Playing the Odds

Playing the Odds

I shouldn't tell you this story. If the wrong people read this, they will recognize it. You see, this is a true story as best I remember it. Sometimes life hits you in the face and sometimes you just watch it as it passes you by. This was one of those times when I was nothing more than a passive observer, watching and wondering "What the fuck is wrong with those people?"

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I started college in September 1973. OK, I'm an old fart, but better old than dead. I suppose I lived a rather sheltered life, maybe even privileged by some standards. College was an opportunity to learn how the rest of society lived and I deliberately chose a very large, state university with a good engineering program. I'd been to small schools and now I wanted to see the rest.

So this is a simple little story about one of those eye-opening realizations that left me wondering, "Huh?"

I lived in an eight-story, coed high rise on the edge of campus. When you exited the elevator, you either turned left or right. The dorm was coed with one side for the men and the other side for the women. It was a far cry from my male-only high school. I became reasonably comfortable and fell into a routine quickly. There was the usual nonsense. A few of the guys went streaking that first week. Streaking was running naked through the dormitory quad. It was a thing people did back then. A couple of guys dropped a golf ball and a bowling ball out the window to see if they would hit the ground at the same time. The golf ball bounced, and the bowling ball exploded. A table and some towels were used to turn the four-man shower into a four-foot-deep swimming pool complete with lifeguard and topless girls. It was college.

It didn't take long to figure out who the good students were and who the slackers were. People on my floor graduated with mixed grades in an assortment of majors. A few of them spent more time drinking beer and smoking dope than they did going to class, but then some of the classes at the state school weren't worth very much. Like I said, it was college.

One guy dropped some wisdom on us that changed our outlook for years to come. We called him "Dad". Dad was a nondescript, trim little fellow who was a bit on the short side and who had a cock-of-the-walk attitude that I always thought was compensation for something. I never did find out his grade status and if I ever knew his major, I long ago forgot it, but Dad had one skill above all others. Dad could seduce women. I mean, this guy brought a different woman back to his room every second or third day, two or three each week. Dad was a fucking machine! Now, it was never the same girl twice, so maybe Dad's pitch was better than his delivery, but his pitch was perfect. This went on week after week and we began to think that Dad was a god. Remember, too, this was before the time of AIDS. Sex to a college student meant not getting pregnant and not much more than that.

Eventually, some of the guys couldn't take it any longer and they asked Dad his secret. I wasn't there when they asked, but you can bet I heard about it. He said, "It's the simplest thing in the world. I walk up to maybe six or more girls every day. I talk them up for 10 or 15 minutes, and then I ask if they'd like to come back to my room for sex. Every two or three days, one of them says yes." It was that simple! It was so simple, it was diabolical. Better than five percent of the women on campus were total sluts and Dad was sampling the distribution to find the girls who said, "Yes." Dad was just playing the odds. He didn't care about his reputation. He didn't care that more than forty women every week decided he was a sleaze ball. He was charming enough to smile and pull it off. There were forty thousand students on that campus - that's twenty thousand women. He had a virtually unlimited supply to draw upon and he would never exhaust that supply in the four years he was there.

About two years later he met a woman who got under his skin. I never knew how or why, but he gave up his trolling for sluts and entered a monogamous relationship with this one woman. We weren't very original, so we called her "Mom". Mom had a little quirk; whenever she was having sex, she liked to put a red light in the window. Mom and Dad used to fight from time to time; and when they did, she would go back to her room in the dorm on the other side of the quad and put a red light in her window. He knew she was messing with his head, but he couldn't help himself. He would pace the floor and tell us repeatedly that she was just doing it to get to him. Mom knew what she was doing. Dad knew what she was doing. Dad couldn't help himself and it drove him crazy.

I lost track of them when I graduated as I lost track of virtually everyone. I have no idea what happened to them. Whatever happened, I'm going to guess that Mom made the decision. Dad was pretty much roped, broken and saddled by that time. I do wonder what happened to them and I sometimes wonder whether Mom kept that red lamp for the next place they lived.