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.

I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman

When I was a kid, I always had a looming suspicion that I was older than my birth certificate said. I was the same height and reading level as my older sister, which logically meant that I must be the same age as well. The following years held my hitting puberty before all of my classmates, buying my first bra before all of my friends, and thanks in part to my italian heritage, once again being the first to wax my eyebrows and co. From the very beginning I've always felt that my physical age was a year or two behind my internal age.
To this day, as a nineteen year old who, depending on the outfit, could pass for 25, my physical self often gets in the way of doing what my internal self loves most: drinking. My ID deficit never affects me when I go out to the fraternities or apartments, but whenever I want to flock to the bars with the mature crowd my physical self prevents that from happening. Thankfully, a bar on campus recently opened that's 18+ to enter and 21+ to drink. So this past week, my girlfriends and I decided that there was no better way to celebrate the last night of Mardi Gras than to hit up the bar in our festive attire of beads and beer goggles.
After a significant amount of pregaming, we stumbled our struts over to the 18+ bar. The atmosphere was vibing, the place was full of our peers and everyone was dripping in both beads and booze. My friends and I walked in, made our rounds, and after a brief lap around the place I arrived at the drunkenly determined decision that I was going to get a drink by whatever means necessary. I walked up to the bar bearing no ID and no money, only my most seductive eye contact. I set my gaze upon the bartender and unleashed a look that could have constituted sexual harassment. But by some metaphysical triumph, the bartender obediently gravitated over to me.
"What're you drinking?" He asked with a smile.
"Vodka tonic," I replied, still raping his soul with my eyes.
I watched as he made my drink, but before I could even slur out an excuse to free me from paying for it he just placed it on the bar and walked away. Stunned, I picked up the drink and turned to my friends. I couldn't believe my womanly powers were capable of waiving both currency and photo ID! My breasts are much more powerful than I thought, I internalized.
"What! How did you get that?!" My friends were jealous, which only made my success taste sweeter.
"The bartender just gave it to me!" Even saying it out loud I couldn't fully believe it.
"You're so lucky!"
"I know!!!" I felt on top of the world; I couldn't believe what I'd achieved with just a single look. I love being a woman.
I had a winner's thirst, so I took a sip of my vodka tonic to quench it. The taste of my drink was just as delicious as my victory. I swallowed my sip, and a second man immediately gravitated over to me, only this time it was a bouncer.
Shit! My heart dropped. No longer was I feeling sexy and confident.
"Do you have a wristband?" The bouncer didn't address me with the same grin the bartender had.
"I'm just holding it for a friend!" I tried to rape his soul but his eyes were deadened and mechanical.
"Let me see your ID." In lieu of a fake ID, I handed over my genuine 1992 license with the hope that he would be too distracted by my picture to look at my D.O.B.
He squinted his robotic eyes and shook his head. "Come with me," and with that he escorted me outside. "Don't let her back in," he said to the bouncer at the entrance, then went inside.
Within one minute I'd gone from feeling like the sexiest girl in the bar, to feeling like the biggest loser standing outside of the bar alone with the exception of a bouncer who wouldn't make nice despite my best efforts, all the while pathetically covered in sequins and beads.
"Pleeease let me back in, all of my friends are inside!" I didn't know whether he'd be more susceptible to crying or flirting.
"Can't do that," he said without even looking at me.
"Babyyy, pleaseee!" I guess I was taking the flirting route.
"Nope," he remained stone cold.
"Puh-leaseee, I promise I won't drink! Just let me back in, baby!"
He'd stopped answering me.
"Baby?"
Now he was just ignoring me.
"Fine! I'm gonna get raped walking home all alone and it'll be your fault!" Now I was angry, no one puts  this baby in a corner.
He just shook his head, still unswayed by my new angry approach. However, I wasn't done ranting.
"You don't even understand how stupid this is for your business! Do you even know how many drinks I would've gotten bought for me tonight?!" I was trying to put on the air that I was "the shit," but in actuality standing outside alone foolishly in my costume at the absolute mercy of this fat, aged bouncer, I had never been less of "the shit" in my entire life. My womanly powers had fleeted me, and I was left outside in shame, standing there like a little girl who'd been put in the time-out corner.
Absolutely defeated, I realized that this was a battle I wasn't going to win regardless of how seductive or angry I got. I turned away and walked myself home, stuck in the awkward limbo between ages 18 and 21.