The House Of Heat

They were the best of times, they were... I think they were the best, hell if I remember. Today marks move-in day at ASU, the first day the dorms are open for thousands of wide-eyed, hormone-filled 18 year-olds. It's important for these n00bs to get socially acclimated and to network, because ASU is a big place and it's easy to get lost in the fold. (a VTech joke is tempting, but not now)

During my beer bong-filled days in Tempe, our fraternity set the standard for these bashes, commonly called pre-school parties. The prefix "pre" indicating that it happened before school started, not that we dressed in diapers and drank out of sippy-cups, you sick fuck. (can't wait to see what pervs google brings to this site now) On move-in day, our brotherhood "volunteered" our services to help these poor young folks move their crap into their state-issued cells, and as an additional service to them we extended a warm welcome into our home, but only after their parents left.

We then proceeded to Osco, the best stop for wicked-cheap domestic beer. Of all the rules we broke, the only one we always managed to follow was the no-keg rule. Still baffles me. Osco usually had one of the lowest rung beers absurdly cheap- Red Dog, Icehouse, Keystone Light, Milwaukee's Best. Multiple brothers with pickup trucks and SUV's caravanned around town to several Osco's, buying their entire stock of whatever was on special. We always skipped Jerry's Drive-Thru because no matter how much beer we got ahead of time, we always had to make another run around 11 pm and that was the closest stop.

We would unload everything back at the house into our galvanized horse trough and crank the stereo. Kids would start flowing through the door in no time flat, and if the numbers weren't good enough we'd go dormstorming. The Manzy smoke circle was usually a good place to find kids looking to get fucked up, and several of those kids became fraternity brothers. The cops usually showed up at 2 am to break the thing up, but by then over 1,000 people (no shit) had come and gone and we were out of free beer anyway.

These parties were home to some of the most outlandish things I've ever seen, and I've been to Bonaroo. Naked girls dancing on tables, two-story beer bongs, fistfights, crowdsurfing, and a close friend of mine had sex with three chicks at the same time (didn't even have a million dollars). If anyone reading this came and had a good time, you're welcome. I hope you got laid. We would clean up the empty cups and cans with a pushbroom and drink our private stashes of booze until dawn.

The south campus landscape has drastically changed since our reign- and we did reign, if only for one week per year- but where do the kids go now? The fraternity houses are gone, so are the n00bs having keggers in the dorms? Secret house parties? ASU Resedential Life went so far as to ban solicitation during move-in thanks to us, so how do you find these soirees? ASU slipped from Playboy's #1 to #3 party school after I left town, is this why? With an already weak Greek system and a president that frowns on that sort of thing, how do people get involved in the scene? Fake ID machines or something? I guess I am truly out of touch.

In honor of this glorious holiday, I'm drinking ferociously and watching PCU, trying to vicariously relive the glory days of partydom. If you're an undergrad and reading this, ru away from the computer, find a bum to buy you some booze, find a chick, and get ripped together until your clothes fall off. It's the one true Sun Devil tradition.

Labels: anecdotal evidence, drugs, I miss college, I'm a big fatass