The worst party ever was a fraternity party, with a "Dukes of Hazard" theme. Though I never watched the show, I was a marginal member of the fraternity and decided to attend. Parked in front of the house was an orange 1960 something Dodge Charger with a rebel flag painted on the roof. Bails of hay were strewn about for decoration. Inside the house, a local band earned their $300 covering the likes of Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers, Alabama, The Marshall Tucker Band, etc.
I dressed like Boss Hog, in a cheap oversized white suit from Goodwill. It wasn't a good look for me. The costume looked more like a cross between a hobo and a waiter at a fancy restaurant than anything from the TV show.
I considered myself a "marginal" member of the fraternity because it was April, and almost graduation time. By this point my collegiate concerns centered on dwindling job prospects and an intense fear of moving back with my parents. I'd reread the "Bell Jar" over Christmas Break and thought total psychological disentegration was a very real possibility if I didn't have an income and apartment come May 1st.
My point being, I stayed away from the keggers for the most part, except that every couple of weeks the pressure got to me and I'd head over for a rager. The Dukes party felt like one of those nights. Hobo-waiter Boss Hog was going to get tabernacled.
In terms of party-layout, there was a great hall on the first floor where the band was playing. Also on the first floor was a kitchen with a liquor bar manned by pledges. The second and third floors consisted of bedrooms, in a party sense these were mainly used for casual sex and the discrete ingestion of hard drugs. I went to the bar for a jack and coke, regarded the freshmen writhing to some Hank Jr. song in the great hall, and decided to head upstairs.
I found some friends passing around a j-bird by the stairwell on the third floor. This party is going to be alright, I thought to myself. I took a couple tugs off the spliff and asked my friend Travis how his job prospects were coming along. T-bone was a business major and destined to do a lot better on the outside than me. I doubt he'd read the Bell Jar.
Before he could answer I wave of nausea washed over me, and I was forced to grab the rail of the stairwell for support.
"You ok, Moe?" Travis asked. "It's a little early for the spins."
I wasn't ok. I ran into one of the bathrooms. I puked my guts out. After washing my face, I looked inside my plastic cup. It was about half-empty. Two tugs off a joint and half a jack and coke. Travis was right, it was too early for the spins. As would soon become clear, something was terribly wrong with me.
By the time I left the bathroom, my friends had dispersed from the stairwell. I attempted to rejoin the party, but only made down one flight of stairs before I had to run into the second-floor bathroom and puke again. A bunch of dudes wearing overalls pointed and laughed at me puking.
"Rookie!" They yelled. "It's only 9:30."
I didn't know what to do. I could hardly stand without getting terribly dizzy. Remembering that my friend Brad was out of town, I crawled back up to the third floor and holed up in his bedroom. I could hear the party thumping under me as I filled his trashcan with vomit.
After about 30 minutes of this, Travis knocked on the door. He'd been looking for me. T-bone asked if I'd had any of the cookies the Ladies of Omega-Moo had dropped off the week before.
"Those fat bitches left us some cookies and an invitation to some pancake dinner," he said. "Ben ate some and got sick as shit. Food poisoning. He had to go the hospital, and the nurses put some rod up his asshole."
I couldn't recall if I'd eaten a cookie, but I remembered Ben's story. I couldn't stop thinking about having some medical instrument rammed up my anus.
"Need me to take you to the hospital Moe?"
"No, thanks."
(A few weeks later we learned that I didn't have food poisoning, and we'd carelessly blamed the ladies of Omega-Mu for nothing. Some kind of vicious norovirus was tearing through campus. Worse, in my opinion, than any swine flu or chicken cold reported by some worry-wart newscaster.)
Brad saved my life that night, as I managed to find a case of some of knock-off sports drink in his room (not Gatorade or it's bastard cousin Powerade, but some other shit, Squencher maybe). While the party went on below me, I drank bottle after bottle of sports drink, puked it up, then rinsed and repeated.
A couple times I got the undeniable feeling that the demons were trying to escape through the other end, and sprinted to the bathroom to piss out of my butt. The runs drippin'. On the fraternity's third floor were two bathrooms: a single serving toilet and sink; and a big, multi-stall affair with showers and mirrors. The first two times with the runs I got lucky and found the single unnoccupied.
The third time I was not so blessed. There'd been girls voices outside the door and, even though I really had to go, I held out as long as humanly possible waiting for them to leave. When they finally did, I sprinted to the single but it was lock. My butt cheeks were clenched and giving way every second. I ran back around the hall into the big bathroom, where I found the three girls adjusting make-up in the mirror and gossiping. I knew one of them, not well, but well enough to be embarrassed.
In that big bathroom there were three toilet stalls. Only one, the farthest from the sinks, had a door. Occupied. With no choice, about to soil my white, Boss Hog suit pants, I ran into one of the doorless stalls, dropped drawers and blew ass. The girls stared at me with a combination of horror and mirth. Before too long, I got dizzy and had to flip around and vomit into the shitty toilet. This dance continued for another 5-10 minutes until it was all out. Thankfully, by this point the ladies had left.
I stayed in that room all night, vomiting. I stunk the place up. Nonetheless, at one point an innebriated couple crashed through the door and flopped onto the bed. The room smelled worse than a hog farm on a warm, windless day. I yelled at them to leave. The dude, who was trying to unhook the girls bra over her shirt, gave me a hand signal like "hang on bro." I stood up to physically remove them, got dizzy and passed out on the floor. When I came to they were gone. I sincerely hope they both contracted my norovirus, and maybe an STD to boot.
Around six in the morning, I stopped feeling nauseated and decided to make a run for it. I felt as though someone had turned me inside out, used me as a punching bag, and then turned me right side in again. Hobbling out the door, I passed a couple younger fraternity members sitting on the front bench and polishing off the last of the keg.
"Party of the year, Moses", they called out. "Party of the year."
Party of the year, indeed. I was ready to graduate.
