Left at the Altar

It's been a rough week (by first-world standards, it's not like I'm dying of hunger or anything). Things that have happened:

• I got rejected from my two dream internships
• My favorite band (The Graduate) cancelled their second straight show here
• One of my favorite bands (The Stills) broke up
• I learned a girl I like is attracted to aggressive men
• I'm losing another friend to marriage
• My professor thought I told her to go f*ck herself (see two posts down)
• My car battery died

The last one occurred at the most awkward time actually, right before I was heading that professor's class.  So I arrived 30 minutes late and she probably thought I was disrespecting her further.  Disaster.

Anyways, I had one thing to look forward to this week.  Coachella Music and Arts Festival.  I couldn't wait to release all this bad energy and fill my body with the good vibes that come from live music (and second-hand weed).  

The only issue was I didn't have a ticket.  Despite constant reminders from my roommate, I kept postponing buying them, since they took forever to sell out last year.  Well, this year they sold out in a week.

I found out shortly thereafter that one of my friend's classmates had bought tickets but they had to go on a mandatory field trip during that weekend so they'd gladly sell me them.  Unfortunately, this fell through when the trip became voluntary instead of mandatory.

Plan B.  There was a writing competition open to only USC students.  My stories get consistently praised in my fiction writing class so I submitted it in hopes of winning 2nd place ($500) or 1st place ($1000).  Unfortunately, I didn't win.

Now I was left to the black market - dirty, greasy scalpers.  The tickets, a $320 value, were going for around $500, which is over half of my savings.  Having been a scalper myself back in the day, I figured I could find a good deal.  I sent over 40 emails to Craigslist people.  Unfortunately, the responses I got were the following. 

1) no response 

2) a request to stop calling their # because their friends put it up there as a hoax telling people they had 20 tickets they wanted to move at face value right away 

3) a request to wire the money to an "account" in Great Britain (they had moved since they bought the tickets)

By this time, Coachella was a week away.  I was growing despondent, until our school made an announcement.  They had 10 Coachella tickets, and they were giving them away for FREE (!) to the 10 people in the craziest costumes.  Hope was restored!

I immediately began pondering costume ideas - an oxygen tank? Stilts? Headgear?  Then it came to me.

Cross-dressing is always a good bet, right?  Let me break this down:

• The costume is loosely based around Ariel getting married from The Little Mermaid  
• Wedding dress - paid $25 for it on Craigslist, drove 20 minutes to pick it up from a stoner who had inherited it from a storage shed he bought (look at that train!)  
• Dyed hair - it's not particularly visible, but I'm supposed to be a ginger like her (it came out more pink - I feared people would think I was imitating P!nk, my least favorite pop artist)
• Fishbowl - complete with two goldfish (Sebastian and Flounder) that I bought from Petsmart that day
• Large fork - to brush my hair with
• High heels - yeah, I went there

I even shaved my sideburns, so you could say I was in it to win it.  There were about 75 kids dressed up, but I liked my chances, especially after I made the judges laugh by telling them I was dressed up as the Disney heroine my father never let me be as a child at Halloween.  

They started announcing the winners, asking them to come up on stage, and after the first few, people began to boo because they were choosing people in the worst costumes - they were all dressed up in black with various lame accessories.  I started to panic, but my friend assured me they were playing a prank on these 10, since their costumes were so obviously bad.  When they called the 10th person on stage, they then told everyone to look behind them. As we turned around, a group of people on top of a building unfurled this flag

   

I didn't know what it meant, but then my friend said "Skull & Dagger" and I became sick to my stomach.  Skull & Dagger is a secret honor society made up of USC students that has pulled multiple pranks here (they once cellophane wrapped every bike rack on campus, with the bikes still intact).  This was their biggest (and cruelest) one yet.  You see, there were no actual tickets.  It was all a hoax.  We dressed up for nothing.

I was so blindsided.  I barely slept the night before because I so nervous about the contest (it was like I was actually getting married).  I had gone to such extreme lengths to secure this ticket that I wanted so bad, and it turned out I was a fool (and dressed like one as well).  I just was dumbfounded.  Out of all the plausible scenarios I had gone through in my head, this one had never crossed my mind.

I didn't think things could get worse until a flash mob started right in front of me. Our emotions could not have been on more opposite sides of the spectrum. After they finished, they approached me and another victim (he was wearing a banana suit) inviting us to their dance show.  They asked us to take the flyer, but the banana suit kid wouldn't take it because he "didn't know which events were real anymore".  My feelings exactly.

Once I got my legs working again, I high-heeled it back to my car in my dress (with catcalls of "I do!" from Latino men in cars), went home, and ordered pizza, and sat and ate staring blankly at the TV.  I was just so shell-shocked and spent that I couldn't bring myself to search for tickets further.  I think God had done enough to send me a message that I wasn't going to this.

Of course, the one seeming highlight of this was that I got quoted in the school paper.  But of course, keeping in line with my life being 10x more awkward than any average human being's, they quoted me as "Nick David" in the print edition.  

So instead of watching Arcade Fire perform songs from their Grammy-winning album, I'm going to spend the weekend growing back my sideburns and feeding these stupid anorexic goldfish that don't eat their food.

This is what I get for leaving my apartment.