When I was at UMass, one of my best friends AB briefly dated a member of the Lacrosse team. The Lacrosse team was dominated by hippie jocks who supplanted their Lacrosse practice with juggling, hackey sack, ultimate frisbee, and spontaneous dance movements at Phish shows. We would go over to his dorm room, hang out with some of his team mates, and drink Long Trails. When we asked them about Lacrosse, they would say “It’s sweet.”
One night I taught a Lacrosse player how to play the card game Spit. We played for about an hour. Everyone else had left except AB and her boyfriend, who were curled up on his bed in the other part of the Z-shaped room.
“I’ll see you later,” I told the Lacrosse player, a short, muscular long-haired brunette with mutton chops.
“Come on, one more game?” he said, shuffling the cards.
“No, some other time,” I said, wanting to leave AB and her boyfriend alone.
“Come on! Let’s Spit!” he said. “You just can’t teach me a new game and leave.”
“It’s late. I’m too tired to play.”
“One more game! Come ON,” he said. He cut the cards and tried to force a pile into my hand.
“No,” I said, dropping the cards on the ground, backing away him. “I don’t feel like playing.”
He shrugged and put down the cards. “Okay. Well, thanks for teaching me to play. See you later.”
That was my uneventful exposure to collegiate men’s Lacrosse. I was surprised when I read I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, and he depicted Dupont University’s Lacrosse team as womanizing, hard-partying aristocrats capable of primitive hedonism that would have shocked the townsfolk of Gomorrah. I thought the whole book was sensationalized smut.
But the recent rape scandal at Duke University, on which Dupont is based, proved that Tom Wolfe did his research. It makes sense: What 75-year old man could conjure such a perverse picture of collegiate life in his head? I’m suddenly very scared for the future of America. It’s not going to be run by UMass Lacrosse players…
