GOT ADVICE?
One reporter experiences the party scene and is left feeling lost among his peers

Story by Kevin Kolus

It’s a dreadfully humid August night, weeks before my 21st birthday. I’m sitting on a friend’s deck at his home in Strongsville, watching the blonde in the pool and slaking my thirst with a St. Pauli Girl. The heat causes an almost instant beading of condensation on this green beer bottle, and for the past 10 minutes I’ve playfully crinkled the damp sticker with my thumbnail. I pause for a moment, absorbing the irony. Holding six mugs of the draft, gazing at me with her twinkling blue eyes, proudly displaying her cleavage above the slogan GERMANY’S FUN-LOVING BEER, is the blonde on the bottle. When I look past the drink, I see standing in front of me a beautiful blonde with twinkling blue eyes, proudly displaying her cleavage above the waterline.

“Hi, my name’s Alex.”

“It’s nice to meet you. My name is Kevin … isn’t it damn humid out here?”

Wait, that was a stupid thing to say. She’s in a pool. I’ve never been any good at this.

We stare at each other for a moment. Nothing comes out of my mouth, but I can’t take my eyes away from her. She’s tall, built well in her bronze bikini, and warrants the looks from every man she meets. I can feel a warm rush of blood streaming to my face as I tear the sticker off with a single skittish thrust, gumming glue up under my nail. I’ll try and wipe it off on my pants, maybe act annoyed, and hope for her to swim away. I’m a commuter at Kent State who hasn’t experienced a single party at that massive university, and I’m not doing too well in my friend’s backyard. This apprehension sends me trembling into embarrassment, and it was probably visible to everyone — a handful of college guys in their late-teens, who are drunk, waiting with fermented breath to pick me apart in front of this … huntress. Unexpectedly, I hear Tim, the friend who lives here, as he runs up onto the deck, interrupting the silence with his bright, if not enviably happy, voice. He asks me if I need a refill, but I turn him down and keep a tight grip on Pauli. Or what’s left of her.

This is Tim’s first party and he’s going to impress us. The thrill of underage drinking rouses the boys and girls, complementing that underage detachment from responsibility. He wanted a pool party so we would come together in the heat and undress. His friend’s older brother bought alcohol so we could feel like adults. And so the girls would be easier to talk to.

It’s also the kind of summer night that lends itself to mischief. Adventure. Disaster. The premise for those teen movies my peers can’t seem to get enough of. And it is the night I find myself, where so many other college students find themselves, in a time of need for that one universally human desire: advice.

Who are we kidding?

It’s hard for me to ask people for help. My whole life I’ve felt independent and strong. That’s probably why I always favored existentialist philosophers to the Greeks, being alone to being in a group, and staying relatively calm compared to expressively wild. But I can’t deny that I’ve wanted advice, and neither can anyone else.

Newspapers and magazines have Q&As with an eager public for just about every issue. Family doctors scrawl out prescriptions for anti-depressants as a daily routine. I can’t leave out our role models, either. Doesn’t it seem like everyone in Hollywood has a therapist?

Then there are college students. I feel like we’re missing something.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, one out of four of us, the young adults, will have had at least one depressive episode by age 24. Many— almost half — of all college students become so depressed that they say functioning normally is difficult. With a creeping pace, suicide has become the second leading cause of death for us.

Yet we look so happy on the outside. We are drinking Corona during our fiestas, dressing more exotically to show we’ve shed our inhibitions, passing up condoms for a lifestyle that serves to entertain. Sadness, it seems, has become the embarrassing epidemic not one of us wants to associate with.

Violence is another problem for us. Just look at Northern Illinois University or Virginia Tech to see what can happen when mentally ill students snap. Yet, it doesn’t feel like these horrors stay in our minds long enough to make an impression. I’m always noticing sentiments like “I live life to the fullest,” or “I’m only about having a good time” advertised on everyone’s Facebook page. Well, who is lying? Not everyone can be enjoying college.

We young people are without wisdom. College students are giving each other the wrong advice, I believe, and we are worse off because of it. So I ask a professional what the dilemma is with college students. As I suspect, Gregory Eells, director of psychological services at Cornell University, whose research interests include general college mental health issues, doesn’t agree with my theory.

“When you look at the ideology of depression, it really isn’t correlated to advice,” Eells says. “Permanence creates depression. Losses. There are many things that can affect people negatively. Attempting to give someone advice does not make them depressed. However, if they are getting messages that are supporting the negativity, if there is any kind of advice that supports that kind of thinking, the depression cycle can get much worse.”

He is right. If we are feeling down, or just need help with any decision, negative advice can reinforce bad feelings. I rarely see people act vicious for the purpose of derailing an already troubled individual, so that isn’t our problem.

I think back to the pool party again and wonder: What happens when we need help, but are too embarrassed to ask for it?

She moves swiftly

Earlier in the night, Tim was smashing the tops of beer bottles on the kitchen countertop, trying to get the caps off. He couldn’t find the bottle opener. I wonder what your parents will think when they see the chips in the counter, you jackass.  There’s a hand-operated can opener next to the stove, so I pick it up and use the hooked part on the bottom of it to open the next bottle. “What the hell?” Tim, a biomedical engineering student at Case Western Reserve University, must have felt dense. “I never knew what that was for.”

I’m thinking about this and smile at everyone who is shirtless. Drunk. Having a good time. Acting young. But how am I acting?

I came to a pool party wearing a long-sleeved shirt and jeans on one of the muggiest days of the year. I’ve had one beer in a six-hour period. And I’m standing with my arms crossed as Alex puts her hand on my shoulder.

“Hi … hi there.” She’s incredibly drunk.

“Are you having a good time?” Of course she is. A half dozen shirtless swimmers have been flirting with her and handing her beers all night. She doesn’t respond. Instead, I feel her fingers slowly climbing the ridges of my spine. It’s an intoxicating feeling; the huntress moves across the plain of my body, like a lioness chasing gazelle. She’s lethal, looking for the weakest prey. To my right is a guy named Greg whom I met earlier, giving me the “thumbs up” with his eyebrows. I don’t even know how that’s possible. It must be the way guys communicate. Small on words, big on emphasis.

I can feel her staring at me, but I hold my eyes forward. Arms crossed.

“Do you wanna go skinny dipping?”

Yes.

“No. I don’t think Tim would like that happening in his pool.”

She doesn’t look happy with my answer and slouches on my shoulder with her elbow digging into my neck. The alcohol has fatigued my huntress. She looks weary, and the pool water has turned her flowing blonde hair into a dirty mass of sticky braids. Next to my left ear, breaths are deep and focused: her futile attempt to quell the stirring nausea within. I feel concerned and look at her, and she puts her arm around me. What am I supposed to do next? The toast of the party is spilling herself all over me, and I can only come up with a foolish grin. But this can’t hold forever. The others will figure me out. So will she.

This isn’t the way a virgin should spend his first time.

“Let’s go skinny dipping.”

Before I can refuse again, she moves in front of me, pushing her breasts into and across my chest. She stands on the tips of her toes, up and down, gyrating her body into mine.

I pull back. Arms still crossed.

“Why are you doing that? I think you need to calm down for a second. You might get sick from the beer.” Please, someone get her away from me.

“I do this all the time.” She burps. “There’s nothing wrong with it.” Then she gyrates again. This time I allow it, to see if she feels like an idiot when it doesn’t cause me to embrace her. Greg is still giving me the eyebrow raise, but he’s also added in a big smile and head nod. How am I doing something right by not doing anything at all? What kind of culture is this? I must look uncomfortable. She recognizes this and stops.

“How old are you?” I ask.

She hesitates to answer. The party is still going on around us. A ping-pong ball from a nearby drinking game hits me in the foot. Other people I never noticed arrive are already close to passing out. The black garbage bag hanging off the barbecue grill is spilling over with empty cans of Natty Light. My crew-neck shirt collar is saturated with sweat. It’s so damn humid.

“I’m 18.”

“Can I see your driver’s license?”

“I don’t have it yet.”

This is why my moral compass spun like it was trapped in a magnetic field. Instinct!

There’s a pause. She knows I don’t believe her. Her hand moves down my chest, and she grabs at me, below my belt. I squirm away.

“What the hell is wrong with you? I barely know you and you are grabbing me there?”

The huntress is angry. Wounded. No trophy in the form of an older guy for her tonight. She’s just another high school girl looking to have a story to tell. Leaving me, she walks up to the guys playing the drinking game. I look at Greg long enough to see him shake his head at me before I hear the hollering going on. Alex has taken her top off and is moving her exposed breasts like pistons, much to the satisfaction of her admirers. Time stops for me. What have I done? This girl needed your help, and you pushed her away. Insulted her. I feel alone. Who do I talk to at this party about feelings of regret? They’d surely make fun of me if they found out my reasoning. A nearly 21-year-old virgin, terrified of a high school girl. I leave the party a lesser man, consumed by feelings I was too afraid to explain.            

The worst of it all

That night weighs me down like a soaking wet outfit. It taught me that parties have no standing room for an observer who’s offended by questionably immoral decisions. I can’t be the only one in my age group to have this realization, though. I need to know what Eells thinks.

Mental illnesses like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and major depression happen in the early 20s, usually the time people are enrolled at a college, he says. But most college students have the luxury of free guidance counseling. The professional therapy is there for us, easy to obtain.

But therapy with one person you hardly know can’t be enough. Well, Eells, what should we do to keep therapy in our lives not only by appointment, but also as a common practice?

“You need to have social connection,” Eells says. “The power of having someone ask you for a cup of coffee or to go to a movie combats the feelings of depression. Not connecting with people, telling people to keep to themselves, saying ‘nobody feels that way,’ continues the cycle of depression. There are so many things that are just normal, developmental things, that it’s great to have another perspective. For instance, people like to talk about sex, because college may be the first time they’ve had sex. It’s things like that where college can be useful, to talk to people who are in the same developmental place. They have the same questions you are struggling with.”

Eells wants us to look for a variety of perspectives. Talking to our parents will net different advice than talking to the people currently experiencing the same dilemmas, but drawing on a broader pool will help us recognize where we stand. No one, regardless of age, can expect to succeed through these forms of therapy without acknowledging he or she has a problem, accepting that it won’t go away and having the willingness to look for help, Eells says.

But why do we need to accept that we are helpless in order to get helped?

“The reality is you are much wiser if you don’t know some things,” he emphasizes. “Nor can you when you are 18 or 20. And that’s true in all areas of life. If people are really honest with themselves, they will tell themselves they don’t know the answer to these questions, and accept that they need advice.”

All right. I know I have a problem, and I know I need to talk to at least one person about it. How will I know what advice I should follow?

“Ask yourself, ‘Does this feel true to me? Does it fit with my experience?’” Eells suggests. “Sometimes we take advice because the person giving it is smart, or that tiny voice inside says ‘that sounds OK,’ but it really doesn’t. I think internally we all have a sense of what is the best advice. If students don’t take that time to reflect, it’s hard to know what that good advice is.”

Maybe that is what’s been missing for me. For all of us.

A time to reflect

I talk to three people that night on the way home from the party.

First, I call Tim. He’s wasted.

“I think you should go for it. She is underage, but it’s your call. You have your own risk to take.”

What he says doesn’t sit well. I didn’t hesitate because I was afraid of going to jail. It’s because she was drunk and easy to take advantage of. It seemed morally wrong. Then there’s that small matter of being petrified of her.

Next, I call Ian, a fellow Kent State student. He’s less of a partier. Maybe he’ll have something insightful to say.

“I think you should have at least made out with her,” he says. The story seems to blow him away. “But I guess you were right in not messing around with an underage girl. You don’t need the cops knocking down your door.”

Again, someone is focusing on the consequence, but at least he supports my decision. I still don’t have the advice I want. I need someone with more experience. I’ll call my 26-year-old brother.

“Hell yeah man! That sounds like you had a good night.”

Ugh. Come on Kris. Enlighten me!
“But I’m proud of you, bro. You stuck to your guns. I think you would have regretted doing otherwise.”

It now makes sense. Kris was right this entire time. I just never gave his simple message the chance to sink in.

Kevin Kolus is a senior magazine journalism major. This is his first story for The Burr.