Hex and the City 4
by Douglas Choi, Staff Columnist

In a city filled with millions of men and hundreds of attractive women, even within the confines of our Washington Square cubicle in this culturally sprawling metropolis, a guy will inevitably encounter a cornucopia of people, and the person sitting next to you could very well be the most interesting person or someone who would fail their personality test. There are, so to speak, plenty of fish in the sea; some who confess they would date you if they didn't already have a boyfriend and others who will rip out your heart, move to Australia, drop out of college, and then become a bar maid. Variety, after all, is the paprika of life.

Throughout our journey in the unrelenting wave we call life, we will meet more people than we can know, and a myriad of experiences will flood our mind and memory, some good and some bad, like don't you just hate it when the girl you have a crush on is taking birth control pills and you know you're not the reason? Unfortunately, in the end, we will forget more than we will remember. Quite often, though, we remember our firsts. Thus, in the denouement of my time at NYU, as I write my swan song for GenerAsian and reflect upon my college years with nostalgic reverie, I would like to share with you some of my firsts, the moments I cherish and those I never forget out of the need to feed my zealous lust for revenge…er, I mean…quick! Change topics!

My first erection:
I don't know exactly how it happened; I just looked down, and there it was, staring back at me. I had never seen my penis like this before and certainly did not know what or why or how it came to be, but there seemed to be something definitely wrong with it. I just hoped it wasn't permanent. Imagine living your everyday life and then one day finding your hand to have suddenly grown ten times its original size. Then you can begin to understand the weird curiosity of a boy who had his first boner. After some thought, I concluded that my penis was just full of urine, explaining why it was so bloated, so I stood in front of the toilet for a while and continued pissing with difficulty until the swelling went down and my penis was no longer freakishly deformed with gigantism.

My first rejection:
Sophomore year of high school, I was coerced into a blind date for the rival school's homecoming dance. Because I found my date to be unattractive (I nicknamed her Rat Girl), I spent more time talking to her pretty friend than my date, which probably made for a nightmare date for Rat Girl, worsened by the fact that I said maybe two words to her the entire night, didn't even get her a corsage, and tried to maneuver our dancing so that my face would never be videotaped alongside hers while the cameraman incessantly circled us. The following week, I called Rat Girl's pretty friend and asked her to go see a movie with me. After giving me a little run-around, she replied, "My parents said no," which was either a contrived excuse or my reputation for being a jackass preceded me. In a society so desensitized to violence, will we ever be able to get used to disappointment so that our hearts will never again fall to the floor?

The first time I had to hide under a bed in a girl's hotel room because the student travel group chaperone saw me sneaking in:
Well, actually, this was the first, last and only time it happened to me, but I remember it to be exciting and naughty. As we were listening to Extreme's "More Than Words," the chaperone knocked on the door to find the unruly boys who were sneaking into girls' rooms after curfew. I immediately hid underneath the bed as the girl, acting all naïve and innocent, cleverly lied and covered for me. After the chaperone left, the girl turned to me and asked, "Are you masturbating?" (No, I was not…how presumptuous).

The first time I turned down sex:
Was this even possible? It seems more like myth than memory, for I never imagined I was capable of saying no to sex, and I was further surprised by what I said to reject her: "Sorry, but I have to get up early tomorrow morning." My life had become a clichéd TV show. Of course, it was a lie. I didn't have to get up early the next morning. Such a pathetic common excuse, which pales in comparison to some of the truths I have uttered in the past, such as, "No, I'm not scared of you; I'm only shivering because I'm cold," and the time I told a girl I couldn't be her date to a formal because I seriously thought I had a realistic chance of winning an internet contest for tickets to an advanced screening of the digitally redone version of Akira scheduled for the same evening. The first time I had to write a farewell for my last column of Hex and the City: Normally I end my columns with "Anyways, I hope this has been helpful somehow, and perhaps next time (if there is a next time) I can tell you something you can use, like always check for toilet paper coming out of your pants after using the bathroom," but since there is no next time, tell Rolling Stone that my last words were "I'm on drugs!" I think we should work on those last words.

Questions and comments can be emailed to Douglas Choi at douglit@hotmail.com