Drinking excessive alcohol started to cause weird, unexpected occurrences in my life.
For one thing, people started asking me about parties. Like everyone else, I picked up printed flyers for frat parties and house parties, and those flyers told me where to go.
But strangers would ask, “Hey! Are there any parties this weekend?” And I would have to think: What flyer do I have? And why the heck are they asking me?
Most of the time, I would mumble, “I think there’s one at ATO…” and trail off, hoping they would be able to figure it out on their own.
One time, I was called into the Dean’s Office for planning a party.
Dean Davis – who already knew me as a “problem drinker” – said, “I want you to rethink whatever you are planning this weekend.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. I literally had no idea what she was talking about.
“There are to be no parties in any dorm,” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I believe you are planning a very big event on your floor,” she said.
“I’m not,” I said, completely truthfully. “I don’t know anything about any very big event!”
The dean did not believe me.
Sometimes there were parties on my floor. I remember a kamikaze party where I got very, very sick from an overload of whatever alcohol is in a kamikaze. I never drank kamikazes again.
But the dean blamed me for some figment of her imagination. And mostly the parties happened elsewhere.
Another interesting development happened as college progressed: people started asking me – and Bonnie – if we had any drugs to sell.
At that point, both of us had given up whatever drugs we’d done in high school. We just drank a lot.
“I don’t do drugs,” I would say – meaning it.
“Right,” they’d laugh. “Well if you get any, find me.”
Get any what? I’d wonder. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be selling.
One semester, I was put on something called Social Probation.
“You will remain on Social Probation for one semester,” the letter said. “If there are any infractions during the upcoming semester, you could be suspended or expelled from college.”
“… expelled from college.”
Really?
Sure, there were rules about visitation – but I thought everyone agreed that those rules were stupid. So when someone actually turned me in for having a man in my dorm room, I was appalled. I was an adult! Why was I being treated like a child?
It didn’t matter that I couldn’t tell you the name of the guy who was in my room because, between the parties and the impromptu overnights, there were too many names to consider.
Why couldn’t people just accept my new persona and leave me alone? I’d have to spend an entire semester adhering to the rules … and hoping not to be too drunk to forget.
Right after receiving my threatening Social Probation letter, I received another letter from Mount Union.
“Congratulations!” it said. “Your exemplary GPA and outstanding academic performance have placed you on the Mount Union College Dean’s List!”
I’d made Dean’s List and been put on Social Probation in exactly the same semester.
Two years later, I was back on Social Probation for the same offense. I never made Dean’s List again.
I’ve said that Bonnie gave me “permission” to do things that I wouldn’t otherwise have normally done. But I need to clarify.
Bonnie didn’t sit around determining what I could and couldn’t do. She simply showed by example that things could be done differently than I’d been doing them. Before meeting Bonnie, I tried harder to play by the rules.
When I got a speeding ticket, I sat and listened to the police officer and shook, worried about the legal ramifications and the possibility of jail. Then I drove home and immediately mailed in the fine so I wouldn’t somehow forget.
When Bonnie got a speeding ticket, she swore at the officer under her breath, blasted music in her own car while he was writing out the ticket, and as soon as he was out of eyesight she shredded the ticket and tossed the scraps into the backseat.
I thought this was cool. In fact, I thought everything Bonnie did was cool. So I tried to be like her.
One thing I learned from Bonnie involved going home from parties and bars with men: sometimes Bonnie said no. If she didn’t like the guy, she just said, “No thanks!” and kept chatting and drinking.
Until I saw what Bonnie did, I hadn’t known there was a choice. I thought if a guy asked you, you went. My motto: guys are more important than me, so I have to do what they say.
I wonder how much of my “motto” was due to my age, and how much was due to my overwhelming insecurities.
I asked Bonnie about this the very first time she told a guy “no thanks.”
“Fuck him!” Bonnie said. There was no other explanation. She chose the person with whom she’d depart – they didn’t choose her.
I didn’t really get the concept, though. From that point on, I turned into a predator. I started “choosing” as soon as I walked into a place.
Making a conscious choice to go home with someone specific provided me a delusional feeling of control. With my life slowly spiraling out of control because of my drinking, I thought this was an important step in the right direction.
But both Bonnie and I were putting ourselves in dangerous situations based on our choices.
After one harrowing incident when Bonnie almost didn’t make it home from her 2 a.m. excursion, we made a pact: from now on, we choose two guys, so that whatever we do, we do it in the same place. We made sure they understood that we would not be separated, whether they liked it or not.
We wanted to be safe from being lost in the middle of the night and unable to find our way home, and we wanted to be safe from unwanted advances. Having each other within arm’s reach meant that we wouldn’t be alone, ever.
Of course, we were obliterated by alcohol most of the time, so I’m not sure this rule made a bit of difference. But we felt safer because of it.
A lot of alcoholics forego food in favor of alcohol. In college, with my meals “free” (thanks Mom and Dad!), I didn’t need to forego anything. The cafeteria was a social hub and I didn’t want to miss anything – least of all the cute guys building towers out of their mashed potatoes and meatloaf, only to drop an apple on their creation to see the spray.
But Bonnie didn’t see the cafeteria in the same light; she wanted to eat better food – meaning, something from the snack bar after the cafeteria had closed. It didn’t matter that I had no money for such frivolities. Bonnie had a checkbook.
I didn’t even know how a checkbook worked, but Bonnie would say, “Let’s get malts!” and I would leap from the chair and head over to the snack bar for a malt.
One day I asked, “How can you afford malts every night?”
She shrugged. “I’ll just bounce a check!” And in we’d go, for malts and whatever else we might want.
For the first semester, Bonnie also often had a car. This was rare, as a freshman, so we made the most of it. We’d walk to the bar and back – then hop in the car and drive to Denny’s, because it was open all night.
The entire campus – and many people we didn’t know – would be at Denny’s, wasted, inhaling thick pancakes and greasy bacon. Denny’s was the place to be at 3 a.m. We’d be there for hours, stuffing ourselves silly and laughing like we’d never laughed before.
Sometimes we’d go to Bonnie’s parents’ house for the weekend. We’d wait for them to go to sleep and then we’d raid the refrigerator. One night we dined on cold peas in a jar. We considered this a delicacy, and laughed about it for weeks.
Since we rarely had dinners at the cafeteria, we also had pizza delivered. There was no Door Dash – pizza was the only thing we could have delivered. Everyone had pizza all the time. And always Dominos.
Then we found a place that would deliver subs. We’d ask: “Can we get two steak-and-cheese subs?” And that would be lunch. We’d get pizza for dinner.
We ate subs for quite awhile before we discovered that they also sold beer at the sub place. It was like getting soda, we reasoned, so it didn’t hurt to ask if they’d deliver it.
“Can we get two steak-and-cheese subs? And can you maybe also add a six-pack of Natural Light?”
They would.
Suddenly subs were our favorite food.
“Can we get two steak-and-cheese subs and a six-pack of Natural Light?” we’d say – every single day.
One day Bonnie looked at me in all seriousness and said, “We should get more beer.”
So we did: “Two steak-and-cheese subs and a twelve-pack of Natural Light, please.”
This made us temporarily happy. And then one day, it happened.
“Can you just deliver us a twelve-pack of Natural Light?” I don’t know what we ate that day.
I know that within a week, we were ordering two twelve-packs at a time, because as any alcoholic knows: more is always better.
Some days we got subs, too. Some days we got pizza, too. Some days we even got malts at the snack bar.
But not leaving the room and having infinite beer delivered … and living across the hall from the bathroom and the water fountain … ? Well, that was truly heaven on earth.
Bonnie gave me permission to do all the things I’d been trying not to do.
Breaking rules was big on Bonnie’s list of favorite things to do. She refused to set an alarm for class, so skipping classes became a regular occurrence. Stealing things from the snack bar, the bar, the store … that wasn’t “really” breaking the law. Driving drunk was okay when she borrowed her parents’ car. And to think, I’d been afraid to go more than a week without doing laundry.
As a freshman, I was enamored with all the opportunities at Mount Union: parties, sports, clubs, games, orientation. Bonnie was a freshman when I was a junior, but she rebelled against college-sponsored activities. She even suggested we go to bars other than The Hood – which was very new for me. By the time I graduated, Bonnie was adamant that Mount Union was beneath her; she transferred to a larger college.
In spite of her rebellion, Bonnie always wanted to look good. In this way, we were complete opposites. Her dedication to appearance felt like the opposite of rebellion, like she was trying overwhelmingly hard to conform.
It didn’t matter where we were going or what we were doing, Bonnie’s main loyalty was to her hair and makeup. This is very natural for many females – but Bonnie’s routine seemed extreme.
I woke up on the floor of her room in last night’s clothes, brushed my teeth and hair, rubbed off any eyeliner smudges, then plopped back down on Bonnie’s floor to wait.
Bonnie’s rule was to wash her hair once every three days. On wash day, she put her hair in enormous curlers, then sat under a hair dryer attached to the wall for three hours, unable to do much of anything but sit. I grabbed things for her from across the room, changed the album when it ended, and generally served her for those three hours. Every three days. For two years.
When her hair was finally properly dried and her natural curls entirely negated, Bonnie moved to her desk to do her makeup. There was no schoolwork on the desk; it was just cosmetics. She had foundation and powder, 27 shades of eye shadow, eyeliners and sharpeners and eyelash curlers, varying brands and colors of lip liner, gloss and lipstick, and separate rouges for each area of cheekbone. She worked meticulously to apply colors that provided the illusion of perfection.
Then Bonnie removed the giant curlers and started fixing her hair before considering what she would wear. Choosing clothes was an ordeal that either took two minutes or two hours – with unchosen clothes piled unceremoniously all over the floor.
Sometimes getting ready to go out took eight hours.
Years later, Bonnie and I were exploring Pittsburgh when a couple of guys offered to take us midnight motorcycle riding. This sounded like great fun to me – racing through the night, wind blowing through our hair, gawking at the stars.
Bonnie refused to go.
“But why not?” I asked, genuinely perplexed. Bonnie was usually up for anything.
It took a long time for her to answer. Finally, she pulled me aside so the guys couldn’t hear her and whispered: “My face. It’s all I have. If anything happens to my face….”
She trailed off.
I stared at her, dumbfounded. Her face?
Although I’d never heard her say anything even remotely similar, she sounded sincere. In fact, it may have been the most sincere thing I ever heard her say.
And it’s the only time I ever saw fear in Bonnie’s eyes.
College dances were substantially better than high school dances.
At my high school prom, I shared one bottle of wine with three other people before the dance. For an alcoholic, having a tiny bit of alcohol is like standing half-naked in the snow.
Since we weren’t allowed to drink at the prom or after-prom party, I spent 12 hours feeling cold and … off. This was followed by my not-drunk date falling asleep at the wheel and sliding the car into the median barrier. We all woke up quickly.
So the prom was not fun.
In college, my first dance was also very … uncomfortable. I went to Homecoming with someone who didn’t drink – so I figured I couldn’t drink either. I was miserable.
The most important factor for a fun evening became drinking freely before going out.
I drank just to prep for walking out of my room. Dances were especially uncomfortable because I never wanted to wear a dress. This was long before the gender-non-conforming ability to wear whatever you want. I hated “formal” attire.
But … there were formals. I had fun at every formal, and I attended both sorority and fraternity formals. We would rent out a hotel ballroom with blocks of rooms for everyone in attendance – so we could drink safely and pass out safely at the end of the night.
I proudly did this every time.
I went to formal one year with a guy named Joe who was a flat-out jerk. He was chauvinistic and just generally unkind, but everyone said I should go with him because it would still be fun. I drank and drank and danced and drank and danced, and it was indeed fun. (I still detest Jimmy Buffet’s song Come Monday because Joe loved it.)
The best dance ever, though, was my AXO formal with Jim. Jim was a legendarily fun guy who had graduated years before me. I think. He was always around. Jim always smiled, made everyone feel liked, and drank obscene amounts without falling over. We danced and laughed and danced some more. He was the perfect date for a formal.
At dinner, already drunk, Jim picked up the table’s bowl of Italian salad dressing. He was chatting away and he must have forgotten what he was doing. He looked down, saw the spoon in the bowl, and scooped Italian salad dressing directly into his mouth, smearing it onto his mustache.
“Oh my god did you guys try this soup?” he asked. “It’s the best soup I’ve ever had!”
We told him it wasn’t soup but he continued scooping, entranced. We couldn’t stop laughing long enough to stop him. Jim finished it off, straight from the bowl, then burped up salad dressing for hours: while dancing, while drinking, even in his sleep.
When I got sober – years after formals – I attended sober dances. They played music I loved and I wanted to dance, but I couldn’t figure out how to make my body move correctly. I wiggled my arms and legs but I felt stilted and confused.
I loved line dances; I’d learned how to do the Electric Slide in rehab. I appreciate detailed instructions about exactly what moves to make.
I stood on the sidelines a lot.
Then one night, I just hit the floor and started dancing. What I Like About You is very danceable. I closed my eyes and moved to the music and finally remembered that dancing is about the music, not about me.
Since then, I can dance. Maybe I suck, but I don’t care – and I don’t have to drink to enjoy myself.
Possibly the best thing Bonnie did for me was to introduce me to a whole world of new music.
When I visualize Bonnie now, I see a girl bouncing wildly on her dorm room bed. Bonnie was so lost in the blaring music, she barely noticed she was dancing. Head shaking, arms flailing, scream-singing every word of the song, she became one with the song – whatever song was playing on the record player.
Before the song ended, she’d leap from the bed – three feet into the air and landing on the floor – yelling: “Oh my god you have to hear this!”
In one practiced, fluid motion, she’d scrape the needle across the spinning record and toss her beloved album on the floor, while pulling a new record from its cover and dropping it on the turntable. Then she’d be back on the bed bouncing, beer in hand.
Whatever music Bonnie liked became my favorite music, too. Bonnie would point out a specific guitar riff in a song which I would then never un-hear. Or she’d sing specific lyrics louder than others, staring at me knowingly, begging me to recognize the significance of those specific words.
Some of the classic rock bands had completely eluded me in high school. I knew the Doors and Jimi Hendrix; she knew the Stones, Pink Floyd and David Bowie. She’d done her high school term paper on Stairway to Heaven, and I didn’t even know how to spell Led Zeppelin. (Her knowledge came in handy when Jimmy Page walked into a bar one day, months later, but that’s a different story.)
The Cure, U2, The Smiths, Yaz, REM, Violent Femmes – these bands provided Bonnie’s soundtrack at Mount Union. So they became my soundtrack, too.
I adored these bands, but I honestly hated The Smiths. When we went to see The Smiths in concert, Bonnie and I spent the entire evening in the bathroom. Morrissey bored me. We listened to The Smiths more than anything else, possibly because she was trying to sway my opinion, and eventually I liked a couple of their songs. But I never admitted this to Bonnie; in my eyes, her opinion was the right one.
Several years later when I introduced Bonnie to Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians, she snubbed them without more than a minute of listening. I loved my new cassette, bought with my own money after college when I was very poor.
“That fucking sucks,” she said.
I still like Edie, although she didn’t go very far beyond her one hit wonder status. Still, I always tried to like whatever music Bonnie shared, and she never really listened to mine.
In spite of all those hours of Smiths – and my real adoration of bands like Yaz – I eventually learned that what Bonnie thinks about music is all that matters to Bonnie.
She was never swayed by my opinion. And since I didn’t hold much stock in myself, Bonnie’s “rightness” never much bothered me when we were hanging out. I believed that Bonnie knew best, Bonnie knew more, Bonnie loved more deeply and passionately, and therefore Bonnie was always right.
I was nearly 50 years old before I realized that Bonnie never actually cared about me at all.
But this didn’t stop us from spending every waking moment together for my final two years of college.
During fall break, my junior year, I met Bonnie: a freshman with an attitude-and-a-half. No one else was on campus during break, so we hung out together and drank ourselves silly. We laughed and hooted and hollered and ruled the very empty school. We yelled down the echoing hallways, screaming with freedom, getting to know each other with every bold new move.
Bonnie was everything I wasn’t: loud, confident, brash, calm, wild and cool. Oh my, Bonnie was cool. Nothing phased her. She could stand in the eye of the hurricane with her arms outstretched, laughing at the wind, her long black hair electric around her. Bonnie was everything I wanted to be.
After fall break, I didn’t want to hang out with anyone else.
Bonnie challenged everything I’d ever believed. She took great pride in never being embarrassed or afraid, so I decided to be unafraid, too. To Bonnie, my naivety wasn’t cute; it was stifling. She ignored my god-given tendencies and taught me how to be strong.
Or so I thought.
My entire life, I’d tried to follow the rules: parents’ rules, Bible’s rules, school’s rules, society’s rules. Bonnie broke all of them.
I followed her lead and broke them all, too.
Bonnie validated all the mistakes I’d made and showed me that they weren’t anywhere near as bad as I’d believed. Candy for breakfast? Yeah! Leftover pizza off the floor? Sure! Drinking every day? Why not! Skipping class to sleep? WhatEVER! Premarital sex? Of course! Impromptu road trip? Anytime! Concerts instead of exams? Absolutely!
Bonnie was against authority – all authority – and wild beyond my wildest imagination. She bounced checks to buy chocolate malts. She drove drunk. She chose – and tossed aside – every man in her wake. She slept through entire weeks of class. She swore like a sailor. Bonnie was my idol.
While I technically lived with a roommate down the hall, I spent most nights sleeping on the floor in Bonnie’s single room. She lived directly across the hall from the water fountain, which was exceptionally important in the mornings. And I didn’t want to miss spending a single a moment with her.
I started to evolve. I went from trying so hard to be good … and failing … to purposefully going off the rails. At the time, I decided I was becoming tough, rugged, smart and strong. But really, I was finally letting go of my self-imposed restrictions, allowing myself to do whatever felt good in the moment.
I had no idea that this choice was the first step toward the end of everything I’d ever known.
With Bonnie, I felt spectacularly liberated. For the first time in my life, I had a friend who didn’t worry about who I was; she just modeled who I wanted to be. She lived her life and I followed along, believing every word she said about every subject, fascinated by the many things I didn’t know about the world.
Best of all, and most essentially, Bonnie drank exactly like I did.
I went to The Hood regularly – several times a week, in fact – so it’s interesting that I remember certain happenings on the way to/from the bar.
One night, for example, practically the entire first floor of my dorm left a party together – and hitchhiked to The Hood. Hitchhiking was not in vogue; the seventies were over. But we had such a large group, we felt safe.
I don’t think anyone was expecting a ride, but someone with a pickup truck actually pulled over for the lot of us and we all piled into the cargo bed. Then at the bar, which was maybe a mile away, we all clambered back out again. It was a story we planned to tell our grandchildren.
Another time, I left The Hood and headed back toward campus when a bunch of us decided to play “chicken” – that crazy game played in swimming pools, where two people climb up on two others’ shoulders and try to knock each other off with a huge splash into the water.
We played this game on asphalt.
I climbed up onto Joel’s shoulders – a beefy guy who had graduated at least two years before the game of chicken. He was bouncing up and down and swinging me around; I was flailing rather aimlessly when suddenly Joel reared up like a horse, throwing me off his shoulders and onto the pavement behind him.
I landed on my back with a horrifying crack, which caused Joel to laugh like a hyena before leaving me lying there, stunned, as he lumbered away.
Joel was not a very nice person.
I don’t remember standing up or walking home, or if anyone helped me get there. I don’t even remember needing help.
But I remember waking up the next morning. My head hurt something fierce, and I couldn’t move my arm. I spent that Saturday in the hospital getting x-rays and a sling.
I had dislocated my shoulder. I’d been so drunk, I hadn’t even known I’d been hurt.
I spent a long time in that sling. I have pictures from a toga party where I’m wearing the sling, so I guess dislocating my shoulder in a drunken stupor did nothing to slow my drinking.
I also recall post-Hood riding with a bunch of recent graduates to a dark cabin at least an hour from campus, just to drink more. It was freezing cold and pitch black (no electricity) – but we stayed and drank beer anyway, then drove back to campus before sunrise.
I don’t know who those people were. No one was sober so the fact that we all lived through the round trip is just a miracle. Thank you, God.
A few times, we went to an elementary school and rode the world-famous “alligator swing” which was really just a playground with a long swing that held a slew of people. I wish I could have ridden that swing sober, but I don’t know where it is. The alligator swing was incredibly fun – probably even more so for children than for drunk college students.
Once I went four-wheeling in the snow with complete strangers. On active train tracks. This was my favorite post-Hood activity ever.
I am sincerely lucky to be alive.
Another time the girls and I – whichever girls were there – recited and sang the entire soundtrack to Grease on the way back to our dorm. I am not sure we did it well, or remembered any words, or even sang in tune.
I did not limit my college sisterhood experiences to my sorority; I also became a “Little Sis” at my favorite fraternity.
“Favorite” is relative. Of the four fraternities on campus, I found each one endearing for different reasons. It depended mostly on who was having a party that weekend.
But as the oldest of three girls, I’d always wanted a big brother, so I actually searched for a brother to adopt. After begging one of my dearest friends at SAE to be dubbed his Little Sis, he agreed. I could finally call someone “Brother.”
Angelo was a campus legend. There wasn’t a soul at Mount Union who didn’t know and love him – or if there was, I never knew about it. First of all, he smiled all the time – which made everyone around him feel liked. And second, Angelo had a darling Puerto Rican accent which, unlike in my current area, was rare and beautiful in Alliance, Ohio.
Maybe more importantly, Angelo was always the most enthusiastic person on the dance floor – which made everyone else enthusiastically dance, too. If a party was slow, Angelo never hesitated to brighten the mood. He didn’t seem to have any inhibitions or qualms about just being himself – which was fun.
And he was my Big Brother.
If he had other Little Sisters, he never let on. Angelo treated me like I was special. I danced to the Supremes’ Stop in the Name of Loveabout a gazillion times, laughing and watching Angelo, who just kind of made the song his own. I once rode to the airport with Angelo – which was notable not only because we actually left campus, but because it was the first time I’d ever been stopped by a police car. He’d been (only slightly) speeding: 68 in a 55. I know this because another time, I got a ticket for going 68 in a 55 and thought immediately of Angelo. (I have an unusual knack for remembering numbers.)
I remember when Angelo played volleyball for more than 24 hours straight as some sort of Guiness World Record-breaking attempt. I interviewed Big Bro for the school newspaper later and he told me that after 24 hours of standing outside “playing” volleyball, he’d started to hallucinate – dreaming while still awake. At one point he’d thought the frat house was on fire.
But I don’t remember Angelo ever being angry, sad, grouchy or even frustrated, although I think he was disappointed when he got that speeding ticket. I just remember enjoying his company. Years and years later, Angelo is still much loved. When he was hospitalized with COVID, approximately 10,000 of his closest friends prayed for him.
He survived.
Of course, having Angelo as a Big Bro did not stop me from also becoming a Little Sis at another fraternity too, a couple of years later. The second time my Big Bro was two years younger than me, and just wanted to have a Little Sis. I adored him – and his frat, too – so I happily agreed. And at every party we drank together like insane people well after everyone else passed out on the floor.
Big Bro #2 was incredibly fun, although Angelo will always be my “real” Big Bro. And for the rest of time, when I hear Stop in the Name of Love!I will see Angelo, in my head, dancing.
While my life was moving along swimmingly in college, my parents stayed connected. They wrote me letters, chatted with me when I called, sent my sisters to visit me overnight, and supported me financially. Not only did they give me everything I could need in college, but they supported my independence.
They didn’t know how quickly I was sliding downhill.
When I spent time with my parents during my first couple of years of college, it was nice. We went out to eat, hung out for awhile and talked, and they got to see my room and sometimes my friends. They gave me money for my sorority dues. They took me shopping for snacks. They loved me endlessly.
And then they left, and I silently screamed, Thank God! and ran out to get wasted as fast as possible.
This went on for years.
As a parent now, I wonder how I continued to do this to them. They hadn’t done anything to me. Sure, they moved me around and I had to make new friends every two years – and I wasn’t good at making friends. But they didn’t abuse me. They made sure I knew I was loved and supported.
So what was I rebelling against?
I think about this question now – as a woman in my fifties with two grown children – and I think: I was rebelling against people. All people. I believed people were cruel, because so many had been cruel to me. I believed people were destroying the natural world (which they are, still) and that they were going to eliminate the one source of peace I had.
And when I was in college, I believed that the destruction was imminent – that a nuclear bomb could drop at any minute, as they’d told me in elementary school. I didn’t take the time to educate myself about what was actually happening; I just ran entirely on fear.
And all of my fear stemmed from people.
Unfortunately, “people” included my parents. Looking back, I’d say there wasn’t one single thing they could have done differently to make me stop drinking, stop rebelling, and stop the course of self-destruction I had started.
