Going into my freshmen year, I had conjured up some inaccurate and mostly naïve illusion of what college parties would be like: massive amounts of beautiful people, all congregating on some green lawn outside a nice house where there was a pool, with a pool light and an open bar that served kids of all ages. Maybe there was even a live band playing from some high-up balcony. Cops weren’t a problem and angry neighbors definitely didn’t exist.
But I decided not to go to some immensely-funded state university on the West Coast. Instead, I went to a small, public liberal arts state school that prided itself on having a dry campus and a large amount of campus police riding around on silly bicycles, patrolling the sidewalks outside dorm halls on Friday nights.
On the night I moved into my dorm, I went to my first college party and soon my horrible misconceptions were realized. The parties I saw in movies and on TV were so, so wrong. My new roommates and I, along with three lax bros we barely knew, walked in the pouring rain, through foreign neighborhoods along Main Street and across a seemingly dangerous bridge to a party in a three-family home that was badly in need of a paint job… or demolition.
This party, like most of the parties I’d soon come to realize, was in a basement. Not one of those finished basements with a flat screen TV and an air hockey table, but a grimy, cement-walled, dark basement with rusty nails sticking out of wooden beams. It was hot and sweaty and the music blared with jarring intensity. It was packed to the walls with people who weren’t really dancing, but swaying their bodies back and forth like drones, forced to succumb to the rhythm of the bass. In order to move, I literally had to squeeze myself between groups of sticky strangers and hope that they didn’t accidentally jab their elbows into my ribs.
The one ounce of vodka I gulped down before leaving my dorm sat heavy in my stomach. Girls surrounded me, all in variations of the same Aztec-print crop top and high-waisted shorts. It was the party uniform. This was 2013, after all; Aztec print was in. I glanced down at my full-length shirt and felt uneasy.
At small schools that don’t have fraternities and crazy, themed parties, it’s understood that the “cool” group of kids who throw the parties are the Division Three male athletes. Though, you’ll find that the only themed costume requirement of these parties is “khakis and a button up” for boys and “whatever you want, as long as you look hot” for girls. The lacrosse team hosted the particular party I was at that night. The only guys there were either part of the team or friends of the team. The rest of the party consisted of young, innocent freshmen girls. Fresh. Meat.
In the midst of the makeshift dance floor, people were passing around what was being called “the Freshman Tequila Bottle,” handing it off only to the girls that were too drunk to refuse. This was when it hit me that college parties weren’t just hot and sweaty, they were also rape-y.
My roommates and I huddled together, passing an unmarked water bottle filled with lemonade and cheap vodka back and forth, each of us taking nervous sips. We talked to no one, because the music was too loud for unnecessary conversation.
An overweight guy with a beard holding a Natty Ice walked towards me and barked, “You’re hot!” before turning away. I had hoped for a more intellectually stimulating conversation. But there is only so much a person can yell over thumping music and “You’re hot!” is as good as it gets in a basement party.
Since that night, I have gone to so many of those basement parties. That year was full of groups of us drunkenly trooping through snowy sidewalks, wearing barely enough layers to avoid frostbite, just to make it to a party that wasn’t allowing freshmen in. I’ve learned that it’s not worth it to walk multiple miles in inclement weather just to stand around in a dark, dingy basement.
Basement parties, if you let them, have a certain level of charm—in the same way dive bars on a bad side of town do. They’re dirty, make you sweat abnormally and the people there are rude, desperate and probably sexist. But there’s alcohol, so.
Well, whatever. My favorite thing about a college party is when I leave it.
