The Morning After

    The first thing that I noticed was the light shining through the open window that glittered upon my face.

    The next thing I noticed was the pain that exploded across at the base of my skull as I foolishly opened my eyes.  Suppressing a groan, I attempted to roll over and avoid the painful rays – only to find my reprieve blocked by a body.

    A female and decidedly naked body.

    Her long raven tresses cascaded across my shoulder and down my chest, thin tendrils that lightly tickled my skim as I shifted to take a better look at her.  My eyes quickly took in the rise and fall of her breasts pressed lightly against my side before traveling the length of her body, ending finally at her face that was half hidden buried within the crook of my neck.  I had no recollection of who she was, but judging by the sticky feel of sweat that coated my body, and the sudden realization that my clothes weren't where I left them the night before (namely covering my body), I had no doubt as to the manner of our relationship.

    'Who the hell is this girl?'

      I reached into the depths of my memory, trying to remember the activities from the night before.  However, all I found were quick flashes of sights and sounds that were both completely foreign and yet oddly familiar: Me stuffing a couple of condoms into my pocket before quickly running out of my room; ripping Casey's small, blue bong as we waited for the party to start; shotgunning beers in the basement with Pat as we watched the younger brothers finish setting up; the flash of the strobe lights and the pressure of the skintight jeans of a random girl grinding her ass against my crotch in a crowd of sweaty, hormone-filled freshmen that flooded our stifling fraternity basement.  But that was it.  After that everything was a complete blank. 

      Gently moving the girl draped over me back onto one of the pillows behind me, I began to notice certain details that had previously escaped my notice.  First off, that the bed we were in wasn't mine.  Stretching carefully, so as not to wake the naked girl to my left I noticed that the sheets on the bed weren't mine.  Actually, nothing was mine.  The room we were in appeared to be in one of the dormitories – the stark, white-washed brick walls glaring brightly in the morning light.  I quickly climbed out of bed and began looking for my clothes.  My shirt was by the foot of the bed, though somehow my jeans ended up draped over the girl's desk chair.  My underwear was no where to be found.  I checked under the bed and even in the closet, but to no avail.  Shrugging to myself, I walked over to the desk and grabbed my jeans, fumbling slightly as I attempted to put first my left leg and then my right into the correct holes. 

    Buttoning up the offending article of clothing I suddenly noticed a university ID card resting on a small mirror on the desk.  The ID card was faded and warped from being carried around for too long and a suspicious white residue lightly coated one edge of it.  On further inspection of the mirror, I found more traces of the same white mystery substance, causing me to wonder if I had been incapacitated enough the night before to do one of the few things in life that I promised myself that I would avoid.  I didn't have a problem with it per say, I just didn't want to use it myself.

    Ignoring the obvious drug use for the moment, I took the opportunity to look at the name that was printed on the ID card.  The words Katie Rogean jumped out at me, under the picture of the girl that was sleeping a few feet away from me .... albeit with more clothes on in the picture than she had on at the time.  How did I know that name?  I had never met the girl before then, but the name seemed so familiar.

    “Ohhhh...”

    I nearly jumped in shock from the sound of a low moan emanating from the direction of the bed.  Quickly placing the ID card back to its original position, I turned to see Katie just beginning to rise.  As she became more aware of her surroundings, she gave me a satisfied smile that soon gave way to confusion as she realized that my pants were back on.

    “What are you doing?”  The Katie asked me sleepily, rubbing her eyes in an attempt to more fully wake up.  Not wanting to admit my inability to remember who she was my mind froze, as I tried to come up with an acceptable answer.  Needing a minute to compose myself, I walked over to Katie slowly.  Upon reaching her, I bent down and gently cupped her face with my left hand, my thumb softly caressing her cheek, before pressing my lips to hers.  I had simply meant to distract her from asking me questions that I couldn't answer, but it worked better than I had expected

    She responded immediately.  She gripped the back of my head, pulling me closer to her, her hand quickly ensnaring itself in my hair.  Her lips, already swollen red from the activities of the previous night, parted open, as she began nibbling lightly on my bottom lip.  She seemed to want to want more, grabbing my right hand, which had been resting on her knee at that time, and slowly sliding up her inner thigh.  Then, just as I was about to give in to her desires, I suddenly realized what was happening.  I was about to sleep with a girl who I knew nothing about.  I may be able to use 'I was drunk' as an excuse for the night before, but I had no justifications for using Katie now.  Therefore, I reluctantly  pulled back, resting my forehead against hers.

    It seemed to take her a moment to force down her own wants and open her eyes to look at me, her gaze asking me why I had stopped?  Sighing, I brought my mouth close to her ear, her hair tickling my nose in the process and attempted to come up with a reason that I could give her that wouldn't make me seem like an asshole.

      “I have to be at work in about 15 minutes.”

    Pulling away from her, I could see the disappointment surrounding her as I slowly bent down to pull my sweat-stained black t-shirt over my head.  As I was rotating the shirt around my torso (I had put it on backwards by mistake), she sat up to look at me.

    “How long do you have to work, today”  She asked me, stretching her back as she did so.  This caused her breasts to thrust towards me invitingly, and I almost gave in and took her back into my arms.  Almost.

    “10 to 7”  I rattled off quickly, choosing to give her the hours that I had actually worked the day before.  A seductive smile began to creep onto her face as she slowly stood up from the bed and deliberately made her way over to me.  Pressing her chest against mine, she looked up at me and asked if she could come see me when I was done.

    “Of course,”  I replied quickly, “Just give me your number and I'll call you at 7.”

    “Silly,” She giggled, running her fingertip slowly down my chest, “I put my number in your phone last night.  Don't you remember?”

    “Oh, right,” I quickly told her convincingly, “I guess I'm just a bit distracted.”  Placing a chaste kiss on her lips, I pulled away from her and bent down to look for my shoes and socks.  However, like my underwear, they were no where to be found.

    “Do you know where my shoes are?” I asked her hastily, putting on the appearance of needing to rush to work.  Katie looked at me for a moment as if I was completely retarded.

    “You weren't wearing any last night.  You told me you wanted to feel mother nature under your bare toes.”

      “Right,”  I replied slowly, “Again, distracted.”

    With that I gave her a smile and reassured that I would call her after “work” ended before slipping out her door and into the hallway.  She was a beautiful girl and she seemed interested in me, so I was looking forward to getting to know her better.  However, I couldn't shake the feeling of familiarity that struck me when I first learned her name. 

    It was early in the morning, but not terribly so, and I found that I wasn't alone.  Several girls were popping in and out of the various doors on the hall, many clothed in nothing more than fluffy towels that left little to the imagination.  Most, if not all of the girls stared at me as I passed them, but then again, I made quite a sight.  Glancing at my reflection from a mirror in the hallway, I saw that my hair was dirty and disheveled and my bloodshot eyes stared back at me, mocking me with my hangover.  Completing the drunken mess look was a variety of bruises adorning my neck and jaw – little souvenir love bites from Katie, apparently.

    Finding an exit, I made my way out of the building as swiftly as possible. The cool morning air clung to my dirty clothes, causing me to shiver involuntarily.  Looking around, I noticed that I was thankfully in one of the residential buildings that sat next to the frat quad.  Without hesitation I made my way home as quickly as possible, hoping to escape the awkward feeling that had settled over the situation.  The rough concrete stung at the pads of my feet, tearing the soft skin and making each step that much worse than the one before.  However, this paled in comparison to the discomfort in  my pants.  The unforgiving denim was rubbing painfully against my skin.  This may not have been too unbearable; however, at the time my crotch was still raw from Katie and the night before, and the jeans only further agitated this sensitivity.  Therefore, I was motivated to reach the house as soon as possible.  However, I couldn't help but wonder how much worse I would feel if I didn't have such a close and intimate relationship with hangovers.  'I guess degenerate drinking has a silver lining after all,' I mused bitterly.

    I couldn't help but sigh in relief as I saw the house approaching across the road separating the frat quad from the rest of the campus, but the closer I got to my destination, the more I noticed the state of the house.

  It was trashed!

    Plastic cups and empty beer cans littered the front steps.  The door had a disturbing looking yellow substance splattered on it that appeared as if it would take several of the brothers working together to scrape it off.  There was a mini fridge sitting on the front porch that was smashed beyond recognition – almost as if someone had thrown it off the roof.  I don't think that I had ever seen the house that wrecked on the outside.  Punching the lock-code into the door, I stepped into the living room, not knowing what to expect.

    It looked as if Nicky Sixx had dorm-stormed a refugee camp.

    Everything was a mess.  Tables and couches were upturned haphazardly in front of the TV, which thankfully hadn't been damaged.  However, several chairs were now one or more limbs short and the house had a new ventilation system, by means of a hole in one of the windows.  Cans and cups were everywhere, some empty, some filled with cigarette butts that left a putrid smell hanging in the air.  Of course, that could have been the stale beer and vomit that filled the trash cans and coated the floors, my bare feet sticking to the old oak boards as I made my way towards the stairs.  At the foot of the stairway, I decided to poke my head into the library and assess the damage there.  Books were strewn about everywhere, from massive heaps that seemed to have simply tumbled off of the shelves to single books that may have been thrown across the room.  Empty beer cans and cigarette buts were strewn throughout this room as well.  However, the center piece had to be Kellan, one of the youngest brothers in the house.  He was lying spread eagle on the floor, clutching a bag of Franzia wine and wearing a frilly white bra across his chest.  His shoes were still on, and apparently someone had taken this as permission to cover his face in women's makeup.  I thought about waking him, but quickly decided that I had more pressing matters at hand.  I remembered when I had just moved into the house – the excitement and the level of freedom it offered were a potent combination that landed me in more than one embarrassing situation or another.  I could only thank God that I had, for the most part, grown out of that phase.  Closing the door to the library behind me, I turned to my left and headed for the stairs

    Oh God, those stairs.

    There were 115 steps between the first floor and the third floor, where my room resided.  I know this because I have traversed this monumental mountain at least ten times a day for the last year and a half.  A headache, which had begun not long before as a dull pain was swiftly becoming a throbbing ache with every step that I took.  Finally, I reached the top floor and turned right, wanting nothing more at that moment than to crawl into clean clothes and study the back of my eyelids for as long possible.  Upon reaching my door; however, I suddenly knew that my issues were just beginning.

    My underwear was tied in a knot around my door handle.  I grabbed it quickly and shoved it into the back pocket of my jeans.  Not knowing what to expect, I cautiously pushed my door open and stepped inside.

    'Jesus fucking Christ!!' Was the first thought to enter my head, 'What the fuck happened in here?'  My room looked, if possible, even worse than the living room.  While thankfully clear of vomit, the floor was covered in doritos and table salt.  My desk had a nearly-empty bottle of tequila sitting on my laptop, surrounded by discarded lime wedges.  It looked as if someone had attempted to smoke my hookah the night before, unsuccessfully.  A half-packed hookah bowl sat on the small table in front of my TV, the hookah lay at an angle on the floor, the water from its base having thoroughly soaked into my carpet.  I was so shocked at the horrid state of my room that I nearly missed seeing the unconscious body laying sprawled out on my couch.

    It was Pat, the same brother that I vaguely remembered drinking with earlier.  “Yo wake up, Pat!”  I yelled, kicking his leg in the process.  Pat jumped up to a sitting position quickly, obviously attempting to figure out where he was.

    “What the Hell, man?”  He half-groaned, half-yelled, “What's going on?”

    “I think I should be asking you that,” I replied far more calmly than most would after finding their friend sleeping in their trashed room, “What are you doing in my room?”

    “Huh?... Wait, why am I here?”

    “That's what I'd like to know.”

    “Oh man,” Pat began, rubbing his fists into his eyes, in an attempt to stave off his own headache, “The last thing I remember is taking shots with you and some random girl.”

    “Really?” I asked, hoping to be given some insight into last night, “Do you remember what the girl looked like?”

    “Of course, dude,” Pat quickly offered, “She was a thin, short, blond chick with huge boobs.  I think her name was Hannah.”

    That only seemed to provide me with more questions then answers.  Who the Hell was Hannah and how did I go from drinking with her in my room, to fucking Katie in her's?

    “Hannah?” I asked, my confusion apparent on my face.

    “Yeah, I think she said she was dating somebody you knew.”

      “Oh, okay... that sounds like something I would do,”  I replied slowly.

    “You don't remember?”  Past asked incredulously, “Dude, you were off the wall last night”

      “What do mean?” I asked, wondering what I could done last night that would have made me stand out in what was an obvious shit-show, judging by the overall state of the house that morning.

    “You just started pounding rum in the basement once the party started”  He told me, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips, “I even saw you running around the second floor in your underwear and a fedora last night with some dark-haired girl that kept trying to grab her bra out of your hands.”

    “Damn.”

    “Yeah man, it was pretty funny.”

    “I bet.”

      Pat and I talked for a few more minutes, though he didn't have any more information about what happened to me the night before.  However, apparently he was the one to put the makeup on Kellan, along with a few other brothers.  With nothing more to discuss, Pat decided to head back to his room and sleep in his own bed at last.  I headed out with him, intent on grabbing a quick breakfast to settle my stomach before dealing with the mess strewn about in front of me.  My sandals were at the foot of the bed where I always leave them, and as I was slipping them gratefully onto my tired feet, I noticed  a black lacy bra sitting on my pillow.  Figuring it to be the bra that Pat had mentioned earlier, I decided to leave it be until after I had made some food.  Leaving the decimated room, I quickly went down the stairs (which is much easier than going up) and entered the basement.  The basement was just as bad as the rest of the house – the glass from broken black lights mingling with squashed pong balls and crushed cups in the coagulating puddles of beer that covered the floor in a patchwork of inconvenience.      Attempting to make my way to the back of the room, where the door to the kitchen was propped open with a ping pong paddle that had been lodged under it, without stepping in one of the putrid puddles littered the disgusting room,I felt as if I was traversing a minefield of drunken debauchery. 

    Entering the kitchen, I was pleased to find that this room had miraculously escaped most of the insanity and drunken buffoonery that had coated the rest of the house.  The center table was covered in used plates and half-eaten sandwiches, but was otherwise unsoiled.  Even more surprising was finding Muppet in their cooking eggs and bacon.  His real name is Jim, but everyone in the house calls him Muppet because he looks like Beaker from the Muppet movies.

    “Sup, Mup?”  I asked him while digging into the fridge for a yogurt.

    “Yo what up, Falco?”  He replied in way of greeting, “How are you feeling after last night?”

    “What do you mean?”  I asked, hoping to learn more about what appeared to have been one hell of a night.

    “Well, the last time I saw you some blond chick ran up and slapped you.”

    “Really?”

    “Yeah.  You were with Katie and the two of them got into a cat fight in the middle of the dance floor.

    “Wait... you know Katie?”

    “Sure, I have jazz band with her and Ricky every week.  She also writes for the school paper.”

    'Oh, shit,' I thought, 'That's how I know her.”

    I had been a photography editor for the paper for the last two years.  I didn't interact with the writers often, but I could vaguely remember seeing her every once in a while.

    “So she was fighting some girl who slapped me?” I asked, still generally confused over the whole situation.

    “Yeah, they were really going at it.  It took you, me, and two random domes to break them apart,”  Muppet told me with a hint of amusement in his voice.  “At least they fared better than Casey's fridge last night.”

    “What happened to Casey's fridge last night?”

    “You don't remember?”  Muppet seemed surprised, which mostly meant that this story also involved me, as well.  “Casey couldn't get the thing to work so you and him decided to throw it off the roof.”

    “Oh, damn!”  I had to laugh at that – it was exactly the kind of thing that I could see the two of doing.  When he and I start drinking and blazing together, sooner or later something ends up flying off of the rooftop balcony.

    “Yeah, you nearly hit the blond chick and her boyfriend, I'm guessing that's why she was so pissed at you.”   

    “Okay... but why would Katie fight some random girl for me?”  Something wasn't adding up.

    “Probably because she's had a crush on you all year, man,”  Muppet said lightly, almost mockingly, “All she does in jazz band is ask me about you.  I told her that she should just go for it.”

    “Really?”  I  asked him surprised.  At his nod I couldn't think of anything to say, other than, “Thanks, man.”

    “Don't worry about it,” Muppet said, quickly dismissing my thanks.  “I'm just glad everything worked out... though you might want to stay clear of Junig for a while.”

    “Huh, why?”  I asked, not understanding how my hooking up with Katie would upset the other brother.

    “Dude, he has had a thing for her since she joined the band.”

    With that, Muppet scraped his food off of the grill and onto a plate and headed out.  I for my part was rooted to the spot with indecision.  On one hand, I had promised Katie to call her and I didn't want her to feel like I had simply used her.  Plus, she was a beautiful girl, who apparently shared my interest in journalism, and it had been a long time that I had actually met a girl who was interested in me for more than one night.  One night stands, had started to lose their appeal to me over a year ago, and it would be nice to see if I could make something work with her.  On the other hand, Junig was a brother and a friend, and I didn't want to hurt him, in case it did work out with her.

    Having finished my yogurt, I tossed the empty container into the nearly overflowing trashcan.  Once again, making the arduous climb back to the third floor I entered my room and nearly collapsed onto my unmade bed, tossing the bra onto my nearby couch.  I quickly set an alarm for 3PM on my phone (which had miraculously remained in my jean pockets all night) before stripping off my dirty pants and crawling under my black comforter.  I wanted to set the alarm for later, but I still had to clean up my room and something told me that it would take me longer than usual.  I also had to decide what to do about Katie.  'Should I or shouldn't I?'  These questions kept bouncing back and forth in my mind.  I had to decide whether I should pursue my own interests or step aside and try to help out a brother.  Regardless of which I chose, I knew that I had to call Katie.  I thought about waiting, but I realized that I wouldn't be able to sleep until I had figured this out.  I thought about Katie and how she had looked at me that morning.  I thought about what I knew about her and what I wanted to learn.  More importantly though, I thought about my college career, from when I first joined the fraternity till now.  The fraternity had given me the opportunity to live life fuller than I had ever imagined possible.  I had drank, smoked, and fucked more in the last couple years then most people would in their entire lives.  Was I willing to give up a part of that (and potentially hurt another brother in the process)?  Did I still want to be the guy that partied too hard and woke up in random places, with random people?

    With those questions running through my head, I picked up my phone.  Scrolling through my address book, I found Katie's number and quickly hit the call button.  She picked up by the third ring.

    “Hello, Falco?  I thought you were working?”  She asked me, confused as to why I was calling her so early.

    “I am,” I told her quickly, not wanting to admit that I had been lying to her earlier, “But I got a quick break and wanted to call you.  There's something we need to talk about...”