Vanity 6 - "Nasty Girl"

For one year, I attended Valparaiso University, a university that has an excellent reputation for many of its academic programs and as a bonus, is resoundingy Lutheran.  It even has a seminary school for future Lutheran clergy.   The school is located in the northwestern corner of Indiana, not far from Notre Dame or Lake Michigan, and one million miles away from any place I had ever known.

When I think back about my whole college-search, what sticks out at me now is that I really had no idea what I wanted to do.  I knew I wanted to get the hell out of Danbury, Connecticut, and whatever means to that end was okay with me.  I was really attracted to Emerson College in Boston, I loved being right in the heart of a city (not THE City, but a good one!) and some of the students had purple hair, which thrilled me, but horrified my mother. 

Ah, my mother.  Carol-Bee is a great lady and I have a ton of respect for her, but she was something of a bulldozer back then.  She knew what was best for me, and she thought that I had no idea what I was talking about when it came to my own wants, needs, dreams or desires.  I received a pretty decent discount to Valpo (as it is affectionately called) because my father was a principal of a Lutheran School.  Emerson offered no such thing, and since strange people were there anyway, my mother decided that I would go to Indiana instead of Boston. I agreed because she pretty much told me there was no way we could afford Emerson. I had visited the campus and got hammered with my friend from Immanuel, Cecil, who was there as a freshman AND I made out with a cute guy during a visiting weekend.  It seemed promising, and I had no other choice. It was about a 22 hour drive door-to-door, and in late August of 1986 my mother and sister delivered me to Kreinheder Hall, which would be my home for the next 10 months.

Kreinheder was an octagonal shaped building which meant two corner rooms were almost triangular.  My wing was One South - my window was above, to the right of where it says "Kreinheder Hall".  This was great for spying on people and being obnoxious.  One night my roommate and I would continually drop my screen down and beg a passerby to pick it up and hand it up to us.  As they were on their tiptoes and handing me the screen, my roommate would snap their photo and we would howl hysterically.  I know, but it was funny at the time, you had to be there.   

The majority of the girls on my floor (and the students in general) were from the suburbs of Chicago and were Lutheran, primarily of German/Scandinavian descent.  There were some oddballs like me from far flung places like CT or CA or TX, but we were rare.  So it was pretty homogeneous.

Midwesterners are a different breed of people from the Northeasterners.  I like to say that we New English types are reserved and might appear standoffish, but once you win us over we're loyal friends who will help you move and pick you up at the airport and tell you right away if you are trailing toilet paper from your shoe.  We won't bullshit you, once you are our friend. 

Midwesterners are super-friendly right out of the gate.  I can't tell you how many times I crossed the large grassy area of the campus everyone called "The Tundra" and someone would beam a big smile my way and say, "Hi!" and I would turn around to see if there was someone behind me they were greeting.  No, it was me.  I didn't understand this at all.  I never spoke to strangers.  One thing this freshman year did for me was help me be even more extroverted and outgoing.  For a long time after coming back to CT I would strike up conversations with EVERYBODY much to the puzzlement of whoever was with me.

Valpo was a "dry" campus which meant all the fraternity houses were "off campus" on Mound St.  The phrase, "Going down Mound" meant going to whatever frat house was having a party and drinking free beer, dancing, and maybe someday MEETING OUR HUSBAND.  OK just kidding about that last part, nobody's declaring an MRS. major their freshman year (except my roommate, who told me flat out that's why she was there, which shocked me). 

Every Friday night a bunch of us girls would start to get ready to go out "down Mound" and would play some music to get us fired up and ready for fun.  There were several songs employed for this purpose.

Dancing With Myself was a big one.  We'd dance in and out of the bathroom, up the hall and scream together after Billy's yowling "Sweat sweat SWEAT SWEAT SWEEEAAAT!".  We would also have very loud sing-alongs to Paradise By The Dashboard Lights, by Meat Loaf.  I could have picked these songs, or a few others for this post, but I picked "Nasty Girl" because it was the constant.  We innocent German/Scandinavian Lutheran girls - many of us still virgins - would sing this song about hookers (or at least we thought it was about hookers!) with GUSTO.  I find that sweetly ironic today.

Even better is a song on the second side of the cassette - "If A Girl Answers"...

That's Prince as Jimmy's new girlfriend, "That's because he was swallowing vitamin E, now he's swallowing me!"  We ALL knew this song by heart, and would run around rap-singing this one too, constantly. 

I still think of those girls on Kreinheder One South - the ones who were so friendly when they met me, who took me to their homes on the weekends and did silly things with me.  Especially Scuba, who helped me paper Kristin and Kirsten into their room with newspaper and duct tape while we were supposed to be studying for midterms.  Scuba also stole a shopping cart with me and pushed me down the road where all the professors lived. 

Scuba and I stole a sawhorse and snuck it into our dorm

One time, a few of us went into Chicago including our friend Jeff (who was my East Coast Buddy from MA) and we broke into Soldier Field setting off an alarm, causing us to run like lunatics and hide in the Field Museum of Natural History until we felt safe enough to leave, laughing hysterically the whole time.

My year at Valparaiso was one of the hardest years in my life.  I was pining for a guy back home who was moving on, I was drinking far more than anybody else around me, I was gaining weight hand over fist because of the drinking and late night pizzas.  My grades were plummeting. I had gotten very drunk at a party and someone who I thought was a friend forced himself on me (now they call that date-rape...back then unless someone jumped out at you in a ski mask with a knife, it was YOUR FAULT if something like this happened, because you were drunk, stupid or "leading him on". Yeah.  I know.) and I didn't know what to do with that except take the party line and blame myself. I was blackballed from a fraternity for spilling a glass of Jack Daniels on myself and then wiping my hands on the back of a brother's white button down shirt.  I was cut from the only sorority I wanted to join during Rush.  I stopped going to class, started smoking crappy Illinois-grown pot and sneaking Jack Daniels in 2 liter bottles of Pepsi.  I sat in the TV lounge in thermal long johns (the only pants I had left that still fit me) and would watch almost 4 hours straight of soap operas.  I had realized that I had no idea who I was or what I wanted, that I was there because my parents wanted me to be there, and I didn't really belong.  I was on the wrong path, and didn't even know what the right path was supposed to be, I felt trapped. I lost all my Faith in God or anything good.  I changed roommates thinking that would help, since my roommate had no problem showing her disdain for my lifestyle choices.  I considered suicide. 

Finally, I called my mother and tearfully told her I needed to drop out.  At first she said no way, but she must have heard desperate insanity in my intense sobbing and she agreed to come get me.  Three weeks before finals, I packed her car with whatever stuff I hadn't sold or given away and rode all the way back to CT on top of my things while she and my grandfather took turns glaring at me in the rear view mirror for 26 hours.  To drop out of college was the ultimate failure.  I came from a family of educators, education was one of the most cherished values, and here I was, throwing my whole life away at age almost-19.  Now what would I do?

I didn't know. I did know, however, that it wasn't the school's fault.  There was something really wrong with ME. 

"Nasty Girl" reminds me of the fun I had, the girls who made me laugh, and of course, the me I was before I was challenged, and crumpled before the challenge.