I think we’ve all seen those commercials for Las Vegas. Lots of pretty, generic-looking women, decked out in ankle-breaking heels and sequined dresses. You know the ones. Groups of Jersey Shore rejects dancing to top 40 songs, drinking Malibu, and pretending that they’re having a wild and crazy experience. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas they say, pretending for just a minute that they’re not going to spray this all over Instagram the second their hangover let’s them look at their phones again. This is the time of your life! Aren’t you wild! they say.
Those ads are bullshit. If you want to see some wild crap, spend a weekend in the woods with the raging freak-show that is a Purdue Outing Club reunion or, POC for short. I’ve spend three such weekends with these loveable weirdos, and let me tell you, they’re one David Attenborough voice-over from something you’d see on Discovery channel. And I mean that in the best way possible.
* The names of people have been omitted because, let’s face it, your mom probably doesn’t want to know that you ate an Oreo out of your boyfriend’s butt crack (note: this was not me).
**What, did you think I was fucking kidding when I said these weekends we’re debaucherous? POC don’t play around when it comes to truth or dare.
When I think of my undoing that weekend, it all comes back to a single contraption, brought to the party by an endearingly sadistic POC-er. Picture a hastily-made miniature wheel of fortune in which the only outcomes are either increased alcohol consumption, or public humiliation. You know, like playing russian roulette with a fully loaded gun. It’s fun.
The evening started off innocuously enough, with a fully-nude hot tub session in which we managed to cram 15 grown-ass adults into a single tub. I’ve never been entirely sure where the propensity for nudity came from at POC reunions, but it’s safe to say that anybody who has attended one has been subject to at least one accidentally seen asshole. Or, as might be the case from my first POC reunion, the asshole you’re trying not to stare into like the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings, is being intentionally displayed for your viewing pleasure. My precioussssssssss…..
Anyway.
The night began to unspool in an endless stream of drinks, laughter, magical hamburgers, and spin after spin on the drink-wheel-0f-torture/fun. People swirl in and out of the room. Another hot-tub session is instigated. A man takes a naked lap around the house in the snow. Then a woman does the same. Shots are taken off of previously-unthought of body parts. The man that I love shotguns a beer like a champ. People cheer. Clothes are swapped and then swapped again until the women in the room look like Tom-Boy children and the men strut around the room in skin-tight yoga pants. I laugh until tears stream down my face and I cannot breathe. Everyone in the room is hysterically, and unendingly funny.
The next day we’ll get up and hike to a lookout high above the verdant Washington forrest. We’ll sit around eating cold leftover hamburgers as our hangovers leach out of us into the cool Washington air. That night we’ll do it all again. On Monday we’ll ski, making lap after lap through the powder which barely conceals the blue ice, working feverishly for a few good turns each run, and raucously cheering on our fellow skiers from the chairlift in a way that is hilarous only to us.
On Tuesday morning I’ll return to Los Angeles where people will ask me how my weekend was. I’ll say it was fine. Fun. We went skiing. The askers will smile in a vague sort of way and the conversation will move on. In truth, I barely have the words to explain these POC reunions. I’m stuck relying on a phrase, drunkenly uttered into the dark amongst friends and half-strangers in a hot tub. It’s like a dumpster-fire of joy.
