“I asked my friend, “What are your three favorite things in life?”
She answered, “A martini before, and a cigarette after.”
—Anonymous

Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. These are the driving forces of our college-kid lives, and, after this weekend, I don’t think I want any more for quite a while.

Serendipity is over. The bands have all played, packed up, and gone home. We’re all tired, cracked out, and worried about the homework we didn’t do. And what do we have to show for it? A hell of a lot of empty beer bottles, some seriously depleted bank accounts, and way too many regrets over our alcohol-induced weekend activities.

But we still have upheld the tradition of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. If nothing else, we were ultimately faithful to that beloved triumvirate. Yes, we may be exhausted, drained of every ounce of our energy. We may have spent every last penny we had, scraped our nickels and dimes together to pay a keg fee or buy a medicinal pack of recovering-from-a-hangover cigarettes. We’re broke; we’re tired; we’re incoherent and have the worst headaches of our lives. But right now, we love Guilford more than we have this entire year.

Being a freshman here at Guilco, I looked forward to Serendipity since August. I had no idea what to expect (except, of course, that eternal triad, drugs, sex, and rock ’n’ roll). And now it’s come and gone, and, to tell you the truth, I still don’t know what Serendipity really is. I barely participated in any of the organized events. Yup, 2 Skinny J’s and Rustic Overtones may be awesome bands, but I sure as h*ll didn’t make it to either show. At the freak and drag shows, I might have witnessed the most traumatizing sights of my life, but, thanks to my lack of motivation to move from wherever I happened to have collapsed, I survived unscathed.

It’s not that I didn’t want to go, it’s just that, when the time came, I couldn’t quite haul my lazy butt up and get there.

But I feel that I, and many others like me, made up for it somehow by just participating in the standard: the sex, drugs, and whatever rock ’n’ roll we could get without walking anywhere. I don’t even want to think about the number of random hookups that happened this weekend, and I doubt that anyone else-especially their participants-does either. I hope to god that I never know for sure the grand total of substances I consumed; I think I’d keel over just from the knowledge, if not from the consumption itself.

But whatever. I suppose it doesn’t really matter now. We all managed to come through relatively safely, and did hopefully only a little lasting damage to our brains and bodies. I’m a little bewildered by this whole weekend; in my memory, it seems to be one rather long blur, interspersed by brief periods of sleep and bouts of loud music and a lot of randomness. And though it was undeniably fun, English-major-me is not at all sure why this three-day party is named ‘”Serendipity.”

Serendipity is literally the accidental happening-upon of unexpected yet fantastic things. I’d say everyone put a buttload of work into our lil’ Guilco version, whether organizing events, procuring substances, working out personal itineraries, or a million other what-nots. Perhaps the only serendipitous occurrence of the weekend were the brief patches of sobriety, or that moment just after waking when you lie there and think, ‘h*ll yeah! I’m still breathing! That means it’s time to smoke a cig and start the day.’ Yup those were serendipitous moments; there were few others.

I’d say we have the wrong idea for the name of this whole festival thing. I feel I worked hard to have a great time this weekend, and I know other people did too. Why should we pretend the whole thing just happened without any effort at all? We shouldn’t, plain and simple. We need to change this whole projected image, portray our all-suffering selves far more accurately. Let’s call this thing by a name closer to the truth, describe it better than we do now. It should be the “STD and Overdose Party,” or the “Weekend without Inhibitions,” or something like that.

But, when it comes down to it, I don’t know what to call it, and I don’t really care. I think I’m too burned out to care about much of anything right now. My ears are still ringing, my brain has a hole in it, and I’m declaring myself asexual for a while. And all I can say is, Hooray for Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll!