Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: A Memoir by Andrew Lohse

Author:Andrew Lohse [Lohse, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250033680
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

MINIMAL BABY POWDER

Something felt off—the brothers in the basement looked tense, their sweaty faces taut in frowns, their eyes stung with cigarette fumes. Price sat by himself smoking Marlboros on the benches, yelling, “Sink more cups, faggots,” at the nearest pong game as everyone tried to ignore him. Kegs ran dry early, their fuel coming up as foam. There was a problem with the lights. Despite these setbacks the night progressed like a typical Wednesday: endless pong and directionless bacchanalia until Beaufort passed out somewhere upstairs.

I suspected that part of his popularity derived from his always hanging out yet seldom being drunk enough to say or do ridiculous things; he had the admirable quality of shutting himself down when he reached a certain point of intoxication, finding a comfortable spot to sleep on a brother’s couch, then waking early enough the next morning to reflect fraternally, “Bro, I was so wasted last night.” Maybe that’s just speculation—it doesn’t make a difference now—but he was coy and consolidated social capital slowly and deliberately, as is the Dartmouth way.

His departure left me, for a period, the last man standing from the binge. So I decided to take a seat. After Price had stumbled upstairs, I sat on the benches in Varsity and watched an intense pong game, Wallace and Randall versus two seniors. I wandered between the kitchen and the boot room, wondering if I should pull my trigger to clear my stomach, boot and rally, then deciding not to, deciding that there was always time to sober up later.

Despite my sentimentality for remembering dates, it never occurred to me that I’d snorted drugs off a picture of my grandfather on his death day, that such an act probably had a lot of karmic gravity, that coincident with that oversight a slow and painful process of personal dissolution had begun.

* * *

As if on cue, Pulaski appeared in the basement and graciously joined me in continuing a path of post-meetings merriment. We resolved to snort the rest of the blow in the pool room. No one was around and no one came in to bother us, and he was still drunk from meetings and clapped me on the back as I pulled tight the drapes and then shook the contents of the baggie onto a composite.

“You’re a lucky man,” he said, then dipped a finger in the powder and rubbed it on his gums. “Good stuff.” He smiled.

I stared down at my dim reflection on the glass next to the coke. “Why?”

“I don’t know, minimal baby powder? No powdered household cleaners mixed in? I don’t know these things.”

I must’ve given him a weird look. “Lucky?”

“Yeah, lucky.”

“I guess I can’t complain.”

He pulled his head back and squinted at me sternly. “Don’t blow it.” He licked his finger and dipped it in the pile again, pulling up more than he had before.

I handed him the rolled-up bill. I can remember the taste vividly, the vague gasoline scent, the nasal drip, the feeling of supreme

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