Thursday, October 05, 2006
From the Smith College vault: Razzy gets busted for possession
The other night LL Cool Jew was in town, so JerseyGirl, FalloniousMonk, and myself met her on the Upper West Side for drinks. Since she couldn't meet up with us until later in the evening on account of it being Yom Kippur and having a date with many relatives and a platter of smoked fishes for fast-breaking on the Upper East Side, JerseyGirl and I elected to prefunk at her apartment.
I hadn't seen JerseyGirl in ages before I ran into her randomly at a yoga studio a couple of years ago. Even though we went to Smith together and were buddies from the school newspaper, she was two years behind me and lived in a different house, so we hadn't really kept in touch. However, once she had suffered through a punishing Bikram's class with me, I invited her back to LL Cool Jew and my crib for cheap Chinese food, canned beer, dog admiring, and conversation. We've been hanging out ever since, because she's funny as shit. She works at a certain freedom-loving cable news channel as a producer for a certain famous mustachioed journalist(think angry skinheads hurling chairs), and her stories about life at work, as well as about the New Jersey town she originates from, are priceless.
However, because we've only recently become more frequent hangout buddies, JerseyGirl was unfamiliar with many of the particulars of the hijinks I regularly involved myself in during my college years. Somehow we got to reminiscing about life in the Quad (Jordan House obviously being the best to live in, but I conceded to her that Scales wasn't too bad either), and got to talking about how I scored pot while I was matriculating. There had been a guy who I'll call the Byrdman working in the kitchen of my house who probably every girl smoking pot at Smith had bought from at one time or another, until he got arrested and hauled out of my house. I was rattling off the Byrdman anecdotal tales, and JerseyGirl was loving it to the point where she said, "You should start a blog that's just about Smith. Your stories are hilarious."
I thought about this for a minute. Indeed, I could start a blog that is comprised about just stories about Smith and have ample material at my disposal for fun-poking. However, I can barely keep up with this blog, or my Fantasy Football blog which is turning into a neglected shitshow. Therefore, I decided that when I think of some really good Smith College story I'll just relate it here, and maybe some of my friends from Smith will actually start reading it regularly (yes, I mean you, LL Cool Jew, Wmania, FalloniousMonk, JerseyGirl, Miss Corbutt, and anyone else whose name isn't KatieScarlett). So without further ado, here is the story of my bust for possession by the Smith College "Police" and the subseqent trial before a tribunal of judgmental transgendered bitches:
At Smith we had these party weekends creatively called Winter Weekend and Spring Weekend. Almost all the houses at Smith would host parties, even the lame ones like Talbot and Lamont House, and horny knuckle-dragging men from all over the northeast, from West Point to Dartmouth to the University of fucking Maine, would show up for some action with some desperate Smith girls.
A lot of people are under the misconception that Smith is a "lesbian" school because somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% of the students identify as openly gay. However, I would say that a good 20% of those are LUGs (lesbian until graduation) on the "four-year plan" driven to boobmash by a combination of curiosity and desperation, which makes Smith only 10% gay, just like the rest of the world. Apart from the real dykes and the LUGs, the other 70% is comprised of straight girls with no social skills who want nothing more than to meet a nice guy and GET LAID. Therefore, Winter and Spring weekends represented an excellent opportunity for guys to show up, get laid with minimal effort, and possibly carry out some type of important rite of passage for fraternity pledges. I remember one time this guy in a diaper hauled me into a bathroom, stuck a magic marker in my hand, and informed me that he needed X number of signatures to qualify as a Phi Beta Suckalottacocka or whatever, and would I sign my name and all my friends' names on his back. I whirled him around, then wrote, "I HAVE A MINISCULE PENIS AND CAN'T MAINTAIN AN ERECTION. TELL YOUR FRIENDS NOT TO FUCK ME UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES." Later, once he apparently found out what I'd written, my network of girls informed me that he was looking to have words about how "wrong" it was that I'd written that instead of a list of plagiarized girls' signatures. I guess the self-righteous complaint aspect of the prototypical Smith girl was catching. He never found me, because I was probably already in my room smoking pot with half the party by then.
The Quad, where I lived and where most of these shenanigans went down, generally hosted the best parties. We would have like 6 or 7 kegs. At most state and/or large co-ed schools that's a Tuesday night, but by Smith standards, these were like Spring Break in Mazatlan. However, on Winter or Spring weekend, the turnout was usually so big that these kegs were gone within two or three hours, leaving people angry and beverage-deprived. At that time, I'd corral my group of revelers, and we'd cruise up to my room for unearthing private liquor stashes and the rolling of many joints. Usually my entire floor would do this, so there was always a decent after party at the Jordan second floor. One night during my junior year Winter Weekend, I proceeded to do just this with a large group of girls and their assorted hangers-on, my boyfriend, and some of his townie friends. Shortly after we'd smoked our first joint, there was a loud, authoritative pounding on my door.
"Public Safety! Open up!"
I was a little worried, but not terribly, because Smith doesn't like to compile stats about drug busts, and therefore, they'll generally let it slide to keep promotional material such as the "Crime on Campus" statistic brochure appealing to parents and wealthy alumnae. I hid my bag somewhere, threw the roach out my window, and opened up.
FOUR Public Safety guys marched in and started acting like we were running a sweat shop or something in there. "Where is your marijuana?" demanded the alpha Public Safety guy, a short man with glasses and impeccably gelled hair.
"Marijuana? We were smoking cigarettes," I said, waving my lit Parliament light around to show him so.
"I distinctly smell marijuana. If you don't produce the marijuana, I will search your room."
Since Smith technically owned my room, I had absolutely NO right to privacy at any time. One time Public Safety was investigating something else and accidentally came into my room right while I was fucking my boyfriend. I didn't answer the door, because I didn't want to deal with them, so the officer just let himself right in. I managed to get a bathrobe on just as the door opened, but still there was one hell of an awkward moment as the officer stated that he had the wrong room, and sorry. I knew that they wouldn't hesitate to tear all my personal belongings apart, and if they did, they would find at least two bongs, several assorted pipes, a stack of Zig Zag rolling papers, a large container of seeds left over from my failed attempts at horticulture, and definitely at least a quarter ounce of weed. I didn't want that to happen, so I grabbed the book I had rolled the joint on. "Here is my marijuana," I said. "As you can see, there's hardly anything."
The Public Safety officer looked suspiciously at me, then at the book. There were indeed a few scraps of weed on the book. Acting like some sort of CSI, he made a show about brushing the scraps into a plastic baggie as "evidence." As an afterthought, he also confiscated two candles, because candles are a fire hazard and thus against the rules. Fortunately, this placated him and he didn't search my room. "We're going to have to write you up," he told me. "Expect to be contacted by the director of Public Safety and the Dean of Students about possible disciplinary action."
I knew one of the Public Safety officers there, because he always hung out at the newspaper office. The year prior, when I posed nude for the April Fool's edition of The Sophian, he told me that I had "balls down to here" and requested an autographed copy, which he supposedly hung in his work locker. I asked him if there wasn't anything he could do.
"Sorry," he said. "Normally there would be, but your RC called us specifically to report you. There's a record. My hands are tied."
They left, and I was reeling. I had been ratted out to the fuzz, and I was getting all Tony Soprano about doing horrible, murderous things to the snitch. However, I could do very little, because she was my RC. "RC" stands for "resident coordinator," and they are like RAs at any other school. The RC position was new, and was especially for first-year alumnae who couldn't bear the thought of life somewhere besides Smith. In return for their services and their supposed maturity, they received free board, a suite with a private bathroom, and a "generous" stipend of $11,000. In other words, Smith had created a job tailor-made for losers who couldn't move on with their lives post-graduation. My RC that year fit this description perfectly.
She was this fat bitch named Crystal Daugherty, and yes, that is her real name. She was a women's studies major who drove a VW Fox with fucking daisy stickers all over it, and was the type who thought she knew EVERYTHING. I had already made enemies with her at the LBTA panel discussion in our house when I went as the "ally" (hetero breeder) and wore a shirt that said "It's okay to be straight" on it. I further pissed her off that night at the party by getting mouthy with her when she wasn't letting people in (particularly those of the Y chromosome persuasion) because they weren't on the guest list. I said, "Put them on my guest list, then. Parties are for everyone." She gave me this exasperated, maternal sigh and told the doorwomen to ignore me. Furiously, I marched outside with a piece of paper, took down everyone's names, came in, and gave the sheet to Crystal. "Here is my revised guest list, Crystal, and if you so much as reject one of my friends on it, I'll file a complaint against you with the office of student affairs. If someone is on a guest list, they must be admitted. It's in the fucking handbook under the rules about social functions." Crystal glared at me, knowing there was nothing she could do, and not wanting to mar her perfect disciplinary record with the school with legitimate complaints for which there were witnesses. However, I should have known not to think an obese, socially retarded womyn like her wouldn't immediately seek vengeance that would both stick it to me good and restore her sense of indisputable self-importance. For Crystal, revenge was a dish best served by Public Safety.
I promptly received a letter the next week informing me that I was to report to the judicial board for an inquiry concerning the charges of "possession of a class D substance and candles." I tried to have some words with Crystal about it, but she blew me off with some bullshit about how the particulars of her job were non-negotiable. Even worse, at our Sophian editorial board meeting that week, the rest of the staff thought my inclusion in the "Police Blotter" section of the paper was riotously funny. I was irate, so I decided to get some payback the best way I knew how: I wrote an editorial. The piece was a scathing indictment of the RC program and how it was infringing on our quality of life by ruining the few remotely decent parties that ever happen at Smith. Since Crystal had pissed off plenty of other people the night I got busted by throwing people out of the party because she felt like it, trying to send my neighbors to their rooms, and screaming "GO HOME! THIS IS OUR HOUSE! WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE!" to the entire party the second the kegs were kicked, I had plenty of ammunition to make an example out of her without dragging my legal troubles into it. I argued that the RC program was a failure because no self-respecting Smith girl will be cowed by the authority of someone who acts like an incompetent 12-year-old babysitter, and then likened Crystal and her fat underling (the house "Diversity Coordinator") to Hitler and Mussolini. Crystal was feminazi to the core, so I felt the comparison was valid. Crystal, however, did NOT appreciate it.
Finally, Crystal decided that she wanted to talk, so that we could "understand each other." I trudged down to her suite and sat on her couch. One quick look at the decor told me that we were going to get nowhere in terms of finding common ground. Apart from her Smith diploma prominently displayed on the mantle of her decorative fireplace, the rest of the place was done up in trite-ass feminist icon framed prints (Rosie the Riveter, 70s-era Steinem, etc.) and an ENTIRE WALL devoted to magazine cutouts of Agent Scully from "The X-Files." There was even one Entertainment Weekly cover of Agents Mulder and Scully in bed together, and she'd cut David Duchovny out of the picture. I guess she had a thing for redheads in pleated pants, and she wasn't going to let any inconvenient penis stand in the way of her obsessively lusting after the same.
Anyway, we sat down and she explained to me in a motherly, extraordinarily condescending tone that her job isn't personal, but as RC she has to take drastic action if she suspects drug use. I listened, seething more with every minute of her bullshit story. I most certainly was not the only person smoking pot on the second floor that night, yet somehow the cops only went to my door. Furthermore, she'd been turning a blind eye to underage drinking all night. I know because I had only recently turned 20, and all night long I was arguing with her while clutching a beer.
"Cut the crap, Crystal," I told her. "We all know that it's common practice for RCs to generally overlook things, especially on Winter Weekend. You only called Public Safety on me because you don't like me."
"Why wouldn't I like you?"
"Because I told you that you were full of shit to your face. Maybe I should have gone behind your back in classic Smith non-confrontational tradition."
"That's not what you did! You were trying to let in unsafe, STRANGE MEN! I was just looking out for my house."
"Your house, Crystal? I've lived here for three years. You moved in this year because the school paid you to."
This conversation went like this for about an hour, with both of us becoming increasingly hostile and standoffish. Eventually, we parted with me lying that I wasn't planning on smoking pot anymore anyway, given my date with the judicial board, so I'd appreciate it if she would not immediately dial 2407 and call Public Safety on me whenever she was feeling shemasculated without first investigating herself. Also I believe that I encouraged her to get a real job.
Anyway, I returned to my room only to field a call from Saratoga120, an English professor I'd had my first year. This woman was a total character: she'd been at Smith for twenty years, she was a hard-core Catholic who smoked these foot-long cigarettes (the Saratoga 120s for which she is named) that she carried around in an embroidered cigarette purse, and made scathing comments about people in her class whose writing she thought was "amateurish" or "patently talentless." Fortunately, she liked my writing, and decided to make me a pet project of hers. She was always giving me her two cents on my Sophian articles, constantly pestering me to drop science and become an English major (I told her there was no way unless I'd somehow get out of the Milton-Chaucer-Beowulf requirement), and inviting me to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes with her. So Saratoga120 called me up and launched into a lecture about how stupid I was to be smoking pot. Clearly the word about my bust had made it through the faculty grapevine to her, and she wasn't going to bite her tongue. "I smoked pot twenty years ago at a faculty party!" she raged. "And I threw up on my way home. And dope makes you stupid. You don't want to be stupid, do you?"
After a few minutes of me meekly conceding to her remarks, she then said, "Well, obviously, you'll need representation at your hearing."
"I already read the handbook. I'm not allowed to bring counsel."
"Read it more closely, Razzy, I know that comprehension is one of your strong suits, so don't bullshit me. You're not allowed to have an attorney. You are, however, allowed to have a faculty member plead your case, and thus I will be going with you. Those people on the judicial board are intellectual lightweights, and I won't have them suspending you."
I was delighted. All of a sudden, Fortuna was spinning my way. When the fateful day came, not only did Saratoga120 show up ready to hand the judicial board their asses, but she brought along one of the college's demi-Deans with her. In fact, he was the demi-Dean responsible for overseeing the judicial board. I tried to hide my pleasure and act respectful and somewhat contrite.
When we walked into the judicial board room, I couldn't have been happier to have a posse of impressive faculty and administrators with me. I was faced with a long table populated by a bunch of uptight girls in Smith College sweatshirts and ugly cardigans smiling at me grimly, as if to say, "We can't wait to lord our power over you, you depraved bitch." I'd like to add that I'd been making fun of these types of bitches for two years in the newspaper, and I'm certain that my reputation for being an asshole preceded me into this room. Much like now, my writing in college made people either love me and laud me as hilarious, or hate me with every ounce of their being. The judicial board types were the latter, excepting one woman, a pornography heiress who had once tried to fuck me underneath the giant Georgia O'Keefe lily poster in her room. However, their smiles of imminent Razzy-suspending pleasure were promptly wiped off their smug, acne-ridden faces when my entourage seated themselves alongside me.
The "woman" at the head of the table, and the Chief Bitch of the Judicial Board, glared furiously. S/he was a transgendered person named Gloria Macri who insisted that people call him/her "Billy", yet another example of F2M trannies choosing stupid fucking boy names. My cause would have been hopeless without Saratoga120 and the Dean, as not only did s/he clearly dislike me on principle, but she was also an Ada (meaning "student of non-traditional age", meaning old). However, once s/he saw my entourage, s/he softened his/her reproachful glare immediately and began kissing ass.
"Oh, Dean! Oh, Professor Saratoga120! So NICE to see you! I'm surprised that you would take the time to appear for an insignificant hearing like this one."
I said, "I don't think it's insignificant," earning a kick under the table from Saratoga120, who had advised me to "keep your big mouth shut unless you are asked a specific question, and then answer only that without elaborating. Otherwise, they'll railroad you."
"Yes, well, shall we begin?" asked Billy/Gloria. "The charges are 'possession of a class D substance and candles.' We have your statement here, Ms. Razzy, in which you admit to using the class D substance as well as possessing the candles despite both being expressly prohibited by the school handbook of rules. What do you have to say on the subject?"
"It's all in my statement," I replied.
"Are you aware that marijuana is an illegal drug?"
"Yes. I exercised bad judgment, and for that I apologize," I responded. That was it for the why-were-you-doing-drugs line of questioning. However, the judicial board really wanted to know about the second part of the charge.
"It's obvious why you were using marijuana, but why were you in possession of the candles?"
"Um...decoration, I guess." I couldn't believe I had to come up with a reason for having candles, but I didn't think the right answer was "a flame source for doing hot knives."
"Decoration? Do you ever light them? The Public Safety report says they had clearly been lit."
"Yes, well, you know, to create mood."
"Mood? Mood for what?"
"Romantic mood for when my boyfriend visits."
"You have a boyfriend?"
"Yes, as it clearly says in my statement. Benzo. He's a townie. He works at Cha Cha Cha."
"The one with the rosy cheeks?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I love him, he's so nice!" exclaimed one of the judicial board justices. Benzo has always been a hit with the Smith girls. Even girls who despised me always adored Benzo.
Anyway, Billy/Gloria's tough interrogation tactics were out the window once her cohorts started gushing about how charming and sweet my boyfriend was when he served them black bean burritos, and s/he informed me that I would be receiving my punishment in campus mail. The Dean in my corner advised them that he "would be following up" to ensure that the punishment fit the crime of a first-time offense.
A week later, I received my punishment: a letter on my "permanent record" and loss of priority in the spring housing lottery. I didn't even get probation! The loss of priority in the spring housing lottery sucked, because even though I wound up in my beloved Jordan House, I got shafted from any decent room on the second floor. I ended up in the Dead Girl's Room, a room where during my sophomore year its resident hung herself from a steam pipe and was there for three days before her body was found. Nobody wanted to live there because of rumors going around that it was haunted. I don't believe in ghosts (nor did I see one while living there), so I gladly took it and my only complaint was that it got really shitty light. No wonder the poor girl who lived there killed herself; it was more dreary than a broom closet at Jane Eyre's boarding school.
Crystal Daugherty was clearly appalled by my failure to be removed from her house, and was a royal bitch to me afterward. "So the judicial board didn't even give you probation?" she inquired once after cornering me in the dining room. "That's right," I said happily. "I guess they thought your charges were pretty bogus." I walked away, before she could splutter out any more bullshit about just doing her job. Later that year she tried to have me busted again, but I didn't get caught (although the fake Smith cops were suspicious and got the Dean of Student Affairs to send me to one drug counseling session, but at least I didn't have to explain myself before the judicial board again). She also implied that she would boot my boyfriend out of the house for violating the "no guests may stay longer than 28 consecutive days" rule, but since he usually spent one night of the week at his place, this accusation was groundless as well. That fat bitch was defeated, and undoubtedly spent many nights praying to her shrine to Agent Scully that her totalitarian rule would regain its credibility and allow for the ejection of hateful cockroaches like me.
The next year, despite having to live in the Dead Girl's Room, the RC situation was dramatically improved. First, she didn't display her Smith diploma, and immediately replaced the wall of Agent Scully with a hot black-and-white poster of young Mickey Rourke (9 1/2 Weeks Mickey Rourke, not post-pugilist cheek implants Mickey Rourke). Second, she immediately explained that she was only RC because she couldn't get a job, and wanted an inexpensive, furnished place in which to study for her LSATs. Most importantly, however, not only was she totally down with smoking pot, but she was dating the Byrdman and he got a job in our kitchen. Even when he got arrested (by the real cops) and fired for possessing drugs at work, she moved him covertly into her suite. So when I had previously had to towel my door, light incense, keep the air freshener handy, exhale bong hits through a toilet paper tube stuffed with fabric softener sheets, etc., now I could just stroll downstairs to the RC suite, buy a bag, and smoke it there. Way to rectify your past transgressions, Smith College. I never wrote a derogatory article about the RC program again.
I hadn't seen JerseyGirl in ages before I ran into her randomly at a yoga studio a couple of years ago. Even though we went to Smith together and were buddies from the school newspaper, she was two years behind me and lived in a different house, so we hadn't really kept in touch. However, once she had suffered through a punishing Bikram's class with me, I invited her back to LL Cool Jew and my crib for cheap Chinese food, canned beer, dog admiring, and conversation. We've been hanging out ever since, because she's funny as shit. She works at a certain freedom-loving cable news channel as a producer for a certain famous mustachioed journalist(think angry skinheads hurling chairs), and her stories about life at work, as well as about the New Jersey town she originates from, are priceless.
However, because we've only recently become more frequent hangout buddies, JerseyGirl was unfamiliar with many of the particulars of the hijinks I regularly involved myself in during my college years. Somehow we got to reminiscing about life in the Quad (Jordan House obviously being the best to live in, but I conceded to her that Scales wasn't too bad either), and got to talking about how I scored pot while I was matriculating. There had been a guy who I'll call the Byrdman working in the kitchen of my house who probably every girl smoking pot at Smith had bought from at one time or another, until he got arrested and hauled out of my house. I was rattling off the Byrdman anecdotal tales, and JerseyGirl was loving it to the point where she said, "You should start a blog that's just about Smith. Your stories are hilarious."
I thought about this for a minute. Indeed, I could start a blog that is comprised about just stories about Smith and have ample material at my disposal for fun-poking. However, I can barely keep up with this blog, or my Fantasy Football blog which is turning into a neglected shitshow. Therefore, I decided that when I think of some really good Smith College story I'll just relate it here, and maybe some of my friends from Smith will actually start reading it regularly (yes, I mean you, LL Cool Jew, Wmania, FalloniousMonk, JerseyGirl, Miss Corbutt, and anyone else whose name isn't KatieScarlett). So without further ado, here is the story of my bust for possession by the Smith College "Police" and the subseqent trial before a tribunal of judgmental transgendered bitches:
At Smith we had these party weekends creatively called Winter Weekend and Spring Weekend. Almost all the houses at Smith would host parties, even the lame ones like Talbot and Lamont House, and horny knuckle-dragging men from all over the northeast, from West Point to Dartmouth to the University of fucking Maine, would show up for some action with some desperate Smith girls.
A lot of people are under the misconception that Smith is a "lesbian" school because somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% of the students identify as openly gay. However, I would say that a good 20% of those are LUGs (lesbian until graduation) on the "four-year plan" driven to boobmash by a combination of curiosity and desperation, which makes Smith only 10% gay, just like the rest of the world. Apart from the real dykes and the LUGs, the other 70% is comprised of straight girls with no social skills who want nothing more than to meet a nice guy and GET LAID. Therefore, Winter and Spring weekends represented an excellent opportunity for guys to show up, get laid with minimal effort, and possibly carry out some type of important rite of passage for fraternity pledges. I remember one time this guy in a diaper hauled me into a bathroom, stuck a magic marker in my hand, and informed me that he needed X number of signatures to qualify as a Phi Beta Suckalottacocka or whatever, and would I sign my name and all my friends' names on his back. I whirled him around, then wrote, "I HAVE A MINISCULE PENIS AND CAN'T MAINTAIN AN ERECTION. TELL YOUR FRIENDS NOT TO FUCK ME UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES." Later, once he apparently found out what I'd written, my network of girls informed me that he was looking to have words about how "wrong" it was that I'd written that instead of a list of plagiarized girls' signatures. I guess the self-righteous complaint aspect of the prototypical Smith girl was catching. He never found me, because I was probably already in my room smoking pot with half the party by then.
The Quad, where I lived and where most of these shenanigans went down, generally hosted the best parties. We would have like 6 or 7 kegs. At most state and/or large co-ed schools that's a Tuesday night, but by Smith standards, these were like Spring Break in Mazatlan. However, on Winter or Spring weekend, the turnout was usually so big that these kegs were gone within two or three hours, leaving people angry and beverage-deprived. At that time, I'd corral my group of revelers, and we'd cruise up to my room for unearthing private liquor stashes and the rolling of many joints. Usually my entire floor would do this, so there was always a decent after party at the Jordan second floor. One night during my junior year Winter Weekend, I proceeded to do just this with a large group of girls and their assorted hangers-on, my boyfriend, and some of his townie friends. Shortly after we'd smoked our first joint, there was a loud, authoritative pounding on my door.
"Public Safety! Open up!"
I was a little worried, but not terribly, because Smith doesn't like to compile stats about drug busts, and therefore, they'll generally let it slide to keep promotional material such as the "Crime on Campus" statistic brochure appealing to parents and wealthy alumnae. I hid my bag somewhere, threw the roach out my window, and opened up.
FOUR Public Safety guys marched in and started acting like we were running a sweat shop or something in there. "Where is your marijuana?" demanded the alpha Public Safety guy, a short man with glasses and impeccably gelled hair.
"Marijuana? We were smoking cigarettes," I said, waving my lit Parliament light around to show him so.
"I distinctly smell marijuana. If you don't produce the marijuana, I will search your room."
Since Smith technically owned my room, I had absolutely NO right to privacy at any time. One time Public Safety was investigating something else and accidentally came into my room right while I was fucking my boyfriend. I didn't answer the door, because I didn't want to deal with them, so the officer just let himself right in. I managed to get a bathrobe on just as the door opened, but still there was one hell of an awkward moment as the officer stated that he had the wrong room, and sorry. I knew that they wouldn't hesitate to tear all my personal belongings apart, and if they did, they would find at least two bongs, several assorted pipes, a stack of Zig Zag rolling papers, a large container of seeds left over from my failed attempts at horticulture, and definitely at least a quarter ounce of weed. I didn't want that to happen, so I grabbed the book I had rolled the joint on. "Here is my marijuana," I said. "As you can see, there's hardly anything."
The Public Safety officer looked suspiciously at me, then at the book. There were indeed a few scraps of weed on the book. Acting like some sort of CSI, he made a show about brushing the scraps into a plastic baggie as "evidence." As an afterthought, he also confiscated two candles, because candles are a fire hazard and thus against the rules. Fortunately, this placated him and he didn't search my room. "We're going to have to write you up," he told me. "Expect to be contacted by the director of Public Safety and the Dean of Students about possible disciplinary action."
I knew one of the Public Safety officers there, because he always hung out at the newspaper office. The year prior, when I posed nude for the April Fool's edition of The Sophian, he told me that I had "balls down to here" and requested an autographed copy, which he supposedly hung in his work locker. I asked him if there wasn't anything he could do.
"Sorry," he said. "Normally there would be, but your RC called us specifically to report you. There's a record. My hands are tied."
They left, and I was reeling. I had been ratted out to the fuzz, and I was getting all Tony Soprano about doing horrible, murderous things to the snitch. However, I could do very little, because she was my RC. "RC" stands for "resident coordinator," and they are like RAs at any other school. The RC position was new, and was especially for first-year alumnae who couldn't bear the thought of life somewhere besides Smith. In return for their services and their supposed maturity, they received free board, a suite with a private bathroom, and a "generous" stipend of $11,000. In other words, Smith had created a job tailor-made for losers who couldn't move on with their lives post-graduation. My RC that year fit this description perfectly.
She was this fat bitch named Crystal Daugherty, and yes, that is her real name. She was a women's studies major who drove a VW Fox with fucking daisy stickers all over it, and was the type who thought she knew EVERYTHING. I had already made enemies with her at the LBTA panel discussion in our house when I went as the "ally" (hetero breeder) and wore a shirt that said "It's okay to be straight" on it. I further pissed her off that night at the party by getting mouthy with her when she wasn't letting people in (particularly those of the Y chromosome persuasion) because they weren't on the guest list. I said, "Put them on my guest list, then. Parties are for everyone." She gave me this exasperated, maternal sigh and told the doorwomen to ignore me. Furiously, I marched outside with a piece of paper, took down everyone's names, came in, and gave the sheet to Crystal. "Here is my revised guest list, Crystal, and if you so much as reject one of my friends on it, I'll file a complaint against you with the office of student affairs. If someone is on a guest list, they must be admitted. It's in the fucking handbook under the rules about social functions." Crystal glared at me, knowing there was nothing she could do, and not wanting to mar her perfect disciplinary record with the school with legitimate complaints for which there were witnesses. However, I should have known not to think an obese, socially retarded womyn like her wouldn't immediately seek vengeance that would both stick it to me good and restore her sense of indisputable self-importance. For Crystal, revenge was a dish best served by Public Safety.
I promptly received a letter the next week informing me that I was to report to the judicial board for an inquiry concerning the charges of "possession of a class D substance and candles." I tried to have some words with Crystal about it, but she blew me off with some bullshit about how the particulars of her job were non-negotiable. Even worse, at our Sophian editorial board meeting that week, the rest of the staff thought my inclusion in the "Police Blotter" section of the paper was riotously funny. I was irate, so I decided to get some payback the best way I knew how: I wrote an editorial. The piece was a scathing indictment of the RC program and how it was infringing on our quality of life by ruining the few remotely decent parties that ever happen at Smith. Since Crystal had pissed off plenty of other people the night I got busted by throwing people out of the party because she felt like it, trying to send my neighbors to their rooms, and screaming "GO HOME! THIS IS OUR HOUSE! WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE!" to the entire party the second the kegs were kicked, I had plenty of ammunition to make an example out of her without dragging my legal troubles into it. I argued that the RC program was a failure because no self-respecting Smith girl will be cowed by the authority of someone who acts like an incompetent 12-year-old babysitter, and then likened Crystal and her fat underling (the house "Diversity Coordinator") to Hitler and Mussolini. Crystal was feminazi to the core, so I felt the comparison was valid. Crystal, however, did NOT appreciate it.
Finally, Crystal decided that she wanted to talk, so that we could "understand each other." I trudged down to her suite and sat on her couch. One quick look at the decor told me that we were going to get nowhere in terms of finding common ground. Apart from her Smith diploma prominently displayed on the mantle of her decorative fireplace, the rest of the place was done up in trite-ass feminist icon framed prints (Rosie the Riveter, 70s-era Steinem, etc.) and an ENTIRE WALL devoted to magazine cutouts of Agent Scully from "The X-Files." There was even one Entertainment Weekly cover of Agents Mulder and Scully in bed together, and she'd cut David Duchovny out of the picture. I guess she had a thing for redheads in pleated pants, and she wasn't going to let any inconvenient penis stand in the way of her obsessively lusting after the same.
Anyway, we sat down and she explained to me in a motherly, extraordinarily condescending tone that her job isn't personal, but as RC she has to take drastic action if she suspects drug use. I listened, seething more with every minute of her bullshit story. I most certainly was not the only person smoking pot on the second floor that night, yet somehow the cops only went to my door. Furthermore, she'd been turning a blind eye to underage drinking all night. I know because I had only recently turned 20, and all night long I was arguing with her while clutching a beer.
"Cut the crap, Crystal," I told her. "We all know that it's common practice for RCs to generally overlook things, especially on Winter Weekend. You only called Public Safety on me because you don't like me."
"Why wouldn't I like you?"
"Because I told you that you were full of shit to your face. Maybe I should have gone behind your back in classic Smith non-confrontational tradition."
"That's not what you did! You were trying to let in unsafe, STRANGE MEN! I was just looking out for my house."
"Your house, Crystal? I've lived here for three years. You moved in this year because the school paid you to."
This conversation went like this for about an hour, with both of us becoming increasingly hostile and standoffish. Eventually, we parted with me lying that I wasn't planning on smoking pot anymore anyway, given my date with the judicial board, so I'd appreciate it if she would not immediately dial 2407 and call Public Safety on me whenever she was feeling shemasculated without first investigating herself. Also I believe that I encouraged her to get a real job.
Anyway, I returned to my room only to field a call from Saratoga120, an English professor I'd had my first year. This woman was a total character: she'd been at Smith for twenty years, she was a hard-core Catholic who smoked these foot-long cigarettes (the Saratoga 120s for which she is named) that she carried around in an embroidered cigarette purse, and made scathing comments about people in her class whose writing she thought was "amateurish" or "patently talentless." Fortunately, she liked my writing, and decided to make me a pet project of hers. She was always giving me her two cents on my Sophian articles, constantly pestering me to drop science and become an English major (I told her there was no way unless I'd somehow get out of the Milton-Chaucer-Beowulf requirement), and inviting me to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes with her. So Saratoga120 called me up and launched into a lecture about how stupid I was to be smoking pot. Clearly the word about my bust had made it through the faculty grapevine to her, and she wasn't going to bite her tongue. "I smoked pot twenty years ago at a faculty party!" she raged. "And I threw up on my way home. And dope makes you stupid. You don't want to be stupid, do you?"
After a few minutes of me meekly conceding to her remarks, she then said, "Well, obviously, you'll need representation at your hearing."
"I already read the handbook. I'm not allowed to bring counsel."
"Read it more closely, Razzy, I know that comprehension is one of your strong suits, so don't bullshit me. You're not allowed to have an attorney. You are, however, allowed to have a faculty member plead your case, and thus I will be going with you. Those people on the judicial board are intellectual lightweights, and I won't have them suspending you."
I was delighted. All of a sudden, Fortuna was spinning my way. When the fateful day came, not only did Saratoga120 show up ready to hand the judicial board their asses, but she brought along one of the college's demi-Deans with her. In fact, he was the demi-Dean responsible for overseeing the judicial board. I tried to hide my pleasure and act respectful and somewhat contrite.
When we walked into the judicial board room, I couldn't have been happier to have a posse of impressive faculty and administrators with me. I was faced with a long table populated by a bunch of uptight girls in Smith College sweatshirts and ugly cardigans smiling at me grimly, as if to say, "We can't wait to lord our power over you, you depraved bitch." I'd like to add that I'd been making fun of these types of bitches for two years in the newspaper, and I'm certain that my reputation for being an asshole preceded me into this room. Much like now, my writing in college made people either love me and laud me as hilarious, or hate me with every ounce of their being. The judicial board types were the latter, excepting one woman, a pornography heiress who had once tried to fuck me underneath the giant Georgia O'Keefe lily poster in her room. However, their smiles of imminent Razzy-suspending pleasure were promptly wiped off their smug, acne-ridden faces when my entourage seated themselves alongside me.
The "woman" at the head of the table, and the Chief Bitch of the Judicial Board, glared furiously. S/he was a transgendered person named Gloria Macri who insisted that people call him/her "Billy", yet another example of F2M trannies choosing stupid fucking boy names. My cause would have been hopeless without Saratoga120 and the Dean, as not only did s/he clearly dislike me on principle, but she was also an Ada (meaning "student of non-traditional age", meaning old). However, once s/he saw my entourage, s/he softened his/her reproachful glare immediately and began kissing ass.
"Oh, Dean! Oh, Professor Saratoga120! So NICE to see you! I'm surprised that you would take the time to appear for an insignificant hearing like this one."
I said, "I don't think it's insignificant," earning a kick under the table from Saratoga120, who had advised me to "keep your big mouth shut unless you are asked a specific question, and then answer only that without elaborating. Otherwise, they'll railroad you."
"Yes, well, shall we begin?" asked Billy/Gloria. "The charges are 'possession of a class D substance and candles.' We have your statement here, Ms. Razzy, in which you admit to using the class D substance as well as possessing the candles despite both being expressly prohibited by the school handbook of rules. What do you have to say on the subject?"
"It's all in my statement," I replied.
"Are you aware that marijuana is an illegal drug?"
"Yes. I exercised bad judgment, and for that I apologize," I responded. That was it for the why-were-you-doing-drugs line of questioning. However, the judicial board really wanted to know about the second part of the charge.
"It's obvious why you were using marijuana, but why were you in possession of the candles?"
"Um...decoration, I guess." I couldn't believe I had to come up with a reason for having candles, but I didn't think the right answer was "a flame source for doing hot knives."
"Decoration? Do you ever light them? The Public Safety report says they had clearly been lit."
"Yes, well, you know, to create mood."
"Mood? Mood for what?"
"Romantic mood for when my boyfriend visits."
"You have a boyfriend?"
"Yes, as it clearly says in my statement. Benzo. He's a townie. He works at Cha Cha Cha."
"The one with the rosy cheeks?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I love him, he's so nice!" exclaimed one of the judicial board justices. Benzo has always been a hit with the Smith girls. Even girls who despised me always adored Benzo.
Anyway, Billy/Gloria's tough interrogation tactics were out the window once her cohorts started gushing about how charming and sweet my boyfriend was when he served them black bean burritos, and s/he informed me that I would be receiving my punishment in campus mail. The Dean in my corner advised them that he "would be following up" to ensure that the punishment fit the crime of a first-time offense.
A week later, I received my punishment: a letter on my "permanent record" and loss of priority in the spring housing lottery. I didn't even get probation! The loss of priority in the spring housing lottery sucked, because even though I wound up in my beloved Jordan House, I got shafted from any decent room on the second floor. I ended up in the Dead Girl's Room, a room where during my sophomore year its resident hung herself from a steam pipe and was there for three days before her body was found. Nobody wanted to live there because of rumors going around that it was haunted. I don't believe in ghosts (nor did I see one while living there), so I gladly took it and my only complaint was that it got really shitty light. No wonder the poor girl who lived there killed herself; it was more dreary than a broom closet at Jane Eyre's boarding school.
Crystal Daugherty was clearly appalled by my failure to be removed from her house, and was a royal bitch to me afterward. "So the judicial board didn't even give you probation?" she inquired once after cornering me in the dining room. "That's right," I said happily. "I guess they thought your charges were pretty bogus." I walked away, before she could splutter out any more bullshit about just doing her job. Later that year she tried to have me busted again, but I didn't get caught (although the fake Smith cops were suspicious and got the Dean of Student Affairs to send me to one drug counseling session, but at least I didn't have to explain myself before the judicial board again). She also implied that she would boot my boyfriend out of the house for violating the "no guests may stay longer than 28 consecutive days" rule, but since he usually spent one night of the week at his place, this accusation was groundless as well. That fat bitch was defeated, and undoubtedly spent many nights praying to her shrine to Agent Scully that her totalitarian rule would regain its credibility and allow for the ejection of hateful cockroaches like me.
The next year, despite having to live in the Dead Girl's Room, the RC situation was dramatically improved. First, she didn't display her Smith diploma, and immediately replaced the wall of Agent Scully with a hot black-and-white poster of young Mickey Rourke (9 1/2 Weeks Mickey Rourke, not post-pugilist cheek implants Mickey Rourke). Second, she immediately explained that she was only RC because she couldn't get a job, and wanted an inexpensive, furnished place in which to study for her LSATs. Most importantly, however, not only was she totally down with smoking pot, but she was dating the Byrdman and he got a job in our kitchen. Even when he got arrested (by the real cops) and fired for possessing drugs at work, she moved him covertly into her suite. So when I had previously had to towel my door, light incense, keep the air freshener handy, exhale bong hits through a toilet paper tube stuffed with fabric softener sheets, etc., now I could just stroll downstairs to the RC suite, buy a bag, and smoke it there. Way to rectify your past transgressions, Smith College. I never wrote a derogatory article about the RC program again.
Labels: crime and punishment, defiance, drugs, Dumb Smith bitches, JerseyGirl, LL Cool Jew, Smith College Vault
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So I just randomly found your blogs and I've got to tell you, I love them. Witty.
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# posted by 
: 8/02/2008 6:39 AM
: 8/02/2008 6:39 AM Links to this post:
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