Duke, Horizontal

To be perfectly honest, I’ve been procrastinating this column. Over the past few days, I’ve tried forcing myself to engage in a few minutes of earnest thinking about booty calls or Skype sex or pheromones or any other earnest topic of sexual interest. But the sunshine lures me to the WaDuke patio, while the depletion of my spring wardrobe spurs me to the mall. I crave SPF, open windows and the return of the Belmont pool. Thus, even in the face of my lingering senior-year responsibilities, I maintain a comfortable yet genuinely false sense of security. According to my internal rationale, if I drink a little too much on a Tuesday night, I may still manage to write a reasonably acceptable thesis. If I don’t have the drive to go the grocery store, I can probably just make up the ingredients in bechamel sauce or at least subsist for a week on pita chips. Truly, everything will turn out okay in the end. For now, I’m tired. Even tired of writing about sex. And with that realization, I recognize that it’s time for spring break.

Surprisingly, this will be the first spring break I’ve spent in the United States since I started college. This year, I plan to serenade all 824 miles of the southbound stretch of I-95 with “Welcome to Miami” before reaching our destination in South Beach. After more seasoned visitors informed us that we needed to dress like Jersey Shore casting-call hopefuls to blend in along Ocean Drive, I expect a reasonably interesting trip to unfold. Vacations and good judgment have never been friends.

In reality, my first introduction to the true correlation between spring break and brain-cell loss began prior to college, during my senior year of high school. In an uncharacteristic move, my mom had been too swamped to plan a more legitimate family vacation and instead booked the clan, as well as two friends, on a Caribbean cruise. Conveniently and predictably, the rest of the continental United States shared a spring break with my high school and I was soon making acquaintances across the SEC and ACC. Most importantly, Midshipmen from the Naval Academy seemed to pour from every deck and cabin. As a freshly minted eighteen-year-old, I was far too entranced by their dress whites during “formal” dinners for my own good. Still, I was happy to leave my rum-soaked flirtations at sea upon returning to the real world, only to be contacted by the now upperclassmen sailors when they made an appearance at the Duke-Navy game during my sophomore year. As I incidentally blurted out to the particular midshipmen who had caught my fancy those many years ago, “You were definitely on my list of people to never see again.”

With that in mind, you meet a lot of interesting members of the opposite sex on vacation, most of whom seem convinced that you’re far more likely to sleep with them as long as you’re near the southern hemisphere. Some stand-out (and ultimately platonic) encounters include the 28-year-old Mormon I met in a St. Thomas hotel pool, simultaneously stressing the creed of Joseph Smith and the necessity of buying me a drink. There was also the alcoholic ship captain in the British Virgin Islands who tried to convince the drunken female population they’d win a free shirt if they jumped off the boat and the swingers who hung out in Disney World. Something about sunscreen and Senor Frogs seems to attract these people.

Time to recharge, refuel, and regret. What happens on spring breaks stays on spring break?

Brooke Hartley is a Trinity senior.