It’s three in the morning, I’m blaquephaded off moonshine and I’m posted up in the middle of the Costa Rican rainforest. In times like this, I start to wonder how I’m going to survive the night without puking on myself or getting arrested and, more importantly, what led me to this situation in the first place. Considering this is the last thing I’ll write for the Nexus, I figure fuck it. Let me wipe my slate clean. Here’s a portion of what I actually learned from college:

I don’t care who you are; the dorms are a lie. The reason you leave your parents to head off to college is to live on your own and throw parties that will guarantee hot sex. Or so I thought. I’ve had 300 people at a house with no backyard destroy everything in sight, including molesting a mom on a stripper pole that was shoved through the ceiling… by my repair count, shoved through 16 times. I’ve picked a beach towel off a bathroom floor to find an entire loaf of shit inside. A trio of girls once wrote their area codes in toothpaste across my mirrors while stealing contact solution in the middle of screaming about coke-induced nosebleeds. The Santa Barbara Police Dept. Gang Unit once broke up a party at my complex with excessive force. Even worse, I’ve called an ambulance for an overweight 15-year-old diabetic who went into insulin shock from drinking after her friends ditched her. I’ve learned that hosting a party is a serious pain in the dick, but goddamn, can they be fun.

Freshman year I came out of a hooch coma to stare at a floor covered in broken glass, piss, puke and an uncomfortable amount of blood thanks to the aggressive pace of an Edward Fortyhands competition. A former boss and a roommate carried my passed-out naked ass off of a toilet and showered me off before putting me to bed. I’ve woken up on a steeply slanted roof. I’ve woken up to a dog licking my face on a lawn in Venice. I woke up naked in a bathroom in Manzanita during orientation. With experiences like those coming with regularity, I’ve learned that tossing back the sauce can make you irrationally tired.

I found my stride wearing solely a ski mask and an extension cord-powered blender on my roof while waving my dong at passersby. Later, I broke up a party at my own house by running through it nude and screaming obscenities. Once, a pair of girls saw me running naked down Pasado and gave me a slice of their Domino’s. I’ve deejayed with my dick out, I’ve run from the police and into an AYSO tournament with my ass hanging out of a small dress during a sloshball game, and I’ve practiced tai chi in the nude as the sun comes up. After all that cock waving, I’ve learned that it’s not just women who should feel free to show some skin.

I dated a girl for a few months, cared about her, and then she married a drug dealer in Santa Cruz while we were still together. A large Samoan girl screamed, “Fuck me!” and tried to jump into my arms in an alley behind a party after I met her five minutes previously and ended up leaving teeth mark bruises on my penis. I can’t remember the last single girl I’ve gotten frisky with. After some serious fingerlingus, a coworker fellated me in the tunnels underneath the UCen basement while her boyfriend was out of state. In an unfathomably rare moment of courage, I asked out whom I would argue is the most gorgeous girl on campus after an interview, only to stand her up in a rare flash of conscience when I found out she had a boyfriend as well. My love life is fucked, but I’ve learned that jumping out windows and wrecking homes is the only way I know how to work.

In Mexico, I’ve almost been killed: by getting in foot chases with Mexican gangs; by getting punched in the face and thrown into the railing of a third-story apartment by a good friend; by getting run over in 60-mile charity bike races; by blowing my hands up with hundreds of dollars worth of free fireworks with a local shop owner and his fiancée; by pimps who wait outside a hotel room in the rain for three hours with the promise of $10 hookers and by hundreds and hundreds of Mexican strippers.

I’ve been tear-gassed at a championship soccer game, shortened my life immensely with a boxed wine called Clos, fallen off a roof during a topless make-out while deejaying a local bar, played Wisest Wizard and ripped tequila suicides in Bocas del Toro, and smoked chrondor all day with a Caribbean soccer player while lounging about in the surf.
While sipping a flask in a jacket pocket through a straw while wandering Vancouver, I learned that there is an abundance of fun to be found worldwide.

I watched a guy wander the beach with a large shovel from the cliffs with my closest friends during a previous Champagne Sunrise. I cheered my face off as a violently drunken roommate left a half-empty beer on the nose of his board while catching a wave and finished it on his ride in. I puked down DP while walking backward to Freebirds with a bunch of visiting friends. Most importantly, every time I’ve felt down, I’ve wandered into an old friend who offered a beer and a good time. With all my shit, I’ve learned that knowing and taking care of good people is the only worthwhile currency we have.

It’s been a whirlwind the last four years, including the actual schooling part, which I’ve glaringly ignored in my writing (although I will say that every test I’ve ever taken drunk or hung over, of which there are a fair amount, resulted in an A). But my personal education aside, the biggest lesson I’ve learned in the past four years that life can be phenomenally fun if you want it to be. All you have to do is make the effort.