by Joe Six-Pack

Color Illustrations by Joe Six-Pack

A “Crossed Fiction” Story

Holiday Treats Series

The belated first story in the Holiday Treats series is the story of two young men going to college for the first time. Allen and Davis are long-time friends from grade school, from the same home town. Now they’re going to college together, and facing the overwhelming new world of academic life at a major university. They hope to become artists, steeped in art history and art theory as well as many other aesthetic pursuits.

But it doesn’t start out very well. Davis finds he has been assigned to a dorm room with a meathead of a roommate, a jock who is obsessed with lifting weights and sports. He doesn’t seem to have much respect for women, either.

Allen has it even worse, as he doesn’t have a place to stay at all. The college is overbooked for beds, and Allen is living out of his car. With a harsh winter soon arriving, he needs to find a place as soon as he can.

When Davis tells him of a spot that’s available in a girl’s dorm, he admonishes himself for mentioning it, as Allen has no hope of getting what appears to be the last available room in whole college.

They stop by the campus Starbucks for a coffee and spill their troubles out to the barista who works there, by the name of Herm.

Herm listens and tells the boys that sometimes you just gotta bend the rules a bit. Why not just pretend to be a girl? Allen seems unusually receptive to his suggestion. The normally level-headed Davis even thinks it could work. Maybe their judgement is being influenced by the special coffee brew Herm has served them?

Anyway, Allen goes off to get a feminine makeover, and against all odds, he gets his dorm room. Only now he realizes that his new dorm is packed with “Basics” who gossip, wear trashy basic bitch outfits and are addicted to pumpkin spice. He hates living there.

So both boys are miserable, finding they have nothing in common with the people they have to live with. Herm serves them up more of his special brew, and suggests they try to adjust. What they couldn’t know is that by the time Herm and his pumpkin spice is done with them, Allen and Davis will have gone far beyond a mere adjustment.

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