It was April. Our last month as students at the University of Michigan. Feeling a bit sentimental, the three of us (myself, my twin brother Reuben and Danny the East Quad comedian) decided to have a little adventure.
- Paul Wong
- Ben Goldstein
“But what kind of adventure?” Reuben and I asked simultaneously, as we have a habit of doing.
“Photo scavenger hunt!” Danny shouted, quickly scribbling down a list of quirky people, places and things. It was a pitifully lame idea, but we decided to humor him, knowing that we’d surely ditch him at some point during the day. We grabbed some disposable cameras from the pile in the closet, hopped on our razor scooters and took off. One final thrill ride. For friendship. For freedom. For the Maize and Blue, God damn it.
Things started out smoothly. Here are some of the things we found:
“A sorority girl” – Danny found one running down Washtenaw with a water bottle in one hand and vomit in the other.
“A GEO member who barely speaks English” – Cheating a bit, Reuben met up with his girlfriend, Math 115 GSI Xian-Xian Wen, who was in the Arb marveling at obese squirrels.
“Jesse Jackson” – On the steps of the grad library, talking to Agnes Aleobua. Aleobua was cutting a fine figure in her Levi’s Engineered Jeans and “Michigan Vaginas” T-shirt. I took their photo and ran.
“Ben and Reuben’s father” – The corner of State and Huron, of course. Me and my bro snapped him at the same time, the camera flashes giving the poor man intense Vietnam/acid flashbacks.
“The ugliest possible human beings” – Danny got a truly repugnant shot of Dave Guipe and James Yeh, making out with each other outside of NYPD, ziti and pizza sauce smeared obscenely on their ample breasts and greasy faces.
That’s about when me and Reuben ditched Danny, who is pretty much used to it by now and didn’t seem to care. So we were just cruising around, and guess who I spy with my little eye at the Diag among the drug dealers and protestors but Rolf, that son-of-a-Canadian-whore international student I had been trying to get even with for some time. He was chatting with crooked Metro Detroit Modeling “talent scout” Jack Torse. “Get a few good shots of this,” I said to Reuben.
I walked over to Rolf and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around. “I am the living incarnation of your death,” I said.
“What’s all this aboot?” he said, and then I brutally pistol-whipped him. Me and Reuben sped off, much to Jack Torse’s lip-licking dismay.
As we were on our way towards more adventures, I saw a vision of raw sexuality waving at me from the sidewalk. I slowed my roll. It was Val, D-Town Dana’s luscious friend from D-Town.
“Sup, baby?” I said.
“Ben, I’ve been looking all over for you. You gotta go home. Dana’s lost it!”
“Never mind about her. Are you free right now?”
“This is serious! Go home!”
I apologized to Reuben for my abrupt departure, leaving him to throw his mack down on the smokin’ hot Val, and sped home, on the way passing my friend Blake, Effeminate Boy, academic advisor Joe Henderson, film professor Peter Bauland, some drunk cheerleaders from Texas on Spring Break, Dirk and his friends (Mark, Eddie, Brock, Reed, Chest and Philip Seymour), the altitudophile I met on the Millennium Force at Cedar Point and Delilah, host of Cool 107’s “The Delilah Show,” all of whom I greeted with a head nod.
D-Town Dana was waiting for me in my room when I got home, which was in shambles, the desk turned over on its side, the drawers pulled out, all the sheets off the bed, the 1108 Thugz and Skim Milf posters in tatters. Dana was in tears. She was also, more importantly, pointing a gun at me. From the hallway, Joyce, Brooke, Brooke’s fianc