Dorm Room Games

I can't believe it's already been 10 years since I graduated college, yet here was my invitation to the reunion. I had only recently begun practicing medicine after all of the schooling and residencies. To be honest, I had lost touch with most of my friends from those earlier years because I was so busy. Everyone tried to tell me becoming a doctor was a long road, and they were all correct; it fucking sucked. I decided to do a little snooping to see what everyone was up to now. From what I could determine from social media, most of my former roommates or friends were firmly in the middle of their careers and here I was just starting out. I know the financial payoff would be there eventually, but it was hard to watch everyone else thriving while I was still in the red for student loans.

I guess I shouldn't really be surprised though. I choose to go to a small, rural college that focused on life skills as much as education. Some claimed it was experimental, but it wasn't. It was just very progressive and the goal of the school was to produce valuable citizens to the world. In that regard the school recruited the most eclectic group of students it could find. Each class was around 100 students so it wasn't too difficult to achieve that goal.

The school had been established by a wealthy entrepreneur who left his entire fortune to the establishment and continued existence of the school. I don't know for sure, but I heard that the endowment was worth over $2.6 billion. I figured it must be kind of true because the school was free to any student accepted. A big reason for that was so that the college could truly draw from the widest diversity of students. In that respect I would say mission accomplished. I met the most interesting people of life at that school. It seemed everyone had a story from every corner of civilization.

Nay sayers say the school is just a liberal breeding ground of affirmative action. In some respects I understand that sentiment, but what they get wrong is that truly everyone is represented. If you think all races and socioeconomic levels fall neatly into one voting block, I'm here to tell you they don't. I don't know how they did it, but it seemed like for every "token" student there was an equally opposite "token". If the voting record of the student body was public knowledge, I would bet you'd see close to a 50/50 split. It was the first place I learned the age old axiom: don't judge a book by its cover.

One of the stupid games we played as students was finding your evil twin, or at least the person that seemed to be the opposite you. For instance, I was a white orphan boy who grew up in the system with no parents, living off government assistance. Half-way through my freshman year I finally met another orphan girl who was adopted by wealthy conservative parents. My roommate Raj was an Indian boy from a high caste family who's parents immigrated to the U.S. 12 years before he was born. His doppelgänger was a Pakistani refugee boy who was from a poor family and rumored not to be a legal immigrant.

Obviously the school couldn't get an exact opposite of you, but the goal was to try. They wanted everyone at the college to understand the diverse perspectives of the world to better facilitate a brighter future. Whether this always worked or not is certainly up for debate, but from what I've seen of my medical school colleagues I would definitely say I had a much more diverse set of friends, even if maybe I hadn't been the best friend to everyone over the last few years as I was so dedicated to my studies.

One of the hallmarks of the school was that everyone had to live on campus, all four years. It was paid for of course, so it was hard to complain. Also, we were in the middle of nowhere Oregon so it wasn't like we could live anywhere else if we wanted to. The dorms themselves were pretty nice and not really like what I had seen on TV. The rooms were decent size and there was a large common room for everyone in that cluster to share. The common rooms were connected to four of the rooms. Two of the rooms of either side were shared by two students and one of the sides was female and the other side male. In typical fashion we even had two transgendered kids and they were in the same cluster, opposite sides. Would have loved to be a fly on the wall of that dorm.

Basically you get eight people to an "apartment" if you will. That's how we looked at it anyway. If you met someone new, you would always ask what apartment they were in. As you can imagine, living with seven other students of wildly differing backgrounds was challenging. Everyone had their own ideas of what "clean" meant or what "loud" was. The smells from cooking were borderline torturous depending on who was doing the cooking. The mix of aromas alone should have been labeled a war crime, but you got used to it.

I already mentioned my roommate Raj. We got along great. He was fairly athletic like me so we bonded over sports and physical activity. We also really liked movies so that was something we could also share. In the room next to us were Maso and Hector. Maso was a Nigerian prince, I shit you not. He had a thick African accent, similar to the one that Trevor Noah does, but a really nice guy. He was a little naive to some Western ways so it was always fun to bust his chops and he took it well. I don't think he ever really got the jokes us giving him our bank account numbers. Hector was from Mexico City and the son of a Catholic priest. They definitely didn't have much money, but what he lacked in money he more than made up for with confidence. Hector was the Alpha male of the apartment for sure, not in a bad way, but from an outsider's perspective they would have thought that.

On the other side we had Kimiko, Shante, Beth, and Raven. Kimiko, who went by Kim, was of Japanese heritage, but was from Southern California. Her parents were both Hollywood agents. I think they owned their own firm and specialized in handling Asian actors from what she told us. Shante was her roommate. She was from Harlem with a pretty thick New York accent who was raised by her single mother. Her mom was a teacher for the NY public schools. Shante was the valedictorian and turned down a full ride to Colombia just so she could get outside of New York.

Beth was the daughter of Pentecostal Preacher from the Florida panhandle. Her mom stayed at home to raise her seven siblings. She had been a standout tennis player in High School and almost got a scholarship to play at the University of Florida, but she tore her ACL. Raven was of Sioux heritage from South Dakota. Grew up on a reservation there and was definitely the quietist one of the bunch.

So that was it. Now you can kind of see the diversity that the school was going for. The only thing everyone had in common was academic strength. Even that was somewhat diverse though. Not everyone was a valedictorian, some won academic competitions or wrote papers for prestigious journals and some were drama masters. I guess it would be more accurate to say everyone was accomplished in some way, driven even.

It felt like forever since I had thought about everyone and our time in the apartment that freshman year. We had all become very close as most apartments did by the end of the year. I guess that's just what happens when you throw a bunch of 18 years olds together. You learn to live with each other and by proxy become pretty good friends in the process. That isn't to say there aren't blow ups or arguments. There were plenty of those.

Beth and Hector would end up in a squabble about something religious just about every week. Originally I thought they were going to bond the most because of the shared religious parent thing. Couldn't have been more wrong. Not sure how I could have been so stupid, considering a large portion of wars have been fought over religious differences. The funny part to me was they argued over the minute details, not whether or not God existed, but more so how God wanted us to run things. From an atheist's perspective it was comical, but probably not so much for them.

The rest of us got into a normal amount of tiffs, usually over living arrangements more than serious stuff though. At the end of the day we were a tight knit group that was respectful of each other. The only rule we all came up with early on is no dating each other. Seemed like the prudent thing at the beginning, but it's hard not to develop feelings for people that spend a lot of time with you.

I had grown closest to Raven as we bonded over growing up poor and relative loners. I definitely had a crush on her. I loved her long black hair and olive skin. She had a more womanly figure than the rest of the girls my age. Actual hips and ass, which I found attractive. I'm guessing she had a large B or small C up top that she wasn't shy to show off in deep-cut shirts. When we were hanging out on the couch one time she was wearing pretty loose shorts. I spent the entire movie trying to get a sneak. I finally did and just about came in my pants. She wasn't wearing any panties and I caught a glimpse of her dark hair down there. At least I knew she didn't shave. I jerked off to that vision for months.

Raj talked to me about Shante all the time so I was pretty sure he had a thing for her. They never dated, but spent a decent amount of time together. Kim was the most popular so she spent the most amount of time with "others" as we jokingly called the other apartments. I suspected that Beth and Hector were in a love/hate situation because they never really tried to avoid each other and seemed to seek each other out just to argue. Anyway, that's just a brief synopsis of our little group so that you'll understand the story I'm getting to.

Did you get the impression that we were a bunch of over achieving nerds? Well, you wouldn't be wrong. To say that most students who showed up to our school were virgins would be an understatement. No official polls were ever held, but if gossip and the grapevine were accurate we were looking at a solid 90%. Between online lives, strict parents, academic endeavors and our generations lack of actual social contact we were all woefully inexperienced in the sexual department. Some were more willing to talk about their experiences or lack thereof, but others were embarrassed by it so you never quite knew about some people.

Beth was very vocal about the fact that she had never even kissed a boy before. She was brought up to save everything for marriage. Over those first months though, I think she was starting to question a lot of things after seeing so many other perspectives. Maso openly talked about his experiences with zero filter. He was the only non-virgin of our group that I was aware of. I wasn't entirely sure about Kim, but couldn't confirm nor deny at that time.

Raj and I had both gotten handjobs before, but that was it. We jokingly referred to ourselves as the "Handy Brothers", when others weren't around. It was our inside joke. Hector and Shante never talked about sexual stuff so they were a bit of an enigma, or at least they were until that fateful night.

What I always found interesting about teen movies is that they made sex seem like something only popular kids did, like nerds would never do it. The reality is, nerds and every other group of teens is going through the same hormonal changes. The secret is that is everyone is horny. I know I just told you that our school was a bunch of virgins, but again it wasn't because we didn't want to. It was just difficult to pull off when we were in high school for the reasons mentioned earlier. College has the reputation that it does for a reason. It's the first time a bunch of horny teenagers are away from home, with limited supervision and lots of free time. Add alcohol to the mix and you have a lot of sexual experimentation. Add weed to the mix and holy shit, Hollywood can't even make the movie, you need PornHub.

Alcohol was not easy for us to get. When you're in a small town, fake IDs don't work as well and when it's a small school too you have less older kids to buy for you. I said it wasn't easy, but it was possible under the right circumstances. Kim had helped a Senior write an important paper for her class so she owed Kim a favor. Kim asked the group what she should ask for and we all said, "Vodka!" That's how we came into possession of a 1.5L bottle of Smirnoff and that's how the greatest/hardest night of my life started.

It was a Friday in late November. Thanksgiving was early that year so we were already back from the break. Finals season was coming up so everyone needed a night off. We decided as a group to stay in with just the eight of us to play games and drink the vodka. Things started out benign like most game nights. Everyone was sipping a mixed drink while we played Settlers of Catan. Overall the vibe was fairly chill, until out of nowhere, Raven says, "this is lame, we should play drinking games or something." That certainly lit a fire under everyone. The entire group seemed to all talk at once, trying to either defend themselves or ask what we should do. Eventually it all quieted down and Hector spoke.

"What kind of games did you have in mind?"

"I don't know. The ones they always play in the movies or something. Never Have I Ever, 7 minutes in Heaven, Truth or Dare...stuff like that. We are all 18, in college and unsupervised. This is the time to be crazy before we have to be real adults...right?!"

There was some murmuring amongst the group as people turned to their neighbor to discuss. Lots of giggling among the girls and some excited smiles on the guys. I was both excited and terrified. I've always heard about these games, but for some reason never really thought about being in them. Of course my mind immediately went to maybe seeing the girls naked, that was the exciting part. The not so exciting part was my lack of sexual experience. What if I didn't know what or how to do something? What if I sucked at everything? Lucky for me, hormones are more powerful than the brain. Seeing my roommates naked, especially Raven was just too good of an opportunity to pass up.

You could tell that everyone was in a similar boat to me based on the whispers and body language. It was funny to see each person basically agree, but in as much of a lackadaisical manner as they could muster. Lots of, "I guess", "That could be fun" and "I'm game if everyone else is." Nobody wanted to seem overeager I guess. It's nice to know that everyone felt the same at least.

"If we're going to play a game, let's start with the greatest: Truth or Dare," Hector announced.

"I don't know, that's kind of advanced isn't it," Beth asked?

"We can make it whatever we want Beth, start small and see where it goes. Right everyone," Shante said.

There was some more debate and then some assurances that we would keep it light. The next phase consisted of coming up with the rules. We were just going to look it up on the internet, but decided it would be more fun if we made our own.

1. If you chose truth twice in a row you have to remove a piece of clothing.

2. The group would vote on your truth, if you got less than 5 votes you had to take 1/2 a shot.

3. You could take a full shot instead of your dare, but the next time it was 2 shots, then 3 etc.

4. You could challenge a dare for being too harsh, but you had to have 5 votes of agreement.

5. If your challenge was successful you could immediately T/D the person who gave it to you.

6. No information was to leave the room and no dare was to go outside the room.

7. If you quit, you had to go in your room. No watching.

8. In each round everyone got to ask a T/D and everyone had to be asked.

The last rule was meant to keep everyone engaged and prevent targeting. We wanted everyone to participate equally. It's the best we could do in the short time we gave ourselves. I'm sure the real rules are somewhat close to what we came up with, but in reality it doesn't matter. Seemed like the whole point of the game was to drink and give people a reason to do stuff without feeling guilty. I can tell you that the last part of that statement was definitely true. I don't think any of us were prepared for what the night had in store.

The room was already arranged with two couches, a love seat and some chairs. We formed the seating into a square and we alternated between boy and girl. It was me and Shante on one couch, Raven and Hector on the love seat, Raj and Kim on the other couch across from me and then Beth and Maso in the two free floating chairs. Maso and Beth were such a contrast in looks it was striking. He was very dark skinned with a shaved head and she was alabaster white with, long blonde hair. He was also very tall and she was pretty short. They just looked funny sitting next to each other.

Everyone was dressed pretty similar. Sweatpants, socks, sweatshirts over T-shirts, the typical college freshman look. There wasn't too much drinking during our previous game so everyone was still pretty sober. Beth seemed like maybe she was slightly drunk because she was giggling a lot, but other than that it appeared we were starting from a blank slate. We still had a good liter plus of vodka left at least.

The other last minute change was we would use a random number generator to see who started a round. I was number 8.

Round 1

1 was randomly chosen first. Shante started things off so that meant Maso was next as we were going in clockwise order each time. A bit of a relief that I was going last so I could get a feel for what people were doing, but it left me with no choice as to who I could T/D. Shante asked Raj first and he surprisingly chose dare. He later told me this was because he wanted to shift his truths to when things got more difficult since you couldn't take multiple truths without severe penalty.

"I dare you take off your shirt and flex for us."

Raj looked a little confused and hesitated slightly before shrugging his shoulders. He turned it into a slow strip tease to be funny. Everyone was hooting and hollering at him to take it off. Eventually he was topless and struck a muscleman pose. Raj was more cut than I realized. He certainly wasn't a gym rat by any stretch, but he had decent definition for sure.

"Thank you, thank you. You're far too kind," he said before taking a bow and putting his top back on.

"No, no. Once a piece of clothing is removed it stays off," Shante stated.

Maso was next and he went with me. I was definitely caught off guard so I didn't really have time to think. I just blurted out truth.

"Do you have a crush on Raven?"

"Uhh...ummm...I mean...well...she's great, but of course not. No dating roommates, right?"

Immediately Maso challenged my truth to a vote. Let's just say that it didn't go well for me. I was poured a half of a shot. I couldn't believe everyone knew I had a crush on her. I guess I wasn't as sneaky as I thought. I was having instant regrets to playing this game. I really hoped Raven didn't hate me. I managed to catch a glimpse of her when I took my shot and she was blushing with a smile on her face. Maybe this game wasn't so bad after all.

Four more truths that didn't really reveal anything special and then it was Raven's turn. She only had Kim or Hector left to ask. She went with Kim who chose dare.

"I dare you to kiss to Maso."

With almost no hesitation she leaned over to Maso's chair, put her hands on his cheeks and laid a fat kiss right on his lips. Everyone was silent for a second before the entire room burst into cheers. Maso was just staring blankly into nowhere. It was pretty funny. Clearly this wasn't Kim's first rodeo.

"That's how you get this party started Kim," Raven shouted.

This left me in a bit of a pickle. The only person left was Beth and I couldn't think of a truth or dare to give her. I was hoping for truth because I could just recycle someone else's question. Unfortunately she oddly took dare.