I hadn't kept in touch with Meredith. She was a roommate from a semester's study abroad program in Galway, Ireland. NUIG's people kept us American students together in these seedy dormitories gated-off and down-river, literally, from the rest of the university. In a four person flat, there was me, Sarge, Field Hockey, and Harvard. Meredith was Harvard.

She was this average-looking, average-smart, average-personality Boston girl who had won a swimming scholarship into the Ivy Leagues. But for two weeks together in Ireland -- sloshing through rain; hitting up pubs; arguing with an Irish professor of American history in a class we all took instead of Irish or European history for its acknowledged easy-A -- none of us, for two weeks, knew Meredith went to Harvard.

To say she kept it under wraps was an understatement. Girl flat-out was embarrassed. When college stuff came up, she would talk about a school in Boston, then quickly change the subject. "Guys," she'd say in that thick-shouldered, deep-throated voice of a female swimmer, "let's do a shot." Or, "have you heard of this band Atomic Kitten." Sip, gulp, sigh. "Awesome."

So she was embarrassed. So what? She had wanted to seem normal, wanted people not to assume she was some egghead or some silver-spooning wannabe Kennedy. I got it. I went to a state school in the midwest. Places like that grow corn stalks as well as they grow douche bags. The last thing I had wanted was people thinking I was some corn-fed overserved fratboy jag-off. We both had gone somewhere new to meet other people and to maybe become a bit more like them.

Around St. Patrick's Day, smack in the middle of Spring Break, a pack of her Harvard friends descended on Ireland from other universities across Europe. Three of them stayed with us -- two girls and a dude. The guy was some asshole named Todd who complained about our flat not having Internet access.

"This," he said, "is exactly the reason I did not want to come."

"Sorry," I said.

"You think Shawn Fanning is fucking around in Ireland right now?"

"I don't know who that is." After I said that, he stormed into the kitchen.

One of the girls was named Emily. She was from Minnesota and swam with Meredith. I asked her if she liked the Twins and she said, huskily, "Are you a wrestling fan?"

"No."

"Want to put me in a headlock? See if I can get out of it?" After she said that, I stormed into the kitchen behind Todd.

The third Harvardian was this girl who identified herself as Mary, even though she very clearly was Tatyana Ali, the superhot R&B singer and younger sister on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Admittedly, I was staring -- I was so sure it was her. And I kept staring until she got up in my face and told me to "look some goddamn place else."

Our group had made Paddy's Day plans: Sarge and I were meeting up a bigger group outside the Spanish Arch, which was the start of the parade route, then getting inside Busker Browne's before all hell broke loose. But, suddenly, with her sweet friends in town, Meredith made other plans. I -- to this day -- have no idea what they did or how they did it. All I know: they got massively fucked-up. In a cab on the way home, all three of them puked. They heaved over every inch of the cab and of themselves.

Luckily, everything in Galway is five minutes away from everything else, so the cabbie, as he explained to me later, continued to our flat. From our kitchen window, I watched them stumble across our courtyard, with each step abandoning articles of barfy clothes. When they reached our hallway, they collapsed onto each other, and I smelled an equal mountain of Guinness, whiskey, and garlic mayo. The cabbie was right behind them, looking for 25 Irish pounds per person for a soiling fee. He explained the seriousness of the situation: I, along with my passed-out friends, could get kicked out of the university, removed from the program, deported -- a systematic failure. Without a question, I paid the man his 75 quid.

To this day I still haven't been paid back. Though I have seen Meredith since then. In New York, after college, I met up with her and some slick dudes for drinks. I never saw Todd after that trip. Tatyana Ali will still pop up on Fresh Prince reruns, an occasional B-movie. In '02 when Aaliyah died in that plane crash in the Bahamas, for a minute, I thought the newscasters were talking about Mary -- Tatyana -- and I remember being sad, thinking of all that wasted talent.

But Tatyana Ali is not dead. Neither is Meredith. She is just unemployed. No longer living it up, selling shit, tearing shit up, getting wasted, getting sick, getting assessed soiling fees that I must pay.

I await her next update.

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