There is something about the frat life that I never seemed to understand but everyone else seemed to adore. Last night I went to a friend’s party- a friend I had known since my freshman year- and, to say the least, it was fun. Although there was no dancing, the drinks were classy and professionally made, the beer was imported and not watered down, I knew the people there and they knew me, and the music was something I’d expect at a house party. In other words, the scene was friendly and comforting. It wasn’t wild, but their apartment was crowded and full. At some point during the party, a hookah was made and about six of us conglomerated outside for a nice smoke of what seemed to be an herbal/ flower flavor mixed with a minty aftertaste. Not bad. We all chatted and laughed and told stories after having a few drinks, which, I thought, was pushing the night in a generally positive direction.

But then I get a call from my girlfriend inside the apartment and she and a few of my other friends that I invited decided that it would be more fun to go to a frat party. Now let me make one thing clear; I absolutely despise frat parties. Although I have never been to one, I’ve been around them and heard stories. This is what I expected. I expected a crowded room full of slutty, incoherent freshman girls in scantily-clad clothing (because it was Halloween, of course), all dancing to music I have never heard of before while making out with the closest thing to normalcy in the room. Now, what upset me even more was the eagerness of my girlfriend to actually go to one of these sleazy parties. But I didn’t complain. I figured that I should be “open-minded” about these things and I have no right to judge unless I actually experience this “frat” thing.

So we’re in the car, leaving my beloved party, headed to the heart of campus for some fun-filled dancing; something I don’t do. We finally get there. We’re escorted into an insanely crowded basement and for just one moment, I’m completely awestruck at the stupidity I saw around me. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why a horde of freshman morons would ever want to stuff themselves like sardines in a room temperature equivalent of a sauna while pretending to be drunk of fruit punch and this other thing they called beer; it was really just urine and water mixed together in a big red cup. Essentially, if I had to describe the scene in one word, it would have been retarded. Yes, retarded. I couldn’t understand what pleasure anyone would find in a party like this. Who leaves a classy party to “dance” for an entire fucking hour straight? Where on earth is the joy in this?

Regardless, I continued into the room with my friends and girlfriend thinking, “Ok, this can’t be that bad. Maybe if I stay for a little while, everything will be ok.” But everything was not ok. I saw three girls in nothing but panties practically making out with each other and another girl licking some other guy’s neck and shoving her tongue down his throat but she just met him. The alcohol was terrible and limited so I couldn’t even get drunk enough to forget what I was experiencing. My girlfriend, of all people, was colloquially “having a blast” thinking this party was the most fun shit she’s had all night. And little old me, standing in the middle of the room with my buttoned down shirt, khaki pants, and cottoned vest staring at all this idiocy around me. I’m sorry, but I have never seen this much retardation in one room. And it would have been different if half these people were actually drunk. You can tell how drunk someone really is by looking at them in the eyes. And I assure you; at least three quarters of the people in the room were faking at least half their intoxication. The setting was precisely that- fake. It was a bunch of idiots screaming in a room, losing themselves for, essentially, no reason. There was nothing to do but stare at all of this happening at the same time. I knew no one else there, and there was physically nothing else to do, nowhere else to move. I was trapped in this bubble of mind numbing stupidity and the worst part was I was the only one. While everyone else thought that shaking your hips for three hours was the best thing on earth, I wondered what the theme was. What was the point to all this? Besides the repetitive dancing, where’s the part when I get to crack jokes with some friends, enjoy a good beer with them, and engage in something called conversation? No, in a frat, it’s loud ass, obnoxious music mixed in tandem with human retardation. Why is it human retardation? Because when you step foot into one of these parties, life outside of this small, confined room stops. All your attention is focused on the party and the party only. There is no room for the semi-intellectual, only the dim-witted. And I understand that humans have to let loose sometimes but for those who do this every weekend, I often wonder how they survive college without showing cleavage of sorts to their professors. And even for those who do this periodically, the sleaziness and sheer ignorance trapped inside one room was, not really too much for me to handle, but instead too much for me to pretend. Last night was a joke and I want my money back.
I have already lost all hope for humanity but I feel like this was the last straw. I knew freshmen were dumb but this went to a different level. When a person cannot find meaning in something as simple as their weekends, I start to search for that shiny red button in life that says “QUIT”.
I give up.