American Fraternity Man

by Nathan Holic

  “And when you’re driving across country,” I say, “the last thing you want is for a cop to pull you over and find a giant timeline of your lifetime of alcohol abuse.”

  Water Jug laughs, nods finally. “All right, all right. Fun Nazi is a fucking smart-ass.”

  The room joins him in subdued laughter, then settles.

  “Back on task,” I say. “Who’s next?”

  Again, the stifling silence.

  “One more timeline,” I say. “Anyone else? Please.”

  “Yeah, I’ll go,” someone says, and it’s James (or Joe, or Jason). The one who smells like gym clothes and basketball courts. The one who hates “Nationals” but loves his fraternity brothers. He walks to the center of the Chapter Room, presses his timeline against the wall, smooths it so we can all follow the Sharpie-drawn milestones. And I can almost feel the room pulsing with electricity now, hairs standing on end, as though we’re all waiting for lightning to strike and sizzle the house from the inside out, reduce everything—the rotting boards and the broken toilets and the broken members—to a pile of post-disaster rubble, a scene of destruction like the one the cable news stations played after the fraternity house fire at Georgia two years ago. Everyone in the room is buzzing, ready to be reduced, ready for the lightning strike breakthrough so we can clean up the rubble, clean up this mess of a chapter.

  Develop our members into the socially-responsible leaders of the next generation.

  One more timeline.

  “All right,” James (or Joe, or Jason) says, and his timeline is mostly empty. “Here goes. This is when I took my first drink,” and he points to a scribbled date at one side of his sheet, “and this is when I learned that I’m a huge fucking alcoholic,” and he points to the other side, where the word “TODAY” is drawn in all-caps. “Big fucking deal,” he says. “The end.”

  The entire room seems to burp one quick uncontainable laugh, then swallow and fall silent. Silent as the inside of a coffin. Heads turn. All eyes on me. Staring at me like I’m supposed to be offended, and I try to rewind the moment and figure out what was said, the words, the tone, did I hear correctly? “Um,” I say, and all I can think about are those moments when a sports broadcaster accidentally says “Jesus Christ!” while watching a tackle, a slip-up swear word, and you don’t even realize it until the commercial break when one of your friends says, “Wait, did he just say ‘Jesus Christ’ on the air?” and then you’re not sure what has actually been said and what you’ve imagined. And now it’s twenty seconds later, and I know it happened and I’m trying to think of the reaction a role model should have. Anger? Surprise? Disgust? To say the wrong thing can be more damaging than saying nothing at all.

  But then someone laughs…cackles…And then someone else.

  And someone claps with great enthusiasm, and then someone else says, “There you go, Jay, you alcoholic bastard!” and the room descends into a growing cheer chorus, everyone laughing clapping hollering. And then someone pushes someone else off a couch and guys are throwing paper.

  Disgust, right?

  And right there—fifteen seconds ago—was when I was supposed to have said something, grabbing hold of this slippery moment and forcing it to stay still in my hands and straightening it and making it look meaningful. And I missed it, and once again I’m forcing myself to cough out a chuckle, and all I can do is try to look like I’m supposed to look the way I do, however I do, and I’m clapping and telling everyone that I hope they had a good time and that they got something out of the workshop. “We’ll end here,” I say, forcing a smile.

  “You’re all right,” Jay tells me. “You’re all right with us, man.”

  The chapter gives a polite but disinterested applause, the sort one expects for the unknown opening act of a small rock concert, and they thank me for coming; mostly, their backs are turned as they clap, eyes already focused on whatever destination—bedrooms, bathrooms—has already been on their minds for the last forty minutes of this workshop. They shuffle out of the Chapter Room, pushing couches back into bedrooms and folding and stacking metal chairs.

  *

  The President—another semi-familiar face, another forgotten name—walks up to me a short while later, tells me that I was better than the Educational Consultant who came to Pittsburgh last Spring, that I know how to take a joke, and he invites me to come out with the chapter tonight, to hit up a place called “The Mill.”

  “It’ll be a damned good time,” he says. He’s wearing a tank top with a crackling Steelers logo in the center, and he keeps scratching at the flaking screen-print paint. Yesterday, it was a Pitt Panthers tank top. Both days, he’s smelled like beer. “We can talk and shit.”

  “The Mill. Is this a restaurant? Or a bar?”

  “Little bit of both,” he says.

  “What kind of food do they serve?”

  “I don’t know. Burgers? Nobody ever eats there, know what I’m saying?”

  “Just drinking, then?”

  “I guess,” he says, scratches again, and a white chip of the Steelers logo flutters to the floor. “We get some tables, chill for the night. Nothing formal. But the guys, they’ll listen to what you have to say. If you want to talk. You made an impression, man.”

  “An impression,” I say.

  “They usually don’t listen to a single word that someone from Nationals says.”

  “Well,” I say. “It’s been awhile since I’ve kicked back.”

  I had reached them, hadn’t I? And what would be the harm in going out…in modeling responsible behavior, responsible drinking?

  “Yeah, bro,” he says, burps. “Think of the Facebook updates you can write. How jealous your buddies will be when they see you’re out on the town, different place every night.”

  “Ha,” I say.

  But ever since I shut down my Facebook account, Jenn has told me that she has no idea what I’m thinking. “You sound more distant,” she told me over the phone. I’m a thousand miles away, I said. Of course I’m distant. “No,” she said. “I never know what you’re doing. I can’t even picture you, sometimes. Where you are.” You hear my voice, I said. Isn’t that better than silly little comments on Facebook? But she only said: “I feel like we’re drifting.” But I do find myself still thinking in status updates. Every day, all the things I could tell the world. All night long, what I could be doing.

  “Charles is…out at the mill with the brothers at Pittsburgh!”

  “Charles is…loosening his tie, rolling up his sleeves, and blowing off some steam.”

  “Charles is…knocking back Yuenglings beneath the Cathedral of Learning.”

  I think of the comments I might receive. “Keep up the good fight!” “Drink one for me!” “Stay safe out there, Charles!” From friends, from old classmates, from Jenn. The alternative?

  “Charles is…alone in the guest room. On a Friday night.”

  “Charles is…waiting for tomorrow.”

  “Charles is…a beacon for leadership.”

  Because, yes, there’s the idea of the Marathon Man, that fraternity man I’m supposed to be, and there’s this image of Walter LaFaber, also, Windsor-knotted tie under his blazer; LaFaber, sitting behind his metal desk at the Headquarters building, rows of higher education journals in his bookshelf; LaFaber, my boss, who saw someone different in me, a professional with an Organizational Communications degree rather than just a clueless college kid who couldn’t decide on a better major. And yes, there’s this image of my father, also, standing on his front porch back in Cypress Falls, Florida, on his Saturday mornings, coffee mug in one hand and the other hand slipped into the pocket of his pleated khaki shorts. Hair combed, polo shirt tucked into shorts. Business-world poise as he waits for me to come crawling home a failure.

  “You’ll come out?” the President asks me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t.”

  “You got somewhere better to be?” He laughs. “This empty house?”

  “No, no. It’
s just that a bar isn’t professional.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not a college student.”

  “Bro, you’re only, like, a year older than most of the guys here.”

  “No, really. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

  “Come on. It’ll be good for you. It’s Friday night, man.” He slaps my back.

  I tell him that I appreciate the invitation, but no. He narrows his eyes.

  “Bro. This is a fraternity. A frat-er-nity. Just come out for one beer.”

  “No,” I say. “It’s more than that.”

  “You don’t got to drink if you don’t want to.”

  “We’re trying to build socially responsible leaders,” I say. “We’re trying to change the culture of alcoholism. I can’t do that at a bar.”

  He sighs, holds his hands up in surrender, backs away. “Whatever. Suit yourself, man.”

  And that’s it. I’ve made my responsible decision. And so it’s Friday night and these guys will head to the University of Pittsburgh bars and enjoy the night, but I’ll creak back down the hall to the guest room to sleep and to model good behavior. Wait until morning. Pack up and drive to a hotel for Saturday night. Take the day off to figure out what I’m doing wrong out here. One day off. Then pack up and drive to Shippensburg University. Pittsburgh to Shippensburg, yes. Other schools where I can still accomplish the mission. Cover the proper material for the Alcohol Responsibility Workshop. Shippensburg to St. Joseph’s to New Mexico State. To Texas Tech. To Fresno State. Fourteen more weeks of travel for the Fall Semester. “Visit Reports Completed / 3 Days After Visit.” “No Fried Food/ EVER.” “Email Chapter Presidents/ Weekly.” “No Alcohol with Chapter/ EVER.”

  But as the President walks away, shaking his head and already calling someone else’s name—“I invited him, but he’s being a pussy”—I’m thinking about the Mill, the slick countertops with drops of beer spilled across the lacquer, loud ‘80s rock from the jukebox, “Don’t Stop Believing” and “You Shook Me All Night Long” and pitchers of Miller Lite until Semi-sonic’s “Closing Time.”

  *

  Late at night I call Jenn, but, of course, it’s a Friday night. So—

  “Whoooo!” she screams when she answers the phone.

  “Jenn?”

  “Whoooo!” Voice like a child on a roller-coaster.

  “Are you out at the bars right now?”

  “Whoooo! Charlie!” Car honking in the background. Chatter and laughter. “The girls say hi, Charles! But we’ve got to go!”

  “Are you—”

  “We’re coming! Hold on!”

  A male voice in the background: “I got your nose, I got your nose!”

  “Um,” I say. “What?”

  “The girls say hi, Charles!” she says again. “Call tomorrow!”

  When I hang up, I hear similar noises coming from the rest of the fraternity house: the hallway outside the guest room, the upstairs bedrooms, the kitchen, the chapter room. Cans crunching, girls giggling, whoooo! and high-fives and clanking bottles and someone saying “But it doesn’t look like a cauliflower!” I stare at my laptop screen and think again of the status updates I could write if only I clicked a few buttons, restarted my Facebook profile, re-joined that world.

  But after a few minutes, I close the computer and try to settle into the disturbed guest room futon. Because there are two unthinkable spikes in my timeline, snapshots that keep developing in my head throughout the night, photos tagged as “Charles Washington” just waiting for me to reactivate my account to be republished online for all the world to see. And I can’t go back to that.

  CHAPTER TEN. The Grand Tradition.

  This was my original plan for Saturday: after two straight weeks of fraternity house-hopping, I’d take a “free day.” Time off. A hotel stay. A day that wouldn’t smell like spilled beer and McDonalds wrappers, a day when I wouldn’t have to explain to anyone why binge-drinking was not an “extreme sport,” a chance to sleep in a comfortable bed and take a shower without wearing flip-flops on mildewy floors, a chance to get outside and fulfill my goal of “Jog three times/ weekly,” maybe sit at the pool, watch college football on TV, have a drink at the bar without worrying whether anyone was watching. At the very least, a chance to sleep comfortably, no frat stars crashing into my bedroom unexpectedly. Forget the failed workshop. Remind myself why I’m out here.

  That was the plan. But this is what happened:

  Early this morning. Everything still pre-dawn peaceful in the Pittsburgh chapter house. So quiet that I could hear the low hum of the outdated refrigerator in the kitchen down the hall, the scattered snores of fraternity brothers in their upstairs bedrooms. I was ten minutes away from sneaking out of the house and driving away and enjoying my Saturday off. But at 8:04 AM, my cell phone ring-tone blared through the entire first floor, the metal and plastic of the phone vibrating against the wood floor of the guest room so loud that I could hear the noise all the way down the hall in the bathroom. Without even dropping my toothbrush, I darted down the hall and found the phone and flipped it open and said something with a mouthful of Colgate that almost passed for “hello.”

  “Charles,” said a familiar voice on the other end. “Good morning.” Crisp voice, starched. The kind of voice impossible to catch off-guard, the kind of voice that would never answer a phone with a full mouth: Walter LaFaber, back at Headquarters.

  “Eyyy,” I said, trying not to swallow, and I hurried back to the bathroom, a glob of toothpaste slipping down my throat.

  “You weren’t asleep, were you?”

  “Mmmm?” I said. “Mmm-mmm.”

  “Good. I’d hoped not. Where are you right now, Charles?”

  I attempted the word “Pittsburgh,” but it probably sounded more like “Riisssrrruhrr.” The question was a mere formality, though; LaFaber knows where I’m at. He drafted the consultant travel schedules before I even arrived for orientation. He mapped the distances between chapters, divided the three consultants into travel territories. Brock London travels Texas and the Gulf States; Nick Bennett travels the South. And I drive everything beyond.

  I covered the phone’s mouthpiece, spit into the sink.

  “What are your plans for the day?” LaFaber asked.

  “Driving. I have a hotel reserved for tonight.”

  “Travel day?” he said.

  “I need to stretch out in a real bed, get a good night’s sleep.” I looked around the Pittsburgh bathroom that I’d been using for the past three days, the once-white floor tiles that had taken on urine tones, the limp shower head, the thick black-orange mildew trail that slinked from the sink’s rim to its drain. I’d slept on a broken futon, had misplaced my shampoo and a folder full of print-outs, and as I’d searched for them this morning I’d knocked the stack of “Fun Nazi” business cards into the depths of my suitcase; they fell under shirts, inside shoes. “I need to recharge my batteries.”

  “So you’ve got no plans, then,” LaFaber said.

  “Well,” I said, but I knew immediately that I’d walked into a trap: LaFaber never asks a question if he doesn’t already know the answer. Not only does he have the energy and hard-hitting presence of a linebackers coach, but he also has a full shelf lined with leadership books and biographies of Great Men, each flagged with dozens of post-it stickers. He knows exactly how to get his employees to do what he needs. Stares you down, silent, brown eyes growing darker by the moment, the scar on his forehead shining brighter like it’s watching you, too, and you’ll eventually cave. Doesn’t matter what he’s asking (“Could you pick up the sandwiches for the luncheon this afternoon?” or “I need you to run up to West Lafayette tonight to deliver a package”); when he’s done, you’re convinced it was your idea. And every time we talk over the phone, I picture him rigid with the same discipline I remember from the office. Perfect posture, puttied hair, unwrinkled pants, standing—never reclining—while on the phone. Walter LaFaber, staring into his office walls as thou
gh he can actually see past the trees outside, past the Indianapolis office buildings, as if he can see for miles and miles and he can actually stare me down from hours away. “No,” I said. “No, not like…plans plans.”

  “So can you cancel the hotel tonight?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I leaned into the mirror. Flesh around my eyes looked worn. I could probably have slept for another five hours. Sometime after 2 AM last night, after the Mill closed, the first wave of drunk brothers crashed back into the house and raided the kitchen. Every fifteen minutes after, another carload banged through the front doors all at once, and they swore and shouted and drank in the main foyer for what seemed like hours, and as I lay on the guest room futon, I watched the door, afraid that someone might burst in to play Beer Pong or to have privacy with a girl. And now that the entire house had likely been woken by my cell phone, I knew I’d never even get out of here. The President would soon come stumbling downstairs with questions about the house air-conditioner, who to contact if it keeps freezing over, or maybe the Treasurer would stop me with questions about fire insurance, or some other gruff and angry frat star would want to argue with me about the benefits of hazing, of Hell Week, of making pledges drink piss. “There might be a cancellation fee,” I tried.

  “Most hotels won’t charge cancellation fees,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve got a treat for you, Charles.”

  “Really.”

  “I spoke to Dr. Wigginton, and he’d like to meet you.”

  “Dr. Wigginton? Like, the Dr. Wigginton?”

  “The Dr. Wigginton.”

  Dr. Wigginton: one of only five living alumni awarded the title of “District Magistrate.” The sort of man for whom I was given a prep file, should our paths ever cross: made his career in business and politics in Philadelphia, initiated a charitable not-for-profit in Chester, supported Penn State substantially enough for the university to name a fundraising office after him (and is rumored to have made the “anonymous” financial contribution to the Nu Kappa Epsilon Headquarters that directly funded the fraternity’s award-winning “DO IT!” social responsibility program, the backbone of our leadership development mission and our workshops). Has a portrait hanging in the lobby of the headquarters building, awards named after him, wears embroidered sashes at conventions, and when he clears his throat everyone shuts up. The Dr. Wigginton. “Meet me today?” I asked.