Weird Flashback- Fraternity Memories at the Gym

As is my custom in the late afternoon. I headed off to the gym to play a couple of of hours of ball. Since we play pickup ball you cannot always predict how good the games are going to be. Sometimes you can find yourself on a really bad team and that can wreak havoc upon your time at the gym.

To be clear a really bad team doesn't have to be one that consists of players with limited ability and talent. You can have great players on your team and still be stuck with a bad lot. Much of it has to do with chemistry. Some guys are team players and some aren't.

There are more than a few guys who are quite talented that I don't like playing with. The basic explanation for that is that they don't play good defense and they don't pass the ball. That drives me crazy because it is a recipe for disaster.

However today was great. I had awesome teammates and we were pitted against teams that were very challenging and that is always something I want. I need to play against someone who is better than I am. I like the challenge of trying to raise my game, of trying to figure out a way to compensate for my shortcomings.

Anyway, we played for a good 90 minutes or so and then collapsed in a heap outside of the gym. After spending a few minutes recovering I headed up stairs with a few of the guys to grab a beer and that is when I had my flashback.

They had a dance class playing all sorts of dance music from the 80s and 90s. As I walked by I glanced inside and watched them dance and then bam! The music triggered a memory of a fraternity party.

If I could reach inside my head and upload the memory to YouTube I would because it would be far easier to share it that way, but alas it is not a possibility. So I'll do my best to give a description.

It is a Saturday night, approximately 1988 or '89. I am at the fraternity house. I spend the first few hours working the bar. It is one of my favorite places to be because it is one of the easiest places to meet women. You don't have to come up with any sort of goofy line. They come to you and ask for a drink. Bingo, perfect opportunity to start up a conversation.

Anyway, the bar at the house is always hopping. We're pouring kamikazes and all sorts of assorted drinks and shots. Just to the right the keg machine keeps the beer flowing. All throughout the backyard there are groups of people talking.

Just to the right of me is the entrance to the living room, or in this case the dance floor. It is packed full of people dancing. After a while a girl from my biology class spots me at the bar and comes over to talk. She is at the house with a half dozen of her friends, but can't find them. I give her a little grief about women traveling in packs and shoot the breeze.

She asks me if I can help her find her girls and takes me by the hand. We wander inside and the dance floor is packed. It is just jammed full of people dancing. Since space is at a premium we start dancing with each other. The thing is that it is so crowded we can't really do much more than kind of move a bit. It is good for me, I am not the most skilled dancer, but in a crowd I can do a little shimmy that makes it look like I can.

On the other hand maybe I can't and she just let it go. Have to think about that one, aw, who cares. Anyhoo, after we have been dancing for a while we start kissing. As you might imagine I am pleased with this turn of events, but I am a bit concerned about one thing. It is really hot in there.

It is a like a sauna, all you need to do is bring your own brick and towel. The heat is such that I am sweating as if I just played two hours of ball. I like this girl and I want to make a good impression, but the last thing I want to do is look like some giant sweat hog.

While the great brain is trying to figure out the best way to handle things the great hormones are raging. I figure that if she is not interested in seeing if I can lose 20 pounds of sweat she'll let me know. So I mentally shrug my shoulders and go back to just enjoying the moment.

At some point she wraps an arm around my neck to pull my head down so that she can kiss me. Just as our lips are about to touch disaster strikes, three gallons of sweat pour right off of my head and into her mouth.

Talk about killing a moment.

I have heard that some women find sweaty men to be sexy, but she apparently wasn't one of them. In a matter of moments she excused herself and glided off the dance floor. I hung out for a moment and tried to come up with a cool remark to cover the whole sweat thing. Unfortunately, I never did come up with anything clever.

Flashback to the present, as I watch the people dance inside the class I realize that 20 years later I still don't know the name of the song that was playing when the infamous perspiration incident took place. Not that it matters, but I am mildly curious about it.