The Deserted Bandwagon

Author: MATT KUNZWEILER

I ended up in the Bahamas for spring break. And it was everything I could've hoped for: more high-fiving than an ADP party, more sunburns than the early days of British colonialism. Everybody (and I know I'm prone to hyperbole, but seriously ­­- everybody on Spring Break) was wearing Polo shirts, Polo shorts and sandals. Although this branded homogenization was a pastel parody of itself, it raised a question: Do people who wear only Polo complement each other's clothes? Because it would sound like this:

"I like your shirt."

"Yeah, I know. There were like four colors to choose from, but I think I made the right call."

"Especially by coordinating it with those periwinkle shorts. Which are dashing."

But what do these Polo-clad children say when drinking on a beach in the Caribbean? I actually heard one frat boy shout: "Raise the roof!" His sunburned companion - an avid weightlifter, and judging by the following comment, an avid degenerate - responded, "Raise the roofie!"

As they high-fived, I frowned and hid my margarita beneath my beach recliner- just because, in the eyes of a sun-drunk, mohito-drunk and testosterone-drunk frat boy, I, with my longish locks, might somehow appear female. Not that I even look like a girl - or, by any stretch of the imagination, an attractive girl - but I was reading a novel on the beach, and only chicks do that, right? Anyway, the beer goggles on these frat boys were so foggy and Coke-bottled that I assumed these "brothers" capable of drugging and violating anything they could get their sandy hands on. I'd already seen one violate a coconut… Believe the stereotype: state school frat boys are savages.

Later, at the Isle of Capri Casino (which sounds more like a Wham! song than an actual casino) I was cashing out a triple-7 jackpot on the 25¢ slot machines, the metal trays clanging obscenely with the barrage of falling quarters. As I scooped the winnings into my plastic cup (I'd never seen $100 in quarters before), I fervently shouted to the room (and two hundred hidden cameras): "These are the loosest slots in the Caribbean!"

As soon as I made this declaration, I noticed the raise-the-roofie brothers staring at me drop-jawed from their stools at a nearby poker table, their Polo-clad Greek-system compatriots following suit. "Slots," I repeated, this time with considerably more emphasis on the "o". "These must be the loosest slot machines in the Bahamas."

Disappointedly, they turned back to their game of Texas Hold 'em in hopes of emulating their goateed heroes of ESPN poker -you know, those fat dudes who probably suck at everything besides poker. But there was one especially drunk kid who didn't turn back to the table. It was the brother who'd spoken earlier of "raising the roofie." Now he was leering at me with corkscrewed eyes and snarled lips. Was he looking at my beautiful shoulder-length locks? Had he drunk enough to think that anyone with longish hair qualified as a desirable spring-breaking female? Would Yanni or Kevin Sorbo receive the same treatment?

But in order to change my mass of quarters into bills, I had to I walk by the Texas Hold 'em table. I did so hastily- but as I passed, the brother leaned from his stool, meaty arm extended, his thumb and index finger pinched together -and tried to roofie my giant cup of quarters…