During my five-year college reunion in May, I snuck into my old
fraternity house, which at the time was being used as some sort of
community service dorm. As I wandered about taking pictures, a
student approached and asked politely, “Excuse me, who are you?”
Instinctively, I turned around and yelled menacingly, “Who the fuck
are YOU?” The girl scurried off, but the incident made me
introspective. Here I am, twenty-seven-years old, with a relatively
successful career, regular car insurance payments, and pillowcases
that match my comforter. Yet at the same time, I can’t drink one beer
without drinking twenty, I can’t converse with a girl without trying
to take her home, and I can’t even step foot in a fraternity house
without immediately regressing into an asshole. While college is many
years behind me, vestiges of the experience remain deeply ingrained in
my personality. Welcome to the world of a recovering frat boy.
Of course, I’m not the only one. There’s an entire faction of
twentysomethings out there who live seemingly mature lives – but only
to the naked eye. Take my friend Mike, a successful software
developer in New York whose downtown apartment has actually been
passed down for years to successive generations of graduates from his
fraternity like an off-campus party house. Or my buddy Justin, a
writer here in LA who is looking to
move to a new place – but has yet to find one big enough to fit his
beer pong table. Unfortunately for him, “Hardwood floor quickly soaks
up cheap beer” is generally not an amenity typically found on
craigslist.
Recovering frat boys aren’t required to have ever been Greek. In
fact, they don’t even have to be boys. On average, every other Evite
I received from girls over the past year has been for some sort of
elaborate, costume/theme party that reminds me of sophomore year. If
you’re a strong, independent woman in her mid-twenties who is still
throwing parties entitled Pimps & Hos, Forties & Hos, or Golf Pros &
Tennis Hos, you are most definitely a recovering frat boy. Dressed
like a whore.
To me, the phrase, “Let’s grab a drink” is both the rallying cry and
secret password of the recovering frat boy movement. For some reason,
no one uses that phrase until they’ve graduated college, and then they
use it so frequently it becomes virtually devoid of meaning. If you
really think about it, you only actually grab a drink with about 10%
of the people you say that to. Of that 10%, most think you literally
want to have a solitary cocktail and exchange pleasantries or discuss
current events (these people are often married or lawyers). The
remainder – who you quickly recognize as kindred spirits – take “grab
a drink” to mean “play beer pong and find that party where chicks are
dressed as hos.”
Why is it, then, that so many of us, whether subconsciously or not,
have adopted this quasi-Peter Pan lifestyle? These days, it’s no
longer, “I won’t grow up.” It’s more like, “OK, I’ll grow up, as long
as I can still throw up once a weekend.” I think the answer is
simple: because we can. The world is changing. Getting married in
your twenties is no longer the norm – in fact, those unfortunate souls
who do are now outcasts, scorned
and shunned, spit on and kicked to the side of the road by the rest of
us single folk. And that means we now have more time to live our
lives the way we want to and, most importantly, have evolved the
ability to do so while still excelling in the adult world. People ask
me all the time how long I can continue calling myself a recovering
frat boy. Those people are usually sober and annoying. And my
response is always the same: “Who the
fuck are you?”
–
Trammell
