It has been freezing lately. Below freezing. The kind of cold that steals your breath and punishes you for going outside.
…Which obviously makes it the perfect temperature to head to Oberlin’s bar, the Feve, for two dollar drinks! Yay.
Last Tuesday, I dragged my friend Eric to the Feve. Being a fourth-year, I knew half the people there for one reason or another. I was meeting my other friend Emmy there, and I had tempted her out with warm pumpkin chocolate chip bread (highly effective). Emmy and Eric had never met before. Eric is a baller, and Emmy is a jazz vocalist. Perfect combo.
The vibe on a Tuesday night at the Feve is hard to describe. In many ways, it’s like all college bars, chock full of college students wrestling around a table, card games, and drinks half-spilling over sticky wooden tables. The lighting is yellow and dim. It’ll take you three minutes to walk 60 feet from one side of the bar to the other. Step outside, and there are students smoking cigarettes, asking each other for lights and eyeing unlocked bikes.
The Feve last Tuesday was especially enjoyable for me because I’m undertaking the experiment of introducing all of my different friend groups to each other. Jazz, meet co-op. Co-op, meet writing. Writing, meet freshman-year friend group. It all comes full circle. Get some drinks in anyone, and they’ll be amenable to becoming friends with a group of strangers.
At one point in the night, Eric and I walked over to Sam, someone I met in my first year, and his friends. They were huddled around a table, talking intently.
“What’s up, guys?” I asked.
“We are just debriefing our latest DND campaign. A DND debrief, if you will,” one of Sam’s friends told us. Sam smiled self-consciously. “By the way,” his friend added, “did you know that Sam is in three different campaigns?”
I was stunned. One DND campaign is a lot of work––but Sam was the DM (Dungeon Master) for TWO campaigns. We continued chatting for a little bit before Sam’s friends turned back without ceremony and began talking again. Eric and I glanced at each other.
“Oh, sorry,” Sam’s friend said. “We are going to begin debriefing again. You can watch if you want!”
That’s the thing about Oberlin––there’s something for everyone, and everyone cares a lot about their thing. If you’re a baller like Eric, there’s basketball. Eric is also trying out for the football team. They are very athletically inclined, but they are also an amazing cook. If you like to cook, you’ll join Brown Bag Co-op. If you’re like my friend Sam, you’ll find people who love DND, and not only will you be an avid member of the Creative Writing department, but you’ll squirrel every weekend for a few hours pretending to be a troll. (I’m going to be honest, I’ve never played DND before.)
Okay, but let’s say you like to play cards or drink or stand in line for the bathroom and look around at other people. Perfect! There’s the Feve every night. Going to the Feve makes me realize how much I have in common with other people, as if there are little threads tying us all together. I probably met at least five new people I didn’t know, and we all had things to talk about.
Later that night, Eric and I left the Feve and trudged through snowy sidewalks. We were tipsy, not drunk, and laughing about all the people we’d met that night. We’d promised our other friends we would go back to the bar tomorrow. The chances, we decided, were slim. It was cold––and after all, our house had Mario Kart.
