Chapter 25

One of the first things I learned at college was how difficult it is to get into a fraternity party if you don’t have a membership at that fraternity, a membership at another, or boobs. Preferably a pair. With minimal fabric standing between them and the eyes of the guy working the door.

That we lacked any of those prerequisites was why my new friend Brad and I found ourselves trying to slip in through a basement window we had managed to pry open several inches. Fortunately, we were both relatively skinny.

Why was I so desperate to get into the party?

For years, it had been my goal to find a girlfriend. When I went to college, I added to that list of objectives finding a group of close friends—a crew, if you will, who could, among other things, help me navigate the world of dating. Tony, my childhood friend from church, and I had not stayed as close during high school, so I had never had anyone to give me advice when I was trying to date Francesca and Evelyn.

That’s why Brad and I found ourselves shoving our bodies through that basement window. We thought we might meet some girls at the party. Maybe I could CFD with one of them. But even if we failed on those counts, nothing bonds two people together like a little breaking and entering. So either way I would end up with a closer friend as a result of the adventure.

We dropped from the window into the corner of a room about five feet from a makeshift bar, several kegs behind it. No one said anything or even looked twice at us. At a party like this one, I realized, there was a high ratio of people who were there to have fun versus people who were there to enforce the rules. And most of the tiny group that fell into the latter category was already stationed at the front door, turning away guys like Brad and me. The partygoers who saw us, the ones who were there purely for fun, couldn’t care less about our method of entry.

“You want a beer?” Brad asked.

“Nah,” I said.

“I’m gonna get in line.”

There were two lines for beer: a guys’ line and a girls’ line. Fraternity brothers worked the kegs behind the bar and evidently also chose which line to give priority to. The guys’ line snaked all the way across the floor of the basement to the stairwell where people entered from the front door upstairs. The girls’ line was three girls long.

Anyway, I had decided I didn’t want to drink until I was twenty-one. It wasn’t like I wanted to take the moral high road. I just didn’t like breaking laws. Unless those laws happened to be preventing me from an opportunity to meet girls, in which case I was happy to engage in a bit of trespassing via a basement window.

While Brad waited in line, I made my way to the other side of the basement, where the sticky tile floor dropped several feet to another level that served as a dance floor. It was packed with sweaty revelers. Rap music was blaring. Most people held a red plastic Solo cup in one hand and gripped the body of a dance partner with the other. Unlike high school, I saw, there was not much circle dancing at a frat party. Grinding was rampant. Virtually everyone was paired off. The guys who didn’t have a girl to dance with prowled the open floor on the higher level, watching for a girl who didn’t have a guy on her already.

I spotted a smile and a wave that seemed to be directed at me. I waved back. It was Paulette, another freshman. I’d hung out with her a few times. Not like “we should hang out sometime” hanging out. Just with a group or whatever. She motioned me over to where she was dancing with her friends.

In contrast to the semi-intoxicated bros prowling the perimeter, I didn’t want to accost a girl I had never met with a proposition to dance. So Paulette was an ideal candidate for CFDing. After all, she was probably here in search of a dance partner, right? Maybe even a boyfriend? I mean, why else would you come to a frat party? Plus, I wasn’t going to grind on her. I would just put my hands on her hips and then we would sway back and forth together. It would be fun. Good old-fashioned CFDing. Maybe that’s why she had motioned me to come over in the first place. She wanted to dance with a boy she knew. A boy like me.

It took me a full twenty minutes to work up the courage. I would tell myself: at the end of this song. No, at the end of this song. And so forth.

Finally, I just did it, like tearing off a Band-Aid. All at once I took a step forward on my fake leg so I was only a few inches away from her, placing my hands on her waist and trying to smile a friendly rather than nervous smile. She immediately snapped back, pushing my hands away like she was ripping off a pair of pants she had just discovered to be infested with spiders. “Sorry,” she said, slowing down a little as if she was worried she had overreacted. “I just don’t want to dance like that.”

The way she had instantly shoved away my hands, as if they were too grotesque to allow near her body, as if they were infected with some contagious disease, was more personal and painful than the worst-case scenario I could have imagined.

I was so shocked that for a moment I dropped my mask of confidence; the hurt was written on my face. All that time I had wasted building up my nerve. That entire internal-monologue pep talk had been for nothing.

In fact, worse than for nothing. It had led me to rejection, a violent, physical rejection.

Getting rejected by a girl you are trying to dance with is different from getting rejected by one you asked out on a date. Not necessarily worse or better, just different. When a girl says no to a date, you presume there was some logic behind her decision. She made an evaluation of you in her mind, summing up your traits, her attraction to you, your past history, your five-year plan, the make and model of your car, etc., and then she gave you her answer: no. But when a girl rejects your advance on the dance floor, it is something deeper, more instinctive, more visceral. She is at a fundamental gut level not attracted to you. In fact, she is in some way repelled by you, by your smell, by your presence, by the feeling of your body touching hers. Her rejection of you is precognitive, a pure animal reflex. The dance floor rejection has a stronger physical charge, then: Your body is not enough. I don’t want it near mine. And this charge is amplified, I think, if you happen to be an amputee, because it throws a spark on the kindling of insecurity you were already harboring concerning the shape of your body.

At any rate, I could not—I would not—dance in the presence of Paulette and her friends after that rejection. I was angry and hurt and humiliated. I waved a wordless good-night and turned to go find Brad.

Paulette grabbed my arm. “Wait. Stay and dance with us some more!” She was smiling. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to make up for the way she had made me feel or if she was just completely oblivious to it.

I offered no explanation. That I was walking away communicated everything I had to say.

I found Brad. “I’m leaving.”

“Now?”

I nodded tersely.

“You want me to come with you?”

“If you want.”

He looked around, surveying the room, and then back at me. “All right. Hold on.” He downed his beer in a single gulp, tossing the cup into a nearby trash can, and we left out the front door. Despite my anger, or perhaps because of it, I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder and smile at the bouncers as we exited, pushing through the crowd that was trying to get in. Suckers.

Brad and I sat outside and I told him what had happened and he listened. I had to admit: Having a friend to talk about it with did not make me feel better. Not completely, that is. But it did feel better than holding it all inside.