I was stumbling home alone from the bar one night when this adorable boy named Terry saw me and pulled over in his car.
“Do you want a ride?” he asked. It was really, really cold and sliding on the ice wasn’t fun, so I considered this.
Terry was really cute, with sandy hair and a sweet smile. I knew him, but only barely. Maybe we had a class together. I considered refusing – I was proud to be going home alone for once – but it was very cold.
“Um, okay, thanks,” I said and slid onto the passenger side of the long bench seat. I hung close to the door just to be safe. By this time in my college career, I knew that I might need to dive out of a stranger’s car at any given moment.
“Were you at The Hood?” Terry asked politely.
“Yeah,” I said; everyone knew the campus bar.
“Lots of people there?” he asked.
“Not a lot,” I said. I think it was a Wednesday. I watched as Terry turned into our campus. It wasn’t a long drive, maybe two minutes.
“Which dorm is yours?” he asked. Oh boy, I thought. Here we go.
“This one,” I said – and pointed. He gently pulled over into the nearest parking space and stopped the car.
“All right,” he said. He turned to look at me for the first time.
I knew I had no choice; I’d accepted a ride home from this man. This would surely require payment. I asked, “Do you want to come in?” I was shaking a little – maybe from the cold, maybe from the fear.
“No thanks,” Terry said.
“No?” I asked, incredulous. He wasn’t coming in?
“No, I’ve got some studying to do.”
My heart leapt. For the first time in as long as I could remember, a guy did something nice for me without asking for a single thing in return.
“Okay well ….” I trailed off. I sat there for what seemed like a full minute, although it was probably eight seconds.
I had no idea how to say what I wanted to say. You’re like an angel, I wanted to say. Thank you for not forcing me to have sex with you.
Finally I stammered “thank you so much” and got out of the car. I turned and waved quickly, and ran into my dorm with all the giddiness of a teenager.
Which I was.
And then – because I was so incredibly confused and naive – I considered that maybe I was in love.
Fortunately for Terry, we only saw each other in passing after that. We waved slightly and moved on – him in his world, where nice people did nice things … and me to mine.
Most people drink to alleviate stress or to be social. They drink to feel good when they are feeling bad. They drink to celebrate when they are feeling good. But I didn’t drink just to feel good. I drank to feel good about who I am.
I wasn’t trying to change my mood. I was trying to change my inner being.
I drank to feel better about the internal part of myself that was always, always, always out of whack. I was never properly aligned with society. I never fit in. I never felt “part of” anything. But when I drank, I could be a part of everything – or so I thought.
Eventually I fit into absolutely nothing, all over again. That took awhile – but somehow happened suddenly.
At first I fit, then – wham! – I didn’t fit because I was a drunk.
An exquisite example of this is my experience with the Rocky Horror Picture Show. For the uninitiated, Rocky Horror is the pinnacle of audience participation movies.
In high school, I went weekly to see Rocky Horror twice weekly at midnight. It was an awesome experience: going to a dark theater, shooting squirt guns and throwing bread at each other, and dancing the Time Warp. Best of all, I knew every line of the movie – which included the hysterical lines that are yelled aloud at the characters. I adored going to Rocky Horror.
I knew every single line to yell at the screen, and even if I drank beforehand, I could spew verbatim the lines needed to make the movie into a phenomenal experience.
Fast forward to college, freshman year: Rocky Horror was playing for one night only on campus! Totally ecstatic, I headed into the theater with – I learned later – about 300 “virgins” who had never seen the movie before.
When it came time to throw something or yell at the screen, I was the only one who did it. And the audience loved me.
I would yell “kick the tire!” and the character in the movie would kick the tire. The other students roared with laughter. They thought I was hysterical!
Of course I’d had several beers before attending, so I got louder as the movie wore on. I yelled out lines for two hours, never missing a beat. It was my starring moment.
Fast forward again: two years later: Rocky Horror was coming back! I could hardly wait to do it all again!
Before the movie, I drank a few beers – and then a few more beers – and by the time the movie started, I was sloshed. My alcoholism had progressed quite a bit in those few years; I’d been drinking daily for awhile.
When I sat down in that movie theater again, my enthusiasm was off the charts. I sang along with the opening song, loudly and poorly. But when it came time to yell lines, I could barely remember what I was supposed to say.
This time, when the guy kicked the tire, I watched him kick it … then yelled: “Kick the tire!” … which was not funny at all. Nor was it appreciated by my peers.
I kept trying, and failing, my humiliation palpable. Eventually I just gave up and shut up. My drinking actually made me stand out – in a bad way – instead of fitting in.
But it didn’t stop me from drinking to crush my inner being. The pain I felt before I drank was still too raw. I didn’t want that person to ever see the light of day again.
I’d considered, once or twice, that I might have a problem with drinking. The dean had called me a “problem drinker” and my mom had called me an “alcoholic” and I was just having a good time, but it occurred to me that I should prove, once and for all, that I was not an alcoholic.
I’d heard that alcoholics couldn’t drink just one drink. Like those potato chips, only with alcohol.
So one evening, when Donna and I both needed to study, we went out to prove that we were not “real” alcoholics. We put down our books and went to the bar for a study break, with every intention of having only one drink.
We took two quarters each – enough money for exactly one draft beer at the Naborhood Inn. We didn’t want to tempt fate by taking a full dollar.
We walked in and sat down at the bar, usually jammed with people but rather empty, and we ordered our beers. I made sure there wasn’t too much foam on top. I was only having one beer; I wanted to make sure that the glass was full.
We sipped our beers slowly, trying to relax in a room choking us with smoke and scratchy jukebox records. We chatted a little.
Some guy offered to buy us another round, but Donna politely declined. “We have to study!” she said, earnestly smiling. I hoped he’d ask again when my beer was gone.
We tried to drink slowly – although for me, “slow” was relative. It took me 10 minutes instead of two.
Then Donna hopped off the bar stool.
I was genuinely surprised. “Really? We’re really leaving?”
“Of course!” Donna said. She was smart and had a good head on her shoulders. She was getting straight A’s and she never got into trouble. Of course she was going back to the dorm.
But did I really have to go? It took every ounce of willpower I had to follow her out that door.
For me, it was a bit like sitting on a roller coaster – just sitting there – without anyone pushing the “go” button. I was ready! But I was stuck.
Why would anyone drink one drink? I thought. What’s the point?
Donna was excited to get back to our room, but I was distressed. My brain was sloshy. I felt tired but not drunk. I felt an emptiness – an ache that screamed from deep inside me, a scream that started with the first sip of that one beer.
I didn’t want to study! I wanted to go back to that bar!
“We did it, though,” Donna said. “We proved we could just have one drink!”
Oh riiiiiight, I thought. We proved that we’re not alcoholics!
That was an important thing. I needed to prove that I wasn’t an alcoholic, and this had been my test. And look! I had done it! I’d had one beer, and then I’d gone home!
I ignored all of my distress and decided that I had no trouble at all drinking only one beer.
Even though I had a tremendous amount of trouble drinking only one beer.
And I clung to the results of this experiment like it was the Holy Grail of Alcoholism. I didn’t think about how that one beer made me insane on the walk home – about how physically, mentally and emotionally agonizing it was for me to stop. I pretended there was no screaming emptiness.
The next night, I went back to that bar and drank 42,000 beers to make up for the ones I didn’t drink the night before.
As a parent with two sons in college, I spend a great deal of time focusing on academics. I say things like, “How was your class?” and “Who’s your favorite professor?” And my sons generally answer me, telling me about their classes and their professors.
But when I look back on four years of college, my memories of classes are limited to a very, very few.
I remember one day in Creative Writing – with the wonderful Dr. Crist – where students were led, 100% blindfolded, outside and around campus. The activity heightened our awareness of our other senses, to teach us how write with details that were beyond visual.
When I walked out that door wearing a blindfold, it was the middle of winter. It had been winter forever. But until I walked out the door without my vision, I hadn’t realized that winter has a smell. It’s something I think about every winter now, even though Dr. Crist died 20 years ago.
I remember another day in American Literature when Dr. Gloria Malone said, “That’s it for Ray Bradbury; next week we’ll be starting a new work.” And then she dismissed the class.
But I had read that Ray Bradbury story in high school; it was one of my favorites. I’d learned about the massive amounts of symbolism in the opening scene; every sentence sagged with hugely symbolic descriptions. And she hadn’t even mentioned symbolism! Maybe she forgot?
I walked up to Dr. Malone, meekly as was my way, and asked. “But what about the rest of it? What about all the symbolism in the first part, about the hose and the … well, everything? What about all of the meaning behind what he wrote?”
Dr. Malone smiled. “Ah yes,” she said. “Well, this is an introductory course. I’m afraid not everyone would be able to delve into the deeper meanings in an introductory course. It’s just a bit too much depth at this level.”
But we discussed this when I was in high school, I wanted to say, and it wasn’t too much even then. But I said nothing. I nodded, and I left. I minored in English but I didn’t learn a single thing about literature.
I remember showing up to countless morning – and afternoon – classes with my head pounding, dry-mouthed and crusty, wishing I could be back in my bed recovering.
And while I had some classes I truly detested, the worst for me was taking a night class. By the time I took Public Relations – the career to which my dad devoted his entire life – I wasn’t able to stay sober all the way to 7:00 p.m. I went to class drunk more often than not, and when I wasn’t there drunk, it’s because I wasn’t there at all.
My dad made a national name for himself in both public relations and higher education – so my Public Relations professor, Harry Paidis, knew the Keith Moore. A friend told him I was Keith’s daughter and he nearly croaked. By that time, I’d become nothing more than a walking wet noodle.
By the last semester of my senior year, I slept through my final exam in Shakespeare and I escaped with a D- in the class. That was memorable. I certainly did not deserve a passing grade.
The other hundred credits I took? I barely remember them at all.
During my sophomore year, I’d settled into a rhythm: drink on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and sometimes on Sunday afternoons. Drink other nights if anything at all was happening. And drink if nothing was happening, but only if someone else was willing to drink, too.
It was this schedule that motivated my psychic change from someone who cared a little about the people around me to a full-blown jerk who wanted to have “fun” no matter who got hurt in the process.
Part of my issue was that I had gained no social skills growing up, so I had no ability to express myself properly. When I was raging drunk, if I wasn’t busy dancing and feeling accepted, I spewed venom on everyone in my vicinity – especially my roommate.
Donna was my best friend and we could hardly wait to room together sophomore year. We spent a ton of time together freshman year and knew that our living styles were similar. Neither of us expected to end up in the Office of the Dean, seeking mediation for our relationship issues.
Dean Dorothy Davis was a campus legend. Being called into her office terrified me.
The dean listened to us talk about our problems. Donna and I tried to be nice to one another, because we really liked each other. But we were obviously both furiously frustrated.
Donna thought my problem was a lack of food. She told Dean Davis that I was constantly starving myself and … “I hate to say it, but when she’s on a diet she’s just a bitch.”
And I was on a diet all the time. I was constantly worried about my weight (128 pounds). I drank beer instead of eating most of the time, but when I ate it was usually candy bars and pizza. Honestly, though, dieting wasn’t my problem.
I thought Donna’s problem was stress or boredom, maybe both. Donna seemed to do only boring things, like watching TV and studying, even when I wanted to drink. I told Dean Davis that if Donna would spend more time having fun and less time worrying about stupid stuff, we’d both be fine.
Dean Davis asked us if we drank alcohol. She asked about the parties we attended, what else we did together, what we did when we were apart. We told her as little as possible to avoid getting into trouble, but we were honest enough to let her know that we were pretty typical college kids.
That’s when the dean leaned forward in her chair over her giant administrative desk and looked directly at me.
“You might be a problem drinker,” she said.
“A problem drinker?” I asked. “What is that? Is that like an alcoholic?”
“Not necessarily,” she said. “But it might be a step toward becoming an alcoholic unless you do something differently. You might want to be careful.”
“I am always careful,” I said, not understanding a word she said. “And I will continue to be careful.”
I am sure I believed this with my whole heart, but I had no idea with what I was supposed to be careful.
Eventually Dean Davis sent Donna and me on our way with a plan to cooperate, communicate and cohabitate more effectively. Somehow by junior year, Donna was still ready to get as far away from me as possible.
Growing up, I believed that staying celibate until marriage was a good idea. I was taught that intimacy was private and personal and meant to be shared between two loving adults. And as a child, I believed deeply in love, romance, fantasy and magic.
In fact, I still believe in love, romance, fantasy and magic. It’s terribly disappointing for me most days.
My behavior with men in college can’t be explained without many years of in-depth, personal therapy. Fortunately, I have explored two rehabs and countless therapists to provide me with some insights. I know a little about why I behaved the way I did.
First and foremost: if I hadn’t been a drunk, it’s quite likely that I would have led a different life entirely.
But I didn’t know anything about men. What little I knew, I learned from books and Disney movies. So I went to college thinking, I will meet Prince Charming at Mount Union! Our eyes would lock across a crowded room and that would be it. We would instantly fall in love and when we graduated, we’d get married and have 2.2 children, a dog and a white picket fence.
All the stuff that was supposed to happen in between our first eye-lock and the picket fence…?
Well, I had no idea what that might be, but I assumed my One True Love and I would figure it out.
It’s like I was a packet of cake mix, just waiting for the eggs to get mixed in so I could start baking. My life wasn’t going to be complete without a man – feminism be damned – and I was going to find the perfect complement to my completely warped perceptions no matter what I had to do along the way.
But since I had no idea that men were actually human beings, I truly had no idea what to do with a man when I found one. I was raised with loving, caring parents, but no brothers. My role-model father was, in my mind, perfect. His job was to come home from work and play games with me and go sled riding.
So I just had to find a guy who would go to work and then come home and play games with me. How hard could that be?
I didn’t know what I was supposed to do to make that marital fantasy into a reality – and I sure didn’t know what to do with a real-life man when I found one who would talk to me.
So I took my cues from men; I got drunk then tried to figure out what they wanted. I met lots and lots of men at college – at bars, house parties, and fraternities. And what I discovered: they all seemed to want the same thing. And what they wanted from me … wasn’t what I wanted at all.
Alcohol provided me with both a buffer and a tranquilizer. It shoved me into a corner – face up against the wall – daring me to find my way out when I could see nothing but the corner. Ya gotta get another beer! it screamed. Go with him! He has beer!
Alcohol drowned my naivety and buried my innocence. You can do this! You’re cool! I was not cool.
It kept me engaged with the targets of my affection while allowing me to deadpan my deepest desires. If I give him what he wants, maybe he will like me.
Alcohol let me continue dreaming, even as it killed every dream I ever had.
I once heard that the difference between a college student and an alcoholic is that the alcoholic keeps drinking to excess after graduation. For me, this is truth. With very few exceptions, my friends stopped excessive drinking after college and went on to lead “normal” lives.
But on weekends during college, nearly everyone who drank alcohol consumed it with much the same gusto I did. During my sophomore year, I found a home with some like-minded people on the first floor of McMaster Hall.
We often had a few beers before going to parties. With a boombox in the communal bathroom, we’d take beers into the shower stalls and drink and sing along while prepping for the evening. We called these “shower parties.” I enjoyed them so much that, even after quitting drinking, I keep a boombox in my bathroom so I can have a “shower party” whenever I want.
Sometimes we’d go out to the local bars – most often “The Hood” – and we would drink until we dropped or found somewhere else to go, six-pack in tow. More often than not, my friends would randomly disappear. Staying until closing at 2 a.m. was commonplace for me. I’m the same way now with Disney World.
At parties, which took place mostly in off-campus housing, we drank vehemently. Students danced and sang to whatever song blasted through the air. Since I stayed near the keg or the garbage bin brimming with grain alcohol and Kool Aid, I never knew from where the music emanated. Sometimes the music would also be outside, as in the case of the awesome annual ATO pig roast, and those were fine parties, indeed. More than the alcohol, really, the music made the party great.
My recollections of college parties center around the song, Paradise by the Dashboard Light, with its gaggle of girls rushing into whatever makeshift dance floor suddenly appeared. Waving our drinks above our heads, we’d scream-sing every single syllable of the song, dividing the group during the duet piece so that some of us sang the “boy” lines and some sang the “girl” lines. Scream-singing “Let me sleep on it!” is possibly my fondest memory of my entire college experience.
Of course there were people on campus who didn’t drink. Given the atmosphere at any house party, frat party or bar scene, the people who didn’t drink simply didn’t frequent the places I did. My friend Debbie, who never indulged, would stay in her dorm room and study or watch TV while the campus teemed with drunk people outside.
Sometimes I would stumble past a group of students – day and night – sitting in a circle on the lawn in the center of campus. Mentally I referred to them as “the Christians” but I don’t know if they were religious. They’d hang out, sometimes playing guitar, all of them smiling and chatting and having fun. Feigning disdain, I would put my head down and walk by, searching for somewhere safe to pass out.
I think about “the Christians” now with the wish that – even once – I’d had the good sense to do what they did, sitting out there with a guitar in the sunshine. I always imagined myself a hippie born too late for her generation, but truthfully I was just a drunk. I didn’t spend one minute with peace or love.
When college ended, my partying days continued. The difference is that my friends and my feeling of belonging ended at graduation.
Dave and Kevin’s parties were the place to be. Everyone knew this. During my freshman year, we’d hear that one word: “Daveandkevins” – and we’d be on our way.
To this day, I have no idea how their parties were better than everyone else’s parties, because they were held in their room on campus, not in a house and not in a bar. The small space alone should have made a mess out of every attempted soirée. It should have been a disaster every single time.
But if that was true … you didn’t know Dave and Kevin. Their parties were somehow sized perfectly – people coming and going but always a tight-knit happy crowd inside. In spite of the single-gender male dorm, party-goers were mostly female.
Dave and Kevin’s parties were the only parties I attended that didn’t require me to prep beforehand with a couple of beers. They always provided enough alcohol for everyone, but that’s not the reason I had fun. The reason Dave and Kevin’s parties were fun, quite honestly, was because of Kevin.
Kevin told stories. He waved his arms around in grand gestures and rolled his eyes dramatically as he talked. His stories started small and ended huge. And every, single story was fall-on-the-floor, laugh-out-loud, can’t-stop-crying hysterical. It was like watching stand-up without the fee.
Dave played the straight man to Kevin’s funny. They’d been roommates for a couple of years and they made a great team. Dave was super nice, too. But I remember those parties as if Kevin stood under a spotlight, waving his arms with a circle of people around him laughing, Dave standing slightly askance, rolling his eyes one step behind.
Way later in college, when I was a sorority girl and needed a date to the sorority formal, I invited Kevin. Any party would be better with Kevin; any event would be bearable with Kevin nearby, telling his stories and making us all laugh. And Kevin did exactly that.
We all drank like swine, of course, since a sorority formal is known for its drinking … or at least, that’s what I believed. I think it’s supposed to be a dance. But after dancing, we all went back to our rooms and drank more, crashing in our fancy hotel rooms until checkout the next morning.
I remember drunkenly hanging on Kevin in our room and trying to kiss him. Kevin swatted me away like an annoying insect that had crawled onto his arm.
This was a reaction I’d never gotten before. “Just nooooo!” he said.
Kevin had every stereotypical nuance that became popularized decades later by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, so maybe he was gay. Until Ellen, ten years later, I was as ignorant as the rest of the American public. In the 20th century, people were extremely hesitant to announce their homosexuality.
I’d had absolutely no clue that Kevin was gay until that moment. And even then, he never admitted it. Maybe he was planning to be a priest.
I wish Kevin had felt safer then to be himself, all of himself, and been free in college the way – I hope and imagine – he was able to be free a decade later. And I wish I’d been less oblivious to the signs and more intelligent about life when I was younger.
Mostly, I just wish Kevin knew how much I adored him from the very first time he opened his dorm room door. And I hope he went on to be adored for decades longer, wherever he may have gone.
I played tennis and softball in high school, partially a requirement by my parents to “do something.” I was expected to do something in college as well, and I considered playing softball. But all the scary powder puff football girls played softball, so I only played tennis in college.
Even this was a mistake. Drunks should not play sports.
When I started playing, I felt pretty good about it. I made the college tennis team! I would go to practice, stretch and run sprints. Tennis is not really a “team” sport, and I didn’t become friends with the other tennis players, but I felt like I was part of something anyway.
We went to matches on a bus and I sat alone, laughing at the comments made around me but not really knowing how to participate in the conversation. Everyone seemed older than me. I wasn’t a fan of the uniforms (skirts – yuk) and I wasn’t wild about “conditioning,” but I enjoyed playing, when we actually played.
My freshman year was all about getting used to playing at a higher level than in high school. We had a lot of good players and my game hadn’t changed that much since high school, so I don’t remember playing a single match. I probably did – but I was accustomed to sitting on a bench anyway.
When tennis season ended, I was thrilled. That meant I could drink with wild abandon again.
By sophomore year, I was drinking substantially more – and tennis practices were held on Saturday mornings. My Friday night partying interfered greatly with my ability to perform on the courts. And sprints after drinking two dozen beers? That was a non-starter.
I definitely survived one practice. I may have survived two. Then I quit the team, and quit playing tennis for the rest of my college career, and well into adulthood. By the time I started playing again, I was past 40.
Looking back on my youth, I never felt like I was part of the team. I didn’t get to know my teammates. I didn’t talk to them. I didn’t have any fun. It wasn’t until I was in my forties, and laughing at the net with my mom and her friends, that I discovered there was joy in socializing during sports.
Now I have actual fun – with tennis (although I rarely play) and with pickleball (which is way easier to play – and to socialize). And softball – which was useless to me in high school – is an absolute blast now that I speak to the humans on my team and don’t just stand in the outfield watching butterflies.
Well, sometimes I am still distracted by the butterflies.
I have some softball friends who talk about their weekend games, where they crack a beer after every home run. To me, that makes no sense. It’s like drinking at Disney World. Why? It’s a waste of alcohol. More importantly, it’s a waste of Disney World.
But in college, I was glad to do away with softball, and tennis, and swimming (which I previously loved) and anything else that required movement.
To be honest, I’m not a fan of movement now – until I get up and get going. Then I love it. Sober, I can do anything I want.
I never imagined myself in a sorority. Believing that sororities were just cliques with Greek letters, I assumed that I would be excluded. I have never been accepted well by cliques.
After arriving at Mount Union, this anti-sorority attitude lasted maybe two months. Then suddenly I was surrounded by girls rushing sororities, girls asking me to join their sororities, and girls asking which sorority I was going to join. Sorority rush – whether or not I wanted to be involved – became everything on campus.
According to CollegeData.com, 50% of students participate in Greek life at Mount Union. My guess in 1983 would have been 98%. I could count on one hand the number of people I knew who weren’t involved with Greek life, other than freshmen who were waiting for their chance to get in.
Having rarely been accepted by women – any women – in the past, I didn’t expect to be accepted by women in a sorority either. Everyone assured me that it was tons of fun, and not to worry. I imagined I’d be rejected by all four of Mount Union’s sororities because who would want someone as anti-social as me?
My ideas started to shift when girls started saying things like “you’d be a great …” and “you’d really fit in with …” as if they wanted me to join their group. I started thinking I might not be completely on the outs.
But the real clincher was Preference Night.
Preference Night was when students officially chose the sorority or fraternity they “preferred.” And if lucky enough to be chosen by my preferred sorority, I would go to a big party at the sorority house. Lots of celebratory drinking was involved – and that was awesome.
Better still, the guys from all the fraternities would make the rounds from one sorority house to another, “welcoming” the girls with big, sloppy, drunken kisses. The four fraternities would wander into each of the four sorority houses, and everyone would kiss everyone else. This debauchery lasted all evening. (Obviously this was pre-pandemic; I can’t imagine what they did in 2021.)
The description of Preference Night sounded too good to be true. I could not miss that party! Plus … see above. Other than my ex-friend Connie, people seemed to want me in their group. Sorority rush became everything.
My greatest fear during Rush was that I wouldn’t get into the one sorority I truly loved: Alpha Chi Omega. I loved the girls who were already members, and the ones I didn’t know yet seemed incredibly fun. Many of my favorite upperclassmen were in that sorority, and all the freshmen I adored were pledging Alpha Chi, too.
Each sorority had its own personality. And after “rushing” and getting to know the various sororities, Alpha Chi seemed to be the best fit for me. In addition to the truly delightful personalities of the individuals, the group as a whole drank a sufficient amount of alcohol. And I wanted to be part of that.
The entire rush process made me feel less like a loner and more like … well, a sister.
Fortunately, Alpha Chi wanted me to be part of their group, and I was thrilled to get the invitation. I became a proud member of Alpha Chi Omega, standing in a circle full of girls singing by candlelight, being welcomed into the fold.
I remember the love, the feeling of belonging, the camaraderie between women. I remember feeling like I belonged somewhere – and that I had chosen the greatest group of girls in the world.
Oh yeah, and Preference Night was incredibly fun, too.
