Wednesday I went to the Opera. I didn’t think I’d actually have anything past a few tweets about it, but it was an incredibly long and weirdly hillarious night, so I felt like a blog was necessary.
First, my ride. My seminar class (all the freshman went, and each seminar class had different transportation) decided to carpool because a few people had cars. I don’t know that many people in my class, so I just waited until two of the cars filled up and then jumped in the third. My tweet: “I’m in a car full of football players on my way to the opera. Never thought this would be a situation I’d find myself in.”
My roommate was actually in the car as well, but she was kind of sick and not talkative. So I spent the ride nauseous from the poor driving, texting Ellen, and daydreaming.
Once we got to the opera, nothing much happened. We sat down, the opera started, and yeah. Fancy fancy. It was actually two operas in one performance, Pagliacci and then something else that was more dancing and less singing. Pagliacci was… interesting. I’m just not an opera person. Also, I didn’t realize that in opera, there is no break. It’s not like a musical where there’s talking in between; it is near constant singing.
I know I’m going to be called unsophisticated for this, but opera is kind of weird. It just sounds like a lot of bellowing to me. Every once in a while I catch a word, but I dunno. The style of singing just isn’t appealing to me.
The second thing was cooler because it was more visually appealing and there was more chorus singing, which sounded a lot cooler than the solos.
But the real story is what happened post-opera.
So I found the driver who got me to the opera fairly easily. He’s a football player, and he is very tall. His name is Evan. Gavin decided to catch a ride with us, as did one other guy whose name I can’t remember. It turns out that the rest of our original party had skipped out during one of the breaks.
Shortly after getting in the car, it was decided (by Evan and no name) that we were going to go to Voodoo donuts. It’s like 10:15 or so at night by now, and we have about an hour’s drive back to school to count. I wasn’t particularly pleased about this turn of events, but what can you do? As I tweeted, “The opera has ended and yet I find myself at voodoo donuts. I have an early class. It sucks being at the whim of hungry football players”
The line at Voodoo donuts consists almost entirely of well dressed college freshman who had come from the opera, and it was a long line. We probably waited about twenty minutes before even getting inside. This entire time, I’m standing by myself in line surrounded by fifteen huge football players, texting Ellen my woes. One of the football players that was in my original group, JT*, every once in a while asks me how I’m doing, because I probably looked really out of it.
Finally, we made it into the actual venue, and I got a chocolate crueller for a buck because I hadn’t actually eaten dinner. There wasn’t time between my astronomy class and when I had to meet my carpool.
By now, we’d lost Gavin and gained JT and another football player. His name might be Ian. But I’m not really sure. So we crowd back into the car, me and the four football players. And then we get lost because everyone was trying to give Evan directions at the same time and my iPhone was acting silly and not actually calculating our current location.
Eventually, though, we made it to the highway. The conversation stayed around football mostly at first, but devolved into all of them saying the word “duvall” because they thought it sounded funny.
“Du-VAAAL”
I was starting to judge them harshly at this point, but then Ian used the word gerrymandering correctly and I mostly forgave them. Eventually JT felt bad about my not being included (something that I didn’t particularly care about, but it was nice of him anyways), so we started discussing our seminar class. All the boys were 75% sure that our teacher is gay, but I’m not so sure. It wouldn’t surprise me if he were, I reasoned, but I’m sure he’s mentioned a wife before. They argued that he had a “very gay stance” and I told them that they were just exacerbating stereotypes.
JT made a comment that he was impressed I used the ending “bating” without “mastur” before it, and I remarked back that I didn’t have a penis, so masturbating wasn’t the forefront thing on my mind at all times. They all got a kick out of that, and I unwittingly fueled the conversation for the rest of the ride: sex. There were a lot of lewd first account stories traded on the final stretch back to school, and I’ll spare you the horror of recounting them. Let me just say, it wasn’t pleasant.
Around midnight, we made it back to the dorms. I thanked Evan for the ride and high-tailed it out of there. JT yelled that I should walk with them so we could continue our meaningful conversation, and I retorted that we could have a meaningful conversation when it wasn’t midnight. I ran into the boys probably four more times that night going back and forth from the bathroom and whatnot. Evan even recognized me this morning walking to class, but I’m pretty sure he still doesn’t know my name.
Overall, it was quite a night, and although I’m still not their biggest fan and I’ll probably never go to a game, I’ve come to the conclusion that football players aren’t as bad as I make them out to be.
*JT also had held his hand out after we first arrived at the opera to help me down from the car, but I just jumped down on my own.
