patrick gallagher
contributor

As a senior, I have recently found myself imbued with certain privileges.  These include those, which one would expect, that is, the typical accoutrements of graduation triumph; among
these, may I include the extremely smart and fashionable graduation smocks that Wesleyan has designed for us, with their shrieking red hue.  For sheer vibrance, the red of these glorious
smocks echoes not only the plumage of the Cardinal itself, but also the cry with which the desert air reverberates when the Vulture plunges down upon the putrescent flesh of the
recently dead.  If there is one way that I would characterize all Wesleyan students, given their habit of concealing self-interest in its basest forms behind smiles and friendship, it would
definitely be a crew of scavenging Vultures disguised as sweetly singing Cardinals.  This year’s chirpy red smocks are, therefore, the perfect smocks for the occasion, in every sense the
smocks that each of us deserves.

The preceding are among the observations that occur to me as I twirl about before my mirror in my new smock, my college graduation smock, verily, the fluorescent red smock toward
which my whole life up until this point has led.  Naturally, I feel a certain anxiety; after taking off this smock, what will I have to wear that could possibly adequately follow it?  A
raincoat?  A shirt?  At a loss, friends, I am at a loss. 

Fortunately, however, the waning of the year provides those of us whose smocks await at the end of the month with a thoroughly disorienting swirl of food and alcoholic drink, served
up to us in binge amounts.   This is intended to inoculate seniors of any and all emotions that they might possibly feel in their last few weeks before the big "Smock Walk" down Andrus
Field.  I got a chance to stuff my face in the trough earlier today, for example, at the official Reception for Seniors, Faculty and Support Staff of the Departments of Government,
Economics, and Sociology.  As I suggested earlier, the end of the year offers seniors privileges whose luxuriance exceeds even that of our shimmeringly, flamingly "redrageous"
graduation smocks.  Of these honors, the Departmental Receptions are surely first among equals.

Following class today, I shot directly home and started pounding tequila shots.  Despite my lack of salt, limes, or, for that matter, any non-tequila foodstuffs to muffle the burn of the
drink, I persisted.  It is, after all, well known that Departmental Receptions do not serve alcohol. The greatest pleasure of Receptions is mingling, however, and the presence of my peers
tends to trouble and disturb me. So I resolved to get my drink on before the shindig commenced.  Besides, I heard somewhere that people hook up in the bathrooms during these
Departmental Receptions, and nothing brings out the "Rico Suavé" in a gringo quite like good ol‚ Señor Cuervo. 

Psyched to get my groove on, I rolled up to the Reception fashionably late, say, fifteen minutes past showtime. I coolly avoided eye contact with people I knew, making a B-line directly
to the buffet.  When this guy next to me in line asked me why I was still wearing my sunglasses, even though I was inside, I kept with the Mexican motif and replied, "No hablo Español",
which means "I do not speak Spanish," and then I told him to suck it.  The exchange could have escalated further, into a full-fledged mano-a-mano "Run for the Border" showdown.  But
our faces were so stuffed with brie, finger sandwiches, crackers, fresh-baked cookies, strawberries, honeydew– , and watermelons that neither of us could have opened our mouths
without risking a serious breach of etiquette. 

After a while, I had consumed so many hors d‚oeurves that I felt as though my brain were filled with nitrous oxide.  It was probably the lack of oxygen that had done it.  In any case, all
that I could see after a few minutes was a white light that seemed to hum somehow, and all that I could hear was my mother’s voice, calling me to come in from the sandbox as the sky
above me darkened for a downpour of rain.

When I came to, I lay on the floor, my head hidden beneath the cloth of the buffet table.  I felt like a cross between Marcello Mastroianni at the end of 81/2 and some stupid chump who
is about to graduate from college.  After I got up, though, I set straight to the work of mingling.  What an opportunity it was, to discuss career hopes and exchange reminiscences of
particularly brutal in-class discussion confrontations.  A professor and I exchanged a laugh over the time that I declared an in-class "Food Fight" after he asked me, point-blank, whether
I had actually read a book that I had earlier referred to as "a cancer on American intellectual life."  Later, a former classmate asked me if she had made a positive impression during class
discussion, I said she had, and she asked me if I had any more tequila.  I said I had left it at home.  After that, we talked about Peronism until the catering guys came through with another
plate of cheese, at which point we gorged ourselves for twenty minutes. "Food Fights," class discussion, tequila, Peronism, and antisocial self-indulgence, one last time before we don
the smocks and walk the plank. 

Rather than hooking up in the bathroom, though, I ended up taking a good, long poop.  What a satisfying poop it was, though; I had a sense of the American Dream, of having made a
journey successfully, of having gotten from "Point A" to "Point B." If "Point A" was that time freshman year when I pooped on my roommate’s bed during an alcoholic blackout, then
this poop was certainly "Point B," or "Poop B," if you will.  The difference was, this time, I had not drunk enough to lose memory.

NEXT TIME IN "DAWN OF THE DEAD": Argus columnist Patrick Gallagher does lines of cocaine off the torso of an official Senior Week 2001© crack whore.