Frat House

I have to tell you about last Friday night.

We were going to a place which I had only heard about through friends, their voices embroidered with excitement and awe as they spoke of it. It was a mansion, it was a club, it was a bar, it was where you would lose yourself, lose your friends, find yourself, find your soul-mate, follow your dreams…! The nights always culminated in some sort of hysteria and elated ruin, chance encounters initiated through a haze of vodka mixers and chart-toppers. It was The Madison, or, as everyone dubbed it: The Maddy.

“You’ve NEVER BEEN to the MADDY?!” were the squeals I was met with when I explained it to the girls. It was the birthday of one of my old intern friends at Audio Blood — we were sitting on the floor of her studio basement apartment, nattering through lulls in the tamest game of Never Have I Ever (broken a bone; shoplifted; broken up via text). The girls told me I was in for the night of my life. There were so many different levels to the house: a piano bar, an attic, a dance floor, several bars, a multitude of patios… it was a labyrinth of drunken potential. Every girl who had been there had some point or another met a doctor who was most definitely the man of their dreams. I was guaranteed by them, it would be a night to remember.

The Maddy was on a leafy street, just on the closing corner of some residential road intersected with a bustling flow of late-night traffic. The building was enormous, a line of people snaking outside. Next door, announced by a trio of Greek characters painted upon a wooden sign, was a frat house. A real life frat house!, I squeaked to myself.

Inside, as expected, we lost people. In turn, I found my favourite part of the establishment: the piano bar. I had previously been told that, Oh My God, You Will Fall In Love With The Piano Guy. I caught the tinkling of ivories through a haze of rum-soaked roars, and before I could turn the corner, I already pictured — quite unrealistically — some young thing, flippable mousy brown hair, the strong curve of a melodic jaw, dressed in an immaculate, matte tuxedo. In reality, it was an ageing, weathered man, held together by a sweat-stained t-shirt, a rogue smile on his face as he played through Elton John’s ‘Crocodile Rock’. I befriended a large guy with a face like the benevolent climax of the lunar phases, who would turn to me intermittently and exclaim, “WELCOME TO THE MADDY!” We yelled our way through Bohemian Rhapsody.

It seemed like the lights went up only moments after I entered the mansion. Where to next? I was buzzing after several drinks. I felt a friendly grab on my arm: “We’re going to the frat party,” she said.

George was apparently an honorary member of the frat, a six-foot-something blonde with a large nose and an arm that would hook around any slender waist within his proximity. He had invited us to this rickety old house, boasting long corridors lined with bolted doors, black-and-white photographs of men in blazers and pinned lapels, the halls brimming full of testosterone and snap-backs. Our group of girls dispersed into smaller adventure camps, and we explored the house.

The rooms were eerily devoid of furniture for the most part. There was beer pong in the lounge, dancing in the dim darkness of the basement, conversation and cigarettes on the patio upstairs, where one of our own promptly poured a whole solo cup of beer down another’s top, which was apparently quite funny, and then, not very funny at all. I was standing on the wooden patio, an arm around a guy whose clean haircut and soft sweater reminded me of a shorter version of Drake. I wandered downstairs and came across a man who obviously was the poor, omega-male of the house: short and skinny with dark circles around his eyes, an awfully sweet disposition. His name was Richard, and so we called him Little Richard. His attempt at flirting with the birthday girl was promptly shut down as he asked, standing nose-to-nose, whether she liked bad guys or good guys.

“Good guys,” Sarah said, firm yet polite. “Now kiss me on the forehead.”

I later found a room that branched off from the main frat corridor, two guys sitting on a couch, listening to their own mixtape, snorting lines of cocaine through rolled-up dollar bills. The “rapper” was thin, bloodshot-eyed and swamped by his sweater. He tried on several attempts to begin a freestyle, and stuttered and halted each time. “Nah, nah, nah, wait…”

I didn’t wait. I took a box of Pringles that had been sitting on the coffee table and wandered into a secret kitchen, offering one to everybody in the new room. I met a guy in a green shirt and red shorts, with a backpack strapped so tightly round his shoulders he resembled some sort of entry-level Pokemon trainer. His name was Tiberius, and he was cooking pizza. He whipped out a Margherita from the oven next to him, and offered me a slice. I accepted it, and he started to tell me about how he was an exotic dancer.

“I was gonna give your birthday friend a lap dance,” he said, as we walked out of the kitchen, pizza slices in hand, “but she went away somewhere. Anyway, would you like a tour of the house?” 

A tour of the house! Lovely! I agreed, with genuine curiosity. Naturally, he started things down in the basement.

The room was lined with couches which had been pushed back for dancing, but no-one was down there anymore. Some light was provided by the vending machine in the corner which sold Pabst Blue Ribbon. Tiberius asked if I wanted a lap dance. I was horrendously amused by the thought of this, and accepted, again, with genuine curiosity.

What proceeded was probably the most peculiar ten minutes of my life.

Tiberius had me lie lengthways on one of the couches, like some sort of therapy patient. I still had my pizza in hand, which he took and placed up on a cushion. He then took off his shirt, lifted himself up on to the couch on top of me and gave me the full, undulating pelvic thrusts of a Magic Mike sequel. I had my hand on my mouth but it didn’t stifle the laughter.

“This is so weird!” I would bray every so often, which didn’t seem to temper but probably undermined Tiberuis’ concentrated efforts to turn this into Lap Dance 2.0. He then retreated, swivelled me round to a seated position, and grabbed my ankles and hoisted them up so that my knees were by my ears. This was super uncomfortable mostly because I was wearing really tight skinny jeans, which weren’t really allowing for much mobility. More weird motions.

“You’re so flexible,” he observed in the pitch-black. I think I croaked a thanks, while beginning to wonder if it were actually possible to be choked by your own pelvis.

The experience was hilariously intriguing, but I was getting bored and was starting to wonder where the rest of the party was at. Thankfully, just as I’d had enough, someone wandered in to grab a beer from the vending machine. I jumped up, something falling on my shoulder as I did: the half-eaten slice of pizza.

Starting back upstairs, I looked around: where was the party at? Why was everyone leaving? It was about half past four in the morning, I realised. Probably time to go home. I called the girls and let them know that I was fine, and jumped in a taxi after saying goodnight to George and company.

Things I learned from that night:

The Maddy is fun.

Frat parties are not entirely full of assholes, but almost completely full of men trying to get into your pants.

If he says he’s a stripper, he probably is a stripper, but it doesn’t mean he’s a good stripper.

If he wants to give you a tour of the house, he doesn’t want to give you a tour of the house.

If he wants to give you a lap dance, he probably also doesn’t really want to give you a lap dance.

Pizza will never disappoint.