Page 219 - WhyAsInY

you Can taKe tHe Boy out of BrooKlyn
The results of both the road trip and import strategies would improve after freshman year (getting older, belonging to a fraternity, where girls were allowed into the rooms, and having a car all helped), and I would start dating Smithies and Mount Holyoke girls in earnest. As I recall it, however, nothing much improved until the first summer, a time when I could really impress by wearing my Amherst jacket and being older than the girls I dated.
The social bust that was the freshman year reached its zenith when the biggest of party weekends arrived and I was dateless. This was a very frustrating experience, as by then I had joined Phi Gamma Chi, and the weekend was famous for being the steamy high point of the year, a true celebration of the rites of spring. Phi Gam, for example, was known for its Fiji Island party, where costumes were scant and rum punch was potent and plentiful. Virtually everyone else, it seemed, had a date.
How to turn this losing state of affairs to something resembling a win, albeit a slim one? Well, I knew that there would be so many dates staying in Amherst (even Smith and Holyoke permitted overnights that weekend, waiving their normal “blue card” rules) that Morrow Dormi- tory would have to be used to provide additional rooms for the young ladies. Thus, to add insult to injury, the administration imposed a two- day evacuation of what had become my home. I had learned that the practice of putting girls in the dorm would classically be responded to by such mature gestures as placing bouquets in the urinals or leaving a certain fruit on the beds. While I might have thought those responses to be clever, I believed that something new and more tasteful was in order. Accordingly, on the Friday morning that was in effect Erev Spring Weekend, I organized the successful removal and hiding of every set of Venetian blinds that had theretofore covered the windows of the soon- to-be newly occupied rooms. This was, of course, met with universal approval, except it seems by the Dean’s Office. The administration offered a “no questions asked” amnesty if the blinds were to be returned in a timely fashion. I’m not sure that I recall the other choice that was afforded to the unnamed miscreants, but, feeling that the joke had been sufficiently made, I let the dorm advisors know where the vanity shields
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