A Formal Affair with Chuck Taylor

One spring day, sometime after Spring Break but before I was otherwise attached, I was waiting in the hall for the class before ours to let out. I was watching for a break in the tide when one of the faces was right in front of me.

It was a guy named AD, whom I had met earlier in the fall. I had ended up going to his dorm room with him, but nothing happened and I split as soon as I could. We had seen each other around campus, but not been at any of the same parties or said more than "hi", so I was a little surprised when he invited me to his fraternity's spring formal. I agreed to go, not so much because I liked him but because I didn't not like him, and I was curious what a fraternity formal would be like.

I was a little nervous, but excited like any female would be about dressing up and going out. I wore my pink and black tuxedo dress, and boring black pumps, although I toyed with the idea of wearing my Chuck Taylors just to let them know I didn't take all of the fraternity/sorority self-importance and drama that seriously.

Turns out the sneaks would have been a better choice. Had I been wearing them, I would have seriously considered walking home at one of the following points in the evening:

• After I sat through dinner with the people all around me talking only to each other. They already knew each other, and I was dismissed once I said I was not in a sorority, as if that determined whether or not we had anything else to talk about.
• After he danced with about the fourth person who wasn't me.
• After he had his picture taken with about 20 people, who also weren't me.
• After we went to the room he rented for the night and it became obvious why he had invited me. He used the argument that we had done it before (we hadn't), he had rented a room (so?) and why not? (he was an asshole). He finally gave up and passed out. 

I laid there and tried to toss and turn without crinkling my dress, which I slept in, wishing I had just worn the f***ing Converse. I couldn't possibly have fit in any worse. I couldn't have looked any more stupid walking back to campus in a formal at 3:00 a.m. than I looked walking past the front desk at 7:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

Todd B was on desk duty and had probably seen it all. He just raised his eyebrows and asked if I'd had a good time. I smiled and kept walking, thinking "Thank God at least I don't have a hangover".