My First and Last Spring Weekend

The only thing stopping me from having another veggie burger yesterday, at the Spring Weekend concert, was the anomalous bounty of straight guys surrounding me; I was shaken by the high levels of testosterone and Old Spice, and decided that drawing attention to myself through mass consumption of food would not necessarily help me find Prince Charming.

I never truly embraced Rose Hill till this past semester. I used to encourage the racial hatred, the segregation of our two campuses. Now that I am finally leaving, and the word "last" constantly finds itself in my daily lexicon, I have come to love what each campus offers: Lincoln Center has an abundance of falafel restaurants and beautiful people and novelty, and Rose Hill has an abundance of grass and kegs and polo tees.

Yesterday, in an explosion of youth and sweat and actual and spiritual inebriation, Fordham celebrated the beginning of Spring at the MGMT concert. My friends and I got to Rose Hill around noon; Eddie's Parade, which is usually teeming with kids, was strangely empty. I heard indiscriminate noise from elsewhere, and we all walked to a party off campus to start the day. The apartments were overflowing with kids. I knew no one and knew everyone at the same time.

We walked onto the field, and set up our blanket amid hundreds of others. There were girls in bikinis not even pretending to care about the music, there were kids from Lincoln Center wearing fedoras, determined to stand apart, there were guys throwing around water on the bathroom line. People were yelling and shrieking for no reason. It was as if everyone just found their own voice, and needed to express themselves before it was too late, before the sun set and it became Sunday.

During the concert, I was thrown into the air a few times, only to see a bunch of other kids throwing their friends around, too. I don't even remember how good the actual music was; I just remember the incessant beat to which we all pumped our fists in unison, a display of solidarity, of collective youth and illusions and hope.

Afterwards, I met up with one of my friends on my Global Outreach team. The MGMT tour bus was parked outside her dorm, so everyone gathered around the band to get shirts and arms and hats and scraps of paper signed. Everyone was high and tired and drained from the sun, and we sat out on the lawn for an hour, eating chocolate and drinking Powerade, waiting for the breeze to revive us. I took the next ram van back to Lincoln Center, and realized that if I were to stay in Manhattan, if I were to stay anywhere near my desk and my laptop and my list of things to do, then I would never be able to enjoy the rest of the night. I couldn't stay in the same borough as my responsibilities, so I took procrastination to new levels and got on a ram van.

We traveled from house to house, peppered our journey with pizza and skeevy bars, and ultimately ended up at an apartment covered in sand with an inflatable pool. We danced for hours and watched a girl on ecstasy fall into the mud. And then we headed back to Lincoln Center, for the second time that day, and got an early breakfast (at 4 in the morning). We toasted our eggs and grilled cheese sandwiches to the last weekend of our college careers. And to the speedy service.

I went to bed around 5, about an hour before the sun rose. I woke up in a few hours, unable to sleep beneath my down comforter, and ate some caramels. Sounds of Saturday's celebrations echoed in my head, as I flipped through my planner to try to focus on the tasks ahead. I skimmed over deadlines, and then flipped to the 3rd week in May. Less than three weeks till graduation. I ate another caramel and hummed "Kids," wishing only for something that lasted forever.