Fall 2001
The weather and the women, they struck me before I ever set foot on campus. The flight from Baltimore landed at LAX around noon, on a typical southern California day. There was a dreadful delay on the tarmac, but when I walked off the jet bridge a deep feeling of relief washed over me. I had been gripped with trepidation the whole flight, even though I knew it was too late to change my mind about going to college 3,000 miles away from home. Maybe it was the beautiful sunlight that dramatically illuminated what I could only imagine were models scampering across the dated linoleum. Or maybe it was the bright cloudless sky and the palm trees that convinced me I had made the right decision. Whatever it was, the apprehension was replaced by excitement as I left for baggage claim, cheerfully humming the theme song from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
After an hour spent on the parking lots known as freeways in LA, I arrived at my dorm to the familiar image of proud parents hugging their impudent child. I walked around the awkward three-way hug to throw my bags on the unoccupied bed and waited for the moment to come to its natural end before sticking my hand out to my new roommate’s parents. I entertained their small talk for longer than usual, noting their matching diamond-bezeled Rolex Daytonas. Having been abruptly transplanted into a private high school, I learned quickly that wealthy connections came in handy. I would later find out that theirs was an inherited wealth: Mrs. Richardson’s oil tycoon father had left her a small fortune and a substantial drinking habit, both of which allowed Mr. Richardson to play 36 holes of golf a day. He had been on the PGA tour in the ‘80s, but lingering injuries and the fallback of a wealthy wife ended his career after only two seasons. They were charming enough and after a few minutes of small talk, they left us to meet some relatives for a late lunch.
Austin and I spent the first week of college solidifying our social circles, contemplating what clubs to join and fraternities to rush. The excitement of the times was a natural bonding agent and we became good friends quickly. Austin naturally received a bid from one of the premier fraternities (I decided instead to walk-on to the Rowing team) and in our second week on campus he invited me to my first frat party. It was an incredible affair. There were open bars in three or four different rooms and dancing in the main hall downstairs. Hundreds of guests with red cups looked like they were having the time of their lives out front. I took a moment to enjoy the spectacle from street level, before rushing in.
It was in the backyard that I first laid eyes on Monica. She stood out from the blondes that dominated the party, off in her own corner smoking a cigarette. I think it was her casual confidence, the kind often possessed by girls who are pretty at a young age, which caught my attention. Looking past the pledges I was hanging out with, I tried to make eye contact.
Two dreadfully long minutes later, she reciprocated. I quickly finished my beer and mustered up the courage to walk over to her.
When I approached, all I could get out was, “Hey, I’m Rohan.”
“Hi Rohan, I’m Monica,” she responded, putting out her cigarette and reaching out for a handshake.
The gesture was reassuring.
“This is some party huh?”
“Nothing compared to my 16th birthday,” she said, in what I would learn was her signature deadpan.
We chatted for a bit, got another drink and continued the conversation until we ended up on the dance floor. She happened to live in the same dorm as me and at the time I thought it was an improbable stroke of luck. I wouldn’t learn to abide by the valuable axiom, don’t shit where you eat, until some time later.
The next morning, I woke up in unfamiliar surroundings and groggily looked around the room. Monica lay next to me comfortably asleep. I noticed there wasn’t another twin bed in the dorm, which was strange. I guessed that must have been part of the reason for coming here. It took a minute for it to hit me that Monica was a Resident Advisor and an upperclassman. She was still asleep when I got out of bed and in the cold sobriety of that Sunday morning I happily noted that she was indeed quite pretty.
She had a delicate look with her fine features and high cheekbones, her messy brown hair cropped shoulder length. I congratulated myself on the job well done, thinking: not bad for less than ten days into the school year. She woke up just as I was about to walk out the door, forcing us to trade banal morning-after pleasantries. I promised her I would call and just like that I was off to gloat in victory.
“You’re never going to guess what happened,” I told Austin as I walked into the dorm.
He was sitting on our communal beanbag in his boxers playing Grand Theft Auto III, drinking a light beer.
“I know exactly what happened,” he said. “The whole frat knows. You wouldn’t stop talkin’ about it all night ya silly drunk bastard.”
I tried to play off my embarrassment, “Well anyway, what’re you up to today?”
“Just cruisin’ over to the quad. Y’all?” He asked as if we were already a couple.
I told him to fuck off and got into bed for a few hours. Two weeks into college, things were going swimmingly.
Then on Tuesday some assholes decided to fly two planes into the World Trade Center. By the time I rolled out of bed, the twin towers had already collapsed, something had blown up the side of the Pentagon and there was much ado about smoke and debris in a field in Pennsylvania.
Monica had come over the night before, causing me to miss practice and my 8am class, so I finally got ready to go to my second lecture of the day around noon. I could sense a commotion in the dormitory but it was only as I waited outside the lecture hall that a classmate told me what had happened that morning. In those days, not all of us brought laptops to class, so I had to wait two whole hours to get the scoop. How could it have happened? We had futuristic radar technology and fighter jets. Weren’t billions of taxpayer dollars going towards preventing just this sort of thing?
That initial incredulity was quickly swept aside by the confident narrative provided on the news. Explanations were rapidly rolled out for any incongruity that came to light and an investigative committee was formed to explain away inconvenient facts like the towers collapsing in free fall, the lack of visible airplane wreckage at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, even the eyewitness accounts of explosions coming from the World Trade Center basement. Blame was quickly assigned to a former CIA asset and his ragtag troupe of cave-dwelling jihadists. The rest, as they say, is history.
Luckily, the remainder of the semester carried a semblance of normalcy as I devoted myself to rowing, lectures, studying, and partying at Austin’s frat. There was little time to spare, even for Monica. She put up with it for the most part but began to act distant in the last month of fall semester. I knew I had been neglecting her so I bought tickets to see some local band at The Wiltern. Having only seen her off and on for the past couple months, she was understandably cold when I invited her, but agreed anyway.
While at Will Call she finally asked the dreaded question, “So what’s going to happen with us over break?”
I stammered, “What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“Mon, I just have so much on my plate with class and all… I don’t know if I can go down that path right now.”
“And what path is that?” she replied.
“You know what I’m talking about, the path to boyfriend-girlfriend. I’d like us to just stay friends. Can we do that?”
“Sure.”
Trying to salvage the situation I continued, “I’m just trying to look out for you, Monica. I think you deserve someone who can devote a lot more attention to you. You’re beautiful, smart and you roll the best joints of any girl I know.”
“Yeah, I get it,” she replied with a quickness indicating the conversation was over.
We barely talked to each other for the entire show. It’s true, I should have known better than to get with the RA and let it end on a sour note. In the remaining three weeks of the semester we were sanctioned for noise and alcohol twice; three times and we would have been kicked out of the dorm, but luckily Monica wasn’t heartless. Austin gave me shit about it for days, though I knew he didn’t really care. He enjoyed posting the silly anti-alcohol posters we were forced to make, telling everyone within earshot we were in trouble because I stopped hooking up with the RA. The experience taught me a lot more about power politics than the International Relations courses I was taking, that's for sure.