Free Hell Week by Rosemary Clement-Moore Page A
Authors: Rosemary Clement-Moore
the movie date. Can you agree on explo- sions vs. romance? Maybe a thriller for compromise. How will you spend your future time together?
Third round: dinner date. Your beau puts on the Ritz, shows off a little, and you learn if he makes an annoying smacking sound when he chews.
And finally, Preference Night: meet the parents. Not a pro- posal just yet, but a test run. A peek into the fold.
I downed the last swig of my latte. It was stone cold, picked up on my way home from Greek Row, since I knew Cole would be waiting to slip my column into place, just in time to get Friday's edition of the Report to the printer. The school paper had a narrow window on the press--in between the Sentinel and the direct mail going out to advertise the weekend's sales.
Like my psychic education, my dating experience mostly came from the movies, too. But it wasn't hard to extrapolate. The two preference parties I'd gone to that night--the Zetas and the SAXis--had been intimate, one-on-one conversa- tions. At each sorority a girl met me at the door and showed me around the house, including her own room. At the Zeta house, they'd found my mother's picture on the wall, and I laughed to see her hair teased up like a brunette Madonna, circa "Material Girl."
Kirby had met me at the SAXi house. I'd been hoping it would be Devon. Maybe I should have been flattered that the president escorted me room to room, but there was a prob- ing intensity to her that put me on edge, and made me think about raising my deflector shields. She was full of ques- tions. What were my ambitions, my goals? I wasn't sad when she pawned me off on a pre-med student named Alexa, and went to circulate among the tiny number of girls that were there.
It wasn't too late to back out, to renege on my word to Holly. She didn't need me, and I wasn't going to change the world with my little commentary. The elite had always ruled and always would.
If I did bow out, my last article could be about taking the high ground, turning my back on the shallow inanity of sororities. But tonight, I was finishing this article for Tricia.
And Rush can break your heart, just like dating. You can pin your hopes on a guy, change yourself for him, pretend to be some- thing you're not, and if he doesn't love you back, you think it's the end of the world.
How much better would it be if women stopped judging their self-worth by somebody else's arbitrary standards. My mother always said, if he's worthy of you, he'll take you as is. This cam- pus is full of organizations where the power of membership lies with the joiner.
And the world is full of guys who don't read Greek.
I saved what I'd written and checked my watch. Just enough time to print it out and try to catch the most egre- gious typos. Unfolding myself from the bed, I carried the laptop to my desk and plugged it into the printer. Then I proofread, fiddled with the hook at the end, sent it to Cole via our supersecret system, and finally fell into bed.
F F F
"Maggie!"
Dad's voice dragged me from the well of slumber. The dregs of a dream had come up with me, twisting my thoughts into dizzying patterns. I had to climb the shreds of reason and try to make sense of my room, which seemed fractured and reassembled in parts, like a cubist painting.
"Maggie! I know you have class this morning." Downstairs. Dad was shouting up at me. I oriented on the familiar sound--it was far from the first time I'd been shouted awake--and the room came into familiar focus.
Unfortunately, the first thing I saw with any clarity was the clock on my bedside table.
"Crap." I rolled out of bed and went to the stairs to yell, "I'm up! I'm up!" Immediately I regretted it, and squeezed my pounding head between my hands.
Okay. Not a normal nightmare, then. I get these some- times. Psychic hangovers, the aftermath of one of my real dreams, as opposed to the random firing of neurons that happens to nonfreaky people in their sleep.
Fortunately, I'd
Third round: dinner date. Your beau puts on the Ritz, shows off a little, and you learn if he makes an annoying smacking sound when he chews.
And finally, Preference Night: meet the parents. Not a pro- posal just yet, but a test run. A peek into the fold.
I downed the last swig of my latte. It was stone cold, picked up on my way home from Greek Row, since I knew Cole would be waiting to slip my column into place, just in time to get Friday's edition of the Report to the printer. The school paper had a narrow window on the press--in between the Sentinel and the direct mail going out to advertise the weekend's sales.
Like my psychic education, my dating experience mostly came from the movies, too. But it wasn't hard to extrapolate. The two preference parties I'd gone to that night--the Zetas and the SAXis--had been intimate, one-on-one conversa- tions. At each sorority a girl met me at the door and showed me around the house, including her own room. At the Zeta house, they'd found my mother's picture on the wall, and I laughed to see her hair teased up like a brunette Madonna, circa "Material Girl."
Kirby had met me at the SAXi house. I'd been hoping it would be Devon. Maybe I should have been flattered that the president escorted me room to room, but there was a prob- ing intensity to her that put me on edge, and made me think about raising my deflector shields. She was full of ques- tions. What were my ambitions, my goals? I wasn't sad when she pawned me off on a pre-med student named Alexa, and went to circulate among the tiny number of girls that were there.
It wasn't too late to back out, to renege on my word to Holly. She didn't need me, and I wasn't going to change the world with my little commentary. The elite had always ruled and always would.
If I did bow out, my last article could be about taking the high ground, turning my back on the shallow inanity of sororities. But tonight, I was finishing this article for Tricia.
And Rush can break your heart, just like dating. You can pin your hopes on a guy, change yourself for him, pretend to be some- thing you're not, and if he doesn't love you back, you think it's the end of the world.
How much better would it be if women stopped judging their self-worth by somebody else's arbitrary standards. My mother always said, if he's worthy of you, he'll take you as is. This cam- pus is full of organizations where the power of membership lies with the joiner.
And the world is full of guys who don't read Greek.
I saved what I'd written and checked my watch. Just enough time to print it out and try to catch the most egre- gious typos. Unfolding myself from the bed, I carried the laptop to my desk and plugged it into the printer. Then I proofread, fiddled with the hook at the end, sent it to Cole via our supersecret system, and finally fell into bed.
F F F
"Maggie!"
Dad's voice dragged me from the well of slumber. The dregs of a dream had come up with me, twisting my thoughts into dizzying patterns. I had to climb the shreds of reason and try to make sense of my room, which seemed fractured and reassembled in parts, like a cubist painting.
"Maggie! I know you have class this morning." Downstairs. Dad was shouting up at me. I oriented on the familiar sound--it was far from the first time I'd been shouted awake--and the room came into familiar focus.
Unfortunately, the first thing I saw with any clarity was the clock on my bedside table.
"Crap." I rolled out of bed and went to the stairs to yell, "I'm up! I'm up!" Immediately I regretted it, and squeezed my pounding head between my hands.
Okay. Not a normal nightmare, then. I get these some- times. Psychic hangovers, the aftermath of one of my real dreams, as opposed to the random firing of neurons that happens to nonfreaky people in their sleep.
Fortunately, I'd
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