I was a freshman and walking to my first-ever college party. It was 9 p.m., and I approached the apartment complex slowly. I stuck my hand into the pocket of my dark-green army jacket and fiddled with the half-filled pack of Marlboro Lights with two joints pushed to the corners. I figured I should bring something to be polite, but I had no way of obtaining a bottle of wine or a six-pack of beer.
The idea of going to this party put me on edge at first. During the hours leading up to it, worried thoughts raced around my head. My palms sweat over the types of people who would be in attendance, whether I would even find the courage to make friends, or stand in the corner watching other people schmooze. I checked the Facebook event page on my phone. “Party starts at 10.” I sat on a bench under a street lamp that emitted a dim orange light. I stuck a cigarette in my mouth and pulled out my phone.
After an intense game of Tetris, I checked the time. 9:30 p.m. Close enough. I found the apartment and knocked on the door. My high school friend Maria, the hostess of the party, answered with a smile.
I apologized for being so early and offered her a joint. She and her two roommates sat with me at their kitchen table, and we got high. By the time it was done, all three ladies had gone into their respective rooms to “get ready.”
I was alone at the table feeling much more anxious than before. I was stoned and listening intently to the rap music radiating from a speaker set on the kitchen counter. It was the type of rap that I didn’t like — the Waka Flocka Flame, Rick Ross, Gucci Mane brand of ultra-masculine “party” music. Lyrics about selling hard drugs, getting wasted and having sex with multiple partners have a sense of conceit that has always bothered me.
I thought back to the last time I had listened to Rick Ross. It was in this guy Jason’s BMW. We were parked in an empty parking garage at midnight on a Tuesday. He turned up the song as the rapper nonchalantly chanted, “Put Molly all in her champagne, she ain’t even know it/I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain’t even know it.” He pulled out a small glass bong and a blow torch.
Jason told me not to be a p---- when I coughed and then told me I was being ungrateful when I said I didn’t want a second dab.
It was about 11 p.m. when the party was really taking off. I had sobered up from the pot and was on something like my eighth Bud Light. At this point, the beer just tasted like seltzer water. Through blasting trap-rap I staggered toward cute girls one by one, shouting at them until they walked away.
It was midnight when I found my way into an empty bedroom. I had run out of cigarettes, so I lit up the second joint. After finishing, I walked back out into the party.
The pounding bass and large crowd shocked me. Suddenly I felt the room start to spin. I walked back into the bedroom and lay down on the full-sized mattress. I closed my eyes for a moment, but then I heard the door open. It was Maria.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just lying down.” I slurred.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I got up off the bed and proceeded to vomit on Maria’s carpet. Sour-brown beer and bile spewed from my mouth, and she looked on with terror.
Jeremy Haas is a UF English junior. His column appears on Wednesdays.
