I got into my friend's house in Columbia to stay the night around 3:00 AM. I had just come from my second concert in the last three days and the juices were running dry. I got into bed and realized I was going to get a minimal amount of sleep. What I didn't realize was how exactly I was going to get the energy to keep myself alive throughout the day. The early morning had come and I had entered my impending doom with the gentle ringing of my phone's alarm. The continuous deterioration of my weeks’ worth of energy was making my eyes heavy even in the icy shower I was taking. I cursed myself and the ensuing hangover that would follow. The countdown to the alteration of sane consciousness had begun. I stood in the house, still damp from the cold, sobering shower and began to ready myself for the ensuing debauchery and moral degradation that is The Carolina Cup.

The event can be best described as an essential event for any college student that finds an inner desire to flaunt their fraudulent southern beau or southern belle persona. The Cup is known for its memorable quotes like "Wait... there were Horses?" and being an excuse to get absolutely inebriated beyond comprehension. The age of chivalry is dead, and I'm certain The Carolina Cup was one of the malignant tumors that savagely murdered it. My grandparents are the last southern gentleman and southern belle on the planet; I'm still not sure who these kids think they are.

I left the house and made my way to the rendezvous point where I'd leave my car so I wouldn't have to pay the outrageous general parking fee. I was dressed as gaudy as possible; blazer, pink plaid button-down, light blue pants, duck boots and my irregularly colored aviators. I looked like the Easter Bunny had picked my clothes for me from a Lilly Pulitzer nightmare. We saddled up in our friend's truck with their dates and we were off to the mythological land of Camden.

Camden is a small, yet historic, town located close to the capital of South Carolina. The tall green pines and fields give the town a natural charm that rapidly growing areas like Greenville are quickly losing. The Carolina Cup is the only reason the town is worth an occasional mention, otherwise, it would just be another hick town full horses and stables. Each year in April, the horses in the stables of Camden are accompanied by another, less desirable, farm animal: pigs. As soon as you come off the exit and begin your way to the fabled event the cops are there and everywhere. They line the streets to pull over any misbehavior on the roads so they can finally provide the city with the income it needs in traffic tickets. The pigs get their fill of slop.

We maneuvered our way through the sea of police officers after our driver was stopped for not having his seatbelt buckled and made our way inside the awaiting depravity. I got in line at will-call for my fashionable tag that would allow me to enter the gates of the twisted Garden of Eden. The conversations in the line were incredibly and excruciatingly mundane. I must have heard the words "like" and "literally" enough times that the cast of "Mean Girls" would have ripped their eyes out. The disdain for the semi-coherent conversations kept growing but I had eventually gotten to the front of the line. I threaded my ticket and made my way inside.

It was a mad, cotton candy-colored carnival. The air was bleached with smells of fermented beer, soggy mud, horse manure from those blasted invisible beats and the last wave of the spring’s yellow pollen plague. The patrons looked like they were all clones, each of them boasting their colors as if they were peacocks, flapping and squawking in this deranged sanctuary. Every woman had a ridiculous sunhat with their monogrammed initials and all the males were sporting bow-ties. The ironic thing was that at some point all of the boys had spent a considerable amount of time tying their bow-ties solely to get to a point around noon where their intoxication commanded them to untie them. While walking the path to our tailgate I had noticed that most of the men's blazers covered more skin on their legs than their extra short, shorts did. They all truly looked like blazers had grown two, sometimes hairy, sticks to frolic in the decadent atmosphere. The girls, on the other hand, looked much less ridiculous. The floral print sundresses provided unexpected curves to their otherwise corset-flattened assets.

I finally made it to our tailgate all the way at the end of the row closest to the imaginary animal's racing track and that's when things began to get even stranger. The painted coolers were brilliant masterpieces of craftiness. They were all dedicated to the male dates and wore multiple, personalized logos of brands that are considered "frat", whatever that means. The music the tailgates were blaring was mind numbing enough even without the copious amounts of alcohol. Every song was from one of three different "artists": Waka Flocka Flame, Young Thug and my, barely, least favorite Luke Bryan. The music choice made sense in that the "race enthusiasts" all looked like they had come from a Donald Trump rally hosted at a country club.

After feeling my brain ooze out of my ears from the talent-less noises roaring from the speakers, I decided it was enough and I would go try to meet up a buddy of mine that was working as a vendor. We did a quick catch-up and I asked him what would be the funniest thing he'd seen that I could write about. He initially mentioned the obvious; stupid drunk idiots face-plantation in the mud, but I pried my way into a better story. His booth was selling sunglasses but one of the patrons stumbled up to his with no shirt.

"Do you have any T-shirts?" the slurred words came out of his mouth.

"No, we're only selling sun-glasses."

"Look man, I will give you $70 for one of your shirts." He demanded. The story ended there but one can only assume that the man had royally pissed off his date that day.

Suddenly the horns trumpeted the calls for the horses to line up for the race. We lined ourselves with the other colorful whack-jobs along the fence to see if it was really true that this was really a horse race.

"I can't see a damn thing." he said.

"I don't want to see a damn thing." I muttered under my breath. I wasn't sure if it was me or the substance talking so I went to make sense of it and grab another beer. There were three girls huddled next to one of the tables. I had not realized this at first but they all looked unusually gloomy and possessed. One of them sashayed her way up to my friend while his arm was deep in the cooler. I couldn't understand a word she was saying so I assume that when she got close to his ear she was speaking in tongues. To my friend, it was all white noise and he didn't even notice the girl until he slapped his cooler shut and unknowingly turned to her. Her and her friend's eyes all got really wide and they sprinted away like freighted felines.

As the kooky carnival wore on, the clowns were becoming restless. The Cup had turned into an attention deficit disorder paradise, with people making runs through all the tailgates. Everyone wanted to leave and I never understood why. No matter which new tailgate you discovered and ventured to, it would have been nearly identical to the last. I found it best to go with the flow and make a move too- back to my original tailgate. When I arrived some of the faces had changed. I saw two girls standing by a trailer and I began to make conversation. They were from Clemson, so I instinctively asked them what sororities they were in, to which they replied they were in some sorority I'd never heard of. I, and the majority of college students, assume that when we've never heard of your social club, that you're lame. I pondered,Should I be the one to tell them that they are the nobodies among the clones of this head-liner deprived event?I did, but they have no idea that was what I was actually saying.

A great fear began to strike me. I was becoming one of them. I had become a baby colored conformist that absorbed and excreted pompousness to appear that I was the king of the hill. There was no depth at The Carolina Cup. Everything you saw on the surface was what it really was. The event lived up to the credibility of a giant, vibrant and gaudy photo opportunity. The euphoria of this dystopian nightmare began to wear off and it was time for the faux beaus and belles to retreat back to their lives to regain a sense of depth that was neglected on that glorious April day.