We No Speak Americano: Socializing

For, as I have re­cently re­flected, there are many ways back in Ed­in­burgh for an in­di­vid­ual to let off steam, in­clud­ing (but not lim­ited to) going to: a bar, club, pub, restau­rant, cin­ema, the­atre, com­edy show, mu­seum, art gallery, bowl­ing alley, laser quest, grave­yards (don’t ask), sex shows (please don’t ask) and ghost tours. Yes, peo­ple get their kicks pay­ing two men in fancy dress to take them into aban­doned cel­lars and scare the shit out of them.

My friend from uni­ver­sity re­cently came to stay, armed with noth­ing but a tooth­brush and a ruck­sack filled with heels. “Let’s hit the town!” she ex­claimed, rif­fling through my wardrobe in search of a cock­tail dress. I shook my head. “I don’t think you quite un­der­stood me prop­erly when we spoke the other day,” I told her, mak­ing her walk down to CVS with me. “This is the town.” She stood there in the car park, hands on hips, not look­ing im­pressed. “Ok. Fine. So what do Dart­mouth stu­dents do on a Fri­day night? En­lighten me.”

I made her change out of her stilet­tos and bondage dress into a pair of jeans and a very non-trea­sured t-shirt be­fore guid­ing her to Web­ster Av­enue. What hap­pened next is a mon­tage of Key­stone, pong, bod­ily flu­ids, cig­a­rette smoke, some se­ri­ous rag­ing, S&S, and the odd dog. If this were a movie, Burt Bacharach’s “Bond Street” would be the sound­track.

I can’t re­mem­ber the exact de­tails of that night, but I will never for­get my friend’s screams the next morn­ing over Skype to her mother. “Three men uri­nated in front of me, Mum! Three men!” I calmed her down by tak­ing her to brunch and se­dat­ing her with waf­fles.

Clearly the Greek scene here at Dart­mouth is the most promi­nent so­cial fea­ture, and will prob­a­bly be the pri­mary mem­ory of stu­dent life for those who have grad­u­ated. But I would like to sug­gest that there are other ways to spend your time — prob­a­bly not in the same way that stu­dents do at Ed­in­burgh, but still just as en­joy­able. Things like rent­ing as manymovies from Jonesas pos­si­ble, then watch­ing them with friends after down­ing a bot­tle of Yel­low­tail. Or going out for din­ner atThe Canoe Cluband pre­tend­ing that you have a bot­tom­less bank ac­count. Or eat­ing un­lim­ited sup­plies of bread and honey-but­ter at Molly’s. It’s purely co­in­ci­den­tal that all of these ideas in­volve deny­ing re­al­ity to a de­gree.

But nowhere in Ed­in­burgh is there a pond that freezes over nat­u­rally, where you can skate to your heart’s con­tent sur­rounded by na­ture, where you can play ice hockey with your friends, where you can glide across the ice and ob­serve in the dis­tance a mag­nif­i­cent sun­set, be­fore get­ting hit in the face by a rogue puck.