"Welcome to the greatest year of your life," Jake shouted to me as he tossed me a beer.
I smile and give him a hug, he's shirtless per usual.
"There's a keg inside, 10 handles of Kamchatka and all of Kappa is coming over. See ya."
I still remember that last move in day so vividly. Driving down to Bloomington in my old Pontiac with my family following me in the U-Haul. I was cranking Dave Matthews Band Live at Central Park and didn't have a care in the world.
My actual moving process revolved mainly around me barking orders at my brother in between sips of beer.
Put the mattress by the Xbox, the futon by the window, set up the dresser in the corner...throw that giant bean bag in the back by the AC, that will be a great place to nap when I'm hungover tomorrow. As an 18 year old high school student, his labor was very cheap. His rate? One case of BLs.
The only thing left was to do was drag my 500 pound TV up the stairs, a job that required four men, though with the amount of late night Mario Kart we played, it was well worth the struggle.
We were up in Btown a week early with a very full social calendar that included drinking on our porch, playing golf and terrorizing Kilroy's. It felt bittersweet being a Senior, living out of the fraternity house with one foot out the door. On one hand we were the kings of campus, the world was ours. On the other, the finish line was now clearly in site and no matter how hard we tried, we knew our time in this world was finite. The vacation was about to end.
It was ten years ago today that I moved into Shingles, ten years ago that I started the most memorable year of my life. Back then who could have known that Jack, Steve, Larkin and Jake would get married, that I would live in LA, the people that would come into my life, the people that would fade. Hunter would go to London, Jack and Nick started companies. Dan and Taylor climbed the ranks of corporate America and I...
Dan was the first one to get arrested that year, didn't even make it to the first day of class. I think he had some trouble finding his way home from the bar. In his defense, it was a pretty long, tricky walk home. He bailed himself out and made our tee time the following day.
I think we rented boats that week, planned our first party, coordinated a semi-formal and mapped a bar crawl. These days I can barely pay my rent on time, but back then I had the ambition to squeeze something awesome into every waking moment. I figured by the time I was 31 my life would ostensibly be over, I would be married, I'd have children, I'd be coaching the soccer team. Little did I know.
The pregame would rotate between three houses. 8th and Dunn would take Thursdays before and after Bears, the Sigma Chi guys usually took Friday and our house always threw down on Saturday. We were 500 feet from the only bar that mattered and had campus exposure on three sides, like a party peninsula. One couldn't help but walk by and be in envy of the debauchery: a dj playing trance music, shirtless men participating in beer jousts, young women sucking from a bottle of Grape vodka like it contained the secrets of life.
We were assholes, but the nice kind. We wore Crocs to bars because it was funny, would tip 70% because it was awesome, danced on tables because we could. We slept all day and stayed out all night. If I could just drag myself to class, where I would sit in the back BBMing girls or breaking bricks, I could make it to the night where it would all start over again. It didn't matter what night of the week because we had static plans year round, a standing reservation if you will.
Monday: bowling.
Tuesday: Kilroy's.
Wednesday: Crazy Horse/Sports
Thursday: pregame/karaoke/pregame/Kilroys
Friday: Sorority Dance/Theme Party
Saturday: Tailgate/Darty/Adderall/Darty/Kilroys
Sunday: Sleep until 4pm, smoke a bowl and watch Planet Earth.
The theme parties were absurd too. I had gear in my closet for every single decade, every offensive exchange idea that would never work in 2018 and lots of Members Only and Surf Style just for the fuck of it. We would throw wedding parties, we would throw divorce parties, we would take a bus out to a barn just to party with a change of scenery. I played more pub golf than actual golf, I spent more time coaching bar crawls than I did thinking about my future, but it just felt right.
Spring Break? That was a banger. How did we take the whole Greek system to a foreign country and have nothing go wrong. I feel like I couldn't pull that off with a group of four now. Little 5, I'll never forget. We could've won that year...
Remember Opryland? The Gossip Girl themed Trip Delt arrest? Lazy afternoons at Lake Lemon and Monroe? I thought it would last forever.
And then just as fast as it started, it was over.
I didn't have a job lined up, nor any real direction in my life, so I stayed in that 9 bedroom shack at 528 East 7th Street. Though it was summer and classes were out, I kept up the routine, living in an extended epilogue with no real purpose. I would wake up and go on day crawls, which were just bar crawls that started at noon. Every moment I slept was one less precious minute in Bloomington.
I floated around, spending some time in both NYC and Los Angeles but I ended up coming back to that house, going to the bars with a handful of people that studied in Summer Session 2, fiending for that last drop of adolescence that I so clearly could not let go.
I remember leaving and how sad it made me feel.
This was my first real house, first place I'd been arrested, first place I had fallen in for a girl and the last place where I had any business calling myself a kid. There would be no more Friday brunch at Tri Delt, no more late night smoking sessions at Chi O, no more getting girls to spend the night via the promise of pizza. It was time for me to leave, it was time to become an adult.
Steve got married shortly after I left for LA. Things were still the same when we went back. It felt like a frat party with higher stakes. It was like we were pretending to be adults, getting into nice suits, staying in a hotel, but the next day we would all go back to eating Easy Mac and calling pledges to do our laundry.
Jake was next. His wedding also felt like a gong show. We were back in Bloomington and it felt like nothing had changed. The absurdity was well chronicled on this blog. I was very pleased with everyone's lack of progress in the 'growing up' department. I thought maybe, just maybe we could all be Peter Pan forever.
But by the time Ryan got married later that year, I was noticing changes. People were showing up with dates, there were no plans for an after-after-party and people seemed to be starting to let go of the past, a troubling development.
Ten years later I found myself sweating profusely on a golf course in Barrington Hills, about to give the best man toast for Jack, almost ten years to the day of us moving in and beginning this crazy journey together. Most of my speech focused on how we had lived together for so long, so many places, so many memories. Crazy to think that we had started in a crumbling fraternity house in a 6 bedroom closet and now here we were at a beautiful country club. It didn't feel like a frat party anymore, this was real life.
It was during the speech that I had a moment of clarity.
I had spent my entire life comparing everything to that year, that time and place. 2008, Senior Year, Bloomington.
It's not that I didn't enjoy the ten years in between...I've had a wonderful time, it's just that 2008 was the last time I fully felt in control.
In college, you are given a very simple charge: graduate and don't die.
I was very good at graduating and not dying.
But everything else, came more difficult to me. Figuring out what I wanted, who I wanted to be, where I wanted to be. Getting in touch with my feelings, learning how to communicate with people and telling them what they mean to me. I also realize that while I may evolve, I'll still always largely be the same person I was in 2008. I may have different goals now and in the future but that won't drastically change my personality.
The last ten years weren't a wash. I made some of the greatest bonds of my lifetime, experienced joy, loss, pride and disappointment. But now, for the first time in a very long time I feel like I'm back in the driver's seat of my own story. I have regained the control. There will always be professional and personal ups and downs but if living in Venice has taught me anything, it's to just ride the wave.
As a writer I'm always thinking of things narratively, how do I get this character from point A to Point B and give them a happy ending. Well I don't have the precise answer yet, but I'm starting to figure it out. Every single one of my past experiences got me to where I am right now, and where I am, is the right track.
10 years ago today, Jake tossed me that beer and I could have never been prepared for the rollercoaster that followed. But If I could go back and talk to 21 year old me, I would just tell him to strap in and enjoy the ride.
And so I raise a glass...here's to you Shingles, may you always be a part of my heart.
