Pledge paddles hung on the wall behind the card table—activation numbers inked down walnut lengths in red, blue and black. Brass plaques with etchings of well-fed, well-worn Alpha faces of the past hung at eye-level among the philanthropic and bureaucratic awards which were inlaid with mother of pearl and silver gilt. As I looked through the blue room’s cedar framed windows, I saw snowflakes falling in the headlight beams of cars on the main drag.
Past the anteroom, someone hackled behind the dining area’s double doors. The doors opened and an old man of his early eighties shuffled with guarded steps. He wore a fire-engine-red unbuttoned blazer over his shirt and tie and his feet slid within patent leather shoes as he walked and poked over the ground with his horse-head cane.
He exclaimed, “Are you an Alpha man?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Can you direct me to your house president, Rex Blauwern?”
“I’m not sure where he is. He should be down shortly.”
“It’s important I speak with him—but if he’s coming down,” he scratched through pouffy white hair slicked with pomade. These hairs began in a distinctively low ‘W’ and ended in a curling, sparse mullet. His face resembled a diamond-shape with narrow temples and eyes, wide jowls and a weak chin. He cleared his throat, spitting something into a white and red-trimmed handkerchief with “NS” monogrammed in its corner. He folded and slipped the handkerchief into his hind pocket and then stuffed his hand in his slacks, jostling a large key ring and perhaps a small change purse like Chinese medicine balls. He eyed the walls of our Blue Room.
“You’re an alumnus of the house?” I asked.
“Yes, I lived here, at one time. I work for Alpha Headquarters International. Though, as you may correctly suspect, I leave the ‘International’ as optional. As you may have come to understand, the Alpha experience is a largely American… tradition.” He cleared his throat and scratched the side of his neck with his yellowing fingernails.
“What do you do for Headquarters?”
“I’m the Grand Magister.” He tapped his right lapel to his rank designating golden pin of a man leaning over a crescent-shaped truncation of bow, lines and masts—the glinting hairline expression of his goblet of a face screaming. The bow was tethered to a golden lion’s paw by a drape of links. “I’ve overseen the training of our pledges into men at a national level for forty-nine years. Longer than I was wed to my departed wife.”
“That’s an impressive pin—I’m afraid I don’t know your name—”
“Nicodemus Smith.”
“Wow.” I smiled. “I bet you went by Nick a lot when you lived here.”
“Nicodemus,” Nicodemus said.
“I see. Are you going to be one of the judges?”
“What’s your name, son?”
“Victor Hastings.”
“You the one with the Internet problem?”
“Well, I don’t want to get ahead of things.”
“It’s not appropriate for us to speak further. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to join you when the session begins.”
“Sure. That’s okay. I, uh, I understand.”
Nicodemus turned and made his way back to the double doors of the dining area. I listened to him walk across the dining area’s tiles and when I thought it was safe, I followed him halfway across the dining room. Through the dining area’s windows, Nicodemus stood on the back porch near the basketball hoop, looking up at the sky with a sheen of fresh snow covering him like a ghost or an angel.
I walked back into the Blue Room and there was Solomon, lounging on a brown sofa. He stood sharply and saluted sharply with distant, slit eyes and a smirk. “What’s up sir!”
“At ease, soldier,” I said. “You’re an active now. Besides, I’m the one that’s on trial.”
Solomon had a beach-ball-sized, white man’s afro of thick brown curls that dispersed radially so that, when he jerked his head toward the anteroom just then, like some lost squirrel, it took the edges of his frizzy planet a split-second to get the message. His facial hair was more of a moustache than the Van Dyke he was attempting and when he spoke in his lackadaisical nasal tones it made me a little indignant to realize he had some kind of unclassifiable intelligence that he was, perhaps, subconsciously attempting to squelch with his weed habit.
He sat back down, closing his eyes and running his hand over his untucked faded-yellow polo and his fingers rubbed the terrycloth of the red sweatband above his elbow.
“You know where the world went?” Solomon asked.
I was hesitant of these types of questions. He had a way of making me chase conversational red herrings that only resulted in me looking foolish. Solomon once told me that he had a dream where he shrunk the world’s gold, used it to fill a cavity and all the dentists fell hopelessly in love with him.
“Wouldn’t it be a heavy tooth?” I had asked.
“No,” he had told me.
He was a liar and unconcerned with physics so I kept a close watch.
“I don’t know or really care where the world went, Solomon. To tell you the truth I’m a little nervous about how this review is going to turn out.”
“Yep,” He said. “Been some talk ‘bout that. The University’s Greek Affairs Coordinator is coming here to see the review.”
“He is?” I said.
“Yep. He’s been having problems with sororities and he wants to understand what’s going on before he gets fired.”
“What kind of problems with sororities?”
“I don’t know.” Solomon slumped along the sofa’s arm and length as if he was falling asleep on top of a lover. “But I imagine some underage sorority girls—some seventeen year olds—maybe, made a link on their MySpace sites to some naked pictures of themselves. I think I heard something ‘bout black limousines picking up pretty underage girls outside of sorority houses to wine and dine ‘em and recruit them to host porno sites. But—yah, I think that’s what happened. What time is it?”
“I think it’s about twenty ‘til seven.”
Solomon stood, looking around. “That’s plenty of time! You want to get high, Victor?”
“It’s not my thing. I can’t.”
“Man.” Solomon smiled. “You ain’t got to worry about shit. I’m going to go up there;”—he pointed—“I’m going to roll them up. Then I’m going to come back down here and help you.”
“Ah, thank you, Solomon.”
He walked away. “Don’t mention it, Victor.”
“Hey, Solomon.”
He turned.
“Aren’t you high, already?”
“My feet are off the ground, sure,” Solomon swiped a grey Chuck Taylor through a vacuum track. “But I can’t see the clouds.”
A couple of members met him as he left. “There’s still time,” Solomon said. “There’s still time!”
More footsteps came down the stairwell. It wasn’t long before they filled the Blue Room. The Juniors had decided to be serious and occupy the first two rows so they could pay close attention. Budge, K-Zorro, Tag, Kothenbeutel and Todd Kessler were all still discussing a two-point conversion of a football game as they got comfortable. They hadn’t all taken the trouble to dress properly and, therefore, I thought perhaps the review was intended as a slap-on-the-wrist to keep members in line. Tag was the tough sort, very fervent in his fraternal beliefs, so it was bewildering to see him dressed casually in sweatpants and a highschool wrestling T-shirt at an event like this. Other than Todd Kessler (this chubby young guy who had paired a black sport coat with tuxedo pants and a white T-shirt) the rest of them were adequately dressed between business casual and formal.
The pledges had apparently not been invited. None of the members talked to me or looked my direction. I stood to the right of my folding chair and tried to look impatient or cool or something.
Rex came down in a black three piece suit. There was a stiff-jawed malaise about his pale broad face. Chris Dubnicek, Nicodemus and Ma Red followed close behind. Ma Red
’s white slip showed and she was attempting to bring her hair color back in blonde, tennis-ball-sized blotches.
“Please,” Rex said, grasping my forearm and ushering to my brown chair. “Take a seat, 1382, we’re ready to begin.” He looked at me and leaned in to whisper, “I know you’ll make it interesting for us.” This last comment seemed a little cruel, like I was entertainment for him.
I seated myself and my judges seated behind their table. From left to right, they were Chris Dubnicek, Rex, Ma Red and then Nicodemus. Members seated themselves, murmuring. I stole glances as the chairs filled and the sofas crowded. People sat and stood along the steps leading to the anteroom. Brad Torstan hadn’t arrived but the Greek Affairs Coordinator stood on the top step where the anteroom met the vestibule. He was a tall man with a well-trimmed, tawny beard. Thomas Clark, Wilfred and Drake had shown, followed shortly by the out of house guys: Zimmerman, Vandusen, Jason Shoup, John Steele and The Snitz. The Snitz was the only one I really knew of. This twenty-six-year-old drop-out and smug bartender wore a green wool turtleneck and had another black eye which wasn’t surprising. He had punched-out his twin brother, back in his fraternal days, for the right to be the only one of their pair addressed by their Snitz family name.
Keeande weaved through seated and standing members to a sofa near the action and sat cross-legged. His lion’s paw slanted down on the right breast of his grey button-down shirt and he sported gold-rimmed opal cufflinks. He winked at me with his scarred left eye.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FRAT COURT
Rex nodded to someone in the back. Track lighting dimmed. He walked to the front of the table to light five penny candles with a plastic cigarette lighter. “Esteemed members of the review board, witnesses of the Sigma Tau Chapter and the beloved brother, 1382, under our consideration.”
As he continued his recitation, I was impressed with the accuracy of which he had memorized these passages of Scobey’s Field-guide. But the switch between the way the brother’s really talked and how they spoke and acted when they read from the Field-guide always seemed pretentious to me. No one really knew why they chanted the things they chanted.
“Brothers,” Rex spoke, “as prescribed by our Scoby’s Field-guide, in the book of Clementine, verse twelve, I light candles, signifying our fidelity to the five virtues and their power to guide.” He lit a candle, naming it. “Mirth. The mirthiest of mirth-makers blooms mirth—verily. Prudence. As the prude wins the day, he subsumes it within his bosom. Earnestness. Those lacking sincerity for each task are lower than our boots. Piety. The pious are careful not to entreat demons nor practice oriental magic. Vigilance. The vigilant gets what be his and partakes of blessings forthcoming, burbling and o’r-brimming his chalice.”
Nicodemus dabbed a tear from his eye and leaned in to whisper something to Ma Red.
Rex seated himself and whispered in Dubnicek’s ear and Dubnicek stood to read from Scobey’s Field-guide. “Brothers and guests, this is, this is,”—Dubnicek leaned in to read something—“1382’s Standards Review. He is under review for damage of property, for isolation; and for perversion of decency unbefitting the Alpha man. 1382 has entrusted the Standards Committee to evaluate his status as a Brother.
“After this session completes, the committee shall retire to convene in a private session and then make a ruling. This committee is comprised of your Consul, Rex Blouwern, as Magistrate, Miss Elizabeth Redding as Minister of Fraternal Traditions, Mr. Nicodemus Smith as Minister of Inter-Chapter Brotherhood and myself as Minister of Brotherly Goodwill—”
I turned back to the Greek Affairs Coordinator. He met my eyes. Sure enough, he had been studying the back of my head. If he was there—watching—who else knew? Had the sororities been told? I found a blonde-haired, young girl sitting on the steps. Just sitting there—a spectator. Was she in a sorority? She had the poised and done-up look of a sorority girl. She was texting something on her flip phone. It was one of those flip phones with a camera lens in the hinge. But was it a video-enabled phone? I realized that this might be the first fraternal tribunal concerning a member’s private pornography use. I realized that this was the type of thing that could flare-up and spread. My throat dried at the thought of some viral, Youtube clip like ‘Fraternal Porn Tribunal’ spreading across the world from that girl’s phone—
“Brothers,” Dubnicek continued, “the revelations of 1382’s review lay also in your trusted, unbesmirched palms. If the Spirit moves any to words for or opposing these matters, let each speak with volume commensurate with his conviction but—mind—keep tongues friendly, lest our Magistrate speak his word ‘Harrumph’ and strike his Lion’s Paw gavel. You will, then, be soundless after each spoken Harrumph.
“Are there questions?
“Let us commence.” Dubnicek sat.
“1382,” Rex said. “We’ve prepared questions to ask of you. You will have a chance to make a statement at the end. Remember, 1382, you must answer each question directly, even if you believe them based upon false pretense. Failure to answer as such will result in immediate dismissal from our brotherhood. Do you understand, 1382?”
All four of them studied my face.
“Yes, Your Magistrate,” I said. What were they looking for? What did they expect to discover from my face?
“The Minister of Brotherly Goodwill, begins,” Rex said and depressed the record button for the directional microphone.
“Thank you, Your Magistrate,” Dubnicek said. “1382, why don’t you greet your brothers with our motto ‘Tergo Haec?’”
“Well,” I said. “I’m not really given to using that phrase.”
Someone sniggered. “He’s not given…”
I was losing their respect. I knew I talked differently, sometimes, than the other guys in the house. But I was nervous. It just came out. It hit me, in full: I could be kicked out on the streets, I could be ostracized on campus, I could be branded for life. I’d thought of it before but now it rested on my shoulders, it pulled my stomach to the floor and made my skin hot and itchy as I felt them, back there, behind me, staring at my neck.
“1382,” Dubnicek continued. “What was it you were listening to before you ripped the Ethernet socket out, causing the electrical fire to our newly remodeled house?”
“I, uh…” I scratched the back of my neck, blushing. “Your Magistrate, can I stand?” If I stood, it would all come back to me. All the cleverly scripted answers that I had rehearsed.
“If it makes you more comfortable.” Rex lifted his hand. “Proceed.”
“Thanks,” I said and stood.
“Should I repeat the question,” Dubnicek said.
“No,” I said, grasping the chair’s back. “You don’t have to. I was, I was listening to you have sex with your girlfriend.”
Dubnicek sniffed at the air, exchanging a look with Rex. “And were you doing anything else in your room with your door locked while you listened to this sexual, ah, this sex?”
“No—well—yes, I was online. I—everyone knows I was looking at pictures of your girlfriend, okay? but I didn’t do anything, though. I did not, um, pleasure—you know? myself. I wanted to. And then I was disgusted with myself.”
“Why did you want to?” Ma Red asked.
“Because. I don’t know.” Why was she asking me that? No one could ever be expected to answer that question. Was she trying to ruin me?
“Take your time, my dear,” she said.
“Chris Dubnicek’s girlfriend is attractive. The walls are thin. I heard them. That put my mind there. Then the Internet was right there and the other guys in the house knew she had a MySpace account and her pictures were right there. Everything was right there. It was hard to resist. But I felt inhuman so I got frustrated. I pulled out the Ethernet.”
“That’s good,” Rex said. “That’s honesty. That’s all we ask.”
“1382,” Dubnicek said, glancing at a note card. “What is the source of your disrespect for the traditions and beliefs of our upright
, Alpha man?”
“I, ah, I’m not sure how to—” I cringed, “Is that a stock question? Never mind.”
Expectant faces leaned forward.
“I like what’s new and criticize what’s old.”
“1382,” Rex said. “Why have you chosen to isolate yourself from other members?”
“I don’t know.” I waited. I hadn’t planned on that question. But now it seemed like such an obvious question. I was a fool for not seeing it coming. “I’m idealistic. When I spent all my time locked away with the Internet, I got caught in fantasies about how I would be with women like that.” Shit! I should have lied. I should have lied!
“And now,” Rex said. “You’ve learned that being with those women is a fantasy.”
“No, I haven’t; that’s the problem. You can’t ask a person to give up hope once he’s seen, you know, that beauty. There’s no real reason why I can’t be with those women, and there are so many—” My mind scrolled through its database of racy, pixilated imagery. “But now I’ll always know they’re all out there. I know where all the webpages are. Even if those webpages change twenty years from now, I’ll know how to find other ones. That’s what makes an addict, I think—it’s knowing all the details of how to get away with it.”
Nicodemus leaned forward. His brow furrowed. “And would you say you are an addict inside of this, this Internet connection?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think I am. But I think having that knowledge might make me stronger than the other members.”
“That isn’t true,” someone said. “You’re not like me. That’s for damn sure.”
I turned and watched Tag as he sat back down.
“Sorry,” Tag mumbled, without eye contact.
Someone snickered.
The situation was unreal. My head felt light. I felt like I was going to faint. Did I really just explain to Ma Red why I wanted to pleasure myself to pictures of the Vice President’s girlfriend? I turned to the crowd and I felt like I had been turned inside out for them, exposing my organs. There was my heart, hanging and beating for them, there were my lungs and my spleen. We could all look at my fleshy secrets and see how they looked, even though I’d never seen them before. I held up open hands. Cool sweat surfaced on my neck. My face must have been pleading. “Hasn’t anyone else in here had some of these same—you know—experiences with the Internet.”
Growing Up Wired Page 6