Free I Totally Meant to Do That by Jane Borden

It’s a discomfort akin to watching Andy Rooney on
60 Minutes:
not painful per se, just boring and insulting to my intelligence. Therefore, having to do this with twelve people—in a row—would be like spending an entire Saturday in Andy Rooney’s home while he cleans out his bathroom cabinets. And that is enough to send even the sanest to drink. I understood my hosts’ desire for social lubricant; during each of the three years I Rushed freshmen, I kept a bottle of vodka under a friend’s bed inside the house.
    From the other side, whether as a prospective pledge or tenant, there is one relief far more profound than alcohol: a trip to the bathroom, the one room in the house or apartment where I could be alone and sit in silence for at least three minutes without drawing suspicion. It was rare that I actually needed to use the room for its intended purpose; I’d seen the insides of several others that day. But hosts were never the wiser. During these dubious respites, I understood the word “restroom” as anything other than a euphemism. While searching for an apartment, I also used these rests to script the perfect closing statement. Leave them wanting more, right? Be so charming that when the door clicks behind you, they say only nice things—because you can be sure there will be categorical judgment.
    In Tri Delt, we used note cards and the numbers one, two, orthree. In the ten minutes between the time one round of Rushees left and another arrived, each member of the house was to grade every girl she’d met. In what remained of the ten minutes after the house was cleaned, the plates restocked, and the decorations fixed, each of us was to sum up an entire person’s worth—based on five minutes of conversation—and distill her talents, history, idiosyncrasies, and endeavors into one number. One number of three. Not big fans of gray area, these sororities. I wasn’t sure how it would specifically work with New York lease holders, but I knew the effect and intention had to be basically the same.
    And so I found myself standing in the bathroom of an affordable, spacious four-bedroom in south Greenpoint, carefully considering how I’d say good-bye, when I noticed a trinket on a shelf by the sink: a purple candle in the shape of a pansy. Normally, chintsy candles don’t betray anything about their owners beyond a misguided taste in interior design. But this one was different. The pansy is one of Tri Delt’s symbols. It’s upward-facing bud represents optimism and a hope for the future. The pansy is the third status—or third delta, if you will—of sisterhood:
alumnus
. I leaned in for a closer look and, sure enough, discovered three small triangles etched into the tiny statue’s wax base. Someone in that apartment had been a Tri Delt. And she openly admitted it.
    My fears were confirmed when I returned to the living room to find one of my hosts, the one wearing sweatpants with literature on the ass, holding a Polaroid camera. “Would you mind if we took a quick shot?” she asked. “We’ve just met so many people, you know; it really helps to put faces with names.”
    I couldn’t believe it. I would be in another multimedia gab session. How foolish I’d been to think I’d met my last. How much I wished I’d never met any. I thought of all the twentysomething girlswho’d smiled for the same camera, unaware of what it meant, of how their images would be used. I would have killed for their blissful ignorance.
    Of all the callous and catty ways to judge someone, using her picture is the worst because, although it happens behind a girl’s back, she is also technically in the room. She’s there, but helpless to defend herself. While her sense of worth is bluntly assessed, she smiles back without a clue, unmoving and optimistic. In her graduation gown or cheerleading uniform, wearing her yearbook best or prom dress, with her family at the beach, sitting in a mall with a Slurpie, standing next to a shiny