in.”

“I guess so,” she said. “I don’t think she went to any parties in high school. Weird, right? I mean, not even one.”

“So weird,” I said, and I decided to just take it as a compliment that Michaela Birdrock thought I was the type of person who got invited to parties in high school. “We had some good parties in my high school.”

“Oh yeah?” she said. “Throw any ragers?”

Of course not, but Philip had, that one week my dad was back in Nevada during recess and my mom had to go to San Francisco. Justine and I were twelve and thirteen, respectively, and shuttled off to parental supervision--her to Julie Kendrick’s, me to Grant Prendergast’s--but Philip was seventeen and had obtained permission to stay home. I officially knew nothing about the party, but Philip had left his (otherwise locked) Xanga open on the computer one day, and I’d read everything.

“Yeah, one,” I said. “My parents were both out of town for work, and my brother and I--” I figured I might as well just insert myself into the story. “--threw this great party. Well, it was his party, but he said I could bring friends if we didn’t tell my parents.”

“Of course,” Michaela nodded. “My older sister let me do that all the time.”

“Right,” I said, trying to hide how proud I was that I’d stumbled onto some universal truth. “And, like, there was just a ton of booze. We had about a hundred people--” It had really been closer to fifty, but my fictional life could throw a better party than Philip, in theory. “--so, like, anyone who’s anyone in our class. The cops got called maybe five times, and we kept talking our way out of it. My brother did, I mean. He’s really slick. And everyone passes out late into the night, and we’re all sprawled across my house, and my parents are coming back in, like, seven hours so we have to frantically clean everything. And we got away with it, too. No one could tell. My sister found out about it on Xanga, like, three months later.”

“Nice,” she said, with enough admiration that I felt like I’d passed some sort of coolness test.I know Adam Becker had only been around for about a week but he--I--could conceivably throw a party that people would go to. Tripp, Justin, Charlie, Erik, maybe even Michaela Birdrock.

Peter Becker couldn’t but Adam Becker could get away with that. He had game. Some game. More game.

We got to the science labs, buried in an old building that seemed very Depression-era to me--dark, dingy, with gray tile floors and chipped woodwork. All the doors were unmarked, except the third one down, which had a piece of paper taped to it: "Geology Lab."

“For this, we pay $50,000 a year,” Michaela grinned.

“I’m on scholarship,” I told her. “Half-ride.”

She shook her head. “Lucky bastard.”

Inside, about half of the metal stools were taken. A middle-aged Indian man, stooped over a podium motionless and slightly sinister, like a fleshy gargoyle, was at the front of the room.

Michaela led me silently to the last row--Michaela and Adam were the kind of nonchalant people who sat in the back row--and took the two remaining empty stools there. The class was heavily backloaded, actually, with everyone trying to sit as far away from the T.A. as possible.

The clock struck one, and a few more people stumbled inside, got stuck with the front row.

"Do you understand anything this guy's saying?" Michaela whispered, once he began talking. I shrugged. He handed out the workbooks and passed around a sign-in sheet, then must've said we'd start next week, because he went back to the podium to shuffle papers, and everyone else began packing up.

"Totally not a waste of time," Michaela muttered, once we got out onto the quad. "Where do you live?"

"Sharp," I said. "Third floor."

"I’m in Josephine Louise House," she replied. "Or J.L., I guess they call it. Odd-numbered wing, second floor." We had reached the point where the path forked. "I'm this way, then. See you tonight, though." She paused. "Here, let me have your number so we can keep in text about tonight.”

I gave her my number, she punched it into her phone, and then said goodbye, with a smile on her face. She was so blase about the whole thing--I couldn't tell if she was giving me her number so I could text her later, or if she was giving me her number so I could text her later.

Nuanced difference. I didn't understand girls. I’d never had any desire to understand girls because you’d think I wouldn’t have to, but then you meet someone like Michaela Birdrock. And I wasn’t attracted to her in a sexual way, because I didn’t feel that kind of attraction to girls in a sexual way, but damn. She was beautiful, and she wanted me to text her later and, no matter what the context, I couldn’t help but silently celebrate that little milestone in my head.

 

Tripp, Erik, Justin, and Charlie were all in our room already when I got back. Charlie and Justin were both sitting at our desks, Tripp and Erik on each of the beds, playing Battlescar 3. Too-loud rap music was playing from Justin’s bulky old Dell computer, which had been plugged into Tripp’s speakers. There was a deitized pillowcase in the middle of the room, shaped suspiciously like a liquor bottle, and a few bottles of vending machine soda. Everyone was drinking out of a Solo cup.

"Are you guys seriously all done with class?" I asked.

"You're done," Tripp pointed out, without looking away from the TV.

"Yeah but I'm not supposed to be for another hour and a half. First day of labs.”

"I'm so jealous of you, dude," Erik said. "You get to have a class with fucking Michaela? And that section's full. I checked.”

"Stalker," Justin called, shaking his head sadly. Erik flipped him off, without looking.

Tripp grinned. “She's in my Spanish class, but I didn't know who she was. Admired her beauty from afar. Now I have a reason to talk to her. Life just got so much better.”

"Wait, dude," Erik said. "You're in Spanish 201, right?" Tripp nodded. Erik paused the game, emitting a frantic “Hey!” from Tripp, who was banging on the controller keys, futiley.

Erik looked over at Justin. "Let me use one of the laptops, eh?”

Justin unplugged Tripp’s laptop, and passed it to Erik. I watched him load up Firefox and log onto StudentWeb.

"Okay," Erik said, pulling up a list of Spanish 201 classes. "What section are you guys in?"

"You're a crazy person," Charlie said, spinning around in his desk chair to face all of us. "You're really going to switch classes to get with her?”

"Dude, I'd sell a kidney to bang a girl like that. This is my in.”

“You’re a crazy person,” Charlie echoed.’

“It is kind of stalkery,” I told him. “Like, what if she finds out your meet-cute is this orchestration?”

“She’ll only find out if you guys are little assholes,” Erik replied. “And I trust you guys. We’re buds. Tripp, what section?"

"Uh,” he said, caught off-guard. “Tuesday-Thursday, 11am, with Profe Schumann."

"Yes!" Erik said. "I'm in the Monday-Wednesday-Friday at 10--same professor and everything." He clicked a few buttons, dropped his section, replaced it with Tripp's, then threw his fists up in the air triumphantly. "Last seat. Look at that shit. Meant. To. Be."

"Baller," Tripp deadpanned. “Get off my computer.”

 

Michaela Birdrock texted me when they were heading over to the bus.

“She texts Adam,” Erik said, bitterly. “Figures.”

When we got to the library, a hulking Brutalist cage along Freret Street, everyone was clustered into a big group, and some Lambda Nu brother holding a big flag with their letters on it, a beacon in the sky for weary aspiring drunks.

It was mostly guys, the occasional girl in high heels and a short dress, screeching loudly at some group of guys they hadn’t known two weeks ago. I could see, from the direction of Josephine Louise House, a pride of freshmen girls heading towards us.

And yes, Michaela and Jordan, right at the front.

"Hey," I said, as they walked up. “Great to see you guys.”

Michaela quickly introduced the rest of these girls, whose names I immediately forgot, and then looked at me, big smile on her face. “I’m so excited about tonight.”

They were all already a little drunk. So were we. Pregaming. Everyone but Jordan, who looked rather pretty when she put some effort into it--a pale green dress, that brought out her expressive hazel eyes, and straightened hair and makeup, but she was standing there with her arms folded and a suspicious scowl, looking utterly untouchable.

And then, in one of the other approaching crowds, I saw Patrick ManFind in a group of guys. And suddenly I felt nervous, like this whole fiction of Adam Becker was about to come crashing down. I could see Erik, linking arms with Michaela, both of them sneering at seeing my secrets splashed across the conversation as they sauntered away, beautiful people flooding out of this wonderful new collegiate life.

And then: Patrick ManFind walked right past me, not even looking up at me, not even almost acknowledging my presence. I watched him go. He was in a tight flannel button-down, jeans that hugged that pert little ass that I could imagine abusing, as a pressure valve.

No, he was in the closet too. Maybe even more so than I was. We had talked about that, hadn’t we--I’d been so drunk, and high--that this was a first time, very tentative, very discreet transaction between the two of us?

We were bonded in the secret. Mutually-assured destruction. I America, he the Soviets. No way either of us would Bay of Pigs each other. Still, I kept staring at him with suspicion. He didn’t stare at me at all, almost aggressively so.

The bus pulled up, a yellow school bus that said Orleans Parish School Board on the side, and took our seats. I was sitting with Erik, in front of Michaela and Jordan. We kneeled up on our seats and turned backwards, as the bus drove away.

"So," Erik said, "Tripp said you're in our Spanish class."

"Oh, yeah," she said. "Schumann?"

"I just transferred in," he explained. "I was in the Monday-Wednesday-Friday but I needed to move things around and all. You know how it is."

"Cool," she said. "Schumann seems pretty good. He was ranked pretty high, at least." And then she turned to Jordan, pointedly to avoid Erik. “That color looks amazing on you. I told you that we could wear the same size.”

Erik was unaware or, more likely, didn’t seem to care that Michaela was trying to chew her way out of the conversational mousetrap he’d set.

"Yeah, it does," he complimented, noncommittally. "Have you gone to Bourbon Street yet?"

"Only with my parents," Jordan chimed in; Erik sent her a displeased look that she had wedged her way into their conversation at all. "They wanted to take me to Preservation Hall to hear jazz music. And we ate at the Red Fish Grill the first night."

"Nice," Erik said, somewhat dismissively, still looking at Michaela. "What about you?"

“Yeah, my first night," she replied, just as disdainfully, and then turned a complete ninety degrees to Jordan, to engage in conversation about one of their floormates, a conversation that left Erik, still with wide-eyed interest plastered on his face, nodding along absently but enthusiastically, still determined to be a part of whatever Michaela Birdrock was talking about, even if it expressly didn’t include him.

The bus pulled up to the side of Tropical Isle, on the corner of Bourbon Street, in one of those French Quarter colonial buildings that looked elegantly dilapidated. I thought, before I moved to New Orleans, that all of the city looked like that, but it didn’t. Just those ten square blocks. The rest of the city was either ramshackle shotguns, polished antebellum mansions, or, now, Katrina rubble.

We walked up an extremely questionable staircase on the side of the building, one that looked like it might detach from the building and collapse onto the dumpsters below at any given moment, and then made our way into the private room on the second floor of the building. They checked our Tulane IDs, but not our actual IDs, which was a nice bit of confidence.

“So I guess we can just get drinks?” Tripp asked, inspecting his hands for some sort of Under 21 X. “I've never been to a bar before.”

"I don't think they care,” Jordan said. “It's New Orleans. And Lambda's paying anyway."

"Michaela could probably order for us," Erik said. "I don't think they'd turn her down."

Michaela's face registered no response. It was admirably how committed she was too blocking Erik any way possible.

Erik seemed to realize what she was doing; the smile wavered from his face, for just a second, before he hitched it right back up again.

“I got the first round if you go get it,” Erik said to Tripp, pulling out a wad of cash. “Just cashed a check from my mom. Go with Michaela, just in case they give you a hard time.”

Tripp took the cash, and he and Michaela went to get the first round of icy green hand grenades, which the bartenders were filling up as quickly as they could.

I saw Patrick ManHunt across the bar, behind an animatronic hula girl that was creaking back and forth slowly, noisily. We were both looking towards each other, but specifically not at each other, pointedly not trying to make eye contact. He was with must’ve been his entire floor--a big group of fifteen or twenty guys, all in a circle, nervously trying to make eye contact with the floor of girls crowded next to them.

"So Jordan," Erik said, "what's Michaela's deal?"

She looked suspicious, even though she clearly knew exactly what he was going for. "What do you mean?"

"Like, she doesn't seem to like me very much.” He said it like he’d never been rejected before. Part of me wondered if he even had been rejected before, and I suspected Erik was the kind of guy that could bed every pretty girl in Lake Laurel, Arkansas, without so much as a second guess.

Jordan grimaced. "She gets hit on constantly. Believe me. I've seen it. She knows just what kind of girl she is. She knows what you’re after.”

Erik thought for a moment. "It's flattering," he said, putting his hands in his pockets.

"Oh, she loves it," Jordan said, "but you made her think that you like her, and she's going to let you dangle because she's a sadistic bitch.” She paused. “Love her as I do. She has a boyfriend anyway--you’re really just wasting your time."

"Boyfriend, huh," Erik muttered. "Think I could take him?"

Jordan grinned, and shook her head, as Tripp and Michaela came back, their arms full of s. "You look stupid enough to try. Ken was an all-state wrestler in Texas."

"Holy shit, he really is made by Mattel, isn't he," Erik gasped. "Is his name really Ken?"

Michaela, who had just appeared over his shoulder with an armful of Hand Grenades, had a look of pure revulsion on her face. "What about Ken?"

"Nothing," he said, taking one of the Hand Grenade. With a smirk, he added, "Thanks for the drink, Barbie."

She glared next at Jordan, who slinked back a bit.

I took my own Hand Grenade. It was served in a green plastic cup, tall and skinny, and it looked like a slushy. Regardless, I braced myself for a first, tentative sip, remembering the guy vat from the Zeta house--but it just tasted like a slightly-bitter juice, citrusy. I knew, from the banners blazing “Strongest Drink on Bourbon Street!” that it was not to be tangled with, but I definitely could feel myself sucking it down.

"We're going to get fucked up," Tripp announced, cheersing everyone.

"Hell yes," Justin replied.

Charlie didn't cheers us. He was too busy scanning the crowd. "I'm trying to figure out who's a Lambda," he said, taking a sip of hand grenade. "I know that's Landon Marsh." He pointed. "He's definitely a Lambda--sophomore. He went to prom with a guy--kind of a big deal at Hillcrest."

I knew immediately who he was talking about, because I had seen him on ManFind and then again on Facebook when I ran a search for guys at Tulane who were interested in men. He hadn't seen me--we hadn't talked and, since my face was private on ManFind, I didn't unlock it for him. He was cute, but in a bubbly, obviously-gay sort of way. He was making the rounds with a few other guys in Lambda letters.

"He went to school in Dallas with us," Charlie clarified. "Chris hates him."

"Because he's gay?" Tripp asked. "Stone Age shit, man."

I kept a straight face, as best I could, but I just felt like I wanted hug him. Some indication that, with at least one of my Tulane friends, there might not be a point where he was ashamed of me, where we stopped being friends because he learned too much about me. Sure, it was 2006, not 1986--polite public opinion would be on my side, not theirs--but there was still that lingering idea that they’d treat me differently, that things would never be quite the same.

No, I wanted to hug him, but I wouldn’t hug him. I just tried to look at him as plainly, nonchalantly, as possible.

"Nothing to do with being gay," Charlie said. "Chris just hates him. But he hates everyone. He’s equal-opportunity like that.”

Michaela was still staring at Landon Marsh, her eyes narrowed, her face twisted into disbelief. “Why don't I remember him at all?”

Charlie turned to her, raised his eyebrows. “How on earth do you not remember him? He took a guy to prom and almost got it cancelled.”

Michaela raised her hands defensively. “I don’t know. I remember that whole gay prom thing, but wasn’t it that gay black kid? What’s his face?”

Charlie started laughing. “He’s straight, believe it or not. I mean, officially.”

“Officially,” Michaela repeated, and they both laughed again.

Officially. I wondered if there was any discussions like that about me, when I wasn’t in the room. Probably not--I didn’t think I advertised anything too much, and they hadn’t known me very long. Still, it made me uncomfortable--ripped the euphoria I had from Tripp away from me.

I tried to pull away Jordan or Tripp or Erik into a side conversation, but they seemed pretty involved in Hillsdale High School’s gossip mill.

“Michaela was popular,” Charlie explained to us, “so she didn’t really know shit about anyone. Apparently being popular meant you have no idea who anyone is, but they all know who you are.”

“Hey!” she protested. “Charlie was just as popular as I was. We were both in prom court senior year.”

“But you made prom queen,” he said, clearly enjoying this faux-self-deprecating exchange among titans of high school popularity. “I maxed out at prom prince.”

Jordan leaned over to me, and muttered, “Think they’ll whip them out and start measuring?”

We both laughed a little bit at that. Michaela looked at me out of the corner of her eye, disapprovingly, and we both abruptly stopped.

“I saw Kelsey Franklin, too,” Charlie continued, apparently no longer paying attention to the rest of us in this conversation. “Last week. Remember her, grade above us? She’s in Gamma Nu now. Lost some weight. Looks pretty hot. My mom was right--turns out she did have a pretty face.”

“I always said she’d be a cute girl if she lost thirty pounds,” Michaela agreed. “There's so many Hillcrest people here."

"Just the two us from our class, though," Charlie told her.

Michaela’s mouth snaked upwards into a smirk. “No, no, not two. You’re forgetting--you know.” She did a theatrical shudder.

“Oh, shit,” he said, biting his knuckle behind a smile. “The Anteater?”

Then, together, they both shouted, sing-song, "Marci Linden."

High school was such an intriguing concept. I didn’t realize how spot-on “Mean Girls” was--from my little basecamp of Grant Prendergast and Sarah Bernard and the rest of us on Debate, I didn’t realize there were people being verbally eviscerated for sport like gladiators in the Colosseum of Popularity across the halls of Harrington. And it felt horrible for saying this--how ugly could a girl be that they nicknamed her The Anteater?--but it was awfully fun on this end.

"Yeah," he said, shaking his head. "God, she's gross." He turned to us, his eyes suddenly lit up with excitement at getting to tell about this poor, gruesome girl. "You should see her. She looks like a troll doll"--Jordan actually spit out some Hand Grenade in laughter at this--"with, like, grizzled hair and acne. Big, long nose. She looks like she just came out of the ground at a cemetery.”

Michaela nodded enthusiastically. "And, like, not one of those girls with a great personality either. She's kind of a bitch. And kind of a slut, surprisingly. In certain circles.”

"Ugly, bitchy slut," Erik said, clapping his hands together. "Named The Anteater. Can't wait to meet her. Sounds like Tripper’s type, at least.”

Tripp gave him the finger, and then went silently, scowling, back to his Hand Grenade.

 

I was three drinks in when the room was starting to spin a little, so I went out on the gallery for some fresh air. Jordan offered to go with me. She was still on her first, which had the majority left in it still, so I figured it was more of a goodwill gesture on her part than a genuine need for fresh air.

"Having fun?" I asked. She nodded. I flicked her cup. "Doesn't look like it."

"I'm not a big drinker," she replied. She took a quick sip, then rolled her eyes. "Plus, someone's going to have to cart Michaela home whenever she’s moaning about how she’s never going to drink again.”

I didn’t know quite how to approach that sort of comment, so I just managed a sputtered: “Is she that bad?”

"Oh, no," Jordan said, swatting the air. “I don’t mean to imply.” She paused, restarted. “No, she's really great. She's just annoying as hell when she's wasted. But who isn't?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "I had to drag Tripp back last weekend. Literally, drag. He wasn’t walking."

She gave me a brusque laugh. "Great having roommates," she said. "They'll return the favor, I'm sure."

"Well, looks like Michaela won't have to," I said, flicking her cup again. “Lucky her.”

“Getting drunk just doesn’t appeal to me,” she said. “Losing your faculties and everything. I don’t know. There’s something scary about being conscious, being around people, and having no idea what you’re doing. It seems so, I don’t know.” She took one more sip of her drink, for good measure.

“It’s just fun,” I told her, “to lose your faculties. I think you have too many faculties.”

She grinned widely. "I don't think I like you very much, Adam Becker."

"Que sera, sera," I sang. "Whatever will be, will be." She slapped me on the back head, and I stopped singing. "Wow. Violence. I don't think I like you either."

"You'll come around," she teased. "I'm a people pleaser. Why Adam?”

“What?”

“Adam,” she repeated. “That’s not your name. Your name’s Peter.”

I’d never expressly been asked that kind of question before, in my two weeks at Tulane--everyone else had just accepted it as my name. Why Adam. Well, Adam wasn’t Peter. That was the short answer. Peter Becker, the emaciated fifteen-year-old with glasses and braces and speech and debate trophies. I didn’t mean to be too down on myself, because I did actually have a generally placid high school experience. I wasn’t bullied or anything. If someone thought I was gay, they kept it to themselves--I wasn’t popular but I was well-liked, didn’t live in one of those after school specials on bullying. I didn’t know why I wanted to be anyone else but Peter Becker, but I did.

“Adam’s my middle name,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, “but why not Peter?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Pete-er Beck-er.” I added the last bit, sing-song, landing hard on the slant rhyme. Peter Becker had terrible phonetics, for starters.

She shrugged, then thought for a moment. “How about Pete Becker?”

“Friends character,” I warned. “Monica’s rich boyfriend.”

Jordan rolled her eyes. “You might be the only person in the entire world to know that.” This coy little smirk begun to grow on her face, and then, “Petey Becker?”

I rolled my eyes, smiling at her. “I’m done with this conversation.”

“No, no,” she giggled. “I promise I won’t call you Petey. Peter’s a good name though. Stone.”

“Rock,” I corrected. “Peter means ‘rock.’ It always bugged me because Simon means ‘to whom God listens.’ So God took someone he listened to and turned him into a rock.”

That was literally all I knew about the Bible. It wasn’t even because of the Bible that I knew that--I had looked up my name in this battered baby name book my parents had from back when Philip was a fetus. Rock. Stone. Whatever it was. I hated the thought of turning an advisor into a rock.

“Stone, rock,” Jordan replied. “Adam, though. First man.”

Hadn’t entirely thought of it that way, considering the last time I’d even seen a Bible was maybe seventh grade. With a smile, I told her, “Well, that’s a lot of pressure, isn’t it.”

“Well, Eve wore the pants,” Jordan replied. “Took the risks. Showed intellectual curiosity.”

“That’s a little revisionist.”

She smirked again at that. “Any siblings?"

"What?"

"Do you have a siblings?"

I hadn’t realized we were moving on from my naming choices and scripture so suddenly.

"Yeah," I said. "Sister, a year younger. Brother, three years older."

"Middle kid," she said. "Me too. Three brothers, one older, and the twins are younger."

"Bet they whipped you into shape."

"Ha," she said. "Please. The only girl holds all the power.”

“Eve,” I accused.

She smirked again, but said nothing this time, and the conversation fell into a quick lull of silence. "Have enough fresh air yet?"

"Yeah," I said. "I think it's hotter out here than it is in there."

"Can't catch a break," Jordan replied, still grinning at me. “The privileged life of Adam Becker doesn’t have enough privilege in it, I guess.”

We went back inside. Erik was dancing with Michaela. Drunk hugging, swaying to the music, really. They were both on their third too, nearly finished, hanging limply down at their sides.

"I thought she had a boyfriend," I said.

"Oh, just wait," Jordan replied. "She's a huge tease. She likes the attention. She pretends like she doesn’t, but wait until she gets drunk and then it’s anyone’s ball. But she’s a tease--she'll do this, and then she'll leave when he tries to kiss her and act all offended and prissy, like he took advantage of her completely out of the blue, like she wasn't inviting it at all, and storm out. This happened literally every night we’ve gone out together. Clockwork.”

"Expert witness," I said. "Professor of Michaelaology."

“Observing the gorillas,” she said, with a smirk, crossing her arms. “Michaela's an easy read, though. Ken’s at Vanderbilt, so it's not like he's here to stop any of this. As long as she doesn't kiss or fuck, she's in a moral clear. You know that's what she's thinking--how far can she go without actually cheating, how she can trick guys into wanting her.”

Nearby, Justin was hooking up with a girl. Full-on making out, the girl twisted uncomfortably backwards so her shoulder blades were lying on the edge of the pub table as he ground into her.

I wondered where Patrick ManFind went. He was back on my brain now. I’d had enough to drink to consider lowering my sexual embargo. He looked so damn good in those jeans.

I didn't know where Tripp went, either, but I figured if I could pawn him off on some girl, he'd go home with her and Patrick ManFind could come over and we could, you know, bang. That hot little ass.

Wow. It dawned on me, suddenly, how ready I was for him. Maybe just knowing Patrick was around. Maybe knowing that it was the part of the night where everyone started pairing off. Maybe the sad residue of not being able to jack off since this morning, because my room was full of neighbors playing Battlescar 3.

But then I had a vision of Patrick ManFind and me, naked and knotted on my bed, and Tripp coming back, the look of Southern Republican shock splashed across his face. No, we’d have to go back to his room in Monroe. We had to get his roommate pawned off on some chick.

Or Brandon from Loyola. The safety of a difference campus. He was still an option, but he hadn’t texted me yet at this point, and I didn’t even know if he was thinking later rather than tonight.

Tripp came storming out of the bathroom, top few buttons of his shirt undone, sleeves rolled up. "Y'all!" he screeched, holding out his vowel. "Another round?"

Jordan looked at him skeptically, took another sip of Hand Grenade.

"We're fine, man," I said. I looked down at my drink, which was mostly just ice at this point. "Oh, well, if you're getting one more."

"Ahhh!" he grinned, and he tore off towards the bar.

"I like your friends," Jordan said finally, and she didn’t sound sarcastic, which was a nice change. "I do. They’re fun.”

"Good. I like yours."

She bristled, folded her arms. “Everyone likes Michaela.”

"I like you too.”

“People like me more when I’m with Michaela,” she said, quietly. “I don’t think you’d like me when it’s just me.”

“I like you fine right now. I like you better without Michaela, actually.”

She looked at me, seemed a bit taken aback by that statement, and took another sip of her drink. She’d almost had an entire Hand Grenade in the time we’d had three, but she looked pretty flushed, her eyes lazy with drunkenness. Why she was being so vocal about how she felt, I guess. The main had sprung a drunken leak, however small. "Well, thank you,” was all she could muster.

“You fade away when you’re with her,” I continued.

She waved me away with a hand. “Quit while you’re ahead. I’ll just enjoy the compliment.”

I clinked her glass. “Cheers.”

“L’chaim,” she replied.

“What’s l’chaim?”

“Hebrew,” she said. “To life.”

“To life,” I said, clinking her again.

“L’chaim.”

My phone vibrated--new text. I knew who it would be, so I tried to answer it as discreetly as I could.

“How’s it going?”

I thought of a way to respond, without belaying how drunk I was. I could feel the room getting less exact, people melding together in a haboob of visual noise.

I looked up at Jordan, tried to shield the phone with my hand so she wouldn't see it. She had gone back to staring at Erik and Michaela anyway, and Tripp, who had arrived back from the bar without the promised drinks, was drunkenly slurring words to her, having a conversation with her even though she seemed to be ignoring him.

"I'm about to get in a cab," I texted back, helplessly. "We're heading back."

"If you haven’t left yet, want to go to the Bourbon Pub? I’m just leaving Golden Nugget."

I had no idea where the Golden Nugget was, but it must’ve been close by. Because I recognized the Bourbon Pub from my Google searches for gay life in New Orleans, and it was only a block away, on Bourbon and St. Ann, where the gay half of Bourbon Street abruptly started. From the pictures, which I’d luridly poured over the entire summer since I sent in my deposit, it seemed to be a lot of hot guys grinding up against other hot guys in various states of undress. I would never be confident enough to expose myself there. It was nerve-wracking but titillating.

However, I was drunk and I kind of wanted to get laid. Maybe, just a little. Possibly.

"Yeah you do," he texted again, and yeah, I did. “Where are you?”

“Tropical Isle,” I said. “Meet me outside in two minutes. Bourbon and Orleans.”

"Hey," I said, my head popping up to look at Jordan. "I'm going to meet some other friends at another place--you mind corralling everyone back home for me?"

"Where are we going?" Tripp slurred. "Let's rage."

"Oh, just me, just a little thing," I said. "I just have some other friends I want to see real quick."

"Bullshit--you're getting laid," grinned Tripp, making an unsuccessful grab for my phone; I was too fast at shoving it back in my pocket. "I know a booty call if I see one." He turned suddenly grave. "Have sex in her room--you know I can't go back to sleep after someone wakes me up."