Gender Politics and Dancefloor Warfare
The night preceding my Convocation, an old friend and I met in a bar for a few beers. We bumped into Professor X, who appears to be a regular and who has earned a rather unflattering reputation for his professional conduct regarding the female. After Prof X's usual appraisal of the 'female situation' in the bar, a friend of his, whom I have met before, arrived in high spirits. The high-spirited friend had that day secured a lucrative business contract and offered to buy us endless rounds of beer. We were informed by Prof X that his friend is irresistible to all women. To prove his sexual prowess, high-spirited friend began to accost every woman within a ten foot radius. Continuing with his generosity he made sure to ensure to these women that he was acting on behalf of the guy with the sideburns, yours truly, and the guy with the long hair, my friend. I must have been rejected at least twenty times by proxy. Suffice it to say that I was still drunk as fuck when I was receiving my diploma at 9:00 the following morning. The following evening, I attended a post-convocation celebration that was to end on the dance-floor of AJ's Hangar, the home of last year's fatal knifing. The day before, a dance challenge was issued to me via the graduate student list-serve. I was therefore placed before the gossip hungry expectation of my entire department. I responded with a crushing victory.