When my roommate asked me to make the two-hour drive from my hometown to her New Year's party, I didn't realize I'd be taking a trip into what's affectionately known in North Carolina as the "Cackalacky" part of the state. That short drive from my suburban, private-college housing hometown to her little Main Street was like crossing a second Mason-Dixon line drawn right between me and all of her friends. I was in for an awkward night. 

Things could have gone well. The party was in a hunting lodge. There were taxidermied animals everywhere, a pool table, darts — basically all of the amenities I'd grown accustomed to from Williamsburg bars, as a college student living in New York City. But despite my comfort with these southern accoutrements, my reception was less than warm.

The first indicator I got that my roommate's friends weren't very welcoming to people "not from around here" was probably the fact that nobody talked to me. I picked up a pool cue and tried to get a game going, but somehow the group of guests kept mysteriously rearranging themselves so that wherever I was, they weren't. I wasn't welcome in their football, NASCAR, etc. conversations. I was born and raised in the South, but I don't have a strong Southern accent. When my roommate finally inserted me in their midst and forced some introductions, none of them believed I was from a town only two hours away. The group drifted away from me again and I was left at an empty pool table.

So I did what anyone would do after being socially rejected at a party: I got really, really drunk. By eleven it didn't matter what accent I had, because I could barely form a complete sentence. Somewhere along the way I got the idea into my head that I needed to find a guy to kiss me at midnight. 

The only thing I knew about the guy who kissed me at midnight on New Year's Eve in Cackalacky was that he loved sharks, for some reason. Everyone called him Shark Boy, and he was the second least welcome party guest right after me. At the time I didn't have any serious thoughts about kissing him, except maybe that I wanted to forget all about it before the next day. Unfortunately, that wasn't going to be an option.

I gave Shark Boy my number. Don't ask me why. And the next morning, he called me to see how I was doing. At first I thought it was kind of sweet and very Southern-gentlemanly for him to call, but then I asked him what he was doing that day, and he said, "Nothing. Just going to work in n*****ville — Winston-Salem." 

I thought I must have heard him wrong. It was eleven a.m., I was hungover, and there was just no way he had said what he had clearly just said. So I asked him to repeat what he'd said, because I hadn't heard him. "I said n*****ville. I've got to go work in Winston-Salem today." 

I probably should have stayed on the phone to tell Shark Boy that that word, even with the clever addition of "ville," was not okay, to say the least. Instead I hung up the phone, looked over at my roommate, and said "I think I hooked up with a racist." I haven't gone back to Cackalacky since.

— Marie

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