Fear and Loathing in (UW-)Whitewater (Part I)

It was night. The trip was stained with billboards and car lights. The view from the truck's windows had fit with the music, Iggy Pop's “ThePassenger.” Okay, that right there was a lie; “The Passenger” wasn't playing. I mean, come on that would almost be too perfect. I did think of “The Passenger,” at the moment and it did seem to make sense. I think Pop's message had conveyed what we- Carter, Cody, Phil, Stueven, and I- were embarked upon. The actual music playing wasn't as deep; I mean, I think I heard one of the song's lyrics was something along the lines of “piss, piss, awesome.” Yep, that's the sounds of the music of Stueven. Though to be fair he did have MGMT's “Kids” and Marcy Playground's “Sex and Candy” on that disc by which I was impressed. It was roughly a two hour drive or so, and I bet one could tell this was written by someone from Wisconsin with the fact that I'm telling the distance through hours. We passed through the city of Milwaukee and off to a city in the middle of nowhere: Whitewater.

Nowhere indeed. With the simple fact that Whitewater was literally in the middle of nowhere, I had lead most, if not all, of us to believe that Whitewater wasn't real. We had passed the sign that read: “Whitewater.” Boy, that must have set Dusty back a bit. I mean, making it actually seem real. We passed through a roundabout into what seemed to be the city, though it had the appearance of Kiel. Continuing further down, the Kiel scene had turned into what looked very similar to Sheboygan Falls. Luckily for me, Stueven's disc had run out of music and then it was time for Fatboy Slim to shine. "TheRockafeller Skank” was on; check it out now, the funk soul brother. And later Fatboy Slim was doing something in heaven. I think it was fucking, but don't take my word for it.

We had gotten further down the way where Stueven had turned down some unknown residential street, but we were looking for a road named Starin. Phil, who had been doing the navigating, said “Starin is probably at the end of this, somewhere.” Believe it or not but the boy was right. After one parking lot seemed sketchy because it seemed to be away from everything else, we managed to find one that would seem to be closest: Parking Lot 7. We stepped out of the vehicle. And my thought was that this is cheesyhawk warhawk hawk country!

Now, like any other guests, we wouldn't want to inform our host of our arrival, so why not seek him out? It seemed legit at the time; it's like we weren't in an unknown land or anything like that. We stumbled across student housing, where the leaves were the shape and size of dog shit. We were following Phil who was still navigating. We went whichever the hell direction he went: left, right, forwards, backwards, towards, and even in a circle. There was something spooky about these three buildings that Cody had pointed out. During these trials and tribulations, we had found a car friend, who was probably some inebriated college girl. She liked this game of honking the horn at us, or at least it seemed that way. Not to worry, the car friend was parked, and we weren't even in the way of it, although I really thought it was a failure to communicate. After going in circle we had finally found the Lee Hall, but how does one get in?

The answer was simple: sneak in. Sure, why not? I mean this doesn't seem like UWM or anything like that. Once again, Phil had brought up the idea. So we stood and waited for a person to open the door. She was being quite helpful, though she didn't really know how helpful she was being. We climbed the tiled stairs, I mean everything was tiled, and we climbed those stairs to the fourth floor. We then started looking at every door for Dusty's adjective name. Also, I probably should mention that it was really warm in that hall. Then we bummed into another helpful native, who actually knew he was being helpful, and he told us where Dusty was, and so he brought us to the lad.

Dusty greeted us outside of his room, while his dorm was full of Whitewater natives. We still had to get our stuff, so Dusty left the room with all of those people still inside of it. Yeah, I know I said those people; what, wanna fight about it? So we voyaged back the vehicle. On the way to the outside, we bumped into one of Dusty's friends in the hall (at least that's what I think happened.) It turned out to be Chris, who I heard likes The Rocky Horror PictureShow and a certain someone's Lonely Island vinyl, which I had heard from a reliable source. Dusty had introduced ourselves, and then we went on our merry separate ways. This would be the only time we would see this Chris fellow. Eventually we made it back to the vehicle, which had been almost as challenging as finding Lee Hall. Sure, Dusty might live there, but he doesn't even know where Parking Lot 7 is, so yeah. Like I said, it wasn't as bad as finding the hall, and we got to the vehicle which is what we had needed.

As we got back to Lee Hall and climbed the tiled stairs, there were still people occupying his room. So we dropped our shit off at Dusty's room and walked, without Dusty, towards what appeared to be a “lounge” area, and we lounged. Dusty’s inhabitants had finally cleared out his dorm and we moved from the “lounge” area to the Dusty's newly cleared out dorm. The room had four walls, a ceiling, and even a floor. There were two beds and a futon. There was even a Red Hot Chili Peppers poster on the wall. All of us had gotten situated. I, of course, made it to the futon. Then there was a person who walked in. This person turned out to be Kenny, who was Dusty's “adopted” roommate and a fan of the music of Adele, which I had learned from a reliable source, or at least I could assume was reliable. Kenny had explained that the reason he had become an adopted roommate was, as he put, his “... [“former”] roommate and his girlfriend don't know how to stop fucking.” That's unfortunate though. I suppose it could always be worse: the roommate could be the type of person who isn't the master of his own domain, wink wink. Then again I really won't know. And Kenny had apologized in advance about his use of the King’s English, because he does use it: insert “O” face here. I really couldn't give a shit if he did or didn't, though it was a nice gesture either way, I suppose. Kenny had left the dorm and regrouped with other Whitewater natives to do God knows what?

The night's entertainment consisted of video games, or at least a video game, in which there was only a certain number of players, so one person would sit out each round. It was simple enough, although problems had arisen. Cody was being inquisitive about things being hooked up correctly. At one point, though, Dusty had stated that something was in something and then it led Cody to say, “An HDMI cable doesn't go into a UBS port.” Dusty simply responded with: “oh...” Once things were calibrated everything was better, though it wasn't great, but it didn't make it worse at least. That's certainly a plus, I think.

As this was going on, I had not really noticed it, but two natives had walked in: a shorter guy, and the other a female. The female, with evergreen colored hair, had come into the room and entertained Dusty with stories of conquest. These stories were more or less about the dyeing of her hair this most lovely color of green, her piercings, and her winning of something called an “alcohol hat.” I really don't know what it is, but hey I'm not judging. It turned out that her name was Amanda, though it's not like I'm going to remember that. Her short gentleman friend left before Dusty had introduced us, so it was the female who learned which schools we all go to. Only moments after the green-haired girl left, we were informed that she was, in fact, the “Biology Girl.” The name of the “Biology Girl” was some sort of bearing of a miniature cult following. I still had gotten a kick out of “Biology Girl” and the shorter guy's pet name for Dusty: “Google Bitch.” I had found this humorous. “Google Bitch.” I could only imagine how that originated; actually I knew how it started, but that's for another time, or not. Who's to say?

We continued on with the game until ten-thirty, which was when the newest Saturday Nigh Live was on, so all was stopped and we watched. Jonah Hill was hosting and the band was, surprisingly, someone I never had heard of, The Shins. All was well until a certain someone, Dusty, had left to check on something (I think that might be right.) I then locked, I mean the wind locked, the door. To be fair there was some peer pressuring going on and I won't point any fingers, Stueven, but they, or he, can be very convincing, just sayin'. Luckily for Dusty's sake, Kenny had come to his aid and opened the door; aren't we just the best guests ever? By the time of Weekend Update (with Seth Meyers) there had been three more natives in the room, or at least I think there was: the shorter guy from before, a tall one, and maybe a third one. I mean, if there was a third he really couldn't have been there more than a moment or two. By the way, if anyone can figure out how long a moment is, please inform me. The shorter one left, just like before (talk about Déjà vu). The tall one was later revealed to be one of the two RAs on the floor. The tall one also had a name, Cody. So to avoid confusion we'll call this Cody “Whitewater Cody.” Much similar to the green-haired girl, Dusty had introduced us with our names and our respective schools. Whitewater Cody had stayed for most of SNL, or at least that's what I remember, I think. SNL had ended and the night was still young. More was yet to happen, I think.

To be continued...