It was early spring, and I had already spent a weary hour headed back up to Hanover on the Dartmouth Mini Coach from Logan Airport. There was an attractive young woman seated next to me dressed in a large men's ski jacket and baseball cap. Her face spoke of months of boredom. In the seat to the other side of her was a talkative gentleman, a senior and an obviously vain man. To alleviate the weary ride, I listened in on the gentleman's conversation as he spoke to his comrade in the back about his winter term. The focus, of course, was on the campus social scene.
Every weekend started as soon as Friday classes ended. The talkative gentleman would fill his stomach at Thayer accompanied by the USA Today Sports section and ESPN in the TV room. And then it was straight home for a two hour nap. He would awake more refreshed and alive than any other time in the week and head over to Alumni gym. He would lose himself in two hours of sweaty, shirts-off basketball, always careful to spot the specifics of the female fauna running on the track above him.
Back home, he would sit down to Sega College Football and music. Thoughts focused on women and only women. The opposite sex were to be the driving force for the next 48 hours, or at least until homework hit around 3 PM on Sunday.
As the talkative gentleman related his tale, I could tell that the woman next to me grew increasingly agitated. I was sure that her idea of a night out during the weekend was an entirely different experience than was presently being related.
The gentleman's tale soon changed from the narrative to the philosophical. For him, a successful weekend was all about apprehension of the woman. However, a thousand variables determined success, most of them uncontrollable. So the gentleman insisted that the best method was to not look for women but to let them come to him. The guys that get the most women are the ones that look the most interested in having a good time with their beer and their buddies. His mate in the back agreed but added that a man should also appear approachable.
I could tell that the woman was overdue for a response. "Ah, why don't you creatures of nature just ask a woman out on a date? If you ask me, you guys are pigs," spitted forth the woman in near disgust. There was a moment of silence from the talkative gentleman and his mate as they both looked at each other in a mix of surprise and disbelief. To the gentleman the answer should have been obvious to all.
Dating was never done at Dartmouth. In fact, he could boast that he had not gone out on a date in over two years, and would not embark on one until after graduation. "If you had to date a woman, she was high maintenance," he said. To him, the perfect woman was the one that would arrive circa midnight, warmed by a couple beers, at the fraternity of choice.
The woman responded in silent anger and sat with her arms crossed looking out the window in my direction. The talkative gentleman took little note and continued with his narrative. At the house he would send out "feelers" over e-mail which were nothing more than short, terse invites to prospective women to stop by their fraternal lair later that night.
As the crowds of student arrived at the party, the gentleman, with his back to the wall, always took careful notice of which females had ventured forth. When the dance floor was full, the gentleman and his friends were ready. They would jig onto the dance floor and circle like birds of prey through the horde of female fauna. The gentleman paused at this point to inform his mate of the key items to look for while on the dance floor hunt. "First, if any women dance without males nearby then they are inviting targets. Second, though I admit this does not make complete logical sense, any women wearing bright colors or stand-out clothing were to be watched closely." According to the talkative gentleman, bright colors in the animal kingdom signify courtship, so naturally the women dressed in exotic attire were seeking a male dance partner.
Often however, the gentleman and his friends would emerge from their circling of the dance floor empty handed. Upstairs, in frustration over their unsuccessful hunt, a sometime violent frenzy would break out. The gentleman and his buddies would chase each other around like a pack of dogs, slamming their bodies and fists into walls, breaking windows and throwing beer.
"But the beauty of the berserker rage", described the gentleman with a satisfied smile, "is that sometimes you stumble into dancing with a woman. Just when you are not looking for it, she appears before you out of a mass of bodies. The motto then is that you take what is given to you."
The woman lost control. She elbowed the talkative gentleman next to him, and wondered aloud how the two of them had ever dated! Before I could exclaim my surprise, the gentleman offered his retort. "Women may say what they may about the social scene here at Dartmouth, but the fact remains that most Dartmouth women still operate within the school's culture," he said. "Women still go to fraternities, and though none may vocally agree, most of them are looking for the same things as the men." The truth of the talkative gentleman's words brokered a long silence in the coach, and I did not add my own two cents to the controversy in a hope that the cold peace between man and woman might endure the rest of the trip.
