I’ve never gone to a frat guy’s room before; my first time, I went to get hypnotized.
“You’re not going to do anything you don’t want to do,” he tells me beforehand.
I found out a Fiji guy taught himself how to hypnotize people after seeing Tom DeLuca at school earlier this year, using books and online tutorials. I decide to make myself a subject: I have an economics midterm the next day, I have a pocketful of bad habits I could get corrected. But by the time I ride up to the frat quad alone, it’s dark. Walking up to the green door, I start to realize the implications of a girl getting hypnotized at a frat house. I realize why my roommate asked if I wanted her to come with me.
My hypnotist answers the door, wearing shorts, sneakers and a white T-shirt. We go upstairs. I’m going upstairs at a frat house, I realize, as we walk up to a room where another brother is on his laptop.
“How long you guys need?” he asks.
“Like 20, 30 minutes.”
“All right,” he says, dragging out the vowels and adding a kick of a nod. I sense a wink as he walks out. If someone didn’t know I was about to be hypnotized, it would look like I was about to get taken advantage of by a frat guy. Oh wait. My hypnotist shuts the door.
He picked the “cleanest room” in the house for our session, he said, if by clean he means there is floor space. It’s undeniably crunchy under my shoes, and it definitely smells like feet. I sit on the couch and look straight on at a half-naked Megan Fox, then up at a row of soccer jerseys: One reads Adigras with a marijuana leaf on it. There’s a huge poster of Bob Marley over the den. One could call it a den of relaxation of a different kind.
He first explains to me there will be no habit-breaking, no chicken-clucking, no study-high induced without Adderall. Hypnosis, at its most base form, is simply an emulation of our natural unconscious state. It’s what we experience when we daze off during class and right before we fall asleep or wake up. He reminds me my mind is in control of everything that will happen to me. We begin.
It starts out easy enough, with deep breathing that I match to the waving motion of his hand. I’m asked to close my eyes. Breathe deeply. His voice drops into a deep, raspy whisper. Definitely a bedroom voice.
“You’re doing great, Ali. You’re doing great. You’re getting more and more relaxed. Relax your shoulders, relax your neck. You’re doing great.” I’m trying really hard not to laugh.
Was I actually hypnotized? Let’s put it this way: My mind said no, but my body said yes. He asks me to try to move my legs, and I “can’t,” (the feeling like I’m melting into the couch is too appealing) but at the same time, it still smells like feet, I’m in a frat house focusing my gaze on a giant poster that reads BEER and I’m being hypno-talked to (cringingly similar to dirty talk?) from above by a guy whose waist is at my eye-level.
“Think of the happiest moment you can think of. Let it get brighter and brighter. Now rub your leg and just let that feeling build up inside you.”
When I “wake up” 15 minutes later, I do feel more relaxed, and he tells me I was a great subject, though I’m pretty sure he saw me almost crack up few times. We make awkward small talk; I assume this is what happens after the fact when girls usually frequent these rooms.
He asks if I would be willing to let him experiment on me; there are some things he’s never tried before. Did I mention he’s a freshman? I say OK.
I go under again. A minute later he snaps me out of it. In case I somehow wasn’t conscious for the whole time, he reminds me nothing happened. I recall how a friend of mine assaulted a frat guy at The Keg for trying to slip something in her drink.
“I couldn’t think of anything to make you do that would be … humane,” he admits. When all is said and done, late at night in the dirty corners of the frat house, no one is doing anything she doesn’t want to do.
