008

**** is gearing up for his sophomore year of college. I took the last three weeks of August off work, knowing that I would need some sort of respite after a three-month sentence of hard labor. I spent those three weeks the only way I knew how — connecting with misfits on the internet. Playing video games, talking to my friends, just having a good time. I didn’t want to go to the beach or rub elbows with fellow Class of 2012 graduates somewhere. I wanted to escape, so escape I did.

I had other friends too, who made a comedy podcast starting in late 2009, to which I regularly contributed, and often came on to talk to the hosts and live chat room of fellow listeners. Another great escape. Like World of Warcraft, it was a place where real life stopped. Where anxiety and judgement and insecurity floated away. Where everyone got along because they had shared interests and senses of humor. The only reason I have a twitter account is because of that show, and we all still keep in contact there — our little island in the ocean of social media. There people liked me. They thought I was smart, funny, creative. I didn’t have to pretend, I didn’t have to fit in. I got to be **** — whoever that was.

When I got back to college I was rusty. I had spent three of the four previous months in almost complete silence, and the last month connecting with people who already knew me, or already knew they’d like me. Things were about to get weird again.

The fall semester is the hot season for state schools, especially places with a good football team and bad winters. While ****’s football team had little to write home about while I was there, tradition alone carried the torch for us students. Every home game was (and still is) a massive party. Every square inch of the campus is covered in students ready to play hard after working hard all week. Three-story beer bongs, kegs, half gallons of six-dollar vodka being passed around, while timeless tracks like “Hot in Herre” and “Party in the USA” echo from every frat house, and most of the regular ones.

I didn’t really know what to do. I linked up with my **** Quad friends a few times, but again I felt that “outside looking in” sense. Like I didn’t get the same Buzzfeed Quiz result as they all did. I had some roommates who lived with me: my best friend from **** Lake lived with me in one apartment, and across the hall in the building lived my friend’s former dorm roommate and suitemate from freshman year. I knew them both really well, from all my North Campus trips on “Thirsty Thursdays” the year before, but it felt like they all had more rigid social groups as well. I was the Swiss Army Knife of people — I couldn’t do any one thing great, but I could do just about anything decently. So all my friends were more specialized, in tighter, seemingly inseparable groups, and I was there with a nail file, corkscrew, and tiny scissors. Looking for people who needed that.

Drifting again. I didn’t join any student organizations my freshman year, they seemed like work, or boring, or something. Instead, I thought the key to social success was going to any party I could find — invited or not. Looking back, that was the worst way to find friends. Small talk and shallow conversation over warm beer. If I went out with a couple of my friends, we’d just talk amongst ourselves, all too lazy to break the ice and chat with fellow ****. I often went out alone, just looking for...something.

What I’ve learned in life is that you have to practice how you want to play. I was looking for real connections, where most people were looking for a night off. Trying to make a square meal out of only what I could find in a convenience store. Convenient. That’s what it was. Because this way, I could have single-serving interactions, where I didn’t have to face that fear of “what will they think about me?” The fear that I’d enter a social group just to again feel like the odd one out. I didn’t know it then, but writing it now, I see it. I wanted the lowest-risk interactions. Where if I seemed weird, they could just go to get another drink and never come back. Where if I seemed like I was trying too hard, they wouldn’t remember me, and probably wouldn’t see me again.

To my then-surprise, I found myself several weeks into the school year, not far from where I started. Living in my own space was cool. Feeling like a true adult, after spending most of my childhood already having to be one. Then came an exciting event. The podcast I had been listening to for years was about to have its 200th episode, live, in Las Vegas, all listeners invited. None of us knew what each other looked like, only usernames and voices. So, with not a lot of money in my pocket, in October 2013, I flew to Los Angeles.

For a first vacation, I was doing it very much in my style. Just fucking go and figure it out. Instead of flying to Las Vegas directly, I flew to LA to meet up with someone who was driving out to Vegas, and I was going to hitch a ride with him. All I had was his cell phone number, and the blind trust that he would show up at LAX, and not rob me and leave me somewhere in the high desert of Nevada along the way.

I knew him only as Dapy — that was the name he used online. He was a few hours late to get me, because that day a couple had come to sign the papers to buy his house. No problem, shit happens. We went to In ‘N Out, as any California visitor ought to, and he bought me a shirt — one I still proudly keep as a souvenir from a ridiculous weekend. We set out through the high desert in his weathered suburban. A man as old as my father, and a nineteen-year old who hadn’t left Michigan in nearly a decade. Who had only ever been on a plane once, pre-9/11, as an infant.

It was strange at first. Suddenly a voice gained corporeal form, an idea of a person manifested into flesh. Dapy was well-versed regarding Vegas, a true Sin City veteran. We were going to meet his friends, one of whom had a crazy penthouse condo where we’d be staying. I set out for Vegas with nothing but blind hope and trust. No hotel room, maybe forty dollars in my pocket, and a credit card. Trust that people who until then had only existed virtually would be there for me in real life. I had been listening to the show for years, literal days and weeks of my life spent with them in my ears. I didn’t have a place to sleep, knowing that if I had to sleep on the floor somewhere, that would be fine by me. Because I wasn’t missing this for the world.

My tribe. My people. Where I felt I belonged. And nobody knew what would happen. Maybe some creepy people would show up and kill the vibe, maybe two drunk idiots would start a brawl — who knows. We could only hope that anyone willing to come this far would be on the same page as everyone else, that we could all get along in front of each other as well as we did online. A merry group of misfits.

As the Vegas skyline came into view, Dapy produced a joint of California’s finest. We smoked half of it before putting it out, already very aware that just half may have been too much. It was. We sat in traffic on the highway in, silent. I felt my whole body vibrating and my mind racing in every direction and no direction at the same time. Dapy broke the silence,

“Should we ro-”,

“-ll down the windows, yeah,” I replied.

Telepathically, we somehow both thought that removing the barrier between the vehicle and the outside world would help. It didn’t. We were violently fucking high.

Now, I’ve never been much of a fan of marijuana. Much like alcohol, it’s best with a bit of a tolerance, and I never partook often enough to build the calluses for cannabis. Usually, it just put me right to sleep. Sativa, indica — dispensary or dirt weed — I had so many problems sleeping that even just a puff would knock me out.

Not this time. It must have been the adrenaline, the excitement, but I was wired. The only problem was that we had to meet up with Dapy’s friends first — completely unrelated to the podcast meetup — to get the keys to the penthouse. And we were late, and I had been assigned the task of group guide; I had to go to the Luxor and get a copy of the hosts’ suite key, so I could ferry people up there as they arrived. Except I wasn’t there yet, and some were.

My phone was blowing up with messages, and I just replied with “Uhh, a little late, maybe thirty-to-an-hour out”. We valeted the Suburban at the Venetian, and I Was still deep in the matrix. I couldn’t figure out what to do. Do I tell Dapy I need to go? But he and his friends are so nice, that’d be a bit rude. Let’s just see where this goes.

We came in and met his three friends, all that Old-Vegas type. Fifty on the outside, twenty on the inside. The party never stopped for them. They bought us all a round of drinks — okay, one drink and we’ll go. The messages kept coming, and my arrival time just kept getting later. “Another half hour, I don’t know”.

In the motley crew of Dapy’s friends was a diamond dealer, some other guy, and a woman who seemed very interested in me being comfortable. Sit down, don’t worry, let’s have another drink. Time kept passing, I sat silently, every permutation and combination of how to get out of the situation coursing through my brain. Do I say something? They’re so nice, I don’t want to seem rude. I’m fucking up the job I’m supposed to do. People are counting on me. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Finally, the woman said something. Taking a cue from my endlessly restless posture, constantly bouncing my knees and nervously turning my phone over in my hands, she said — Dapy, is everything okay with your friend? Does he have to be somewhere?

Oh sweet Jesus, I had been saved. I explained the situation, and without hesitation, Dapy rolled out to take me to the Luxor. I thanked his friends, apologized, and got back in the car, freed from my prison of awkward non-confrontation. The high was beginning to loosen its white-knuckle grip on me. I had been so keyed up about meeting all these people for real that the THC had had me at Apollo-13 level anxiety, scrambling to find a way to get my ass back to earth and save myself. I arrived at the Luxor bar to a chorus of familiar voices and new faces. I had made it. Out of bat country, but not out of the woods just yet.