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I went to visit my brother at his college this week. I got to see the old college apartment, and everything is exactly as I remember it—meaning the bowl of half-eaten Easy
Mac that was hanging out on the floor had not moved for the past four years.
While I was there, I realized that there are no fond memories of the college apartment. There are memories, and there are even funny or fuzzy
memories, but there are no fond memories. You may want to argue, “But Lee, what about the poster of the half-naked chick holding beer? That’s a fond memory.”
Perhaps you’re right.
What is the reasoning behind the half-naked chick holding beers? What did that poster really do for us? I mean, it’s a necessity. In some form or another, it can be found
in every male college apartment in existence. You may have to look under some splattered grapefruit pulp on the wall, but it’s there. In terms of essential objects in a
guy's college apartment, it’s on the same level as computer or bed. Guys moving in are like, “We need toilet paper, food, and a half-naked chick poster before we can
move in here.”
But honestly, in the scope of things, that poster never did a thing for us. It never helped us get beer or chicks at any point during college. In fact, in a couple of instances,
it actually decreased our chances of having a girl stick around. I just can’t see that being a big selling point when asking a girl up to your room.
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Beer girl posters also serve as PSA's
for visiting females.
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Idiot Guy: Lisa, you gotta see our apartment. We’ve got a poster of a Miller Lite girl who’s illegal in seven states.
Lisa: Oh my God! I’m there! That’s a collector’s item.
So basically the picture of the gorgeous half-naked woman holding beer is only a window into the unattainable; it depicts two things that are constantly sought after, but rarely
within reach. Because one requires a fake ID and costs money, and the other costs a lot more money and can only be found in Las Vegas. We should have put up a poster right next
to the beer girl of other unattainable things...like good grades and a clean apartment.
And why is the girl always holding a beer? Why is that so exciting for men? Is it because she’s more likely to hook up with us if she’s drinking a lot? So the fact
that she’s holding a beer means she’s even closer to being ours. If that’s the case, she should also be holding a sign that reads, “I like college
students who don’t bathe often and are proud of video
game high scores.” Then we would have known she liked us.
It’s quite odd that the idea of a woman drinking a beer turns guys on. Yet, a woman drinking fourteen beers in a couple of hours, belching, and running to the bathroom
every three minutes—not so attractive anymore. One beer: sexy. A case of beer: redneck. I mean, the emaciated women depicted on the posters holding
these beers are clearly not the ones drinking the beers. I think the poster should show the actual women who drink a lot of Budweiser—the ones with huge beer bellies,
messed up hair, bags under the eyes from constant hangovers, and legs that haven’t been shaved in three weeks. And that serves two purposes because then the women on these
posters would actually have been in our league too. “Check out the Miller Lite girl! That’s the same girl that begged me to go out with her last month, and I said
no. The beer breath she had could knock you to the ground.”
Over the course of that evening, I saw my brother’s roommates achieve two things: buy pizza and buy beer. I tried to warn them that by
getting pizza and beer they were perpetuating age-old college
stereotypes that should be put to rest. But I lost them on the word “perpetuating,” and they went ahead and bought a case of beer roughly the size and weight of
Warren Sapp.
The biggest complication of the night came when they tried to figure out how much each person should pay for the beer. The problem was rooted in the fact that every one of them
owed each other some money from previous beer runs. I do recall from my college days that this was a constant problem. Every conversation about money was essentially,
“Each person should pay twelve dollars, but Jake owes me five bucks for the Hurricane I bought him on that night we ate all those eggs. And I owe Stevie seven bucks for
the Red Bull and Vodka he got me that night we were kicked out of the pizza place, but he still owes Josh eighteen dollars for his bail money. And Brian’s girlfriend, Sam,
paid for the Coronas on that night we broke the window, but the beer ended up on the floor of Alex’s car. So he shouldn’t have to pay anything. So if you add it all
up and divide by seven...you each need to chip in $4,800. And no bad checks this time, Jake!”
One final thing stands out in my memory of my brother’s apartment. It’s memorable because it was the only thing in the apartment that was not dirty, sticky, broken,
illegal or moldy—it was a puppy that belonged to a friend of my brother’s. At first the idea of puppies in a college apartment seemed terribly contradictory to me. I
mean, puppies are sweet and adorable and cuddly...and college guys are, well, not. At first I felt that nothing cute and loveable should be forced to spend more than thirty
seconds in a college room...be it a puppy, a girl, a koala, anything. But then it occurred to me that college apartments must be a dog’s paradise. The puppy can relieve
itself in the corner and no one’s the wiser, there’s always a procrastinating roommate willing to play with it, the furniture already looks chewed up, and
there’s enough food on the floor to allow the little guy to weather a nuclear fallout. That dog was in heaven. He’ll never even hear anyone tell him “Bad
boy!” Instead he’ll hear, “Eat that thing that just crawled by the TV. Good boy!”
I thought I would leave my brother’s apartment the next day with a fresh longing to return to college. But I didn’t. My only longing was for a puppy, a cold beer,
and a chick in a Miller Lite bathing suit. But then again, how’s that different from any other day?
Lee Camp is a comedian from NYC who headlined at 95 colleges last year, won the Laugh Across America Contest, opened for Jimmy Fallon, and was
featured on XM Radio's comedy channel. Lee's college humor book "Neither Sophisticated Nor
Intelligent" and his comedy CD "Toddler-Powered Vehicles" are available at his
website, LeeCamp.net.
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