TUESDAY JUNE 10
Still Not Cool Enough

So maybe you weren’t the most popular kid in college. After you graduated onto Wall Street though, all of a sudden a closet of spread collared shirts, Brooks Brothers suits a Blackberry made you immediately more attractive to girls. It’s as if just standing in the middle of the bar and yelling “EBITDA” would generate multiple suitors. But when you return to campus for reunion weekend, it doesn’t matter if you personally top your graduating class’ league tables. At the end of the day, you’re still hanging out with the less cool, now underemployed, crowd. Some things never change.

June 2008

Gopal treats Princeton Reunions the way MBAs treat “information sessions”—he doesn’t miss a single one. A few Princeton students will opt to come back only for their 5 year reunions (5th, 10th, etc.) and many of those in New York City will at least make an attempt to pretend, right up until they realize they know of nothing better to do, that they “don’t think they’re going to make it back this year.” Not Gopal, though. No—he primes for Reunions weeks in advance. For him, it’s like Goldman coming to Stern—something you just can’t miss because it’s too good to even believe is happening in the first place.

In preparation, he methodically lays out a different pair of pastel or seersucker shorts and a polo for each of the three days. He tries on each outfit with a different set of Oliver Peoples sunglasses and saunters out into the living room of his 4-man apartment.

“Sugar in the RAW, motherfuckers!” he announces, wings spread, bouncing to his own beat. He reaches into his pocket tosses a few half-open packets into the air.

Knowing that if they don’t act clueless, he won’t subsist, his roommates are forced to inquire: “What do you mean?”

And, every time, taking his sunglasses from his face and placing them on his head, Gopal points up at his face and gives the same response: “That’s how sweet I am.”

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