Yesterday on my birthday, I had this idea float across my mind to start writing a book.
And I was going through some old notes and youtube videos compiling stories and came across this one that just rly made me laugh.
So I wanted to bring back some of this energy and share with you the story of The Ocho.
I probably shouldn't tell you this story. But fuck it.
This was sophomore year at Boston University. Saturday night. My friend Jake hits me up like, ‘yo we're throwing down tonight, let's make it happen.’
So I do what I always did back then - I text everyone. Girls on various sports teams, guys on various sports teams, friends in frats, see what the sororities are doing. We create this whole communal project x party list and decide to meet up at this one house called the Ocho.
If you know the lore on the Ocho, you know what their parties were famous for. Historically, completely raunchy. The kind of place where if you on the sorry chance woke up there the next morning and walked around, you could potentially catch something.
When arriving at the Ocho, you would walk in through the back, down this staircase that's covered in – I don't even know – spilled beer, cigarette butts, random papers, condoms and tampons, just genuinely gross stuff caked into every step. You descend into this vast open basement.
Pong table in one corner, DJ booth in the other, and right in the middle there's this staircase that is always slippery as an icy ski slope. Every single party, ten to fifteen people fall down it. Especially unsuspecting freshmen who don't know the rules. Rule number one at the Ocho: always grab the railing.
By 8 o'clock the place was already packed – and here was the weird part – it was mostly girls. Which typically, never happened. So after seeing my snapchat story, all the guys who got my invite were blowing up my phone asking for the address. Pretty soon it was wall to wall. You couldn’t move without getting someone else's sweat on you.
I was 21 at the time, and I didn’t drink, typically, even back then in college. I'd have a beer here and there, but I genuinely prefered being sober. I was just a better person all around. I could wake up the next day and function. And what was about to happen to some people in this story didn’t happen to me because of the fact that I stay away from alcohol and really any drug.
So I was just mingling. Dancing. Watching the chaos unfold.
The guys at the top of the slippery staircase had vodka bottles, and they were yelling down at people trying to descend. "Hey you - open up!" And these people, already buzzed, just kind of complied. Mouths open. Stream of ten dollar vodka running straight down their throat. Then they’d stumble off into the night. I was upstairs watching the whole thing, people getting it splashed in their eyes, falling down the stairs, and honestly it was pretty funny. I remember just dying laughing at this absolute debauchery.
But the thing that really stuck out – the centerpiece of this whole night – was when this girl just completely unloads everything in her stomach onto the floor. She must have been on the unlimited dining plan because the volume of her vomit was genuinely impressive. Puke everywhere. The smell immediately filled the entire first floor.
I was standing there wondering who would be the one to clean this mess up. And then, this one girl from the BU Lacrosse team, out of nowhere, emerges from the kitchen sink having filled up a huge bowl with hot water and a little soap, running over, and just dumping it on top of the puke. As if that wasn’t going to make the whole situation 10x worse.
I still don't know what she was thinking.
The rest of the night was a blur – for most people, anyway. I went home after the Barf-o-rama fest. Slept great.
Next morning I woke up feeling completely fine, like any Sunday…
Walked out into the common room and one of my friends – we'll call him Donald for privacy sake – was completely passed out on the couch. Hand by sides, face down like that, like he was mid-push-up when he blacked out and just froze there. He stayed in that exact position until four in the afternoon.
Now here's what you need to know about ‘Donald’. He had a girlfriend. A girlfriend he really liked. They'd been together a few months. And we all loved this girl – she was awesome. A good college girlfriend thing who was for the boys.
But Donald had this thing where when he drank too much, he became someone else. We call Donald’s alter-ego Ted. Ted was aggressive. Confrontational. And also kind of a horndog. Ted had a reputation for getting lucky when he got drunk. I think it’s how he met his girlfriend that we liked, actually.
So me and a few guys were in the common room playing Fortnite. Our roommate Jackson came downstairs, got a glass of water, went to the bathroom, walked back out – and he had this look on his face. This stupid grin mixed with amazement.
Jackson said: "Guys. There's a girl in Donald’s bed. And it's not his girlfriend."
We all just looked at each other. It was one of those moments where you hate to see it but also you're like... okay, this is about to be interesting.
Donald was still passed out on the couch. We tried to wake him up. Nothing. Donald aka Ted apparently also turned into a bear after his rampages – complete hibernation.
I felt somewhat responsible so I went to knock on Donald’s door where the mystery girl was sleeping. The girl, I had never seen her before, was in fact in there. She was really sweet about it. Super apologetic. She was like I'm so sorry, I didn't realize I drank that much. I told her that it was totally fine, that we all had a crazy night.
Then she said, "I can't find my phone. I don't know where my jacket is. And I only have one shoe."
One shoe.
I was like... okay. Let's figure this out. We looked all over Donald’s room. No shoe. The math wasn’t adding up. Did she walk all the way from the Ocho in one shoe? Where's her stuff?
I called the guys at the Ocho, asked if she can come look around. They said sure, people left stuff everywhere. I gave her my Converse – a little big on her, she looked like a clown actually – and she headed over. Searched the whole house. The throw up was still on the floor. She found nothing.
We put it behind us. A few hours went by. We were eating dinner, doing homework, sitting around recapping the night.
Then one of our roommates who we hadn't seen all day walked downstairs at 7pm. Still in his underwear. Looked like he had no idea where he was. We'll call him Barry.
Barry goes: "Yo. There's a girl's jacket and a shoe in my room. And a phone. I have no idea whose it is."
We all freeze.
It wasn't Donald that brought the girl home.
It was Barry.
Turns out Donald didn't cheat on his girlfriend – which was a huge relief because we all really liked her. Barry apparently brought this girl home and had zero memory of it. And somehow, for reasons we will never understand, this mystery girl left one shoe and all her stuff in Barry's room, then walked downstairs in the middle of the night and got into Donald’s bed instead.
I don't know what the moral of this story is. Maybe there isn't one. Maybe it's don't drink – unless watching the chaos is entertaining enough, in which case, let other people drink and enjoy the show.
That was the Ocho.
Let me know if you enjoyed this swithc of pace from all the serious philosophical stuff.
Dm’s on insta best place to respond, or just reply to this email.
-Arlin
