For people who are not in marriage-like relationships, formals are an integral part of the dating life at Northwestern. This is because everything is already arranged: the buses, the hotel, the price — making it the perfect solution for socially inept students.
The problem with formals, though, is that you need to find a date.
Preferably one that you like, but exceptions can always be made if a) the date looks really, really good in pictures or if b) the date has been known to put out on previous occasions.
For two weeks now, I’ve listened to friends debate who to bring to formal. With all of their seesawing back and forth, I sometimes wonder how they are able to make the more difficult decisions — like when to eat dinner. I shouldn’t mock, though — this is an especially difficult time, seeing as how there are at least four formals that fall on the same night this year. “There is a severe shortage of dates,” one female moaned. “I’m going to have to move to my back up to my back up list soon.”
I have a friend who is everybody’s formal date back-up. He has made the rounds at all of his friend’s formals, but he’s beginning to get the same reputation NU has — he is always the “safety” and never anyone’s first choice. “I mean, it’s fun and all, but sometimes,” this guy said, “you want to be the one, you know?”
And sometimes you don’t necessarily want to be the one — you just want to be the one who gets asked to formal. I know people who have stayed in faulty relationships just to ensure that they have a date for formal.
These people have the same ideology as endurance athletes — they count down the days to formal in the same way that marathoners count down the miles to the finish line: “only three more to go, c’Monday, I can do it,” they think. I have a friend who held onto a dying relationship for a few weeks, knowing that formal was just around the corner. On the night of, she got piss drunk, had the time of her life and when the guy said “I’ll call you tomorrow,” the girl said, “you know, don’t bother.”
Or else there is the opposite, where the guy chooses his date with the same care others use when choosing moisturizers. He has the night planned, he’s bought the flowers, he’s hidden the flask. And then at the end of the night when the girl pecks him on his cheek, and not his, um, pecker, he is a little confused. “I can’t believe she didn’t hook up with me,” a guy friend complained to me the day after a formal. It’s not that the guy was enraged, it was more that he was flabbergasted at this unexpected turn of events.
Of course, you can skip all this and go with a gay friend.
Generally, though, these people are booked weeks in advance. These friends, especially the ones who can dance, require a sign up list that fills up faster than the one for elliptical trainers at Blomquist.
Which makes me wonder, wouldn’t it be easier if all our formals were like the Princeton screw-your-roommate formal? These formals are so called because, if you so desire, you can literally screw over your roommate.
The premise of these formals is that everyone is required to set up their roommate, and the roommate is not allowed to know who their date is until the night of. This can result in many funny stories and situations, especially if you and your roommate do not particularly like each other very much.
The best matches, of course, are the ones that end with lots of screwing — word of caution, though: just make sure your roommate’s not there when that happens, for then you’ll be in the unique position of being doubly screwed.