Sarah Mlynowski - Monkey Business

What the hell is a club fair? “Definitely.”

By that afternoon, I’ve signed up for the American Marketing Association, LWBS Intramural Basketball, the Entrepreneurial Club, the Microbrew Society, the Ice Hockey Association and the Consulting Association. I think I might be overdoing it. But they all sound interesting, eh?

We’re in the main hall of the Katz building, and there’s no Ferris wheel. But there are desks set up against each wall, with groups of second-year students manning them, hollering at passing first-years to join them. There are at least eighty clubs, and it’s like I’m in an electronics store and all the televisions, radios and CD players are tuned into different stations at full blast. How can there be so much to meet about? And why did I just sign up for all of them?

Somewhere in the sea of people, I’ve lost Kimmy. I spot Nick at the front of the line of the beer blast booth. He waves me over. “Dude, did you sign up here yet?”

No, this appears to be the one club I haven’t signed up for yet. How is it different from the Microbrew Association? Beer is beer, right? “Should I?”

The second-year shoves a clipboard and a pen under my face. I write my name.

“That’ll be fifty bucks.” The second-year takes back the clipboard. “You’re signing up for a year of beer blast. Otherwise it’s five bucks a night.”

“Fifty American bucks for beer?”

The second-year puffs himself up and dives into his speech. “Every Thursday night there’s beer blast in the cafeteria. Companies sponsor them, and the profits go to various clubs. You can spend five bucks at the door, or fifty bucks for the entire year. That’s about four for free. Trust me, it’s worth it.”

If a guy I’ve never met before tells me to trust him, why wouldn’t I?

“Do it, dude,” Nick says. “First one’s tomorrow.”

“All right,” I say. “Can I bring the cash then?”

“No,” the second-year says. “But there’s a bank machine down the hall.”

I barely have fifty bucks in my account. “I’ll cover you,” Nick says, sensing my hesitation.

“Thanks, man.” Now that’s a friend. A friend will do everything in his power to help you. If I’m going to win this war I’m waging inside myself, I’m going to need all the help I can get.

Thursday, September 18, 6:15 p.m.

Most men would have taken the hint. I am not most men.

“I can’t tonight,” Kimmy says, “I’m going to a beer blast.” She’s standing in her doorway, brushing out her hair. I wonder what it must feel like to brush one’s hair. I don’t even touch mine, for fear of inadvertently encouraging strands to fall out.

“But you have to eat. You shouldn’t go beer blasting on an empty stomach.”

She grins but shakes her head. “I can’t. I want to get some reading done first. Maybe another time?”

Aha! An opening. “Tomorrow night?”

I know I’m sounding desperate, but the over-the-top-style adoration technique usually works for me. I had to send my last girlfriend, Shoshanna, roses with corresponding poems for two weeks straight before she agreed to go out with me. Let’s face it, I’m not going to pick up women with my hot bod and balding head. I need to showcase glitz, romance and the potential for a lot of laughs.

Unfortunately, Kimmy is not taking the bait. Which poses a problem. Because there aren’t so many women at LWBS to begin with, never mind hot Jewish women, I might have to start hanging out in the undergraduate dorms, which would look suspicious. I might be taken for a perv.

I need something to entertain me at this institution. To distract me from the fact that I don’t know why I’m here. What a farce. What a lie.

For now my distraction is Kimmy. I wonder if it’s the hair. Does she not like the balding? Maybe I should try to grow a comb-over. Oy.

“Maybe. We’ll see,” she says. “I need to work on that Stats assignment for Monday.”

“Stats? I’ll give you a stat. A hundred percent you should have dinner with me tonight.”

“Funny. But no. Not tonight, anyway.”

A maybe is better than a no. I guess I’ll go to beer blast tonight. Might as well watch the morons make fools of themselves.

I decide to call my bubbe before getting ready. I feel a twinge of guilt for not calling since I’ve been at school.

She drops the phone twice before picking up. “Hello?”

“Hi, Bubbe!”

“Hello?”

“Bubbe, it’s me, Jamie.”

“Jamie? Oh, Jamie! I’m so happy you called.” The sentence sounds more like, I’m so heppy you cult. She has a thick Yiddish accent. We speak for only a few minutes. We never have that much to talk about, but she sounds like she’s in good spirits, as usual. It always amazes me how someone who has been through so much-she’s a Holocaust survivor who lost her entire family, including her first husband, in the war, and then her second husband, my mother’s father, to cancer, and then a grandchild, the sister I never met, to crib death-can still keep smiling. Which she does. She may not have too many of her own teeth behind that smile, but she’s still smiling. Unlike my mother, who’s never happy with anything.

“When I gonna see you?” she asks.

I tell her that I can’t come home for Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year, which is in a week and a half, but I’ll be back for Thanksgiving.

“Good, good. You focus on school.”

“Love you, Bubbe.”

“I love you. So much.”

I change into my terry-cloth navy bathrobe, grab my bucket of products and stroll to the showers, not caring that I don’t look macho.

I step into the second shower, because the first one’s in use. I wonder by whom. Maybe it’s Kimmy. All wet, and hot, and soapy. And then just like we’re in a movie, there’s a knock on the shower divider. Wow. Maybe it is Kimmy and she can read my mind. Just like in a movie, we were meant to be.

“Yes, darlin’?” I say.

“Darlin’? How did you know I was a woman?” It isn’t Kimmy, but whoever it is, she sounds sexy.

Me: It was a feminine knock.

Sexy Stranger: Do you have any conditioner? I’m out.

Me: Who wants to know? (I need a name!)

SS: It’s…Darlin’.

Me: Playing mysterious, are you?

SS: Always.

Me: My personal conditioner, occasionally referred to as cream rinse, is for extrafine hair. Is that acceptable?

SS: Preferable, actually.

Me: (A clue?) So you have thin hair?

SS: No, I mean I prefer my men with thin hair. (She doesn’t actually say the part after “no.”)

Me: (While contemplating standing on my bucket and peering over the wall.) Shall I come over to hand you the bottle?

SS: Why don’t you throw it?

Me: What if it spills?

SS: Close it properly and it won’t.

Me: (Laughing.) All right. Ready? One, two, three. (I don’t throw it.)

SS: I’m waiting.

Me: That was a test. Now I’m really going to throw it. Are you ready? I need to know if you’re ready.

SS: Always .

Me: Are you sure? This is serious stuff.

SS: I’m pruning here.

Me: Don’t get cranky. Here we go. One, two, three. (Toss bottle over dividing wall.)

(Clunk. Laughter.)

SS: Oops.

Me: You dropped it, didn’t you?

SS: It didn’t spill. Much. There’s some left. I think.

Me: (While rinsing the shampoo from my head.) I’m going to need it back now.

SS: Why didn’t you take some before you passed it?

Me: Why? It wasn’t time for the cream rinse yet.

SS: Don’t you need a second shampoo?

Me: Real men don’t do two shampoos. (Real mean are men like me without much hair and are afraid to wear it out.)