The following is more or less how, back in September, I imagined my first dinner with my family would transpire upon returning home from my freshman year at Wesleyan University:
Dad: Alex, can you pass me the Russian dressing?
Me (looking out from beneath my dark-rimmed glasses and the combed-over, jet black hair covering my eyes): How dare you fetishize and exploit the centuries of oppression inflicted upon the people of [various unpronounceable Cyrillic characters said with thick Russian accent] by their despotic, non-democratically-elected rulers for the use of a mere condiment upon your inorganic, genetically mutated, anti-fair-trade-regulations manufactured foliage of fascism?!
Dad: Um, well, can I have the ketchup mixed with mayonnaise contained in that bottle?
Alex: I shall be chained by your tyrannical orders no more, White Man! When the revolution comes, you will not be spared!
Dad: Alex, I highly doubt your empathy for the oppressed peoples of the world; plus you’re about as white as a polar bear eating a box of Saltines while listening to Barry Manilow.
Alex: Whatever, fool, a player took an AFAM class.
Dad: Congratulations, Raekwon. Now can you pass me the damn dressing?
Alex: Screw this dinner table and its veritable cesspool of hate speak! I’m gonna go listen to my Of Montreal album while watching Garden State and tapering my jeans!
Well, it is fairly safe to say that the preceding conversation is not what that first dinner at home will be like, and my assumptions about how my freshman year at Wesleyan would transform me into a Cooper-Black-font-tee-shirt-wearing, swooped-bangs-sporting fan of bands that begin with the word “the” and end in a plural noun were rather presumptuous. Undoubtedly, though, I have had an unforgettably “diverse” time during my first year at Wesleyan. I Foss Crossed with footballers, defecated with dames, and ate ziti with ze’s (well, that never happened, but isn’t that really good alliteration?). I have put more knowledge, information, and cheap beer into my system than during any other period in my life.
Regardless of all this, I have not become some unwavering liberal who wishes that everyone’s nether regions resembled that of a Barbie doll and believes that anyone that says the word “mankind” is a misogynistic, heteronormative chauvinist. I still have three more years at Wesleyan to experience the libidinous debauchery of a naked party (I did go to a no pants party, which I guess was pretty cool) or the blue boogers that come with snorting Adderall; and, as nasty game as a player has been spitting, I still haven’t gotten laid by the binary. Can somebody help me out with that, because it’s especially embarrassing when I am hanging out with my friends in Clark on Sunday afternoon, and they’re all like, “Dude, I totally nailed the shit out the binary this weekend. I had that ho screaming for more!” And I’m like, “Why, chums, what is it with tales of which you are regaling each other?” And they’re like, “Fucking bi-yatch, Gelman’s a binary virgin.”
So as I sit idly on the second floor of Olin, marooned among stacks upon stacks of innumerable books, surrounded by my equally stressed peers who are undoubtedly procrastinating on their astronomical amounts of work, I look to my reflection in the window to my left. “Am I really any different?” I ask. The first answer that comes is “You will be if you don’t shut your fucking mouth, douchebag!” from an irritated student behind me. But I’m lost in the moment. I eye myself up and down, my Freeman-toned biceps barely contained by my fourth-grade baseball tee-shirt (well, actually, I’ve only been using that machine where you pull your legs together with those thigh pads— I plan on having an incredibly strong scrotum), and I realize that, aesthetically, I am no different than that naïve, doughy-eyed freshman who arrived on campus eight months ago with a cock in his stride, an enthusiastic anticipation for college life, and a crate of five hundred condoms in his bag. (Screw you, I’ve used ten of them this year… to keep my toes warm one frigid January day.)
Yet upon further inspection— and introspection— I realize that I should not be looking at my body to see if Wesleyan has had a life-altering effect on me; I should be looking into my soul (holy crap, I am such a fucking pussy. I knew this freaking school would make me gay. Oh well, my ass does look stunning in these jeans). The friends I have made from all corners of the country as well as the world— the facts, opinions, and stories I have heard in classes that I never would have experienced in my conformist, industrial, draconian high school— the mysterious liquids I have encountered on the floor of my room upon entering it on early weekend mornings— all have had an indelible mark upon my being that will not soon be erased, no matter how many drugs I do on the next three Zonker Harris Days.
So as I prepare for my sophomore year, living in the wildly unpredictable, wonderfully eclectic, invariably weed-smelling halls of WestCo, I go forth with the same unrelenting enthusiasm that I had the first day I walked through the cavernous halls of Clark. Yet, along with that indefatigable excitement for a place where I can crap next to girls and everyday can be a no-pants party, I realize that living in WestCo probably will not change me into a long-haired, unhygienic, free spirit. Mainly because I am all ready most of those things, but also because I have come to appreciate Wesleyan not as a place that necessarily metamorphoses you into a presumed aesthetic stereotype; it is a school that allows you to grow from the inside, fostering social, intellectual, and maybe a little hallucinogenic amelioration in your life.
Today, I imagine my first dinner home from Wesleyan going a little more like this:
Dad: Alex, can you pass me the Russian dressing?
Me: Sure, Dad. Hey, did I ever tell you guys about that time my friends stole my towel while I was taking a shower, and I had to walk out into the hall with only a floral-patterned rain boot covering my penis? No? Well, it’s quite a yarn, and I would love to spin it.
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