An ongoing series for PoYB, in which Joe reflects on those times in his life that solidified who he is as a person. Some were great nights that made his life better. Some were awful nights that taught him a lesson. Some were insignificant bullshit that, years later, it turns out, probably meant something after all. Who knows. Let's dig in.
PART VI
Mehow Mania
March 17, 2008
This is a story about how much of a stupid asshole I am.
This too is a story as told by a man that has been sober for 60 days in a row, so I apologize if it seems like I'm being a pussy when speaking about my drunken foibles. I'm regretful of a lot of what I'm speaking about because of how I acted in a general, not just mistakes I made when I was drunk. This isn't a story about how DRINKING RUINED MY LIFE, because that's not even remotely true, and just because a lot of the incidents in this story occurred when I was drunk doesn't mean that's the point I'm trying to make. Anyways...
At the start of my freshman year of college, by total chance, I got placed in a dorm room on the third floor of our dormitory, in the far southern wing. This meant that, again, by chance, my R.A. was a guy named Mehow. (I don't usually use real names in these stories, but "Mehow" is not his real name, so fuck it.) Mehow was a junior. He seemed like a nice guy when we first met. He was pleasant and cordial.
And I'm not saying that changed all of a sudden or anything. But certain R.A.s tend to care about following the rules more than others. Mehow, as it turns out, was big into people following the rules. Which, as an eighteen-turning-nineteen-year-old underage drinker, was, shall we say... inconvenient at best.
But we had a decent amount of mutual friends! The dude was in the theater program. We hung out on occasion. It wasn't that big a deal. He saw me drunk sometimes, and he laughed it off. It wasn't like I was scared of him. I knew the boundaries, and respected them. At first, anyway.
It's been a decade since the Joe vs. Mehow Cold War began, but as I remember it, a couple things set this whole thing into motion.
First was that I had a few incidents in which I peed where I was not supposed to pee. My buddy and roommate Pat (avoiding using full names here, remember) had an issue with this, and I do not blame him. He did what any new student would do, and went to his resident advisor for advice on how to deal with the situation. Mehow took this information and, instead of talking to me about it, turned around and told his superiors, and I was getting reprimanded for it.
Okay, fine, ten years later, and I can see where he was coming from. He probably didn't want to confront me about it because he knew I wasn't mature enough to make any changes in my life. He was right! I wasn't mature enough! I would've laughed in his fucking face!
The second thing that happened was that I broke up with my girlfriend, Chrissy, who also lived in our hallway, so we shared an R.A. in Mehow. Through the grapevine—and this is all hearsay I guess, I can't even remember where I heard this, let alone if it was actually said—but allegedly, Mehow sided with my now-ex-girlfriend, indicating that he was going to be tougher on me, and would probably attempt to write me up.
In fact, it's coming back to me now as I type... Chrissy herself fucking warned me that Mehow had told her this. Even after we broke up, she had my back (there are many unsung heroes throughout my college stories). Yet, I did not heed her warning. And the Cold War heated up.
We now enter the date of importance. St. Patrick's Day of my freshman year of college. Did I go to class that day? Who knows. I only had scheduled classes in the morning anyway, so more than likely, I ended my academic day at 11:50 AM sharp like always and went back to ol' St. Basil Room 343 and cracked open a cold beer and started the high holiday.
I was told point blank that Mehow was looking to write me up, and still, for some fucking reason, I came back from spring break with a fold-up table from my parents' house, to be used in the dorm room for the explicit purpose of playing beer pong.
Let me slip into nineteen-year-old Joe for a minute and explain how I got written up and explain too why it was all bullshit. (I will probably end every sentence in an exclamation point and heavily use italics to indicate that I am indeed writing in the role of a nineteen-year-old.) Ahem.
It's not like we were even making that much noise! There were like six of us in there drinking! And I heard through the grapevine that Mehow was overheard that a few friends were gathering in Joe's room and purposefully walked up a flight of stairs to bust us, on purpose! He used the sounds of ping pong balls hitting the floor as his reasoning for even coming in in the first place even though ping pong balls themselves aren't banned!
And the irony is that we weren't even playing beer pong, we were playing water pong! But he still used this as an excuse to go into my fridge and write me up for the Natty in there! It's not like we were even causing a disturbance! He just wanted to fuck with me!
Okay, alright, 28-year-old Joe is back for a cold dose of reality. Yes, the whole incident reeked of abuse of power, and maybe still does, but let's look at the facts here. I was told that Mehow was going to try to write me up, and instead of making my drinking a bit more inconspicuous and maybe avoiding Mehow, I escalated the issue and brought a fucking beer pong table to my dorm room, the room that shared a fucking wall with Mehow's room.
Mehow's motivation shouldn't matter, is what I'm discovering as the years go on. The only thing I can control is my own actions. And my actions were of self-sabotage.
At the time, I was fucking angry. I was fucking devastated. Anger: Mehow made me dump the dozen or so beers left, so I cracked every beer with my teeth and slammed them into the bathroom sink, shouting obscenities all the while; I then kicked the table legs out from the table, and water from the red solo cups flooded the room. Devastation: this was my third write-up for underage drinking, and I was convinced that I was going to be getting kicked out of housing; I slinked back to the dorm room of my crush at the time, and probably cried a little to her, and called it a night.
At the time I was angry and devastated, but a decade or so later, I chuckle a bit at the lack of a fallout, or lack thereof. I had to go to an alcohol class, and I completed that quickly and smugly. I didn't get kicked out of housing. The only consequence, really, was that my anger with Mehow grew. Other than that, I continued to be a little shit that flouted the rules whenever I could.
I've held this grudge for so long that at this point it's honestly kind of pathetic. Like, I don't even know where this dude lives currently. I haven't heard anyone talk about him for years. I've been to a few homecomings since graduation, and I don't think he was there. If he was, I ignored him completely. Last I had heard, he might be in Michigan or something? He's been blocked on Facebook since 2008, so I have no way of knowing.
I've been thinking over the past few days what I would do if I ran into him on the street today. How I would react.
I would probably tell him that I'm sorry. I'm mainly sorry that I've spent so much time sending negative energy his way over the years, and all over some bullshit. Like I said above, I can only control the way I behave, not the way others behave. And that St. Patrick's Day, I acted poorly. I went against my better judgment and put myself in academic danger and paid the price for it. I could've done so many things differently. I could've made peace with Mehow before it escalated, but instead I just did things that pissed him off more. I could've tried to see his side of things, like maybe he was under pressure by the administration to crack down on rowdy drunks. Maybe it wasn't a personal vendetta on his part, maybe he was just doing his fucking job, ya know?
Back then and recently, I've held on to those parts of the story in which I felt that Mehow was the one in the wrong, and I've used those parts as an excuse to be bitter and angry. And that's not right. My actions were not right either. I was stupid and immature. I was a drunken asshole through it all.
St. Patrick's Day 2008 was an important day in my life, but the reason it is important has changed since. It was important to me then because I felt like I had been dicked over by an asshole and my life was going to change when I was inevitably kicked out of the dorms. It is important NOW because it is a clear example of how my behavior negatively affected those around me and negatively affected myself. When it came to booze and partying and in general acting like a college student, I couldn't control myself, and I couldn't see how my behavior was wrong. I just couldn't see it. All I could see was "the man" trying to bring me down, and all I could feel was anger and resentment. I couldn't feel any sense of responsibility. "Responsibility" wasn't even in my fucking vocabulary.
So, if I saw Mehow today, I don't know if I could explain all this eloquently, but I'd try to apologize. I just want him to know that I don't know if I'll ever be a truly responsible young adult that understands how my actions affect others, but, like, every fucking day I'm trying harder and harder to see that, and to get better. And that I'm sorry.
Like the end of the story about the Burholme Bust, I want to assure you, friends, that trying to take responsibility for my actions doesn't mean I don't find all of this humorous sometimes too. I can still laugh about it, about how I cracked those fucking Natty Lights open with my teeth (and how faux angry I was that Mehow had the gall to call them "Natty Ice" on the report!), and about all the other dumb stupid shit we all did when we were young and drunk.
Except I want to be able to look back and laugh from a position of self-awareness. I want to be able to say, "Yeah, we were young and drunk and stupid and it was fucking HILARIOUS, but I know better now." I don't want to laugh to cover my anger. I want to laugh primarily at myself because it was funny but I'm in a better place. I'm trying every day to be in a better place. And I am. And I will be.
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