Spring 2005
Senior year, Austin rented a huge Victorian house a couple blocks from campus with some friends and I was able to snag a room. The house was a zoo. It seemed like every evening we would be sitting out on the stoop, drinking 40s, and a couple friends of one guy would show up and then a couple friends of another. Next thing you know, we’d have twenty people at the house drinking, smoking and jamming out to Public Enemy, NWA and Wu-Tang; pretending we could relate to the lyrics describing life in the inner city.
It was under these auspices that Claire entered my life and I found myself unwittingly playing the obsequious boyfriend. One day we were casually dating and the next she was telling me we should begin to think about where we were going to live after we graduated. I should have known, since she was a Film Studies major, that she’d be good at assigning roles to the actors in the drama of her life. Not only that, she set the stage pretty well too.
“Bro, you really need to tell Claire she can’t go around rearranging shit in our house,” Austin said one evening, noticing the Pop-A-Shot had been moved from its central location in our living room.
“You never should have introduced me to her man, her next project is to replace the poker table with a real coffee table. I don’t even know how to tell her it’s over, every time I’m close she gives me that look and I freeze up.”
Mike, our high testosterone roommate chimed in, “Dude, if she touches the poker table I will personally TP their whole sorority house.”
The thought of Mike throwing rolls of toilet paper over their house in the middle of the night made me chuckle. Knowing him, now that he had the idea in his head, he was probably going to do it regardless of Claire’s redecorating.
“I’ll figure something out,” I said, as I headed out the door for my Poli-Sci lab.
It was a year-long course that had no homework, essays, or exams; just a weekly discussion and a project to complete. According to some upperclassmen, the project was usually a short presentation. Of course that year, the professor decided to throw us a curveball, tiring of the reputation his class had earned as an easy A. He directed us to work on a student senate campaign or run for a seat ourselves. We’d eventually have to make a presentation about the experience.
I knew my only chance for an A was to get Austin to run for a Senate seat. He was well-liked, photogenic and he had plenty of money to throw around on a campaign. Most importantly, he had no idea what to do with his life so he was going to stay in school for another year, making him eligible to run.
When I got home I told him about my predicament in the stupid lab.
I finally asked him if he would run and he replied, “What do I get out of it?”
“The glory of victory? I don’t know, what do you want?”
I said it in a tone that I hoped would inspire maximum pity. It worked.
“I’m kidding man, my classes are a joke this year anyway. Could be fun. Plus, it’ll be an excuse to talk to some random chicks.”
We set about the task ahead of us in earnest. In order to run you had to get a 100 nominating signatures. That, in itself, was a joke. It took all of 10 minutes at the frat house to get done. The bureaucratic paperwork was another story. We needed to fill out innumerous forms and take the signatures to the Student Government office, but before we could do that we needed to identify a campaign. As luck would have it, that very week the school announced it was implementing a policy of capping the number of fraternities and sororities that could be active at any one time and was enacting new rules on frat events. It was only appropriate for a Greek senator to oppose these absurd restrictions. With a platform like that, we felt we could win the hearts and minds of the people, young populists that we were. At least compared to our opponents, who championed causes like extending library hours, starting a mental health awareness campaign, or raising funds to renovate the water polo stadium.
A few days after submission, the Dean of the Social Sciences College asked us to come into his office.
Austin and I exchanged a few casual pleasantries with him before nervously taking our seats.
“Boys, now you’ve got me in a bit of a pickle here. Normally, I don’t interfere with campaigns… but I can’t approve this.”
“Why? This is what we want to run for,” Austin said.
“Now you don’t strike me as the naïve type, so I’ll be blunt. You’re interfering with my work, Austin. Do you know what that is?”
“To manage the college?” he ventured.
”No son, that’s the job of my administrators. My job is to improve this college. And I intend to do that job to the best of my ability. You see, just like you have grades, I have grades. Want know how my performance is measured?”
We sat there dumbfounded.
“As silly as it is, my performance is measured by our US News college ranking. This year they’ve implemented a new factor in the algorithm, the number of fraternities and sororities. As you can imagine, it has a negative impact on the academic rating.”
He focused his attention on Austin, before continuing, “I know you’re a brother. All this does is prevent new competition for you guys. I don’t see why you would run so adamantly to prevent the cap.”
He had a good point, and I personally wanted our school to rise in the rankings as much as possible after I graduated, so as his campaign advisor I shot Austin a glance to back off. He told the Dean we’d think about it and we picked up our bags and left his office, feeling a strange mixture of confusion and enlightenment. So this was politics.
We wracked our brains to find another compelling campaign platform, but we couldn’t quickly think of anything that was acceptable yet still said “fuck you. ” A few days before the deadline, Austin ran into our living room excitedly, grabbed a ball from the pop a shot and threw it at me as hard as he could while I was watching TV.
“The fuck, man!?”
“Dude, I got it. Dean Perry, he lobbied for the new Politics Library right? Well guess what, I looked up all the subs on the project. One of ‘em has a Perry on their board. Guess who?”
“How the fuck should I know dude, move outta the way.”
“Perry’s fucking brother!”
“So what?”
“Dude, that’s completely unethical. You said it didn’t matter if we win right? Let’s just fucking make a big ruckus about it, it’ll be hilarious.”
I looked up from the TV, “Won’t be so funny when they shut us down.”
“Whatever. You’re graduating and my grades can’t get much worse anyway. Let’s just fucking do it.”
With that said, we set about filling out the dreaded forms again, this time demanding an audit of the College finances and subcontractors. We submitted our campaign for approval and immediately received another email from the Dean.
This time he didn’t even bother with a hello.
"Sit down.”
We sat.
“Sir—“ I began but he cut me off with the wave of a hand.
“Are you boys really going to force me into this position?”
Austin answered before I could open my mouth, “And what position is that Professor?”
“Don’t play stupid Austin, just because your grades indicate you’re a retard doesn’t mean you should act like one.”
We were stunned into silence and the Dean gave us the lowdown. It went about how we expected. He said that the school would reject our application on some regulatory grounds if we didn’t rethink our campaign. After doing the paperwork twice, we had no intention of doing it a third time, so we told Dean Perry fuck it, reject the damn thing. We got a rejection notice the next day and breathed a collective sigh of relief. Activism didn’t really suit us much anyway. At least I got a good story about the reality of politics and I didn’t even have to go through with the whole thing. Who knows, maybe it changed the life of some aspiring politician in my lab. Project completed, my mind wandered back to the Claire problem.
I googled ‘ how to break up with your girlfriend’, having learned from the mistake of following my gut freshman year. The article I found said 1) minimize the heartache 2) give an honest explanation and 3) be reassuring. Fucking hell, wasn’t that exactly what I’d done with Monica? I decided to just tell Claire I’d cheated on her. When she came over after class the next day, I informed her as apologetically as I could muster. Rather than get upset, she shamefacedly told me she’d cheated on me herself. Twice. Out of pride, I couldn’t even express my indignation at her twin betrayals. I was dejected but I found comfort in the fact that the cosmic balance was restored. For a notoriously slow worker, karma sure settled the score quickly this time.