1: moratorium

A Chapter by Darcy

note: moratorium is the name for the weekend that the fraternities are banned from throwing parties because of spring rush

(note:there’s some language in here that some people might find offensive)

The weekend of Spring Rush Moratorium came raining down upon that first week after Winter Break like a fiery vengeance. It was as if, by some act of pre-meditated arson, every frat star had been expelled from their precious pong tournaments without a moment to steady some sobriety into their turbulent steps. Like they were each yanked, mid-stroke, off a squealing stick of a girl; only to be left standing hopelessly outside of every last party on Menlo with nothing but their sticky cunning. Their heads probably still reeled from Adderall taken too soon and too often to be blamed on a need for focus.

Those three days were an apocalypse of sorts: Backyards packed with poor decisions and Greek lords without a cause clutching 12-packs of Natty like infants in a sandstorm, patios of 23-hour coffee chains riddled with drunken confusion about what the f**k they were all gonna do with the last couple hours of Holy Weekend and the rest of their lives. Seemingly thousands of “brothers” in starched collars and Greek-Letter-triad-stamped fleeces. Displaced like refugees during a conflict of interest.

The poor fools weren’t allowed to dirty rush so instead they dirtied the reputations of the innocent and unsuspecting freshman, the sad sophomore, and the upperclassmen with daddy issues and a tattoo inspired by the death of a favorite rapper.

They couldn’t stack endless rows of red solo cups onto pledge-painted wooden tables, so they did the next best thing. They stole them and cramped the four-legged frames into every negative space in both North and New. They even stole golf balls from Spring admits at swanky scrambles, and then proceeded to toss the dimply whites into frothy baths of whatever was left on the barren shelves at Trojan Liquor.

They couldn’t party on 28th, but they carried on and they paved their paths to turn-up town in suspiciously damp one-dollar bills and fake IDs that didn’t even remotely resemble their Aaron-Carter-Aryan complexions. The clubs downtown didn’t care. They were making a fortune off these fat-walleted fuckups. Everyone was. That weekend was charred, burnt, singed money.

Uber drivers broke into cold sweats. Cards swiped at impressive speeds; like money had always smelled of gooey plastic, as fake as the gaudy breasts that threatened to burst through the seams of crop tops two sizes below any father’s approval.

Every extracurricular group on campus threw a party. They sucked long, powdery lines into overcrowded rooms through crisp 5 dollar bills. The results were uncouth.

The a cappella groups spun and spit, crazed with unsung lyrics.

The sorority sisters spewed the sickness of four weeks of pent-up gossip in noble rebellion of insatiable parental controls.

The alcoholics were the worst. Those deprived souls crawled from 28th to Orchard in fits of unwelcome withdrawals. Kneeling in pilgrimage, they convulsed and c**k-sucked in dangerously large packs while the homeless stepped gingerly out of their way in terror on their way to alert the nearest authorities.

But the red and blue lights simply loomed on side streets and reminded the khakied and sperried patriotic youths of their independence. In fact, as they processed, the boyish men made absolutely sure to switch their cigars triumphantly to their off-hand so they could properly salute each empty uniform.

Then there were those onlookers with the best intentions. More likely clothed, and more likely crippled by student debt the liberal arts lovers watched the patriarchy parade, all the while trying to continue existential discussions about lonely life and pre-planned death over the screeching sounds of bottles smashing at their feet. They stood swaying arm-in-arm and armed with we-were-here-first facial expressions, while their voices quivered out quick-witted jungle juice gibberish.

The same codeine coolness and syrupy sweat marked the brows of this GDI army as did the unwholesome Greeks, but they never would have known. They did not speak any Greek. Besides, neither could trek through the thick goopy mud of social consciousness between them.

Instead, the GDI foot soldiers just hummed to stoner-surfer anthems and bobbed their braided heads while they silently discussed how moratorium had ripped apart their weekend plans limb from lanky limb. Wide-eyed, they consented to conversations about Row rankings. In spite of themselves, they pretended not to hear fiercely playful tones ringing in a Racist New Year all around them.

Foot soldiers because it was indeed a stinging and sinister war.

From stern statements that “we are absolutely at capacity” to grave stares across interweaving Lyfts that might as well have been the Iron Curtain, a general sense of “this is your fault” was felt by all that fateful weekend. The tension between the boho-chic, the geek, and the Greek was enough to shake the philosophers in their battered combat boots.

Moratorium’s roaring flames enveloped that night with especially hot frustration. Damp sighs mixed with clouds of aluminum and latex until the sky was so opaque with smog and sadness that everything beyond University Park faded into nothingness.

***

And nothingness was all we saw on the rooftop that night.

Dim and dispersed lights twinkled meagerly on the skyline where we had once seen them shine most Divinely. I leaned back on the cold concrete underneath me and let it soothe my thoughtless mind. I searched the only visible stars for meaning, until they too were shrouded momentarily by a tangy bellow of Blue Dream; an aromatic addition to the haze of the evening.

I put my reddening cheeks to the cool, grey, ground and sighed a prayer of gratitude that my friends and I were here. A band of morbid misfits happily administering our own personal armistice from the helipad we sometimes called home.

Not much was important up there. Except perhaps who would queue the next song to buzz from the family speaker. Time faded into LA culture. We took our turns speculating about its particular whereabouts.

Maybe it was a violent criminal. Or perhaps it sat among the celebrities below us. It was a force we read about in the New Yorker or heard about on NPR. It sat behind satirists in coffee shops. But it was never real. We were alive forever.

There we sat in the neutral space. The only fire was from the light guy that we passed peacefully along with the most superb strain of bud. Here we howled our Ginsberg howls like romantic ballads signed with love and disgust to our stoned generation. Those were the days of starry togetherness. We reminisced on lifetimes we had just weeks prior and tried our best to forget blood-soaked stories.

It was on that rooftop that I fell in love. With everything. With nothing.

I wrote pages upon pages of gaudy, poetic prose in my head as I looked out over campus.

About single breaths of velvety air. About people I’d never meet. The beginning of something spectacular that I could never quite describe. Orgasmic arrangements of words forgotten in giggling seconds.

I would write and write until my eyes got tired of tracing the stories in the laugh lines on my boys’ faces; or until they snapped me back; or until DPS came for the thousandth time to tell us to git gone; or until, admittedly, I just got too high to think of anything but the warm swelling of my eyes.