If love actually is all around, then why do my friends scoff at my notion that true love can be found at Club Fever? If people can find love in the marching band, with the roommate of a high school best friend, in ROTC, when a roommate is asleep in the same room, in biology class, at a dorm party and at a Frosh-O event, then why not at Club Fever?
When I tell my kids the story about how I met their mother, I would love to tell them about Club Fever. I'd describe the wide open dance floor with cages towering in the middle, and one dollar Natural Lights flowing through our veins. I might describe the stripper poles upstairs that people refuse to touch or the sawdust covered shuffleboard tables in the basement where I rarely win victory.
In the grand scheme of stories about people meeting the great loves of their life, this would be somewhere between the lame "she was the receptionist at the office where I worked" and the awesome "well I was a monk, and then got thrown out of the monastery, and then she was picking up crates of wine from the monks, and I got a ride with her, but then I crashed my boat on a crazy island and was lost for three years until my crazy time travelling powers let me talk to her on Christmas Eve." There's something about Club Fever, something that I will never let go to, that makes the perfect balance between cute and crazy.
Then why do people keep telling me that it's impossible? I'm not walking around the bar whispering "You complete me" to girls while I am dancing with them, or interrupting a dance floor makeout session to say, "I wish I knew how to quit you." I should be able to go up to the bar and say, "I'll have what she's having," and find the love of my life over a conveniently overpriced mixed drink. Right?
Wrong.
All I want is to be able to tell my wife, "we'll always have Fever," but whenever I go there, girls move away from me faster than the Xlerator dries your hands in the bathrooms of LaFortune. It doesn't matter if I say anything to them, because they somehow think that I want to love them like Chris Brown loved Rihanna. I'll be a nice Notre Dame guy, and do all the awesome things that Notre Dame couples do. We can spoon on a couch in the middle room of a quad, make collages of each other for Valentine's Day, go to see movies such as "He's Just Not That Into You," walk around the lakes (does anybody actually do this?), hold hands and nibble each other under the eternal sunshine of home football games, go on dates to Papa Vino's and become friends with each other's friends (by this, I mean that she will become friends with my friends and then cease to have friends of her own; it's not like I want it that way, I just know how Notre Dame relationships work).
Tonight, however, I go to Club Fever in earnest knowing that of all the nights of the year, tonight I have my best chance to find true love. I'm nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I'm leading a common life, but since it is Desperation Friday (the night before Valentine's Day) I must be able to find true love on the dance floor. There will be people everywhere looking for love like I look for similes and pop culture references to include in Observer columns. Yet my friends that are girls still think I am at the octuplet mother level of craziness for thinking that I can find true love at Club Fever. But what do Kate, Caitlin, Katie C., Katie B., Mary Kate, Mary, Marilyn and Maribeth know about finding true love at Club Fever? Most of them are far more likely to be seen at Finny's, The Backer or even the Potawatomi Zoo this weekend.
Why then, am I always sleepless in South Bend thinking about my lack of a Notre Dame relationship? It can't be because I am looking in the wrong places or basing everything I know about relationships on episodes of "The O.C." Is it because I look really young? No, that didn't hurt William Miller in "Almost Famous." I think the reason I can't find true love at Club Fever has to be because of single-sex dorms and the horrific gender relations at Notre Dame. I mean, every problem at Notre Dame can be blamed on one of five things: 1) Football Losses, 2) Sweatpants, 3) Cold Weather, 4) Bill Kirk, and 5) Single-Sex Dorms. I can't exactly blame Mr. Kirk on my lack of a girlfriend now.
On the bright side, I have some awesome bromances that would make Brody Jenner envious, a support group of girls with similar sounding names, and a bunch of couples I can look to for inspiration. I just hope that one day I can turn to them all and say, "Sorry, guys; I gotta see about a girl."
Until then, I'll just dance ... and start apologizing to all the couples I poked fun at above.
Bob Kessler is a senior majoring in political science and economics. You can contact him at rkessler@nd.edu
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
