Short of Elysium

It had become kind of sad. Sometimes on my way home from class I would stop for a minute and gaze longingly into The Bluebird on Walnut Street. The smell that wafted out of the open doors, a bouquet of stale beer, puke and solvent – it was beginning to smell like opportunity. Things went on in there, I mused – glorious, wonderful things. But this was last semester, and I wasn’t 21 yet. \nInside my apartment on Friday nights, preparing to go do whatever second-rate, boring, unfulfilling activity I had decided upon, I would hear people walking toward Kirkwood Avenue and Walnut Street. They moved in hordes, laughing and yelling and sometimes falling down. Whatever happiness made someone so obnoxious, I knew, must be the greatest happiness of all.\nMy 21st birthday came at the beginning of this semester, and I was inside a bar six minutes before midnight on that night. I had a good time. The next night, I did the same thing, and I had a good time.\nAnd then that was it. I started noticing it was so crowded that I couldn’t move around and that somehow I was in an implicit competition with every other male there. Guys puffed out their chests and scanned the room, purposefully bumping into people who passed them. The part of their brain that rested during the week was alive and thirsty for sex and combat.\nI heard my friends describe disillusionment with the bar scene, but I assumed it came after a period of months, not weeks. I imagined the bars as a gateway to some kind of golden, Dionysian existence. Turns out, my existence was the same as before. \nI felt cheated. I finally had the qualifications to be granted entry into what I had imagined was Elysium. But it wasn’t any good. It wasn’t as though I’d never had alcohol before, but this was the bars. It was supposed to be the crown jewel of nightlife. It was supposed to give me stories I could obnoxiously relate through my cell phone the next morning on the C-bus, smugly annoying everyone within earshot of my immature conquests with liquor. We would talk about who hooked up, who threw up and who just passed out. That was supposed to be the way it worked. \nThe worst part is, this was all supposed to resemble fun. \nGradually, I’m learning I’m not alone. I’m learning that people who can’t successfully con themselves into believing the hype are increasingly looking for something to do on the weekend that doesn’t consciously suck. And when some entrepreneur finally realizes the demand among IU students who aren’t bar hopping, there will be a renaissance. Until then, I’m posting this column on the IDS Opinion Blog, the Sample Gates. There, you can post ideas you have for sans-bar weekend fun and read what other people have to say. Who knows, next weekend you may even enjoy yourself.