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“What’s that?”
“A study of the frat houses. A part of my American experience, no? We can make a little tour. This Saturday. You can be my guide.”
“Only if you let me take you to tea at Martha Cook the next week. I want your research to be well-rounded – you have to see that it’s not allAnimal House.”
Nao Kao laughed.
“Okay, you have a deal.”
On Saturday, we made for the big houses that lined State Street, their front yards littered with red solo cups, a keg or two propped inconspicuously in the corner of the porches, beer pong tables taking pride of place on the lawn.
Blue and Shaggy and Eminem echoed past the mattresses lining the walls from inside, a mostly futile attempt to keep the racket contained. By the end of the night, he could sing the lyrics toYou Shook Me All Night LongandBrown Eyed Girl, so many times did those particular songs ring out.
“So, the bathrooms, Nao Kao, I didn’t mention those before. The toilets are ringed with black, the sinks are gray with filth, honestly, not washing your hands seems cleaner than touching any part of the sink. And soap, in my experience, didn’t even factor into the equation. There was none!”
“But other than that, you had no complaints?”
“If you’re asking whether there’s any paper, you have to remember to grab napkins from the bar.”
“Didn’t think about paper. I’m a guy,” he laughed. “Besides, you always have to supply your own paper in Laos.”
“Did I tell you about the girl who lived next door to me freshman year?”
“I don’t think so.”
“She used to stumble home every Sunday morning. When she was hungover, Catherine and I would hear her rummaging in her purse for her room key. When she was drunk, sometimes she’d bang on our door instead!”
He laughed again, these tales as much part of his “research” as witnessing firsthand the finest young minds in America, as he put it, reduced to heaving in the bushes.
“She lost her underwear once.”
“Say that again.”
“You heard correctly. You can use your imagination as to how. A lacy, black thong.”
Nao Kao inhaled sharply, his research having taken an unexpected turn.
“And?”
“And she found it hanging on the house trophy board the next week.”
“That’s – that’s – wow! I don’t even know what to say.”
“How about, ‘thank you, Liss, for enlightening me about an aspect of American higher education I otherwise would have missed?’”
Under the orange glow of a streetlight, Nao Kao merely pulled me to him and kissed me, the sounds ofCeciliareverberating from one of the Greek houses behind us as he ran his hands along the arch of my spine to my haunches, his thumbs hooked into my belt loops.
The relevance of the lyrics – the original lover leaving momentarily only to return to find another in his place – penetrated my guilty conscience.
I shivered.
At the other end of the spectrum, I took Nao Kao for tea at Martha Cook.
Oh, Martha Cook! That jewel of a dorm, pride of place across from the president’s home. That tremendous hall of leaded glass and vaulted ceilings, the stone floor that gives a satisfying clack under the heels of so many girls on their way to dinner or, later, out to the bar. That cold, stone hall is such a contrast to the lush, sun-drenched rooms that open onto it, with their ornate gold and red furnishings, plush carpets, towering fireplaces, and a Steinway to make Mozart marvel.
On Fridays, that Steinway was the backdrop for afternoon tea, a ritual leftover from the days when William Cook gifted the building to the university in the hope that ladies of fine upbringing and finer tastes (also read: rich) would make suitable wives for the law students living in the law school dormitory an arm’s length away. On Fridays, the dining hall staff turned out silver-plated trays of blueberry scones and lemon bars, truffle brownies and cucumber sandwiches, miniature quiches and filo-dough delicacies. The centerpiece, always, was the great, rococo silver teapot, a resident seated primly to either side, ready with a creamy porcelain cup to be placed under the spout from which tumbled steaming amber liquid, earl gray or English breakfast, lavender, mint, or lemon.
I might not have been a model resident during the years I called it home, but the weekly tea, an opportunity to lounge like cats, and gossip like them too, in the plushness of the gold room was not to be missed.
