Wanna be the next Apprentice?

I'm going to have watch a re-run of this week's premiere of NBC's The Apprentice - something I thought I'd never do after the second season ended. The reason I'm going to watch is that one of the contestants, Rebecca Jarvis, is a girl we went to school with in Chicago. In fact, she lived a couple of floors above us in Pierce Hall. We were neighbors! Oh, but there's so much more history between us than that...

Six years ago, I was at college continuing my journey into adulthood by exploring the wonders of alcohol. It was a cool autumn night in the clear Midwestern air, but I was oblivious to it - sequestered away in the seedy basement of the Phi Delta Gamma fraternity house, drunk off my stump. Ah "Drinks Around the World", such a sad little event hosted by such a sad little society. I believe I had made it around the world (having downed the requisite number of beverages) and was resting, holding onto my prized plastic trophy of a cup. I don't even remember how I got into the basement, let alone that room. I was probably following young Messrs. Ungar and Flanagan who probably summarily ditched me in the room with all the skeezy guys and their drunken prey. One of their charming fratboy schemes was keeping all the young ladies in the room by making them remove the funny bone out of an Operation game before they allowed them to leave. Everyone was laughing and drinking and enjoying the plight of the pretty girls and the incessant buzzing noises they made. Everyone except me - I was trying hard just to stay conscious.

At this point, I should probably point out that this was maybe the fourth time in my life I had ever had more than a single beer. An Emmanuel Baptist education instilled in me the righteous fear of alcohol so strongly that I didn't drink at all during my first year of college. Therefore, I didn't really know what kind of drunk I was: a violent drunk? a happy drunk? From the looks of things, I was a dopey drunk: sitting, staring at a spot on the wall, bobbing my head to the techno and the shrieking. And then Becky Jarvis changed me into a slavering, angry-hulk drunk. But still with the short little body.

She was one of the screechy first-year girls who was getting along so swimmingly with the Phi Delt guys. She may have been catching eyes and flirting all around, but she was nobody's fool. No one would ever get the best of her. When the loud, grinning ape sitting on the floor next to me said something smart, she didn't mess around. Immediately, she flung the contents of her drink at him with the air of someone who did that sort of thing a lot. Unfortunately, I think she was actually trying it out for the first time, because her drink went wide and sailed straight into my slanty eyes.

Intense, seering, sterilizing pain blinded me, but it wouldn't keep me quiet. "Fuck!" I loudly announced. "FUCK!" I demanded to know what corrosive agent was buring my retinas! Someone told me they thought it smelled like vodka. "SHE THREW FUCKING VODKA IN MY FUCKING EYES!" I wanted the entire room to know the injustice I'd received, so I let loose with obscenity after obscenity deploring her miserable aim. As I continued to bellow, hands lifted me and ushered me to what I thought was sure to be running water. Instead, I was merely taken outside of the room; lucky me - I didn't even have to take out the funny bone. I found my friends upstairs and told them what happened. We yelled some, drank some more, and left.

It didn't occur to me until months later that nobody in the room actually cared that I was in pain. They just wanted me to leave, because they were afraid I would try to harm her. This to me was the most hurtful slight: that they thought of me as the weird asian guy who seemed a bit unstable and might punch women when agitated. Sure I was loud and angry, but I only wanted everyone to know what a horrible person she was. Instead, they thought of me as an even greater monster.

Over the next three years, I would cross Becky's path occasionally on the way to class. She would smile very sweetly at me each time we passed. I, in turn, would pretend that nothing had ever happened - maybe I was too drunk to remember - and give her one of those smiles that says, "Hey, I know you!", and maybe I fooled her into thinking I was oblivious. But as soon as she passed, I would turn around, point to my eyes and whisper to her back, "I know you. I know you."


Anywho. I'm going to watch tonight and root for her to win, because if she does win, I'm going to charge future contestants $20,000 to throw vodka in my face for luck.