I know, you're waiting for me to say I crashed. No... luckily I didn't (I did that a few years ago in DC and nearly killed myself on 18th Street while riding one-handed full speed down a hill, but that's another story).
Instead, while in the middle of the tunnel (where scents tend to fester), I passed some random college-age guy wearing patchouli...
... the favored aroma of hippies and potheads everywhere.
I had not smelled patchouli in years, and suddenly I had a bizarre deja vu sort of flashback to college, remembering a Sig Ep fraternity date party I attended circa 1994.
My date's name was Mark, and he was a fine arts student and a friend of a friend of mine, but everyone called him Patchouli because, well, he wore a lot of patchouli. One might find it an oxymoron for a fine arts, patchouli-wearing guy to be in a fraternity, but just about everybody at my undergrad college was Greek (including me). It was just the way of life there.
Anyway, the party was called "Fly Away," and it was a fairly big deal to get invited because a) Sip Eps were generally cool and good looking, and b) the party's theme involved the giving away of two round-trip tickets to a beach paradise (ie: some natty 2-star hotel in a rundown college spring break town in Mexico)...
Hosting this sort of clientele...
Rock on! This pool is full of drunken piss!
I was thrilled at the possibility of winning an all-expense paid vacation... the only catch was that I'd have to travel for multiple days with Patchouli. It's not that I didn't like him, but I didn't really know him that well, and let's face it, he smelled like patchouli. And I rather think patchouli stinks. I wasn't sure I could handle several days in a hotel room with the patchouli scent, and I also wondered if there would be more than one bed because I really had no interest in actually hooking up with Patchouli. So a potential beach vacation... yes indeedy. Alone time with Patchouli? Ehh, not so good.
One's mind generally conjures up images like this when thinking about people who wear patchouli...
... but thankfully, my Patchouli was more artsy than hippy. No dreads... just shaggy, tousled locks.
Turns out, I needn't have been concerned about vacationing with Patchouli, as he and I got taken out of the vacation running in the first half of the party (if they drew the guy's name out of a box, he and his date were out of the contest... the last name in the box was the winner). While slightly disappointed, I was mostly relieved when they hollered out "Patchouli... you're out!" about an hour after the party started.
As an added and somewhat unrelated note, I remember that Patchouli did a dead-on impression of that little claymation figure in the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer movie, and after a few drinks, he would exclaim, "I want to be a dentist!" to everyone's drunken glee.
"I want to be a dentist!"
Rumor has it that he's a fairly successful artist in NYC now, but since I can't remember his last name at the moment, I can't even look him up on Google.
I wonder if he still wears patchouli?
1 comment:
You're a dumbass.
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