LJ Idol Season 8: Week 8; A Traveling Travesty

"She has something. I don’t know what it is, but I want it,” Erin recounted his exact words about me with a giggle. It’s a phrase that has forever stuck in my mind, perhaps because it seemed so oddly mysterious and flattering at the same time.

I never did ask him what "it” was, but maybe I really didn’t want to know.

Erin was insistent that we get together. She went so far as to write, in my sorority initiation book, that I needed to get “some of him” and then tell her how it was. She often told me I just needed to watch him get out of the shower, walk down the hallways of his frat in nothing but a towel and I would be convinced to get with this man and have his babies. Okay, maybe not have his babies, but at least practice making some.

The problem was that while Erin was a wild and crazy girl, I wasn't so outgoing. I liked to talk big, but when I got to college, I'd only been with my high school sweetheart. I would often get drunk and fabricate outlandish stories that made my small town existence seem more interesting than it really was. But deep down, I was just a good old-fashioned country girl who at the age of 21 had only kissed one boy in her entire life.

It was at a party one night when we met. I remember that I was wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt and a pair of “skater” jeans that night. My hair was in pigtails since it’s my go-to hairstyle on bad hair days, which I have often. I wasn’t showing off my boobs. I wasn’t swirling my hips like a hoochie-mama on the dance floor. I often hung out with the guys, showing off by throwing back whiskey shots with the best of them and shooting the shit while those other girls made googly eyes from across the room and practiced their “come hither” stares a bit too hard.

Whatever it was, I somehow caught his attention without trying too hard. My friends pushed for us to get together to just talk. And by push, I mean literally pushed us together. My friend, Jessica, started dancing with him at the club the night before Halloween. She grabbed my hand, pulled me between the two of them and pushed me into him with a “see ya!” look before she hightailed it across the dance floor.

There I was. Alone and face to face with him. I had to make conversation.

"Uhh, hey there.”

"Hey.”

He wasn’t much of a talker either.

"So, umm, what’s your Halloween costume going to be?” he asked, obviously fumbling for the nearest topic.

"I think I’m going to be a vampire.” I answered without really thinking. Even though Halloween was the following day, I didn’t have a costume picked out. But I went with it, trying my best to make conversation. His response terrified me though... He laughed!

"A vampire, huh? So what are you going to do, just rub a little blood on your face and call yourself a big, bad vampire?” He continued laughing. At me. I wasn’t about to have that. I may be shy, he may have been hot, but you don’t mock me.

"Actually, no. I have a little black dress I was going to wear,” I explained coolly. His interest piqued slightly. “Along with some fishnet stockings and a pair of black knee high boots.”

His laughter stopped abruptly as he looked me in the eye.

"Seriously?”

"Yes, seriously.” Though really, I was running a shopping list in my head. Did I have anything like that? I didn’t make it a habit of dressing like a Goth prostitute, not even for Halloween. Could I pull it off?

Then he said the strangest thing one might say in such a situation: "I’ll be right back.”

So I stood there as he ran over to some guys in a corner. They chatted for maybe two seconds before he came back to me.

"Tomorrow night, my fraternity is hosting a Halloween party. You are going to be there.” He didn’t ask, he just out-and-out told me.

I merely smiled up at him.

"You’re on”.

********************


So you want to go to my room and watch a movie?” He tried to make the question sound innocent enough, but even though I was young and probably a bit naive, I knew better than to take such a proposition at face value. Still, I kind of liked this boy.

"Sure, but just so you know... I won’t have sex with you.” I figured it was best to be up front and honest from the get-go. We had been having a good time at the Halloween party, but it was winding down as people found couches and patches of floor to pass out on.

"Okay... that’s fine.” He looked a little stunned and we sat there in silence for a few moments longer, "Though I have to ask, why would you say something like that?”

I weighed my options and decided to be honest with him. I explained that I had only dated one boy in my entire life, never had sex with anyone else, and I was a bit scared. I had been hurt pretty badly by my ex who'd promised me the world and then proceeded to fuck every girl that spoke to him.

I figured a guy like him, who was so infamous that his nickname was a sexual innuendo, would go running for the hills right then and there, but he surprised me.

"Well then, we’ll just go upstairs and watch a movie. How’s that sound?”

It sounded great to me.

He popped in Scary Movie since I mentioned liking horror movies and that was the closest thing he had. I had never seen it before, and can honestly say I still haven’t seen it. We watched less than five minutes of it before we started making out on his couch. After Erin and, later, his roommate walked in on us, we retired to the cubbyhole that contained his bed.

We did get a little feisty, and I will admit that things got a little rough. Clothes came off, and my fishnets may have even been ripped in places. But he never tried to have sex with me. At one point in the early hours of the morning, I remember asking him if we could get some sleep. He made sure I had a pillow beneath my head, a blanket covering me, and we snuggled up next to one another and slept late into the day.

All in all, aside from some childish groping, making out, and perhaps a little vampiric biting thrown in for good measure, it had been an innocent evening.

Judging by the way I looked the next morning though, it appeared to be anything but innocent. We laughed over my appearance, which consisted of a really rumpled black dress, fishnets torn to shreds, hair all over the place, hickeys all down my neck, and lines of mascara running down my face. I looked like a cheap hooker instead of the relatively innocent girl that I actually was at the time.

Nevertheless, he said we could sneak out the back way so none of his frat brothers would give me a hard time. We opened up his door, preparing for my first ever “Walk of Shame” and prayed that no one would see me. But we forgot something very important in our plan.

Family Day: November 1st was the day that our university invited all the families to come visit and tour the campus.

We'd slept later than we had thought. The hallway to the back exit was filled with people, most of them parents of his fellow frat brothers. When the door opened and we stepped out, the hallway went perfectly silent. All eyes were turned toward me, the girl who looked like a streetwalker.

Nobody said a word as he took my hand, tossed a few well-aimed sneers in their direction and walked me down the hallway. I was thankful to get in his car, away from their prying and judging eyes. I was thankful for a whole five seconds until it hit me.

I still had to walk into my sorority house like this.

Not only did I have my first ever "Walk of Shame” moment, but I was lucky enough to experience it twice in one day. The rumors that circulated later followed me throughout my entire college career. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t sleep with the boy, or that I never did even after several months of shacking up. He had a reputation of being a "man-whore”, I dressed in a provocative Halloween costume and suddenly I am the biggest slut on campus.

No one ever cared to find out the truth about me. Rumors sure have a way of taking on a life of their own and traveling fast around a college campus. My fate was sealed the moment I stepped out that door.