3.13.2012

A Walk To Forget

Having a high tolerance for humiliation, I am generally unfazed by feelings of embarrassment during walks of shame. Some walkers prefer to take extreme backroads or even sprint their way home in fear of ridicule and judgement, but not me. Regardless of how scanty my dress may be, I take my sweet time slowly strolling up even the busiest of streets; frat row is essentially my runway.
But the other morning halfway through a walk back from my favorite fraternity, I had a weird encounter that was more bizarre than the drunken night before had been. I'd been set up for a date party at a frat where I was surprised I'd never met my date since, to put it lightly, I'd already "met" a lot of guys in that house. Since I didn't know my date prior, but I knew a lot of other girls' dates, I pulled out all the stops by wearing a dress that left very little to the imagination, and heels so chunky that I'd used them in lieu of a hammer to push thumbtacks into my wall on move-in day. My outfit worked like a charm, and my date and I really hit it off. In fact, the dress worked so well that I found myself walking home in it a mere 10 hours later, only this time the outfit wasn't exactly what I would've chosen for a "morning" look. But still, I walked proudly with my heels in hand during the arduous trek up fraternity row, past people I didn't know and people I did know but didn't care enough to stop and explain my indecency to. I was only a block away from my place when all of the sudden my concentrated strut was broken by someone calling to me.
"Hey, excuse me!" I looked up to see a young guy pulled into a driveway in front of me with his car window rolled down.
Ugh, great, I thought to myself, just what I need right now, someone heckling me.
But once he saw that he'd gotten my attention he continued, "Can you tell me where the music building is?" His heavily accented voice sounded panicked and desperate, so I shrugged my scantily clad shoulders and replied sure. I took a couple of barefoot steps over towards his car and began my explanation.
"The music building is right past the humanities quad, kind of near the astronomy building. Do you know where I'm talking about?"
He looked at me with wide, terrified eyes, "No, no, I do not know where that is, I am not from here," his accent sounded european, and though it didn't make him attractive he didn't look like he could've been more than two or three years older than me. "You see, I have to be at the music hall before 10 for a rehearsal. The concert is my own so it is very important that I be there on time!"
I looked at me phone, it was 9:50. This kid was fucked, and not in the good way.
"Okay, okay," now we were in a time crunch, and for some reason (perhaps the fact that I was still considerably drunk from the night before) I had adopted this foreigner's problem as my own. "So you're going to continue straight down this street and make a left at the next right. Then, you're going to go straight through the light after that, then turn left again at the next light into a roundabout. There, you'll see a bunch of buses and cars and whatnot, drive past those and go into the parking structure. Then once you get out of your car, you're going to walk up a hill past the student store straight up to the music hall. But be careful not to walk in the other direction out of the parking structure or else you'll end up in the dorms!"
"Oh, thank you, thank you!"I felt rewarded, like I'd just done a good deed to rid me of my morning shame. He instantly appeared more relieved, which became evident in his next statement. "So...." he continued much more calmly, "I am here for a couple of days, are there fun places to go at night?"
Still in tour-guide mode, I replied enthusiastically "Sure! There's a bar down this street we're on now that's a huge night spot for students. Especially on Wednesday, that's Pint Night!"
"Do you ever go there?" He asked.
"No, I'm not 21." Why was I still talking to this guy?
"Where do you go out to?" He inquired further.
I couldn't help but laugh and look down at my dress, "I normally just go to the frats."
"Oh, okay. Do you think I could have your phone number for during my stay here? Maybe you could escort me out some night?"
Just as I was drunkenly about to start rattling off my phone number, it struck me: Oh, my god, this guy thinks I'm a prostitute!
"Oh, I'm sorry,"I was jolted back to sobriety, "my phone is broken, bye!" I hurried away from his car before he'd have the chance to notice that my phone had been in my hand during our entire conversation.
I'd always thought of walks of shame as embarrassing only because your fellow students could see your obvious scarlet letter of sleeping in someone else's bed. But it never occurred to me until that eye opening morning that what college students know to be sleeping out, people outside of the Greek System perceive to be prostitution.

1 comment:

  1. HAHAHAHAH, this actually made my night. you know what, you should walk proud knowing that you look so hot that guys think that!
    love your blog, definately following!
    check out mine, follow back if you like it?
    f-a-i-r-y-l-i-g-h-t-s.blogspot.com

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