scenes from campus life
The semester had begun, and I was easing into my new schedule, which now began at eight each morning. For the first time in months, I was waking to an alarm. I had started to work nights over the summer vacation, and I was used to waking only when the superfluous honking of horns on the street, chatter of yuppie pedestrians outside of my window, and sunshine through my broken vertical blinds became too much to sleep through. I was happy for the added hours in my day forced upon me by this early rising, but it was taking a lot more coffee and a lot more weed to put me in shape to leave the house so early each day.
It was Thursday, which meant my journalism class at nine-thirty. We analyzed the novelty and relevance of an article in the campus paper about a twenty-year-long study by the University that proved that “boozing” before exams will lower test scores. We all agreed that it was entertaining to read officially what we all knew from years of experience, but that not a single student on campus was going to change his behavior after reading this article. It was yet another quaint warning from the University that we ought to watch our drinking if we were to be at all successful in our college careers. Much appreciated.
After class I headed to the library, where I passed the computer lab and the cafe to reach the library stacks in a dimly-lit corner on the third floor, exchanged my copy of Anais Nin's Diary for the next volume, then settled into the cafe for more coffee, free internet, and lunch. After six hours of homework, correspondence, and Editing in the cafe, I caught a bus back home, made supper, stole a quick nap, and headed to work.
I stopped to buy a bottle of vodka, as I wouldn't be out until long after the liquor stores were closed. Next to me, pondering over 6-packs in the adjacent cooler, were two girls, maybe nineteen, barely passing for twenty-one tonight.
“Lindsay, you can't just have a liquid dinner again tonight! We should order pizza when we get home,” one said to the other.
“No! No more drunk food,” the one called Lindsay replied. “I am totally addicted! I'll get fat while I'm in Wisconsin.”
As I waited in the long line at the counter, I noticed an unusual number of Vikings jerseys and Brett Favre t-shirts all around me. Ah, football season had begun. Good; the store was not going to be busy tonight.
So, instead of waiting on lines of customers, I spent the night swapping coming-of-age stories with my coworker.
“I got my first tattoo when I was fifteen,” he told me. “A friend of mine needed practice, so he took a bunch of underage kids to some sketchy hotel room downtown and gave us all free tattoos. I got my nose pierced when I was sixteen by some chick in the back of a cafe. I don't think that was legal...”
Throughout the night, drunk couples and groups from the bar next door wandered in to buy munchies and condoms and coffee to top off their nights. Even our regulars were more drunk than expected, everyone friendly as hell and smelling like stale booze even early in the night.
As the night wore on, we could feel the madness of downtown Madison growing around us. Students whose money hadn't run out yet, who had no class on Fridays and no homework assigned yet, who had just recently left their parents' house for the year, and who had stayed sober for four days straight, were ready to fucking party that night. We could hear shouting, techno music, and the general din of debauchery floating into the store each time the door opened for a second.
“I never knew it before moving to Madison,” my boss noted, “but the weekend actually starts on Thursday. And the first Thursday of the semester is like a fucking national holiday in this town.”
And the kids were celebrating, getting this weekend started in bro bars with football and cheap beer and fake IDs. Unfortunately, many of these kids were from out of state or underage, early in their college careers, so most didn't yet know how to handle their alcohol. When I left the store at 1am, the streets were swarming with kids stumbling, puking, wandering, screaming; lost, confused, and wasted .
A couple passed me in the crosswalk, the girl stumbling with as much indignation as she could muster in her wobbly high heels, and the guy behind her shouting, “Yeah, here we go again: I'm not as sensitive as you. I don't care as much as you. You love me so much more than I love you. Whatever, babe. I'll just fucking drop you. Fuck that; I don't have to put up with this shit.”
Two blocks down State Street, I ducked into the bus shelter and settled onto the wooden bench to wait the twenty minutes for the next bus. The shelter was directly across the street from the most Badger-red, bro-filled sports bar downtown, and I watched from behind the glass as groups of young drunks wandered out of its doors.
“Hey bra, hey bra,” drunken taunting across the street. Two of a group of three guys in front me were starting a fake fight with each other, one shouting these words in his Jersey accent and tapping the chest of his friend, puffing out his own. They crouched and raised loose fists to each other, slapped at the air a couple of times, then collapsed into a drunken hug with their third companion. “Nah, man, I'm just messing around. We're cool.”
Taxis were running slowly down the street, stopping in front of the bars as the drivers searched the masses for whatever incoherent group had called them and forgotten by now that they were waiting for a cab. Kids knocked on their windows and tried to climb in random cabs, but the doors were all locked, and the drivers just kept moving. Good Samaritans guided their friends into the taxis with empty pitchers or buckets to puke in, gave the driver directions on where to take their friends, handed them a few dollars to cover the fare, and returned to the bars with the weight of that guy off of their shoulders. Assholes left their friends behind to pass out in the bathroom stalls.
I pulled a joint from my bag and lit it, calming my mind as I took in the madness swirling around me from the other side of the glass shelter. I watched one guy walking down the middle of the street stop and stand in place, staring straight ahead of him with huge pupils for about five minutes without moving. I watched another trip over his own toes and fall face first onto his cheek on the sidewalk. I grimaced with pity as his friends helped him stand up.
Behind me, a girl shouted, “Oh my god! I love that jacket!”
She had stopped while she and her friends walked down the sidewalk, and now she was leaning against a storefront window and tapping the glass to point out the jacket to her friends.
“I'll come buy it tomorrow,” she said as they walked away. “Mañana. El sábado. Per favore,” she chattered to her oblivious friends. “Oh wait! Por favor, I mean!” She laughed. “I shouldn't have taken Spanish and Italian in the same semester.” She waved a hand in the air and shook her head. Even drunk, this town is so goddamn academic.
Across the street, a pair of Madison police officers, one man and one woman, strolled around the corner to patrol down State Street. I hastily put out the joint on the bench and tucked it back into my bag, but they didn't even glance my way. They were chatting with each other, counting on their mere presence to maintain order in the streets. They rounded the corner and walked away from the bro bar just as two people walked out, first a guy in a black-and-white-checkered Abercrombie hoodie sweatshirt, followed by a bitching girl in a short dress and high-heeled sandals.
“You wanna do this?” the bitch screamed at him. They wandered a few feet into an open space on the sidewalk and silently taunted each other for a few seconds. She clumsily slipped out of her sandals and threw her cardigan on the ground next to her. She squared herself and patted him on the cheek to egg him on.
“Aw, come on, baby,” he slurred to her, then reached for her waist. She slapped him again lightly on the other cheek, and he stepped back. They were both so drunk and weak and completely unable to engage in this battle that it unfolded practically in slow motion before me. The guy shook his head at her and unzipped his hoodie and tossed it to the ground a few feet behind him.
They continued to bat at each other a couple of times before a group of five girls poured out of the bar and surrounded them. They tried to coax the two to cut it out while their friend was screaming, “This fucker was trying to start shit with me!” and swatting at the air in front of the guy.
Behind these girls, a group of three guys came out of the bar and watched the fight from a few feet back without interfering. One of the guys noticed the sweatshirt lying on the ground and picked it up, eying the fighting couple carefully as he did. He chuckled to his companions as they dug into the shirt's pockets and pulled out a cell phone and a wallet, stuffed them in their own pockets, and dropped the sweatshirt back to the ground. None of the group just a few feet away noticed this, and finally the girls were able to pull their friend away and sit her down to help her strap her sandals back on. The guy turned away with a snarl, picked up his sweatshirt, and joined the three guys, apparently his own companions. They greeted him and patted his back, calling the girl a bitch and laughing drunkenly as they all walked away down the street.
When I finally exited the bus in my neighborhood, I found myself behind a couple of girls leaving the Gyro shop on the corner. As they weaved a path down the sidewalk, they threw arms around each others' shoulders and held their phones at arms' length to snap a picture to remember the moment. I was walking a lot faster and steadier than they were, unintentionally gaining on them. As I approached quietly within a few feet, about to pass them, the brunette turned around suddenly and gasped.
“Holy shit!” she shouted, but rested a hand kindly on my shoulder after a moment. “I'm sorry-- you scared the crap out me!” She giggled and caught her breath.
I apologized for nothing in particular and laughed too, shrugging my shoulders and rolling my eyes.
“Here.” She passed me a bottle of Coke mixed with cheap rum from inside her purse, and we walked another block together. I introduced myself, and she took a picture of me with her phone before they turned the corner and left me alone but thankful for the warmth of the rum in my belly on this cool night. I finished my joint on the way home, set my alarm for eight a.m., and settled into bed content. I am not much of a fan of football, or bros, or gaggles of drunk young girls; but they do put on a pretty good show to kick off a Madison weekend.
