I wish I could be writing to you, my beloved readers, with better news. Sadly, my bed sheets are still clean, as no freshman girl chose to ravage me over the weekend. Mind you, this is not for lack of trying, I had a very clear and pointed strategy: begin drinking on Tuesday night and maintain course until no earlier than Sunday morning. Failure seemed a distant risk, and yet the mocking face of disappointment plagued me at every breakfast. But such petty concerns no longer require the focus of this weathered senior. Yes, bigger trouble awaits me on the horizon.

Dear friends, it seems I have to kill a friend, a fellow Russian major, over a woman. The Russian proverb states, "You never know a man until you’ve eaten a whole sack of salt together," and although we have not shared a sack of salt (apart from that special Marguerita variety), we have shared liquor. Many, many bottles of liquor. So many bottles, in fact, that it might as well have been salt. Sacks of salt. But I know what I must do, and my Beloved Comrade and I shall duel. Salt, no salt, or perhaps just a grain.

The reason for such drastic action? As local R.A. Aaron Sachs ’02 would say, my beloved comrade is "boning a chick". This chick, however, asked for my hand in marriage Friday night with the stipulation that we be wed by a black Elvis minister over fall break.

And I met her first. Besides, I immediately concluded that if I couldn’t get laid on my wedding night, my prospects for the rest of the year look pretty grim. I accepted the proposition, fully knowing the consequences.

We have therefore agreed on a knife fight, my beloved comrade and I. He suggested that the blades be in proportion with our own anatomies but, as this would leave me at a severe disadvantage, I did not consent. No, we decided to find a middle ground: the blades will be 4" long. Our left hands will be tied together (tied, of course, by my bride-to-be), and the fight shall last until the bitter end. We have both written suicide notes explaining how we chose to end our pathetic and dreary existence with multiple self-inflicted wounds to both the left and caudate lobe of the liver, pancreas, spleen and Sigmoid colon in an attempt to absolve the victor of any possible legal repercussions. Hell, we are even going to do this at the railroad tracks; all bases are covered.

This will be my first time killing a man with the possibility of being tried as an adult. I have been in front of a judge only once before, on trumped up pot charges in the 9th grade.

Thanks to $500 of my Bar-mitzvah gift money that I gave to an area Jewish lawyer, I got off. Record wiped clean. But now I again face the possibility of being brought down by the man. The long arm of the law will, as of a little past noon this Saturday, have another chance to bring me down.

I guess one might be surprised that a man, such as I, is driven to murder a friend, a peer at this liberal arts institution of higher-learning, as a means of getting laid. Well, in defense I must again point the finger of accusation at the freshman class. They drove me to such ends. Where were the lines outside my door? I had even bought the deli counter ticket dispenser in what is now obviously read as naïve anticipatory glee. I am a man with no options.

I guess the irony is, whether or not the police catch me, whether or not I end up married or in prison, I’ll still be getting constant ass. Suckers.