There's no doubt that around a month removed from its opening, RIT's Gene Polisseni Center is a monolithic, matte-beige, poorly-zoned crowd pleaser.
Within its walls, however, lies a den of iniquity: a depraved house of deviancy and unchecked extravagance that would serve as a Biblical example of mankind's arrogance, but now is simply known as the Club Lounge. Access is only permitted to members of a certain upper echelon, but legend has foretold of a Wanderer who was able to breach the glistening exterior of this fabled house of orgy, and the stories he wearily imparted on the huddled masses were enough to make blood run cold.
As the ancient tablets foretell, the Wanderer entered the Polisseni Center on the night of a men's hockey game and, although he was almost immediately plagued with visions of a distant phallic nightmare upon the thought of the elusive Club Lounge, he was still able to gaze toward the Lounge's magnificent facade when his eyes weren't following the players along with the rest of the plebeian grandstand. The disheveled civilians surrounding him chose to ignore the promise of the glimmering splendor that rested in the room with them, but the Wanderer heard the occasional whisper that only tantalized his growing desire and curiosity:
"It's penetrated my dreams, that ungodly lounge. I sleep restlessly through jagged visions of its distant opulence!"
"What cruel god would force our diminutive species to bask in the radiance of such ethereal spectacle? Curse my shameful mortal limitations!"
"I heard there's a buffet in there."
The Wanderer could feel the heavenly glow of the Club Lounge sear into the back of his unworthy skull. He simply couldn't resist the temptations clouding his reasoning any longer and leapt out of his seat toward the Lounge's entrance. While climbing the stairs, he felt himself growing distant from the commoners below him and closer to the elite that awaited him behind the Lounge's towering glass-doored entryway. He thought that this, perhaps, was his destiny all along. This was what he had been tirelessly seeking as he spent his life in a constant pilgrimage to and from RIT's many bacchanal paradises — until he came to his senses and remembered that nothing, not a single thing on RIT's campus, remotely resembles any sort of paradise. The Club Lounge was something different; something to be treasured. It was his Maltese Falcon, his Arc of the Covenant, his Rushmore, and he would drown himself in its storied luxury if it was the last thing he did.
The security guard at the Lounge's entrance was swift to deny him passage beyond the doors, but he peered around her frame and was nearly blinded by what he witnessed inside. A veritable "Who's Who" of RIT and Rochester's ruling class drank and feasted at rows upon rows of fine wooden tables.
Their shrill, gluttonous laughter carried through the cold air like a plague of wealthy locusts as they guzzled mouthfuls of golden mead and tore into boar's legs with spotless, thousand-dollar mandibles.
He yearned with a defeated spirit to one day sit amongst their ranks. As he turned to leave, he saw an opening as the officer briefly left her post to break up a drunken fight across the rink. Holding his breath and bracing himself for what would surely be an unparalleled libidinous shock to his frail system, he passed through the doorway and into the Lounge.
The Wanderer soaked in his new exalted surroundings, perched against a wooden barrier high about the ice. He began to attempt to entertain the countless thoughts that raced through his frazzled mind. One, above all else, rose to the top:
"Do you think this place will entice more people to actually attend and support women's hockey games, as they absolutely should?"
He sighed and solemnly shook his head.
"No. Probably not."
