By the time fall of junior year rolled around, I was pretty over the house party scene. Two kegs supplying warm foamy beer to a jam-packed dark, dingy basement pumping enough bass to give someone arrhythmia has its appeal for a while, but the magic begins to fade over time. Being just a couple months shy of 21, most of my friends and I had fake IDs and frequented the unofficial “underage-friendly” bars when possible, limiting house party appearances to football game tailgates, the off weekend where a friend or younger sibling would come visit, and maybe the rare party my fraternity threw that sounded fun enough to go to. The frat house was a great place to have a party and me and some guys from my pledge class would make appearances for date parties with sororities, but we tended to avoid the more routine weekend gatherings.
A couple weeks into fall semester, rush season was coming to an end. Bids had been handed out and accepted and a large portion of our next chapter meeting was spent planning the party to welcome our new pledges. Adam had gotten a new DJ deck over the summer and was excited to try it out, Cooper volunteered his truck for the beer run, and I tried to slip out before I got assigned a responsibility that would tie me to the house. I wasn’t so lucky.