Justin Halpern - More Sh*t My Dad Says

In the fall of 1998 I began my freshman year at San Diego State University, which my dad commonly referred to as “Harvard, without all the smart people.” Even though the campus was only eight miles from my parents’ house and about a fifth of my high school graduating class was also heading to SDSU, I felt like it would be a new adventure and I was excited to begin.

“I’m pretty sure no one knew who I was in high school,” I said to my best friend Dan, who was also going on to SDSU, as we drove to freshman orientation a few weeks before classes started.

“I dunno. I think people knew who you were,” Dan said as he merged onto the 8 freeway. “I was telling this guy on my volleyball team that we were both going to State and he was like, ‘Isn’t he that guy who wears sweatpants to school sometimes?’”

“Ideally I’d like to be known as something other than that.”

“Who gives a shit about high school? We’re going to be in college now. Nobody knows us here. Girls want to party with crazy dudes. You could be the crazy party guy. Or I could be, and you could be that guy’s friend.”

The idea that I could entirely change all the things I didn’t like about myself and wipe my slate clean was enticing. Unfortunately, I was going to have to try to do so while living at home, because, despite working all summer, I had less than five hundred dollars to my name when the fall rolled around.

My mom understood my plight and tried her best to offer up a solution.

“If you want to make love to a woman in the house, I promise we won’t bother you,” she said one night during dinner when I was a couple weeks into my first semester.

“Let me add an addendum to that. You find a woman that’ll screw you with your mom next door, you run the fuck the other way,” my dad said.

Despite my hopes of reinventing myself as a fearless social animal, I spent the first year of college the same way I had spent high school—hanging out with my high school friends and meeting practically no one new. When it came to partying, San Diego State seemed like the major leagues: it was as if every high school had sent its craziest party animals to compete in a tournament. When I did make it to a party, I usually found myself standing to the side, moving only when some incredibly drunk person stumbled toward me and said something like, “I’m gonna pee here. Could you stand in front of me?” Whenever I was given the chance to melt into the walls, I did.

My friend Ryan, who also attended San Diego State, was similarly frustrated with his freshman year experience, so I was not entirely surprised when, midway through our second semester, he suggested that the two of us get out of Dodge for the summer. Ryan suggested we should take the money we had saved from our job cleaning boats all year and backpack through Europe.

“Everyone I know who’s gone over there has partied with girls and had a bunch of sex,” Ryan said as we drove home from class one day.

“How many people do you know that’ve gone over there?” I asked.

“Hmm. I guess I only know one guy. But that’s what he said.”

That was good enough for me. And I could think of no better travel companion than Ryan, whom I’d been friends with since I was five years old. He was a grade above me, so it wasn’t until I started college, and found myself in a lot of classes with him, that we became really close. Lean and sinewy, with a mop of so-blonde-it’s-white hair on top of his head, Ryan looks like a cross between a mad scientist and the winner of a surfing competition. He is easily the most positive human being I’ve ever met but also one of the strangest, as evidenced by the time he sat me down in high school and informed me, “There’s a fifty-fifty chance the moon is actually an alien spaceship that’s observing us.” But he could be convincing—at least when it came to more earthly pleasures—and together we booked plane tickets for Europe, leaving in July and returning in early August, along with an unlimited EuroRail pass.

The night before we left, I excitedly stuffed my suitcase with as many pairs of underwear and condoms as possible. I was still a virgin, but I was pretty sure Europe would put an end to that. I hadn’t been to another country since I was three years old, and I’d spent the whole second semester of my freshman year waiting for this trip. It was going to be the first real adventure of my life, although I stopped referring to it as an “adventure” after my brother told me that was “the pussiest thing I’ve ever heard someone say.” Regardless, I could barely contain my enthusiasm when my parents came into my bedroom as I was cramming a toothbrush into the tiny front pouch of my oversized Jansport backpack.

“All right, real quick, couple things,” my dad said, sitting down on my desk chair. “You know how I get pissed off when we’re driving around San Diego and some asshole in a rental car doesn’t know where the hell he’s going?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well, over there, you’re the asshole in the rental. Be respectful of people and their culture, okay? I don’t want to pull you out of a secret prison because you pissed on some sacred monument when you were drunk.”

“I’ll have Ryan with me,” I said.

“That guy’s a minor head injury away from eating his own shit. Not much of a case you’re making.”

“Call us every couple of weeks to let us know you’re okay,” my mom said.

“I don’t know if there’s always going to be a phone around.”

“You’re not leading a fucking expedition to Antarctica. Find a phone. Call,” my dad insisted.

The next day Ryan and I flew from San Diego to London, via New York. After eighteen hours of traveling, just after sunrise, we dropped our packs in our crammed room in a dingy hostel near Trafalgar Square. We grabbed breakfast at a nearby pub, where Ryan studied his copy of Let’s Go Europe like he was going to have to recite it for his Bar Mitzvah.

“Ibiza!” he said, looking up from the book like he’d uncovered a clue in a murder case.

“What’s that?” I asked in between forkfuls of overcooked eggs.

“It’s an island near Spain where I guess people just party twenty-four hours a day,” he explained, as he scanned the book. “Whoa. It says there’s a club on the island where two people just have sex in the middle of the dance floor the whole night,” he added, continuing to read.

The whole reason I had come to Europe was to go to places like Ibiza, places where letting loose and getting crazy were my only option and I would be forced into the ring. I was in.

The next few days we toured London, seeing Buckingham Palace, the Tower Bridge, and finally getting into a heated argument with a Londoner after Ryan suggested that Big Ben should be called Medium Sized Ben, because “it’s not even that big.” After packing in as much sightseeing as we could, we took the Chunnel from London to Paris, where we spent a couple days rushing through museums and eating anything that had butter on it, and from Paris we headed to Switzerland for several days and then Florence.

When we arrived in Florence, it was a hundred and ten degrees. We checked into our hostel, which consisted of two large rooms packed with twenty bunk beds each, and two bathrooms total. Ryan and I walked through the narrow passageway between the beds, all the way to the back of the room, where the top bunks of two beds were open. On the bottom of Ryan’s bunk lay a very thin Vietnamese man in his early twenties. Despite the oppressive heat, he was wearing a denim jacket, denim jeans, a blue T-shirt with Michael Jordan’s face on it, and a pair of matching blue Chuck Taylor Converse shoes. Beads of sweat covered his forehead, dripping down his face as he lay there. Ryan reached his hand out and introduced himself.