Breaks during freshman and sophomore years of college are more regressions back to high school selves than visits with old friends.
But once you hit junior and senior year, your body has made a pretty strong distinction between living at home sneaking alcohol from your parent's liquor stash, and being a college-aged adult who can comfortably drunk dial Mom and Dad and not get
grounded.
This normal part of growing up makes hanging out with high school friends particularly odd as an upperclassman, especially if you're like me and your parents fled the state between your sophomore and junior years.
Suddenly, your best friends - who just a few years back could tell you exactly how many times your crush passed you in the hall on any particular day - don't even know who you're sleeping with anymore.
Then you find yourself on some random weekend back in the town you left behind, catching up on the numbers: number of lays, number of good lays and number of lays we have left before other girls are justified in calling us whores.
A few weeks ago, Rachel, one of my best friends from high school, was in Milwaukee for the weekend. She had spent the summer in California and the semester interning in D.C., so it had been a while since she had spent a significant chunk of time in the city. Same went for me, since my family no longer lives there.
I decided to drive up for a night and take the old hometown by storm with my best bud. In high school, we used to spend our weekend evenings on Brady Street, a hip 20-something area on the East Side lined with bars and coffee shops. While in high school, we would jump from coffee shop to coffee shop until we were so high on caffeine that we named the fetus on the side of the abortionmobile Lulu.
But this time, halfway between the Brady Street socialist-turned-poet and the cement lion that seems to edge closer and closer toward the street every time we see him, we had a realization. We were 21. We could go to bars.
Going to bars with someone you used to drive around with a probationary license is a little strange. You find yourselves showing off your adulthood to each other. Like having a drink of choice, being able to wear a strapless shirt without having to adjust it every 25 seconds and remembering to shave your pits regularly.
Then, of course, there's the flirting. Nothing says
I'm a big girl now"" better than having the skills to keep a guy interested through conversation alone without cheap tricks like sucking on your fingers, swirling your straw with your tongue or flashing him a boob. Not both, just one - you can't give it all up right away.
Two college-aged guys had approached Rachel and me, and we had each been involved in separate conversations with each of them until I felt Rachel tug on my arm.
""We have to go. Now,"" she said, pulling me aside.
""What's wrong? What happened?"" I asked, worried.
""Oh, not much, except he was telling me about his experience in the Army. As a prison guard. At Guantanamo Bay.""
""What? We have to go back!"" I yelled, the journalist in me taking over. I fiddled around in my purse for my notebook and pen.
""No! Are you crazy? Do you know how many human rights that douchebag probably violated?""
That would be an excellent headline, I thought - ""Local bar-hopper drunk on human rights violations.""
However, due to my friend's clear discomfort with the whole situation, I agreed to go home. During the drive back, as we noted the changes that had overtaken Milwaukee in the past three years, I realized that the changes we go through from adolescent to adult are minor in comparison to what stays the same.
Rachel will always be the girl who is almost impossible to impress, therefore provoking just about anyone to pour out their darkest secrets in an attempt to earn some kind of reaction from her.
And me, I'll always be waiting at the other end of the bar, my phone or the computer, counting on her for a good story.
If you want to brag to Kiera about your body count, e-mail her at wiatrak@wisc.edu.
