The residence handbook specifically forbids these kids of formally organized party in residence, but it seems anyone with any authority just turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the repeated whispers of the word 'toga' that echoed the hallways all week.
With Halloween retreating behind them and exam period looming in the future, the residents of Wawanakwa house, discretely but undoubtedly lead by Geoff, ordered a clandestine operation to profit from the last weekend before extended quiet hours the best way possible: with more drinking.
Except this time, the drinking would be done while – wait for it – wearing sheets.
Tyler is never one to turn down a night of enthusiastic college boozing, nor does he fear being partially unclothed. However, he does find himself bemoaning one thing: his bed sheets are a sort of flaxen yellow. He recognizes that a toga party is not the pinnacle of historical accuracy, but he also recognizes his own Greek heritage, that heritage to which he owes his sharp nose, dark eyes, and wonderfully lean, athletic body that before-Christ pederasts would certainly enjoy. That same Greek heritage that should possibly make him the expert on Greek stuff, even though the only Greek things he really knows about are feta cheese, olive oil, and the frat he's trying to join.
And he's also pretty sure all the Greeks in books and movies wore white. But he also heard that a lot of statues and things have been bleached away by the wear of time, and in fact, not everything prior to the middle-ages was in shades of grey. Screw it, he decides – the Greeks didn't even wear bed-sheets to begin with.
After attempting to tie the corner of his sheet around a shoulder, Tyler takes his second shot, and probably his last before leaving the security of his room. He feels the tiniest flush rise to his cheeks from the burning liquid, but is nowhere near inebriated enough to develop unsteady hands. Sucking in his stomach to tighten the sheet wrapping, he ties a final bow around his waist, and heads into the hallway.
The boys never said where to meet, but the commotion emanating from the open door of DJ's room gives him a couple hints as to where to start.
He wriggles in the door, relieved to see that he's not the only one in off-white: Duncan's got stripes, Geoff's got polka-dots, and Lindsay, notably, has a boldly retro floral print. Everyone has their fabric draped and tied in their own uniquely sloppy way.
No delay before he's downing shots. He used to drink beer, and he still likes it a bit, but Bridgette told him that the calories in beer are a big contributor to the freshman fifteen, and the last thing Tyler needs is a thick layer of sub-cute-botanical fat making him laggy on the field, on the ice, and in the gym. So now it's straight vodka, and though it feels like taking a blow torch to his adam's apple, it also brings all 170 pounds of him from sober to buzzed in no time flat.
A blur in his vision and a cramped, gelatinous feeling in his legs tells him that he's locked and loaded. Drunk enough to feel like a beast, sober enough to not fuck up his life. The perfect place to be. He manoeuvers away from DJ's desk and scopes the other corner of the room to find someone to chat with.
"Yo so I had like black rum for the first time tonight. Crazy."
Cody Anderson's voice sounds somewhere between caffeinated and drunk, and Tyler figures at first that he's only hearing a clipped piece of someone else's discussion.
"How's it going for you?"
Tyler turns, perplexed, in Cody's general direction. His eyes, though liquid with intoxication, still have enough alertness to show that they're focused on Tyler.
"Oh, Cody. How's she going?"
"Drunk." He says, grinning a gap-toothed smile. His toga is white – he must have borrowed someone's sheets, because his Spongebob bed sheets are borderline infamous around the rez, owing to the snarky gossip of his roommate.
"That's great." Tyler replies, unsure of what the proper response to a one-word comment is.
"So me and Noah were taking shots every time someone died, and he was so good that I had to take like, fourteen shots of black rum. I'm thoroughly thrashed."
"Died?" Tyler asks, catching sight of Noah rolling his eyes in the periphery of his vision. Cody's told this story already about six times tonight, and every time, the ultimate number of shots taken increases.
"We were playing a video game, I mean, yeah and if someone. Uh. We made it into a drinking game! Fuck, I love having a roommate."
"I don't have one, myself. Sounds like fun though."
"Yeah we're like, two peas in a pod!" Cody says, chuckling sloppily at his own comment. "I want to sit down."
Baffled, but thoroughly entertained by the slender boy's antics, Tyler decides to take a seat beside him on the bed.
"Man, being drunk is fun. Why didn't I do this earlier? I wasted so much of high school. I'm amazing. It's all amazing."
Tyler felt like asking if Cody was a hundred percent sure he didn't snort a line or two of coke before coming to the toga party, because despite the slurring, his speech was too energetic for a drunk guy.
"Only problem is, I want to bang, like, everyone now. Is that normal? You've been drunk a bunch of times! Is that normal?" His widened eyes twitch slightly, and he added, "Not that I've never been drunk before but like, yeah."
"Yeah, I guess dude. You feel brave or some shit. Like everyone else is feeling just as brave, so you tend to do some wacky shit. The sex itself is shitty though, especially if you're nauseated or something. This is a weird thing to talk about."
"I don't talk to you enough, you're a riot." Cody giggles, alcoholic fumes wafting from his throat.
"Thanks, b'y." says Tyler, though didn't know what was so funny. "So what, are you trying to get with someone?" Tyler was well aware on Cody's crush on Gwen, which had not let up for even an instant since the start of frosh week. He was also aware that Gwen's disdain for the eager geek only increased along with her blood alcohol level.
"Nah, dude, you know, like you said, when you get drunk enough you'd bang anyone. It wouldn't be, like, special. She'd probably forget half of it and regret the rest, and I'd probably blow it big time. I don't wanna do that. If I get with Gwen, I want it to be sober. I want it to be like, romantic. Real. Oh shit." He says, eyes glazing a little. He must be imagining the horrific results of previous drunken Gwen flirting. Tyler hadn't been privy to the details, but it allegedly lasted about three seconds because a wave of nausea sent Cody out of the room. That nausea was likely a gift from Zeus, or Aphrodite, or someone, because there's no doubt it cut short what was destined to be an ultimate embarrassment fest.
"I'd like to, like, hug somebody though, I have great friends. Toga parties are great. I wish I had a slice of pizza. With mushrooms. And someone to like, kiss pizza kisses. Oh, that sounded gross."
"Aw, Cody, you sweet little gremlin, good to see you're here!" Bridgette's voice is heard, as serene as ever, and her erect posture shows she knows her own limits. Her toga is better-draped than anybody's, and with a seashell necklace and faux leather waist-belt, she actually plays the part of greek goddess well. She chuckles. "I'll give you a freebie."
She leans over, blue fruity drink in hand, and gives Cody a chaste kiss on the cheek. He lights up. "Thank you!" he squeaks.
"And you too, Tyler!" She barely grazes his skin with her lips, but the gesture was one of friendly affection rather than an invitation to anything more, so it's appreciated nonetheless.
"That was awesome!" Cody says, turning to Tyler.
Tyler chuckles, "Dude, you're acting like she just blew you or something."
The darkness at the corners of Tyler's field of vision begins to engulf more of his view as the last of the ethanol metabolizes in his guts. He absently stares at Cody's face with its ever-droopier eyes as he rides the mental elevator to the next level of intoxication. His tunnel-vision reverie is broken off when Cody speaks.
"Would you kiss me, right now?"
As before, Tyler feels like maybe he was just hearing clipped fragments of someone else's conversation. The comment sounded like it was somewhere between a statement and a question. A demand with a question mark. Tyler's spelling may not be all it's cracked up to be, but he has his punctuation down pat, and that vocal question mark throws him through a loop.
"Huh" he utters, guttural and wordless. They're sitting close and Cody's entire face looks like it's been splattered with a theatrical level of rouge.
"Would you kiss me." Simply stated, like a request to pass the sweet potatoes. What could be the harm? Just one could be interesting. Tyler'll chalk it up to drunkenness. That's what he did the day after he fucked up Trent's Roomba, and that's what he'll do tomorrow. So he smooshes his lips into Cody's, expecting it will just be a lip version of what happened with Bridgette.
Tyler had never been so wrong about anything since the devastation that was his Geography midterm last month.
Cody tries his best to force his unruly tongue between Tyler's closed lips, and Tyler pulls away in revolt.
"Okay." Tyler says, perhaps as a vague response to Cody's earlier demand-slash-question.
"Dude, that wasn't a good one. Can we try it again?" Tyler should definitely say no.
The second time doesn't go better than the first, and Cody's words are verbatim the same again, complete with the punctual 'dude', as if using the affectionate 'dude' nickname would somehow make this man-makeout a little more heterosexual.
"I shouldn't, really," Tyler says, "Like, there's someone else I should be smoochin'."
"She's not gonna care, you're not even Facebook offish yet, I'm a dude, we're drunk, dude." Cody replies, eyes slits, laughter slipping through his clenched, gapped teeth.
A third time, and that's all, Tyler promises. Then he'll walk away before he embarrasses himself even more.
But his embarrassment is far more discrete than expected – amidst the rush of King's cup and bad tunes, and the crunch of thirteen kids in a single dorm, only one pair of eyes watches the mortifying debacle.
Tyler has to head to the can. Vodka doesn't have the sheer volume of beer, but it still has that funny effect of ravaging your bladder. He stands in front of the toilet, holding back a sigh of relief as he noisily spills into the toilet. Blackness still dotting the edges of his vision; he needs to keep a hand against the back wall of the stall to keep himself from stumbling straight into the toilet.
He swings open the door and washes his hands. While scrubbing, he studies himself in the mirror and slowly processes his latest drunk fuckup. Numerous thoughts flash through his mind – the idea of kissing a dude, the idea of kissing while sitting on the innocent DJ's bed, the idea of kissing the infamous Cody 'White Girl Wasted' Anderson, and a side dish of remembering that last unprecedented kiss in the hallway, where Cody's toga started to fall away from his narrow waist and Tyler allowed his hands to linger at his stomach for a little too long after helping him tie it back up. As much as Tyler hates to admit it, that last kiss - the one to actually last more than twenty painful seconds – was a bit too close to pleasurable.
A person can get to a certain point of drunkenness where anything that happens with your eyes shut just disappears. For that reason, he's more aware of the idea that it happened, than aware of event's details. Hot lips, uncoordinated motion, a little bit of slimy, rum and cola flavoured spit come to mind. And after that, only the darkness of closed eyes, and a vague feeling of 'Oh, this is a bad plan.'
A lot of thoughts slosh through his inebriated mind like the liquid had sloshed in his overfilled bladder, but from his lips escaped only one sound:
"Oh no…."
He held the 'o' sound like a growling note in ambient death metal, as it rattled in the back of his throat. That's it, he fucked 'er up. This is worse than breaking Trent's Roomba, and everyone's going to remember.
He exits the washroom, and is met with the disgruntled yet slightly bemused face of Noah.
"I got Cody to go to bed," he says, with a knowing lilt to his voice. "I was headed to take a smoke. Wanna come?"
"Nawh b'y, I don't smoke." Tyler replies, stroking back his hair. Noah's eyebrows straighten out, and his mouth forms a tight line. "Oh. Oh."
"Go grab your coat on the way out, we'll probably take a walk. If Cody dies of alcohol poisoning in my room, I'd like at least another half hour of joy before facing that nonsense."
"Having Cody as a roommate is honestly a fucking headache every single day of my life." Noah says, cautiously sprinkling a little of the good stuff into a paper, resting on his poli sci notebook.
"Really? I thought you guys were," Tyler searches his head for the exact words Cody used, "Two peas in a pod?"
"Well maybe, except he's a pea on meth. Like, honestly, I love him, he's a good friend, but he's just not that mature. He doesn't know how to control himself."
"I heard he's got a six hundred dollar fine from that time he needed an ambulance called or something." Tyler says, cold air nipping his drunkenness away into a state of tipsy awareness.
Noah laughs an exaggerated, snarky laugh – an emphasis on the H sound in each 'Ha' "Yeah, who do you think is the one that had to spend an hour trying to wake him, several minutes waiting for the ambulance, several more minutes talking to RAs, and also had to stay up the entire night waiting for him to get back? Goddamnit, man, he puked in my recycling bin. I actually intended to separate those recyclables correctly. But if it wasn't for the puke, he'd have gone to the drunk tank instead of the hospital and that would probably be worse. Light please?"
Tyler jolts slightly, and presses the button on his phone to re-illuminate the light that timed out, shining it on Noah's work area.
"Anyway," Noah says, rolling the paper into a cylinder. "This is more or less me paying you off, a sort of, 'sorry my roommate tried to get into your pants.'"
"Nah, dude, he was keeping 'er above the belt. He's a bad kisser though."
"Tyler, he said, and I quote: 'I'll give you the best oral sex in your life.'"
"Aw, shit, you heard that?" Tyler replies, a bit of a discomfort forming at the base of his esophagus as he remembers the strange 'dude' whimpers that were intended to win him over, but only confused him.
"Yeah. In the two and a half months that Cody's been my roommate, I've developed a bit of a Cody sense, to detect when he's going to ruin someone's day, so I was basically monitoring his behavior the whole evening."
"I really don't think his oral sex would have been that great."
Noah laughs, a genuine laugh this time. As hearty of a laugh that his nasal voice can support. "Absolutely not. He was so drunk that he couldn't find the straw on his water cup. I don't think he could find a dick any easier."
"Lindsay's gonna be mad."
"Relax, dude, she doesn't have the capacity to be mad – " Noah begins, stopping himself slightly short of offending Tyler with comments on his almost-girlfriend's lack of brainpower. "I mean, drunk, gay, mistakes aren't the end of the world. I don't think she even saw. She was too busy taking selfies with Leshawna. To be honest, no one really cared that much. It will look worse on him than on you."
"Drunk, gay, mistakes, eh." Tyler repeats, shifting his feet together. "That whole thing was weird. What about Gwen though?"
He wanted to add, 'And what about me', but he figured he could mull over his sexual entanglement once he was good and stoned, and probably comfortably file it away in his mind with the Roomba incident within a few days.
Noah shrugs his shoulders. "Cody strikes my finely-tuned, and by finely tuned, I mean Windows 2000 era, gay-dar as someone who has a positive feedback loop via alcohol and sexuality. As in, he gets progressively less straight as he gets progressively more drunk." Noah says, as he slips his lighter out of his pocket and hands it to Tyler.
Tyler raises the joint to his mouth and lights, uttering simply: "Jesus Christ."
"I mean I've given him the spiel about eighty times on how not to behave like a complete lush at parties, but clearly, he's never taken this to heart. Poor kid." He holds out a hand to grab the crumpled paper tube before the fire dies. "He never got drunk much in high school, and by that, I mean he did like one time. And he likes to exaggerate. Anyway, so he's blowing up into the classic frenzied freshman."
"I'm glad I live in a single."
"Well, someone has to take care of him, and since I've got a lot of siblings, I guess I've grown used to dealing with atrocious amounts of bullshit." Noah says, taking a deep, smoky breath.
"I gotta give you mad props for that. You're a good roommate."
"Speaking of being a good roommate, I don't wanna go back to my room 'til I'm ready to sleep, because Cody's probably out like a light and he's gotta sleep it off."
"You can come to my room, we can watch some random shit on Youtube." Tyler says, absently, adding: "But like, if you ask to kiss me, I'm just gonna say no."
"Pfft, just 'cause I like dicks doesn't mean I like yours." Noah remarks.
"Ouch."
"With all due respect." Noah sucks the last from the roach, and stuffs it in the grass out of sight. The two take the long way around back to the residence, letting the air wipe away the scent.
"Yo, dude, you know what I just realized?" Tyler says, tingles beginning to flutter down his vertebra.
"What."
He gestures to the building, few lights still on.
"It's only, like, 11:09 PM and everyone's in bed."
"Ha."
Just finished class for the semester and have a little free time before my exams so I whipped this up in an hour or two. Not sure what possessed me to boot this up again but... anyway this is sorta kinda based on a true story ahaha. I tried my best to balance desperation and awkwardness with drunken forwardness with Cody because I really didn't want him coming across as rapey, I just wanted him to be extremely awkward. Hence why he didn't date rape anyone he just made some ehhh questionable choices but it all seems to fit into his character, at least, how he's personified in this tale.
I kinda like this 'everyone at university dorms' thing hmmm I might set a future story in the same setting. But for the time being, all these Tyler tales are rather independent from another. He's not gonna hoe around with every other member of the cast in the same universe.
