FIRST - A LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DRINK TOO MUCH AT A COLLEGE PARTY

ASSIGNMENT:Write an essay in which you prepare a Geertzian “reading” of some part of your culture you know well. You should imagine you are working in Geertz’s spirit, imitating his method and style and carrying out the work that he has begun. What is college life noted for? What is it that makes college sound like so much fun to the everyday high school senior or junior? Is it the hard classes and amazing amounts of work? Is it the amazing bathroom facilities found on each floor of the dormitories? Could it be that everyone is looking forward to getting on with their life and becoming something besides a student? Or is it the parties? I think the subject thought upon by many high school seniors and incoming college freshman is this. Parties, what else is their to do at college that will give you stories to tell you buddies the next day or your children in the future? I was trying to fit in to the whole college scene when I first encountered a college party. It was around ten o’clock and several people were standing around, all dressed up and smoking cigarettes, asking each other if they knew what was going on that night. Several times I was asked if I knew anything, but how was I to know where a party was at, I am a male and it is a strange fact that only females know where they are. After about twenty minutes of people talking and comparing party areas, they decide on one or more to move on to. But wait, we can’t leave yet, we have to wait for a friend of a friend of a friend who is up in her cousin’s room finding a new shirt because she thought she looked “too trashy.” After the person we are waiting for decides to venture down the stairs and out to the meeting area, now totally filled with a thick layer of fog made entirely of cigarette smoke, we all leave. Where are we going? No one knows except for the one person who is leading. Who is leading? The most irresponsible person in the group, the person who gets lost on their dormitory floor, the person that is taking the lowest form of Algebra as one of their courses because they aren’t good with numbers, let alone addresses. Fifteen minutes and two miles later the leader decides to tell us that “We’re almost there. I know it, I’ve been there before.” While walking, the mob pays no attention to where they are going or how long it’s going to take them to get there. Everyone is to busy telling stories of past parties and past mistakes. They are telling stories of how their friends or roommates made fools of themselves and how they were “too messed up to realize what was going on”. If a person is not telling a story they are attentively listening so they can use the same one later on substituting names when the real storyteller is not around. The quietest people are the ones that are half listening and half thinking of how they could be drinking right now if it wasn’t for the foolish person leading. By the end of the third mile everyone dislikes the leader and some impatient followers even decide to turn around and go home. Too bad for them because the party is on the next street over. As the entire mob of thirsty students paces down the correct street they slow at the front of any house that looks like it might be “happening”. After standing out front of the walkway for several minutes one brave soul decides to walk up to the single person sitting on the porch with a cup in his hand and ask “Is this where the party is at?” Sometimes a ‘Yes’ is answered, sometimes a ‘No’, sometimes a ‘No’ is answered but then added to with directions of where a real one exists. If the man at the porch answers ‘Yes’ then the entire mob makes it’s way down the cement pathway towards to front door. The man with the cup stands up and quickly jumps in front of the door to act as a gatekeeper. “Five dollars” he announces, “Five dollars for guys, girls get in free.” What? Even the non-attractive females get in for free, this sounds severely unfair and sexist. The female portion of the mob, which usually gets angry when someone makes a sexist remark about them does not seem to care about this one, walks freely through the doorway and are handed plastic cups. The male portion of the crowd, who usually wouldn’t care if someone made a sexist remark but are extremely offended at this, stand outside and dig into their pockets. As soon as everyone pulls out their green slabs of paper with Abraham Lincoln’s face on it, they give it away to the gatekeeper who casually says “Thank you” and the proceeds to tell where the beer is located. “It’s downstairs in the basement” is what he says to each person as they pass the door. It took Geertz days to be accepted by the new community, it only took me five dollars. (Geertz, page 367) The males are all handed plastic cups, which are not plastic anymore, now they are gold. Everyone, the females and the males, reunite and venture into the basement that turns out to be a sauna with about one hundred and fifty people. Just like Geertz in the cockfight in “Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight” I was part of a superorganism (Geertz, page 366). Everyone in the superorganism is trying to get to two people behind a bar. These people behind the bar are referred to as “Hey buddy” or “Hey, remember me?” The music is loud so you can’t hear anyone around you trying to tell you any important information like “Watch out, I’m going to vomit!” and just when you thought you escaped the thick fog of cigarette smoke, it’s back. The floor is soaked with sweat, beer, and maybe even urine at some point. Everything on the floor, even the urine, is all soaked up by the bottoms of your jeans or pants. People force and shove others for one cup of the horrible tasting liquid that everyone complains about. There seem to be different brands of this horrible tasting liquid but they all seem to taste the same; the same stinging sensation when it hits the back of your throat, the same sick feeling you get when it first hits you stomach. The whole point of drinking this alcoholic water is to get drunk. There is no other reason for going to a party, everyone there is dancing around like a fool and some even take their clothing off without realizing. Some people meet other people and have a good time talking and getting to know each other. Some others also meet people and have a good time having unintended sex or any kind of mistaken relationship. As these students kill their livers slowly, they keep getting drunker and drunker. They don’t realize what’s happening because the beer now tastes like water. Just when everything seems to have fallen into place and has turned a three-mile trek into a night filled with fun and enlightenment, things go bad. People begin to cry “Police! Police!” and everyone rushes for the back door. Outside people are hopping fences and others are stumbling aimlessly down the street. Several friends and I followed another drunk fugitive down the alley as Geertz did when he was escaping the raided cockfight (Geertz, page 366). My company and I still followed the fugitive as he ducked into his apartment. He and his friend, who seemed to have been through something like this before, quickly set up card table and chairs. We all quieted and watched as the apartment owner dealt out the entire deck in uneven numbers. We all started to play poker but were unable to keep our minds into it because several friends didn’t understand that we weren’t playing Go fish. Several minutes pass and everything seems fine and easy now that it’s all over. Everyone is sitting around talking and watching TV when one of the apartment owners asks, “Who wants a beer?” The party has started again, this time it is only ten or twelve people and the beer is a better quality, but still tastes like water. The time rolls around to three o’clock in the morning and we all decide to pack it up and head home. We all stumble through the doors of our individual rooms and pass out right away in our beds, on the couch, or on the floor. The next morning not much is remembered. A headache and a phone number on my hand is all I had to go with. If a person wakes up and they are not lying in a pile of their own vomit it is considered a good night. Stranger yet, if you do wake up in a puddle of you own vomit, it is considered a better night. The man whose apartment we ducked into is just a blur and so is his name, was he even real? That night is over and it is now four o’clock in the afternoon. I gradually get up and clean myself, for it is happening again in another six hours. It may sound strange, but now I have stories to tell people on the three-mile trek to our destination. And just like they were to Geertz, all the past strangers want to be my friends and hear my stories (Geertz, 367).

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