I live with four girls, two of whom have boyfriends. Excluding me, 50 percent of my apartment is single. Since I’m no statistician, I think it’s perfectly fine to use my apartment as a model for the entire undergraduate population. Thus, according to my research, roughly half of Cornell students are single (and good for you — love is for dopes). If half the school is single, that means that that same half of us are open to the possibility of hooking up with someone random when we go home, since we have no boyfriend to stay faithful to … right?
Right. So in all your single glory, you make your voyage home and get invited to the first house party of winter break. You get there in your finest $14.99 dress, straight off the rack at Forever 21 (you’re not going to bust out a Diane Von Furstenberg just so you can get Budweiser spilt all over it), and then you see him. He’s the tall, dark, handsome, argyle sweater-vest type. A little nerdy, but that must mean he goes to school somewhere appropriately pretentious enough for a Cornellian to date.
You thank whatever deity you thank on these types of occasions — but hold on, you spoke too soon. As you talk to him, his Dartmouth-enriched vocabulary reveals itself as too much to handle. He should be teaching an SAT prep course, not chugging a Heineken at a house party.
You move onto the second most eligible bachelor — more handsome but less pretentious. A UCLA man, perhaps? Unfortunately, all he wants to do is take shots faster than the guys in LMFAO can keep time, while he conspicuously stares at your cleavage. You move on, from conceited future lawyer to drunken frat boy wannabe to conceited future lawyer 2.0.
You soon exhaust your supply of men. Then someone taps on your shoulder. He’s cute, in that flannel shirt and scruff way (an urban lumberjack). He smiles shyly and avoids talk of college. You can’t tell if it’s because he’s too cool for generic conversation starters, or if he keeps avoiding questions about majors because he really is the freaking Bounty man. At the end of the night, he asks for your number.
My own Bounty man — whom I actually met in high school, though we did attend a party of the $14.99-dress-meets-Budweiser-type at the beginning of our courtship — was a townie. While the townie part didn’t bother me, my high school BFF, Chloe, couldn’t get over it. I repeatedly tried to convince her that he was a worthy gentleman caller. Who cares that he never went off to college like we did? At least he never tried to bore me to death with details of his five-year plan. He also knew all the best eateries in town … probably because he lived there all year long.
To assuage Chloe, I assured her that he was just a hookup (which he was). Why would I start a relationship with someone who lives 3,000 miles away from where the ivy grows? Sex is sex, whether if be with a townie or the Logan Huntzberger of Cornell. Still, she scoffed when I told her we got slushies at 7-11 and hung out at the mall.
At first, it didn’t bother me; screw Chloe and her hoity-toity upbringing. But one day I finally got angry when she made fun of him. I felt the sudden need to defend him. And at that point I realized the unexpected had happened — I’d fallen for him. However, I didn’t know he’d say he’d been burned by long distance before and didn’t want to do it again. He didn’t want me all year long, only when I was home.
Alas, I’m out of my usual useless yet amusing advice (e.g., buy edible underwear, don’t online date). All I have to say is that things may not have worked out for me, but maybe they will for you. So don’t let stupid things like someone’s townie status keep you from falling in love (or not, in my townie’s case) or just having great sex in a barn or a Dairy Queen or whatever. Break is the time to let loose — who cares what happens once you get back to school?
Don’t worry, trusty readers — this week may have been alarmingly un-scandalous, but next week we tackle bad break-ups!
P.S. In case you’re reading this… I wish things were different, Blake.
Original Author: Hazel Gun