Tales from the Vault

Well, yes, sort of. When I started writing for AMDAL over a year ago, I vowed never to write about a girlfriend or ex-girlfriend on this blog. The key words there are the last three: on this blog.

Last week I experienced what you might call two of the worst days of my life. But I cannot chronicle them here because they center around a girlfriend – or ex-girlfriend, rather. The story, in its entirety, can be found over at a great website www.handmaidofhonor.com. It's run by a friend of mine, whom I tried to recruit here a long time ago, but to no avail. She is hilarious, very much into all things wedding-related, and most importantly: an AMDAL fan (unless the content is about obscure techno gizmos or produced by The BMar*).

Her site's slogan (I think that's the right word) is:

"Life. One day [engagement, bachelorette party, bridal shower, and wedding] at a time."

If you're into that kind of stuff, please support her by following HMOH on Twitter and Facebook. I'm sure she'd appreciate any and all witty (i.e.g. not nasty) comments. And please, tell your friends.

Much obliged,

Scos

*BMar, relax. That was a joke. Hope you had a good graduation. It's my bike.

Tales from the Vault

So I haven’t done one of these for a while. Maybe it’s because, contrary to what you think, I’m actually a busy guy. Or maybe, it’s because I had my Fantasy Football Draft last week and I needed to prepare so that I didn’t get stuck with Cedric Benson again. Or, maybe, it’s because I was focusing on hammering out my 200th Random Thought by the end of August, just in time for the concept to be pilfered by some new contributor who doesn’t even need to prove himself first because he’s that talented. (Trip, I’m just kidding, buddy; you’re not talented.) Anyway, I’ve decided to bring this feature back. The first three focused on the college years. These next ones will focus on the post-collegiate years, aka the years in which a big bad bank sodomized my face, broke my ribs, and sent me tumbling down a pit of despair. Instead of starting at the beginning, let’s have some fun and start with my very last day as a full-fledged investment banking analyst, the day I had a little “accident.”

That Was Just a Fart, Right?
You know that great dream sequence in Office Space where Bill Lumbergh is nailing Peter Gibbon’s girlfriend as he drinks from his coffee mug and says, “If you could just go ahead and move a little bit to the left. That's it. Great”? Well I had that very same dream every night for a month, but instead of Jennifer Aniston on the receiving end, it was my ass. And instead of Lumbergh pounding away, it was Microsoft Excel. But unlike Lumbergh, Excel never politely asked me to cooperate. The program just jammed it in and went to town until I heard a strange buzzing sound. Then I'd wake up screaming.

(Remember Peter's nightmare? Excel was even more merciless. How, exactly, did it violate me? I'm not really sure, but I know I didn't like it one bit.)

It was May 2005 and the anniversary of my first year in banking was slowly approaching. It had been a rough ten months and my body was showing it: my skin had turned exceedingly pale, my once chiseled physique had become increasingly soft and flabby, and my eyes had developed these dark unsightly circles under them. In other words, I looked much like myself during senior week of college. And I was tired. Really tired. For the past few months I had worked 80-90 hours a week with the most execrable characters I ever had the misfortune of meeting. Simply put: these people were terrible and they made my life terrible. And then, suddenly, my life made a turn for the worse.

Without warning, I was “staffed” on a “live sell-side deal” with the one man at the firm whom everyone feared. Yoni was a 40-year Director, an unforgiving man who had spent half of his life in the Israeli army. His resemblance to Elliot Spitzer was uncanny, though he had much bigger, bluer (Hamas-hating) eyes. And his character was just as sleazy, if not worse. For instance, whenever he’d go out at night to drink and womanize, which was often, the first thing he did – and he was very vocal about this – was remove his wedding ring. He said it “made the night more fun.” Apparently his wife, who was pregnant at home with his first son, was a real bore.

(This is basically what Yoni looked like, but with bigger eyes. Terrifying, right? And I bet Yoni didn't pay for his prostitutes; he probably just went Grand Theft Auto: Gaza Strip on their asses.)

Like my fellow analysts, I met Yoni on our very first full Friday at the bank, back in 2004. At 5pm he brought us into a conference room, slowly closed the door and said in a thick Israeli accent, “Your God will not help you here.” He turned his back to us, gazing out the window at the statue of liberty. If it was his intension to intimidate us, it worked very well. All that was missing was O Fortuna and some blindfolds. A few minutes later, he turned around and stared at us with his outstretched hands pressed on the round table. Then, he started giving orders. In short, we were to spend an entire weekend doing hypothetical M&A work. I use the word “hypothetical” because this work would never be used for anything; it was simply meant to teach us what it’s like to waste an entire 48 hours at the office. Like 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire,' we were only allowed three lifelines if we got stuck on something. “If you make a mistake,” Yoni intoned, “I will find it, and I will make your life unpleasant. You don’t want to disappoint me.”

Let me recount a quick anecdote to better illustrate the type of person Yoni was. Right before Christmas, I thought it would be nice to get him a Chanukah present, you know, to get on good terms with the guy. Plus, in my naiveté, I thought I could “change” his nature, and bring out some good in an otherwise bad person. Since he often carried around a yo-yo, I thought I’d give him a Duncan, one that actually slept – unlike his cheap knockoff that constantly snapped his knuckles. While he absolutely loved the present – I even taught him how to Walk the Dog and Rock the Baby – a week later he approached me at a bar, drunk, complaining that the yo-yo was “broked.” “I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s not much I can do.” He looked at me in disbelief. “Replace it. Get me a new one.” I laughed, thinking he was joking. But on the way back to Toys ‘R Us that night, all I could think was, Man, this guy doesn’t joke around.

(This is a sleek Duncan yo-yo, much like the one I got Yoni for Chanukah. Unfortunately, it somehow got "broked" and then I had to buy him a new one. It was probably my fault.)

One of my first responsibilities on the “live deal” was to put together the Working Group List (“WGL”), which is basically a glorified contact list of all the deal participants. Sounds easy, right? Not with Yoni. He called me early one Sunday morning, extremely agitated. He claimed he had found “a major mistake” in the WGL and that I must go into the office immediately, find the error and correct it before sunset. Like the good little submissive banker that I had become, I went in and spent the entire day there, hoping to find a spelling mistake, an incorrect phone number, or an outdated title. Unfortunately, all I found was a long hyphen instead of a dash in some secretary’s fax number. Right as the sun dipped below the city skyline, my office phone rang. It was Yoni. “Did you find it, yet?” “No,” I answered, “but I looked everywhere and I…” He cut me off. “I am very disappointed in you. On page five, instead of a little dash in Justyna’s fax number, there is a big dash. If I can’t trust you on this, how can I trust you on anything?” Before I had time to respond, he hung up. I couldn’t believe it.

To lift my mood, I thought about hitting up the Killarney Rose on Pearl Street to forget about yet another wasted Sunday. Unfortunately, the head of my broader group had just implemented a weekly Sunday night call that was mandatory for all analysts (much like the mandatory Monday morning meeting that would be taking place in twelve hours). So, instead of drowning my sorrows in booze, I did the next best thing: I went to the handicap stall and rubbed one out. I spent the rest of my Sunday night in my cube, listening on the phone to my bosses discuss what new and exciting projects awaited us analysts next week.

(The Killarney Rose is one sweet, old school dive bar. If you haven't been, I recommend you do. They have great drink specials and their lunch buffet is to die for. Denzel Washington even referenced the place in Inside Man.)

As I mentioned, I was having nightmares in which I kept getting reamed. Personally, I think Yoni had something to do with it. Another reason may have been that most of the deal team worked in Poland, which is six hours ahead of New York time. The head of that team, a Managing Director with an unintelligible Polish accent and a complete disregard for the health of his subordinates, liked scheduling 10am calls most mornings. For me, that meant waking up before 4am, which may have been feasible had I been going to sleep at a reasonable hour. But I wasn’t; I was getting home around 1am because, in addition to my responsibilities on other projects, of which there were many, I was in charge of managing the “data room” for this deal, which meant I had to spend innumerable hours sifting through thousands of pages of environmental documents (sometimes written in Polish), organizing them and summarizing the notes in case investors had any questions about the assets we were trying to sell. Since I was only sleeping three hours a night, when my alarm went off at 3:57am I was always mid-dream, and this dream was always a bad one involving a rapacious Excel program. I’d scream, then join the call.

(Wait, this is the program that violated me in my sleep? Yes, but there were like 20 tabs of intense financial modelling, and no lube. I don't really understand it either, so please stop asking.)

Anyway, it was 4:15am, the Monday morning after the WGL mishap, and we were in the middle of a call about God knows what. I was half sleeping, half paying attention when all a sudden I heard my name and my ears perked up. Yoni said I would be leading an important call at 10am and would be providing an overview of all the environmental docs I had read. This was a shock to me, which of course triggered my Irritable Bowel Syndrome (“IBS”), a devastating condition that had afflicted me since high school. I ran to the bathroom and took the rest of the call perched atop my throne. Fortunately, I remembered to hit the mute button on my phone, sparing the group the din of the carnage that was taking place beneath me. The call ended fifteen minutes later, which meant I had approximately five hours to throw together a presentation. Could I do it? I really had no choice. So I put on my work clothes, which were lying in a wrinkled pile in the corner of my bedroom, grabbed my folders and headed to the subway. It was still dark out.

(Ah, IBS. The worst ever? I had never even heard of 'Digestive Advantage' until I started writing this post and needed some images. I bet I could take a bunch of those and as soon as someone says "GMAT" I'd make the medication seem like a placebo.)

I got to the office around 5am and spent the next five hours chugging shitty coffee, skimming documents and writing notes for what I’d say. Before I knew it, it was 10am. I put on my headset, dialed in and tried to calm myself. I was the first one on. Quickly, the London team joined, then the Poland team, then the M&A team in New York, and finally, Yoni. There must have been twenty people on the call. Yoni opened, “Thank you all for joining. Let’s let have our NY analyst, who’s doing a great job, kick things off. Scos, before you tell us about the environmental liabilities, give us the 30,000 foot view of the deal. Remind us what each group is working on, what they’ve read, and then outline the deal timeline.” I nearly shit myself. What the hell was Yoni talking about? I was a first-year analyst, this was my first deal of this sort, and I had only been focusing on what I was told to do.

Now normally, I’m pretty good at bullshitting people. But here, in my exhausted state and under immense pressure (whether real or just imagined), my mind stopped working. I tried being smooth but all that came out was, “Thanks. Um… so we’ve got a pretty good deal here. A lot of people are working on it. The data room, it's pretty big. A lot of docs in there! [Uneasy laugh.] And… uh, and… uh, ” And I hung up. I swear: I hung up the phone. Then, I put my head, facedown, on the keyboard and tried my best to disappear.

(Unlike this hilarious cartoon character, I wasn't trying to sleep; I was simply trying to disappear. But as much as I tried, every time I opened my eyes I was still at my cube. And then, the phone started ringing...)

A minute later, my phone started ringing. (See?) It was Yoni. Do I pick up or not? I picked up. “What the hell just happened out there?” Yoni bellowed. “I don’t know,” I stammered. “I got disconnected. Why don’t you loop me back in?” He did. And there I was, in the hot seat again, with nothing to say. Fortunately, by the grace of (a benevolent Christian) God, an associate in London sensed my plight and intervened. “Welcome back, Scos. Let me actually start here, beginning with the modeling that you helped me with on Saturday.” She then talked for a good fifteen minutes about the deal. She had been in the business for seven years and unlike me, knew exactly what was going on. Then, the Poland team talked for a while, followed by a few others. I’m not sure what they said; I was too nervous about my upcoming presentation to concern myself with such things. Finally, about 45 minutes later, it was my turn to talk about the environmental liabilities. I don’t know if I did well or not; my headset was giving me all this negative feedback and all I could hear was my echoed voice when I spoke. Before I knew it, I was done.

Yoni wrapped up the call. “Thanks all for joining us today. My analyst will be sending around the detailed meeting minutes by noon. If you have any questions, please contact him directly.” What? Detailed meeting minutes? I looked at my notebook. Not a single note on the page, except for “Somebody help me,” scrawled in chicken scratch. Not surprisingly, the IBS struck again. Hard. Frustrated with this condition – and everything else – I effectively told myself, “No! This is just psychological. It will pass.” My intestines, however, disagreed, and they contracted even harder. As a compromise, I decide to cut a fart, to relieve the pressure. So I lifted a cheek, and let one go. But something happened. Something bad. Something hot. That was just a fart, right? I asked myself. I slowly stood up and realized I was sorely mistaken. I had shit myself. We’re not talking an innocent little squirt or some light spraying; we’re talking the real deal, mom-and-pop, main course meat loaf platter. I had shit myself, and I was 23 years old.

(While true, I think for my case, it's more accurate to label this: Fear + Stress + Exhaustion + IBS + 7 Cups of Coffee + An Ill-Conceived Fart = Shit Your Pants.)

Clenching my cheeks, I waddled to the bathroom to assess the damage. Suffice it to say, it was pretty grim. And there, in the very same handicap stall that I had used hours earlier, with soiled briefs in hand, I looked at myself in the mirror and made a decision: I’m not doing this anymore. I hated this job. I hated these people. And I hated my life. But where could I go? What could I do? I didn’t know, so I cleaned myself, tossed out the briefs and trudged to the firm’s infirmary.

I guess I looked pretty ill because the woman at the front desk, without prompting, looked at me and said, “Oh my gosh! Please sit down. Don’t worry – we’ll have someone look at you right away.” I don’t remember much about the discussion with the nurse or what I told him. I just recall lying down, him giving me a card and saying, “You need to talk to someone. I know this social worker.” So I left the building and headed to the address on the card, which was up a couple blocks on Broadway.

On the way there, I bumped into an old boss. Now let’s be clear: I despised this woman; she had effectively ruined my life every day from January to April and was heavily responsible for my current state. But she saw that something wasn’t right with me. And she decided to help. She said, “Go home. I’ll tell Yoni and his boss that you need some rest.” I thanked her, but then added that I didn’t know when – or if – I’d be back. She nodded.

As I opened the door to the social worker’s office, my cell phone starting ringing. It was Yoni. I sent it right to voicemail. A few weeks later, I finally listened to it. He wanted to make sure I was okay. I wasn’t, nor would I be for a long time. Believe it or not, although I had shit myself, I hadn’t hit rock bottom yet. And until I did, I wouldn’t get better.

Tales from the Vault

This is the third installment. Like its predecessors, it’s about college, drinking and doing embarrassing things that my parents would never want to hear about, let alone read about on the internet along with hundreds of others. While I do plan to write extensively about the post-college years (aka my hellish experience at Beutsche Dank), this is another Dartmouth story that needs to be told first. This time, I almost got expelled.

The Band Incident
Fall term was nearing its midpoint. I was living on the first floor of the New Hamp dorm with two buddies from the sailing team. As was my wont, I was complaining how Dartmouth girls were, to put it euphemistically, disgusting. I had my theories why: Inside the Office of Undergraduate Admissions was a cabal of ugly women who practiced affirmative action towards their high school ilk; hot girls were inherently dumb and couldn’t get into a good school; freshmen girls were actually attractive but their strict late night diet of breadsticks and ranch, Froyo with Oreo, and a case of Keystone Light quickly transformed them into hideous beasts.

Of course, there were pretty girls at school; we just never met them because our time outside the classroom was divided between the lake and a rank basement that was anathema to self-respecting women. There were even a few freshmen cuties on the team, but we regarded them as family, and – as the saying goes – hooking up with your sister gets old quickly.

The Brah, who was still dating his attractive high school sweetheart, entertained my assertions but he didn’t fuss about the situation because he had standards, and these kept him faithful. Shogun, who had recently come down with a nasty case of mono that rendered him delirious, would intermittently chime in with hard-hitting questions like, “Is the television on right now?” and “Am I asleep on this couch, or not?” (He withdrew from classes a few weeks later, spouting gibberish and complaining of swollen glands.)

My roomies were great companions who would listen to me gripe about my pathetic college sex life: I was a sophomore and thus far my experiences with women consisted of getting molested by an older girl on the team. Her calloused hands were like those of a body builder; the chafing was excruciating and the scabbing made me perennially bitter. As I would find out, my sour attitude and childish bickering were not conducive to good karma.

(Ouch, for me and for you.*)

Above us lived my good friend Liz, a freshman on the team. Whenever I would over-imbibe and not hook-up, which was often, I’d head to her room to chat, laugh, and pass out. Her two roommates, an outspoken evangelical and a deviant nymphomaniac, detested these late-night intrusions. Apparently, my clothes and sneakers reeked of mung (a lethal amalgamation of stale beer, urine, vomit and stale beer) and I had a tendency to urinate in “strange” places, like their dressers and laundry bins. The religious one in particular disliked me; she’d shush me whenever I’d disrupt her precious sleep. Drunk, I’d often respond, “Quiet in the pews!” or “Praise God!”

One night I got spectacularly hammered and passed out in Liz’s bed. Around 5 a.m. I awoke to relieve myself and stumbled to the hallway bathroom, banging into doors and tearing fliers off the message boards. I don’t recall any of this, but I do remember waking up the next morning barricaded by chairs in the corner of Liz’s room. I was soaked, disoriented and in a world of pain. Liz was standing above me and looked alarmed. “Do you even remember what happened last night?” she asked. “No,” I responded, “but I am wet.” (In hindsight, I'm pretty sure her kinky roommate, who was into water sports and other taboo practices, had something to do with it.)

Liz filled me in on the details that my impaired mind had failed to record: After I finished in the bathroom, I made a wrong turn and entered a room that was inhabited by a girl we did not know. Being a gentleman, I removed my sneakers before getting into bed. I assumed the “big spoon” position and went to sleep, breathing gently into the back of the unsuspecting girl’s head. This did not please her. Confused, she asked, “Who are you?” and then, in a more agitated voice, “What the hell!” Finally, she screamed at the top of her lungs. The piercing decibel level signaled it was time to hightail it out of there. Just as I began my ungainly sprint down the hall, Liz, who had come outside looking for me, intercepted my barreling body, swung me into her room and threw me in the corner. She surrounded me with chairs as a sort of temporary incarceration. No less than a few minutes later the whole dorm was crawling with cops – not Safety and Security guards – but real live cops, with guns, night sticks and badges. Thankfully Liz kept me safe from the pigs. I had dodged a bullet.

Or so I thought. After skipping classes and sleeping the morning away, I went to practice on Mascoma. On the way back to campus, the team, including me, was thoroughly entertained by Liz’s hilarious recounting of my boneheaded adventure. Once we returned, however, I learned it wasn’t over. Plastered on the door of every single campus building was a bright neon flier that read:

Last night in the New Hamp dorm, a young white male – aged 18 to 25 – broke into a female’s dorm room and accosted her in bed. There was a struggle and after the victim screamed, the perpetrator quickly left the room. His body type can be described as slightly scrawny and his brown hair as thick and tough. He was dressed in a navy and white baseball t-shirt and khaki shorts. He was also wearing a pair of grey New Balance sneakers, size 8 and a half, which he left in the victim’s room. If you have any information, please contact the Hanover Police.

The team was in tears; I found it less funny. The first thought that popped into my mind: How did the girl get such an accurate visual of me in the dark? The second: I’m getting kicked out of college. I pulled my hat low on my face and hurried to my room, where I planned to spend the rest of the term like a fugitive. I could not risk bumping into the “the victim” (I didn’t even know what she looked like) nor could I risk being identified by a classmate – or professor – as the slightly scrawny perpetrator with tough brown hair. Even worse, I could no longer wear my favorite baseball t-shirt, which I looked really good in.

Fortunately, Liz intervened again. She went to the victim’s room, introduced herself as a neighbor and said she was a friend of the guy who had climbed into her bed. “He sleepwalks,” she said, “and he’s done it before with me. He made a mistake and is ashamed about what happened. I assure you, he’s completely harmless.” Liz then walked into my room and said, “I just saved your butt. Go up there and put an end to this.” For some reason, she looked like she was trying to fight some sort of wry smile.

I trudged upstairs and knocked on the door. “Come in,” a voice answered. I opened the door, and was suddenly greeted by the most grotesque combination of eyes, nose and mouth I had ever seen. Her face resembled that of the alien from the Predator films (though, to be fair, her teeth were slightly worse). And there was so much bloated flesh everywhere, hanging like uncooked dough and connecting face to neck without any discernible jaw line. She also wore these big black glasses with inch-thick lenses, which made her eyes as big as tennis balls and presumably gave her night vision. Wait, I slept in bed with that? Unable to stomach the horrible visage, I surveyed the room. The walls were adorned with all sorts of band paraphernalia: sheet music, pennants, composite pictures, uniforms, etc. Apparently, she was a member of Dartmouth’s zany marching band.

(Contrary to what you first thought, this is actually a picture of the Predator Alien, and not the Band Girl. How can you tell? The teeth aren't that bad, and no glasses.)

“May I help you?” she asked as her blinking, magnified eyes crossed one another, each staring directly at a flaring nostril. I looked down at my (New Balance-less) feet, contorting my body and twiddling my thumbs like a kid who’s forced to confess to his next-door neighbor for hitting the baseball through her window, and apologized for my non-alcohol-induced transgressions. (Yes, I lied and said the sleepwalking was a genetic condition.) Somehow, amazingly, she accepted my plea for forgiveness and promised to call off the investigation. I thanked her profusely and left.

***

I finished up with classes that fall, took the winter off and returned the following spring. I joined a fraternity (guess which one!) and as a pledge spent many a night in Liz’s room. I had learned from the Band Incident that it was a safe haven that would protect me from danger, like the late night hazing I faced. And while I didn't learn my lesson about alcohol abuse and continued to get recklessly drunk, I never again wandered into the Band Girl’s room. In fact, we never saw one another again, which was probably best for both of us.

Whenever I tell that story people ask, “Why name it after an extraneous detail like her band membership?” Honestly, I don’t know – you'd have to ask Shogun. He came up with it when he had mono.

Hat Tip: Liz, for helping me with the details, and saving my sorry ass.

* Thanks, The GB

Tales from the Vault

College reunions are tough. You run into all these people you haven’t seen in years and you pretend to care about what’s going on in their lives, even though the reason you haven’t kept in touch is because you don’t care about what’s going on in their lives. “Law school, really? That must be great. Listen, I’m going to go get another beer and talk to someone else. You take care.” Sometimes, you run into someone you barely recognize and yet you feel like you had a real connection with her a long time ago. “I’m sorry, what’s your name again? I feel like we knew one another.” “My name? We hooked up junior year – and not just once.” “Right, right, of course! Listen, I’m going to go get another beer and talk to someone else. You take care.” It was during one of these unpleasant conversations this past weekend that an old gem popped into my head.

He Had Curly Blond Hair
Sophomore summer was halfway over and I, like most guys on campus, was looking to get drunk and rub against someone else, preferably a female who weighed less than me. It was Friday night (or Saturday night, or maybe it was a Monday afternoon) and I had just played a lot of pong. As the evening winded down, a cute girl – let’s just call her Valkyrie (she liked Tom Cruise movies; also, her name was Valerie) – came down to my fraternity basement and flirtatiously asked if I wanted to go to her sorority to play one last game. She and her two friends needed a fourth and I, not being one to turn down a game, gladly accepted the invitation. Also, I was wearing a pretty sweet headband.

I don’t really remember how the game went - I think we won, or lost - but what’s important is that I was a rock-star - so much so that after the game, Valkyrie invited me up to her room to “check blitz.” (For those of you unfamiliar with Hanoverian jargon, check blitz means check email, which also means check out my mouth with your mouth.) We messed around for a few minutes - I think I unearthed a boob - but when I proved I was a bit too drunk (N.B. the nose is a not an erogenous zone and should never be treated as such), she kindly asked me to leave. She added, “Let’s do this again. Just not when so much alcohol’s involved.” To be fair, she may have actually said, “Let’s not do this again. You just open-mouth kissed my nose.” Either way, she was definitely into me.

(This is a picture of actor Kevin Bacon playing Dartmouth-style pong at AD. What is it doing here, in a story that has nothing to do with him or AD? We may never know.)

The next night, hoping to achieve a similar, yet even steamier outcome, I played a lot of pong. This time, however, Valkyrie didn't show. It was getting late so I went to her sorority to figure out why my carnal desires weren’t being fulfilled. I checked the basement, then every single shower in the sorority (twice), and then her bedroom, to no avail. Annoyed, I turned on her computer and sent her an innocent email.

Valkyrie, I’m in your room, hanging out. You should swing by. The place looks great!

It was getting late, so in a move that can only be described as strategic (or profoundly sketchy), I decided to take a quick nap in her bed. I was exhausted and besides, in a few minutes she’d wake me up, we’d pump some tats, and all would be well.

Suffice it to say, things did not go as planned. When I awoke it was 6:30am, the sun was beaming in, and I was still alone and fully clothed in Valkyrie’s bed. And there was a slight problem: I had urinated everywhere. It was as if I had had a dream, and in that dream I was a powerful rotating sprinkler and her bed was this arid garden that longed for irrigation, which I then provided in copious amounts. Nothing - I repeat, nothing - was left dry. My clothes, including my wallet, headband(?) and sandals: soaked. Her bed, including the mattress, down comforter, sheets, pillows, and headboard: soaked. The carpet and even her Top Gun and Cocktail DVD's: soaked. “Oh no,” I thought. “This is bad.” Panicked, and still pretty smashed, I did the only sensible thing I could: I staggered home fast. When I got to my room I came to a very unsettling realization. My innocent email singled me out as the prime suspect.
It’s times like these when you really need to take a deep breath and think on your toes. I did neither. I turned on my computer and hastily wrote the following:

Valkyrie, just wanted to say that I’m sorry we didn’t meet up last night. I waited around your room for an hour or so, and then some drunk guy barged in and crashed on your bed. He probably stayed there all night. He had curly blond hair.

Now I don’t know why I wrote that last part; your guess is as good as mine. But it didn’t work. An hour later she wrote back. “Do you think I’m an idiot?!?!?* Get your ass over here and wash all my stuff. NOW!” Before I could write back, she followed up with another email. “Actually, forget that. I’m taking all of my stuff to the cleaners – and you’re paying for it. All of it. I can’t believe this, or you, or that ridiculous email you sent me.”

The dry cleaning bill was well north of $200 (damn decorative pillows). And because Dartmouth girls can be so petty, I never got a second chance with Valkyrie, despite everything we’d been through together. Anyway, as the story goes, we graduated and eventually lost touch. Then, last week, we ran into one another at our 5-year reunion. Although we chatted for nearly ten minutes, I don’t really recall what we talked about. All I know is she kept moving her mouth and I kept nodding, like I cared or something. I considered asking her about sophomore summer and whether she ever believed – even for a second – in the guy with the curly blond hair, but in the end I decided against it; there was pong to play. “Listen, I’m going to go get another beer and talk to someone else. You take care.”

*To be honest, she may have said, “Do you think I’m a f!@#ing idiot?!?!? I no longer have that email to confirm.

Tales from the Vault

For those of you who don’t know me, I sailed in college. I’m talking about hardcore, varsity sailing (excuse the oxymoron). No, I’m not particularly proud of this fact. For example, when I’m shooting the breeze with someone new and the topic of what sports I played comes up, I always say soccer and lacrosse. But when asked if I played either in college my default response is: “No, I wasn’t good enough to play D1. But I did, uh, sail.” Depending on that person’s familiarity with the sport I either get: “How can someone be better than someone else at sailing? Do you pull the rope harder?” or “Let’s change the subject to something that won’t make me want to leave this conversation.” Don’t get me wrong: I don’t regret sailing, nor do I hate the sport. Rather, it’s just kind of a boring subject to talk about, especially with non-sailors.

But the sailing team itself - a tight-knit group of raging, incestuous boys and girls – was the source of many worthwhile stories, many of which have been atrophying in my memory bank for years. Here’s one from the vault.

The Gay Porno Card
It was junior year and the team again decided to spend spring break training in Charleston, S.C. My buddy Diskant and I arrived at one of the two houses first and began scouring the place for the best bedroom. In one of the rooms, we came upon a deck of playing cards. Upon closer inspection we learned that these weren’t your ordinary, run-of-the-mill playing cards; these were porno playing cards that featured naked studs from the 1970’s, all of whom were showcasing fantastic erections. As I flipped through the cards I stumbled upon one that caught my attention. It was this wiry guy, with brown hair and mustache, and he was sitting spread-eagle with a huge, simmering boner in right hand. What caught my attention was that his resemblance to our mutual friend, Wakelin, was simply uncanny. I turned to Diskant and said, “Dude, this looks exactly like Wakelin. Even the face.”

I loved that joke and so when we got to the docks the next day, I couldn’t resist showing everyone my special card and saying, “Even the face!” Most people got it, but some couldn’t get over the prominent, tube-like protrusion running along the ventral side of the guy’s rod. This sparked an engrossing debate: What the heck is that thing? Is it a vein? An artery? Something really cool that I don’t even know about? Everyone had a theory, though I refuted most with some razor-sharp logic: “All I know is that when you stab it with a paper clip, it usually doesn’t bleed.” I recall my coach looking at me like: “What the heck is wrong with you?” By the end of the week the youngsters on the team, performing the traditional, often hilarious “freshman skit”, explained to us laymen that the anatomy in question was in fact a third chamber, called the corpus spongiosum. So that settled that.

A few weeks later I was back on campus, playing pong and looking to hookup with girls not on the sailing team. (Please note that I had nothing against hooking up with girls on the team; in fact, I had taken most of them down already. It’s just that by this point in my college career I was trying to expand my horizons and get with girls whose hands were not completely calloused and whose legs were not completely covered with bruises. Yet.) So this one night I was in the basement and it was late, and I hit it off with this crazy, somewhat attractive girl who was surprisingly into me (probably because she was blackedout.com and I was the only guy left in the basement). We went back to the Gym Triple to mess around and after a disappointing and uneventful hookup, she said she had to go. I woke up in the morning and to my dismay, I discovered she had taken my jeans, including my wallet. Being the crazy, obnoxious Dartmouth chick that she was, she made me go to her off-campus dorm to retrieve my stuff, which she had borrowed without my consent.

When I got to her place, I was greeted by four stoned girls ensconced on some couches, and they were laughing at me like I was the funniest thing in the world. I awkwardly snatched my pants and left the place in a hurry. On the way out I looked through my wallet to see if anything was missing, at which point I immediately realized that my reverse walk-of-shame wasn’t the reason for their laughter; in the clear plastic sleeve where I usually keep my drivers license was my gay porno card. And it looked exactly like Wakelin.

Even the face.