As a sorority girl who is so much more, I have searched far and wide for my fraternity prince. But after my freshman year, dating a senior frat king, I learned quickly that age is just a number, but the frat boy lives on forever. While I have avoided AU's Greek princes, I have discovered a fraternity king hidden in the soul of most men I meet. They love to drink beer and can chug the day away, but five hours later they are still playing foosball, and, with slurred speech, will try to convince three drunken freshman that a videotaped orgy is simply part of initiation into college.
After trying to change a man, tame a man and dissect a man, I was just trying to understand if men ever outgrow their frat-boy status, their wandering eyes and nomadic dicks. Do men ever grow out of it or are women doomed to deal with beer goggles and beer funnels until death do us part?
To answer this question, I went to the source: One of my favorite frat-boy exes. He has the build of the Incredible Hulk and sultry, manipulative green eyes. His game for snagging women is that he has no game, take it or leave it, ladies; Bob the Builder is on the prowl.
"For the past few months your regular columnist has sent me e-mails with her articles attached as a way of keeping in touch... Admittedly I'm impressed by her ability to rise above the millions of other twenty-something women out there who think because they can recite verbatim every line from 'Sex and the City' they should be considered suave, metropolitan New Yorkers. But despite Jess' ability there is still one problem with her columns: despite her attempts to hide it, she's working with a woman's brain. That's where I come in," Bob the Builder said in a letter to The Eagle.
I called Bob shortly after ending my AU dating sabbatical. I had taken up with a frat boy and in my wise eyes of hindsight, I should have known better. But every woman has a weakness, and every once in a while many women have a craving for the raw meat of a fraternity man. Mine just so happened to turn out to be a big cheater... But Bob the Builder assured me not to worry and promised once I moved away from the college frat scene, men would still be dogs.
"Do they ever get over their frat status, stop cheating and give up being big weenies? I mean, don't men get to a point where they are just too old to treat women like blow-up dolls?" I asked him.
"After much deliberation with my college wingmen, we came to the conclusion that guys don't grow up, they just modify their behavior enough so that it is still socially acceptable in the post-college dating world," Bob the Builder responded.
"Guys think about sex all day, every day. In college, sex is easy to get when you want it. It's taken for granted by guys until post-graduation reality hits: girls don't want their friends going home with you from the bar because, unlike in college, you don't have a mutual friend in Basket Weaving 101 and you can't get away with saying 'oh, I just live in the house next door.' Women think you're a serial killer. Meet a girl at a bar post-college and your chances of going home with her about as good as attending an 8:30 class on a Friday morning, back in those college days you now desperately long for.
"To re-live the college days, you can always go back for an alumni weekend visit, but that's a temporary fix. While I admit to having spent one last night in good old Sutherland Hall at age 25, those encounters should be limited to once a year to avoid the "college hanger-oner," (the guy that can't get over that he has graduated so he just keeps coming back in an attempt to re-enact his undergrad glory days) tag so many losers we all know are branded with. Men trying to get laid are left with the question of what to do."
From the female perspective, I'd like to kindly ask these graduated frat boy kings to remove their dicks from their tushes and return their crowns to the throne. I understand that biologically, men are conditioned to spread their seed, but there should be a cut off age when men are forced to realize that dipping their pens in oh-so-many ink wells will get them laid, but may also get them genital warts. ... Bob the Builder, on the other hand, had a different theory.
"First, both men and women should accept that guys could sleep with a woman and have no emotional attachment. Women have that same ability for a roughly eight- month period called 'Freshman Year.' At the conclusion of this period, girls usually go back to being their normal, overly emotional selves. Guys, on the other hand have a similar emotionless period called 'Life.'
"The options for men in the post-college dating world are limited. Men can actually date, i.e. put in some time, get laid and then move along, or settle down with someone and hope you didn't make a huge mistake. Regardless of which path a guy takes, rest assured his mind and thought process are still exactly the same as the day he waved goodbye to his parents that first night in the dorms. It's not men that change; it's women. We are then left with no choice but to adapt as best we can to assure that the ultimate goal of getting laid can still be achieved.
"To the daters out there, good luck. I have never felt abducted by these so called 'beer goggles' that after that eighth Corona, magically transform a woman beaten by the ugly stick look like Catherine Zeta Jones. If you're like me and still prefer quality over quantity, I have bad news: the dating pool is getting smaller and smaller by the minute."
Twenty-something women have realized that many college men have sex on the brain and a few quarters in their pockets. Not only do these men not want to be committed, they also don't want to take more time and energy to wow a girl than it takes them to get a beer. And to the ladies out there, drowning in the black hole of college dating, Bob has his own advice.
"I guess you can start looking for 'Mrs. Right' instead of 'Mrs. Tonight,' settle down and find out what 'Lord of the Ring' really means as you slide that small but surprisingly heavy piece of platinum over your left ring finger. Are you then changed so much that you have, without even realizing it, 'grown up?' Commitment and a boyfriend won't make you older and wiser; sadly it's just a matter of time and life experience until girls and guys want similar things.
"When it seems all hope is lost, my college wingman has discovered what we all must find before taking the plunge: a girl who nurtures the frat guy that forever remains in all of us. How do you do that? Remember that when we settle down, all we really want is a lady in public and a freak in the bedroom. Ideally we are hoping for a personal porn star. For his birthday, my wingman's girlfriend handed him a new digital recorder and a box of candles and promised him her own rendition of 'Happy Birthday.' Don't you believe that a girl like that is out there for each of us? Somewhere hidden away is videotape to prove they exist. Find a girl that can foster that part of the frat guy in all of us by fulfilling our bizarre sexual wishes and we'll all be guaranteed happy birthdays for many years to come in the bedroom: the one place a frat guy never grows up."
As I prepare to exit college and begin dating in what will be known as my first year out, I am cautious of the frat boy mentality, for health reasons and emotional ones, too. And while Bob the Builder may fit the stereotypical Maxim-retired frat-boy profile, he retired his golden cock crown and is an honorable guy to date. I just hope for the sake of women everywhere that more men realize rocking out with their cock out was reserved for the dorm days and that in the world of 20-something sex and dating, it's the nice guy that gets laid.
