Tag Archives: Carla Rossi

50 Shades of Purple, Chapter Two: The Battle for the Keg

10 Jul

“At first I was like, ‘You know, it might not be such a great idea to go skinny dipping in the Amazon with a bottle of Patron and the entire San Diego Chargers Charger Girls squad,’ but then I was just like, ‘YOLO.'”
-Morton O. Schapiro

Don’t worry, the sex scene’s coming soon.

It’s a Monday evening, and my roommates are pregaming the pregame for the Keg. I’ve had a pretty stressful day in Journalism 301, filled with lots of hard-hitting pestering of innocent yuppies reporting for my enterprise story, and it’s time for me to kick back and relax. I pop a bottle of Peach Andre and my night has begun.

“How was your interview with Ross Packingham?” asks Beverly Brooke, my roommate and consummate frenemy.

“Intriguing. There’s something secretive about him that I can’t figure out. Is it true he once had a threesome with a Theta and Willie the Wildcat in the library stacks?”

“I heard it was with Stephen Colbert and two theater majors on South Beach while Andrew Bird played in the background,” Beave answers, “But that’s just what I read once on College ACB.”

We finish off our bottles of Andre while watching Say Yes to the Dress and head over to Alpha Delta for the true pregame. The second we step into the basement, our senses are assaulted by skunked beer, bros in tank-tops, and Katy Perry. Lots of Katy Perry.

“WOOOOOOOOOO” shouts Beave as “Teenage Dream” comes on, and immediately begs a frat brother who looks suspiciously similar to an Asian Nic Cage (and almost as belligerent) to let her take a beer pong celeb shot.

I leave to get myself a drink. I pour myself some Mohawk vodka into a solo cup of Busch Light, which I affectionately dub ‘The Bobb,’ because the drink’s always a party and smells like piss.

The Alpha Delta brothers are getting rowdy. Some jackass tries to hit on me by asking which Vice President I’m most sexually attracted to, only to leave the next moment muttering to himself about the similarities between House Republicans and gonorrhea.

“KEG! KEG! KEG!” The Alpha Delta brothers shout. I down my drink and steel myself for the heinous that is to come.

————————————–

HE’S HERE! OMIGOD HE’S HERE!!!

It takes me a little while to recognize the man before my eyes, but after I adjust to the hedonism around me and get over the brief torrent of terror that shot through me as the Keg bouncer took an additional five seconds to ensure that I truly am the 25-year-old Beyonce Lovato from Anchorage, Alaska that my ID said I was, I realize that I really am beholding the elusive Ross Packingham, HERE, in the flesh, at the Keg!

Gorgeous as all hell and with a gleam in his eye, Packingham is freaking the night away with some co-ed like he’s Channing Tatum on ecstasy.

“Carla!” He shouts, “Carla Rossi! Over here!” He’s beckoning me over to join him and his slam-piece on the dance floor, and I head his way.

And then, with a tremendous blast, the door of the Keg comes crashing down. A dark, shrouded figure looms large in the doorway. For a moment everything stops, douchebags freeze mid-thrust where they were dancing, and even that one townie playing pool turns to look. The only sound is that of Ludacris’ verse on “Baby” as Mayor Tisdahl, clad in combat boots, night-vision goggles, and a James Taylor t-shirt, fully armed with a crowbar and flanked by a cadre of Evanston cops, steps into the neon light of the Coors Light sign.

“My sources tell me that there’s been underage drinking in this establishment,” Mayor Tisdahl growls, tossing the disemboweled corpse of an engineer into the stunned crowd. “You can thank this snitch here. Now I’m going to shut this motherfucker down once and for all.”

All hell breaks loose as Elizabeth Tisdahl and her police posse attack.

Intoxicated and sweaty bodies frantically jostle with one another (not unlike the Keg on a normal Monday night) as Tisdahl brutally swings her crowbar with reckless abandon at poor defenseless English majors and ETHS seniors while the cops gleefully cite students for underage drinking by the score.

“That’s for yacking on the Evanston Post Office!” screams Tisdahl as she brains a Comm Studies student with her crowbar as he tries to scuttle up a stripper pole.

“And this will teach you to holler about blowjobs on MY streets!” she adds, sucker-punching a Tri Delt like she’s Michael Barrett squaring off against A.J.

“Say blowjob one more time. I FUCKING DARE YOU!”

I can’t bear the sight of her pile-driving two foreign students through a window, and quickly duck under a booth and pray that God will save me, or at least turn off the Bieber that’s still playing if I am to be summarily executed by Mayor Tisdahl in this den of debauchery.

The Keg has all but cleared out as I cower in fear, watching Tisdahl and her cops methodically pour big cups of Bud Light and handles of Svedka and Wild Turkey all over the Keg’s walls and floors.

Tisdahl shoulders her crowbar and lights a cigarette. Turning with a menacing gait, she addresses the few remaining students.

“Based on what I see here, I think that the Keg has some grave public safety concerns. I’m revoking the Keg’s license,” she flips her cigarette onto the booze-soaked floor, “Permanently.”

The flames erupt immediately, burning away years of sin and memories. Students scream, and Tisdahl laughs, but just as she turns to leave a gallant figure, wearing nothing but an enormous purple cape, bursts through the Keg’s window riding on the back of a dashing wildcat.

“MORTY SCHAPIRO!” everybody cheers as the lionhearted president rushes to their defense.

His body is lithe and stately, glistening in the fiery inferno as his beard bristles with the white-hot intensity of a hundred thousand Pat Fitzgeralds.

“Oh no you don’t, Tisdahl!” cries Morty, slapping the Mayor back with his massive appendage. More cheers from the students. Morty rips off a stripper pole to serve as his quarterstaff (he already has a full staff down below).

“I’m going to give you the Chet Haze treatment tonight, baby,” shouts Morty. “You’ll be white and purple when I’m done with you.”

Then Morty sets to work, fighting off cops left and right with the help of his trusty wildcat. Those police officers who are too foolish not to run away suffer the awful fate of his beard, and Morty and his steed finish them off faster than the NCAA finishing off Northwestern’s March Madness dreams.

Yet somehow in all the confusion, Mayor Tisdahl managed to escape, cursing Morty and swearing that her revenge is nigh. Few seemed to care, however, as Morty ripped open a fire hydrant with his bare hands, soused the Keg’s raging flames, and turned the club into an all-night slip-and-slide.

“Come here,” a voice says gruffly. I turn with shock and look at the man gripping my hand. It’s Packingham. “This way.”

He leads me to the Popcorn machine, raps it three times with his knuckles, opens up the top, and helps me inside. “Follow me,” Ross says, pushing a button and revealing a secret passageway that travels out of the popcorn machine and leads to a mysterious tunnel. I follow, obediently, trusting Ross completely.

“I hereby declare the Keg re-instated!” bellows the victorious, and still mostly-nude, Morty. “I wish the Keg luck with their newly instated Lifetime License to Rage!”

I can barely hear the cheers as I go deeper and deeper down the tunnel, guided only by the mysterious Ross Packingham.

To be continued

Chapter one of 50 Shades of Purple can be found HERE.

50 Shades of Purple, Chapter One

19 Jun

For Morty, the master of my universe

I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair — it just won’t behave, and damn that Beverly Brooke for being ill and subjecting me to this ordeal. I should be studying for my final exams, which are next week, yet here I am trying to brush my hair into submission. Ugh. FML. I’m suuuuch a Medilldo.

I must not sleep with it wet. I must not sleep with it wet. That’s what she said. Reciting this mantra several times, I attempt, once more, to bring it under control with the brush. I roll my eyes in exasperation and gaze at the pale, brown-haired girl with blue eyes too big for her face staring back at me, and give up. My only option is to restrain my wayward hair in a ponytail and hope that I look semi presentable.

Beave is my roommate, and she has chosen today of all days to succumb to the flu. Therefore, she cannot attend the interview she’d arranged to do, with some mega-brill-brill engineer I’ve never heard of, for The Daily. So I have volunteered. I have finals to complain about, one 500-word article to fabricate, but no — today I have to walk all the way from Pi Phi all the way up to fucking Slivka in order to meet this enigmatic nerd. As an exceptional engineer and son of major Northwestern benefactors, his time is extraordinarily precious — much more precious than mine — but he has granted Beave an interview. A real coup, she tells me. Damn her extra-curricular activities. What is ASG anyways?

“Does, like, vodka and gatorade get rid of the flu?” Beverly asks.

“Sure it does. It’s a disinfectant,” I answer.

Gathering my Steve Madden bag, I smile at her and head out the door. She’ll make an exceptional journalist for Chillicothe Times-Bulletin one day. She’s got talent.

———————————————————

I knock on the door in Slivka. It slowly opens as a tremendous cloud of weed-smoke funnels out.

“Mr. Packingham is out at the moment,” says my interviewee’s roommate, a man who presumably served two years in the Singapore army and is double-majoring in chemistry and K-Pop Studies. “But feel free to come in.”

I check out Packingham’s room. It looks like a cross between an adolescent’s wet dream and Charlie Sheen’s Tuesday morning. Kate Upton and Pippa Middleton adorn walls streaked with what I can only assume is Dmitri vodka and CVS Gold Brand grape soda. An exotic aroma hits my nose, an exquisite fusion of BK, Busch Light, and man musk. Must be a Comm major. I think I need to sit down.

And then, a man enters.

“Excuse me. I’m looking for a Beave. Have you seen one?”

Oh God. Packingham’s a tool. He’s smiling like a Freshman who just got into The Keg.

“Um. Actually–” I mutter. But such a handsome tool.

“Miss Brooke is indisposed, so she sent me. I hope you don’t mind, Mr. Packingham.” Eyes like Bill Murray. Complexion like Drake. Body like John Shurna. And, most importantly, a beard like Morty’s.

“And you are?” His voice is warm, possibly amused, definitely slurred a bit. I can’t help but notice the portable beer pong table near his bed.

“Carla Rossi. I’m studying magazine journalism with Beave, um… Miss Brooke in Medill.”

“I see,” he says simply. I can’t help but notice he’s wearing a Sig Nu hoodie. That’s… unexpected.

“Would you like to sit?” He waves me toward a green bean bag chair prominently featuring several suspicious stains.

“I have some questions for you,” I say, catching him looking down my shirt.

“I though you might Carla,” he deadpans.

“Well, let’s get started. I’d like to know what you make of allegations that your father’s donations are the reason Northwestern starts so ungodly late in the calendar year.”

“Bullshit,” Packingham replies.

“Okay, how about suggestions that you once banged Mayor Tisdahl on the roof of Swift?” I try.

“I wish,” the swashbuckling sultan of swag replies.

“Do you have any hobbies?” Butter them up with some puff questions. Medill’s taught me well.

“You know, the usual. Chill with my bros. Drunken Sporcle. Skinny dipping in Lake Michigan with my biddies. Hey Carla, did you know that I’m the reason Selena Gomez decided against becoming a Wildcat? Let’s just say she’s no big fan of the hot cookie bar, if you know what I mean. How about you?”

“Me!?” I ask, surprised. “I mostly complain about how sketch the el is on my way to my internship. I just love the city.”

He smiles, seeming to sense something flutter inside me. Shit! Could he possibly have realized that I can name all 151 original Pokémon in alphabetical order? I thought I had kept that hidden since the Kappa rush debacle of 2011.

“Fine. Last question. Can you comment on the prevailing rumors that you are the man responsible for the invention of the fucksaw—”

“I can’t comment on pending litigation,” he cuts me off, quicker than I awkwardly end conversations on Sheridan.

“Dude, want to play the National Treasure 2 drinking game?” His roommate interrupts.

“Yes, yes I do,” he answers. “Carla,” he says as a farewell.

“Ross,” I reply. And the door, Adele poster and all, comes to a close.