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November 14, 2005

Ex Marks the Spot

From Whitney Gaskell, November's Guest Literary Chick!

Confession time: when I was in college, I was a sorority chick. I was, it’s true. Not only that, I was a Tri-Delt at a time when Saturday Night Live kept running an inane sorority skit in which one of the comedians answered her sorority house phone by chirping, “Delta, Delta, Delta, can I help ya, help ya, help ya!”

Approximately 40,000 people felt the need to repeat this joke to me.

“Hey, did you ever see that Saturday Night Live skit?” they’d ask.

“Yes, I have! Please don’t . . .,” I’d beg.

Too late.

“Delta, Delta, Delta, can I help ya, help ya, help ya! Ha!”

Sigh.

Twice a year, my sorority held a formal dinner dance, which forced me to scour the bottom of the scum-crusted barrel of eligible undergraduate men for a date. This never went well. In fact, the one trait that all of my dates had in common was that they were all pukers.

They puked at the dance. They puked on the bus on the way back from the dance. They puked on my sorority sisters. And, worst of all, they puked on me.

By the time my senior year rolled around, I’d had enough.

“Who are you bringing to the spring dance?” my friends would ask.

“I’m not,” I’d say.

“But you have to! You can’t go alone!”

“I can and I will,” I said. “I have a nice dress. I don’t want to be puked on again.”

My friend, Heather, took the situation in hand, and decided to set me up with a friend of her boyfriend.

“That way they can hang out together, and we can hang out together,” she explained.

“I want to meet him first,” I said.

And so I did. I met – let’s call him Loser – for lunch, and he seemed relatively harmless. I subtly tried to question him about his drinking habits.

“Are you a puker?” I asked suspiciously.

Loser swore he could hold his liquor. I sighed. I’d heard it before.

The formal that year was being held out of town, at a hotel near Lake George. This meant we all had to stay over . . . and I found myself in the unfortunate position of having to share a hotel room with Loser.

“You’ll have two beds,” Heather assured me. “So you won’t have to sleep with him. Just near him. Across the room.”

But then we arrived at the hotel, and discovered that our room only had one bed. I called the front desk, and was told that there weren’t any doubles available. I was stuck sharing a bed with Loser.

Still, the dance was fun. Loser disappeared into the bar early on, leaving me to dance with my friends and play a catty game of “Who’s Wearing the Ugliest Dress." I didn’t see him again until the band was playing the last song, and my friends with boyfriends were clinging to them in a swaying slow dance, while I snitched cigarettes out of their purses.

And then Loser suddenly appeared, glassy-eyed and swaying.

“Do you want to dance?” he asked, slurring his words.

“I think not,” I said, standing up. “I’m going to bed.”

I don’t know how he made it back to our hotel room. I certainly wasn’t about to help him. In fact, I was secretly hoping that he’d pass out in the ball room so that I could have the room to myself. But after I’d showered and changed into my pajamas, there was a knock at the door. And there Loser was.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” he announced.

I shoved him into the bathroom and closed the door behind him, and then got back into bed. I pointedly turned on my side, with my back facing his half of the bed, and switched the light off. Loser staggered from the bathroom, and fell into bed, fully dressed.

Maybe he drank so much, he’ll just pass out, I thought hopefully.

And then I felt a hand on my bottom.

“Don’t. Even. Think. About. It,” I hissed, shoving his hand away.

He sighed, and rolled over. And, somehow, I fell asleep . . . only to wake up a little while later, from the curious feeling of the bed jiggling. I rolled over to look at Loser.

“What are you . . .?” I didn’t finish the sentence. Because I saw what he was doing.

Since I’m guessing this is a PG-13 website, let’s just say that he was taking care of business. On his own.

“Ack!” I shrieked. “Stop!”

“What else do you expect me to do?” Loser huffed.

“Not that! Put your pants back on!”

The next morning, we ignored one another on the trip back home. When we got back to campus, I gave him his souvenir t-shirt and fully expected never to see him again.

But then I did see him. Constantly. We were on the same class schedule, and twice a week, I’d pass him on campus when he was leaving his class and I was going into mine. He’d give me a tight-lipped smile, and I did my damndest not to snicker.

“I thought you didn’t like Loser,” Heather asked me one day.

“I don’t,” I said. I hadn’t told her – or anyone else – about the, erm, incident. I figured he’d been embarrassed enough as it was, so I’d simply told her the half-truth that we just hadn’t hit it off.

“Loser called my boyfriend last night,” Heather announced one day. “He said that he thinks that you’re stalking him, because he keeps running into you.”

“He said what?” I bellowed. I mean, really. It was too much. First, he was a horrible date. And then there was the puking. And then there was the . . . you know. And after all of that, he had the unmitigated gall to tell people I was stalking him?

“Let me tell you a little story about Loser,” I said.

When I finished, Heather’s jaw dropped open.

" What a freak!” she exclaimed.

“Feel free to spread it around. Especially if he keeps telling people that I’m stalking him. God, what an idiot,” I said.

So, for all you men out there, here’s the moral of the story: if you think the fury of a scorned woman is bad, just try puking on one. And if you’re going to make a fool of yourself in front of a woman, don’t turn around and accuse her of stalking you. Because, really, then you’re just asking for your comeuppance.

This blog was brought to you by Ex and The Single Girl, Lani's newest release about a family that won't mind their own business, exes that won't go away, and the true love that gets caught in-between.

Posted by Whitney at 1:55 PM | Comments (7)

Comments

Posted by: Alesia Holliday at November 14, 2005 4:14 PM

Posted by: Holly at November 14, 2005 4:44 PM

Posted by: BeeJay at November 15, 2005 12:38 AM

Posted by: Jennifer the Chaos Queen at November 15, 2005 6:06 PM

Posted by: Robyn at November 15, 2005 6:17 PM

Posted by: pam at November 18, 2005 9:18 AM

Posted by: Whitney at November 18, 2005 12:34 PM