The Princeton Pisser - Chapter 1

I’d lived my whole life not as Aaron Sinclair, but as the son of Conrad Jebediah Sinclair, the famous Texas oil baron, a legacy laid out for me the day I was born. He was never around at home; the only presence of him was his overwhelming expectations of his eldest son. I was expected to get the best grades, be the best at lacrosse, and get into the most prestigious colleges. In short, my father wanted nothing short of perfection, something I could never seem to achieve; always a disappointment. He had groomed me my entire life to meet his impossible standards, robbing me of the entirety of my childhood. I’d even joined his old fraternity, hoping this would earn me some form of fatherly love or affection, but 2 years in and still not a word of praise. 

The only thing that made life somewhat bearable was my girlfriend, Ally. We’d been together since freshman year of university, and my whole life, she’d seemed like the only person who truly cared for me.

She was like a breath of fresh air from the suffocating reality that was my life. We spent every minute of every day together, studying in the library, talking in her dorm, and eating in the dining hall. With her, I felt the mountains of each day flattened.

Of course, our fairytale couldn’t last forever, and when she was accepted into the foreign exchange program in Paris, France, we chose to part ways. She explored her life in Paris while I stayed behind here at Princeton, rotting away.

The statue of Princeton’s esteemed founder, John Witherspoon, had loomed in front of the Princeton Hall of Literature for centuries, a beacon of respect and prestige on campus. To me, it was just another relic of this suffocating institution, another reminder of the entitlement that infects society. I passed it every morning on my way to endless lectures that I held nothing but indifference for. I’d never given the statue any real thought—too focused on just getting through the daily cycle of suffering. Every day at this damned school had been identical; trapped in this confined hell of mediocrity and unmerited privilege. An ivy-covered prison. 

Even my oldest friend, Dominic, was someone I could only really tolerate; another aspect of this purgatory. We’d known each other our whole lives. Our dads were business partners, our facade of a friendship a product of maintained commercial diplomacy. Dominic was the blueprint of your average trust fund kid—entitled, arrogant, and devoid of any real substance or touch with reality.

Carrying around a tall and broad figure, often adorned in khaki shorts and a Lacoste polo. He held himself with an air of superiority and presumptuousness, one that made it difficult for those around him to breathe.

We’d been eating and chatting in the dining hall when my head drifted off. The events of the previous night had completely drained me of any energy and left me with the most excruciating headache I’d ever experienced. Lost in thought, my head finally snapped back to Dominic’s attention as he waved his hand in my face, saying, 

“Hello? Are you good, Aaron?” 

“Yeah,” I muttered, with eyes that were glazed over from the lack of sleep. I quickly responded with a slight smile and a “Sorry about that. Was just really deep in thought.” 

He stared at me with a puzzled expression on his face, like he was trying to read what was going on in my head. An expression that only lasted a second before he dove right back into his girl troubles. While he continued explaining how he’d “accidentally” cheated on his girlfriend, my head slipped back into thought. 

A week before this conversation, on a Saturday night, I’d been in my frat house helping set up for the party we were hosting later that night.

As I lifted keg after keg into our backyard, I began to question my motives for joining this glorified jerk circle in the first place.

I’d grown to slowly hate the people I’d surrounded myself with. I found it quite ironic that the people I was supposed to regard as brothers were people I could barely stand to look at, let alone associate myself with. Looking around at all the finance bros and trust-fun brats in the room, I harbored nothing but resentment. This was fueled by the division that stood between them and me. It was something I’d tried to ignore at first, but over time, the realization became too apparent to ignore. I was nothing like the rest of them. While this accumulation of idiocy and overindulgence was truly all there was to the people around me, to me, it was all just a front, and as time went on, this fact became increasingly difficult to hide.

Jake Vanderbilt, one of my “brothers,” approached me.

With a deep and slurred voice—likely from whatever substances he’d been taking prior—he said, “Hey, Aaron, why so glum, my brother?” As he pinched my cheeks and assaulted me with his horrendous breath, he continued, “Turn that frown upside down, my man.”

I’d wanted to rip his hands off my face and strangle him with his own button-down. He reeked of shit and weed, and just being that close to him made me sick.

I swallowed every instinct in my body telling me to slap that dazed smile off of his face and responded with “Maybe you should drink some water, Jake. You’re looking really out of it.” The smile on my face disguised the disgust in my voice. He laughed it off and left me alone.

For the rest of the night, I wanted to do nothing but bury my troubles in deep and endless cups of cheap liquor. I drank copiously throughout the night to the point where my memory had been fractured into flashes. Somehow, during all the chaos, I’d found myself at the Witherspoon statue, pants down, cock out, pissing at its base. I don’t know how I managed to get back to my bed by the end of it all, but I did. 

The following morning, I’d awoken with a grueling headache and very minimal clothing. Assuming that memory was simply a part of some drunken hallucination, I went about my day as usual. With a throbbing headache and barely enough strength to open my eyes, I’d gotten ready for the day. On my way to my economics class, I scrolled onto a video about a shadowy figure in front of Princeton Hall of Literature defacing its statue with urine. My blood ran cold at that moment. As I scanned the comments to see if anyone had identified me in the video, I felt relief wash over me. The darkness prevented a clear view of the perpetrator, a sentiment shared by the majority of the comment section. While I continued to scan, I noticed that instead of judgment or reproach, I’d been receiving praise and laughter.

They’d christened me the “Princeton Pisser,” and this flood of attention sparked something within me. The sense of anonymity made me feel free, untethered from responsibility. This was an identity of my own, separate from my predetermined life, from my father’s shadow, an escape from my abysmal reality.

Fast forward to now, in the dining hall with Dominic, the video plagued my every thought. I knew it was wrong—illegal even—to repeat the events of the other night, but I couldn’t shake the feeling. Part of me craved the attention, the mystery that the video had created, and in that moment, I’d made the decision that tonight I’d wear that mask again, the mask of the “Princeton Pisser.”