by Nathan Holic
*
I’m still dressed in flat-front khaki pants, but I traded my NKE polo for a striped button-down that I pulled from my dirty-clothes bag, sprayed with deodorant, ironed. Already, I’m searching the shirt for wrinkles or dirt splotches or stains, and every time Ben speaks, my dirty shirt is my excuse to smooth my pants and my sleeves, to stare at my chest or my lap so that I don’t have to respond.
“I love these nights out,” Ben says. “Makes me feel young again.”
Several minutes later, two older Penn State alumni arrive and exchange excited pleasantries with Dr. Wigginton. One, Henry Guffman, looks like an older, swollen Don Johnson (with the addition of an untrimmed moustache); he “owns a little construction company in Barlow, just down the road.” The other alumnus, Clyde Hampshire, is just as old and wealthy as the Doctor, and also occupies several ceremonial positions in the fraternity. He tells me that he served for eight years as the Housing Board President for Penn State. It was great, he says. That does sound great, I say.
“Our monthly alumni gatherings are always in flux,” Dr. Wigginton says. “Some months, we have more than fifteen. Other months, as few as four or five. Either way, small or large, these reunions are the perfect nourishment for the fraternal hunger.”
“So what about it, gentlemen?” Ben says. “Split some pitchers?”
“Mr. Hampshire?” Dr. Wigginton asks, looking at Clyde. “Shall we?”
“I might as well,” Clyde says. “I’m already up past my bedtime.”
Dr. Wigginton and Clyde Hampshire laugh the same huffing, deep-throated laughs, hands on one another’s knees.
“All right, then,” Ben says. “Where’s our girl? Where is that little thing?”
I lower my head, smooth my pants.
“Hey, cutie. We’re gonna need some service. Let’s go.” Ben claps.
Scattered laughter around the table. I keep my head down.
Our waitress arrives and introduces herself, and someone—Clyde Hampshire?—cuts her off to say, “Thank God we have you tonight. I don’t know what we would have done, had we been waited on by that fat gentleman.” Laughter. “A wasted night,” someone else says. Hearty man-laughter. Some nervous 20-year-old female laughter, too.
When I look up, Ben is very obviously staring into her chest.
She is blonde—no, brunette, with clearly visible roots—and has the athletic build of a volleyball player. Almost looks like Jenn, except that Jenn is leaner and never allows her roots to show. (And Jenn doesn’t wear choker necklaces as this girl does; the farther I travel from Florida, strangely, the more popular that surfer accessories become. The undergraduates at Pittsburgh wore board shorts and “Rusty” t-shirts, as if they live only a few blocks from the beach and are ready to load up their Jeeps each morning to see what fortune the waves hold for them.) Ben leans into her, lets his voice descend into an older is sexier tone, and says, “Need a pitcher of Yuengling and six glasses.”
“That it for now?” she says.
Six glasses. Six of us. Five alumni, and myself.
And that sounds fantastic. A way to redeem the day. Yuengling. Splitting pitchers with the big boys. Again, I savor the word alumni. On Homecoming weekends back at EU, when the alumni came back to the house en masse, we’d buy a couple cases of Heineken and let them have the house to themselves. Loosen up, enjoy yourself, we said. (Then cut us a check for our scholarship fund!) A couple brews with the big boys, I’m thinking, with the alumni, with a District Magistrate, and I am picturing myself on the edge of my seat, beer in my hand recounting stories from my first two weeks of travel to an alumni audience enthralled, laughing, beers in their hands, too. Stories. Jokes with alumni. Dr. Wigginton telling me that he will hand my resume to his friends, certainly, that it will not be filtered, that he has my back and that this is what fraternity is all about. I’m smelling the beer, tasting it. Yuengling. Crisp and cold, light carbonation.
Six glasses.
But the Code of Conduct: “While you’re a representative of the fraternity, the four D’s are off-limits. No dating, no drinking, no drugs, and no digital footprint.”
So I say to the waitress, “None for me. Just five glasses is fine.”
“None for you?” Ben asks.
“Mmm?” Dr. Wigginton asks.
“What are you, the sober driver?” Henry Guffman asks in his deep, phlegmy voice.
“No, no,” I say. “It’s just—I can’t drink with students or alumni.”
“Oh, the Headquarters,” Dr. Wigginton says, shakes his head. “Silly little rules. Come now, Mr. Washington. I’m certain a glass of beer at a restaurant will not get you fired. We’re tight-lipped. We aren’t a bunch of rambunctious college students, after all.”
“No, it’s not that. I should just stay clearheaded.”
“You got to be kidding me, right?” Ben asks. “Some of us are twice your age, and we don’t care about clear heads. Do we care about clear heads?” he asks the waitress, who still stands by nervously, attempting a smile, shifting her weight from foot to foot.
“I guess not,” she says. “No clear heads tonight.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Ben says. “This is a fraternity gathering, for crying out loud.”
I’m silent for a moment. “It’s a personal decision, is all. Nothing against you all.”
“Is it your gas?” Dr. Wigginton asks.
“Gas?” Clyde Hampshire says.
“Chili for lunch,” Dr. Wigginton says. “He had very bad gas.”
The waitress still looks nervous, but now she no longer needs to fake her smile.
“No. Come on,” I say. “I just can’t do it. It’s the rule.”
“Fine. Just five glasses,” Dr. Wigginton tells the waitress, touching her hand.
“Well, fuck,” Ben says. “Not going to twist your arm.”
I want to tell the waitress that I would drink if I were with my friends, that everything would be different if I was back home, but these are alumni and I’m an Educational Consultant, and the mission, and the National Fraternity and its leadership development programs, and the Code of Conduct I have to follow, and tough choices and goals, and I know that a beer—just one—would show the whole table that I am one of them, that I am alumni, part of the Grand Tradition, and no drink draws a line between them and me, forever segregates me from their ranks, their club, their favors…I stay silent for several minutes, then, as the five resume or finish bits of conversations from previous gatherings, knowing that I’ve followed guidelines and the New Charles Washington is preserved, but that this is a failed outing nonetheless.
Soon, I start to catch vital information: I learn that the quiet one, Anthony Simmons, is the District Representative for Western Pennsylvania, an important advisor position. I should have known, but sometimes the names and districts and regions blur together.
They talk fraternity. The state of their chapters, the state of students today.
Beer sparkling in pitchers, while I drink water.
*
And then: so much for sober drivers. Ben drinks his beer in massive gulps and Anthony tries to keep up, taking long and labored sips each time he sees Ben drink. Clyde Hampshire and Dr. Wigginton appear to drink conservatively, small old-man-sips, but by the time the waitress arrives again, both have finished their beers and are ready for a new pitcher. The night doesn’t feel like it’ll be a quick affair, either: these alumni have driven a fair distance to be here, and damned if they aren’t going to suck the night dry.
“Sure you don’t want a drink, Charlie?” Ben asks me. “C’mon!”
“I’ve got my water.”
“Just a sip. Just a little siplet. No need to be a pussy, Charlie. You’re among men.”
Anthony snickers soundlessly, tries to chug but spills beer on his shirt.
Back at EU, we never really saw the alumni get drunk. Yes, we bought them alcohol, and yes, we came home to trash-bagged beer bottles and flattened cardboard boxes, but we always left them alone
at their reunions. That’s the way they wanted it. Much like my grade school teachers, who guarded the door to the faculty lounge ferociously and who always looked just a little uncomfortable when we saw them at the gas station or the grocery store, blocking our view of their carts, their M&M snack packs, their chewing gum, their tampons or toilet paper or condoms or laxatives, the chinks in their adult armor.
*
And then it’s Ben saying that he wishes kegs were legal in fraternity houses. “We were allowed to have them when I was an undergrad, and we never sent anyone to the hospital,” he says. “That’s the worst thing about Nationals”—and he points at me, as if I wrote the alcohol policies—“they banned kegs. And why? ‘Cause, like, one kid gets alcohol poisoning. Bullshit.”
And then it’s Clyde Hampshire telling us that things went downhill when they—“they,” again meaning “The National Headquarters,” or maybe parents, or lawyers, or university administrators, or everyone—outlawed hazing. “We knew how to keep it under control,” Clyde says. “It made boys into men. It made all of us into brothers.”
“The Terror Machine,” Dr. Wigginton says, eyes shut.
“The Terror Machines,” Clyde Hampshire repeats.
The table falls into silent reverence.
“What’s that?” I ask. “What’s the Terror Machine?”
“Historically, during Week Seven of the pledge semester at Penn State,” Dr. Wigginton says. “Utter humiliation. A contraption that was so physically and emotionally demeaning that pledges sometimes could not speak for days afterward.” He closes his eyes again, shakes his head. But I can’t tell if he’s upset by the memory, or if this is nostalgia for a beloved tradition that has now been outlawed.
“What did it do?” I ask.
“That is something we do no talk about,” Clyde Hampshire says.
“Part of the mystique of the Penn State chapter,” Dr. Wigginton says.
“The Terror Machine,” Hampshire says, and everyone raises glasses high and drinks.
*
Sometime after Anthony spills a beer across the table and into the onion ring basket, Henry Guffman launches into a hearty diatribe about all the things he can’t understand about young people: the tattoos, the piercings, the torn jeans, the baseball caps turned backwards, each new item stated incredulously—“I saw this kid wearing headphones! While he was on his skateboard!”—and with the anticipation of laughter, as if he is a stand-up comic in the middle of his routine. “You know, I read this thing,” he says when the comedian thing is clearly not working, and now he speaks like a researcher with some incredible new finding. “It’s called the Beloit College Mindset. They put it out for teachers and professionals that work with college kids, and it’s this giant list of factoids. Shit that kids don’t know. Like, for kids coming into college right now, it says that Paul Newman is a salad dressing, not an actor.”
“Intriguing,” Dr. Wigginton says.
“And, like, rap music has always been mainstream,” Henry says. He sits back in his chair, gulps his beer. “And the Facebook!”
“The what?” Clyde Hampshire asks.
“The Facebook!” Guffman repeats.
“Oh, delightful!” Dr. Wigginton says. “Yes, the Facebook. Mr. Washington here introduced me to it today. How wonderful.”
“Got me an account,” Ben says. “Who needs porn when you got an endless supply of Spring Break photos, am I right?”
“You too?” I ask.
“I couldn’t, not up until recently. Needed a school email. But I was first in line when they dropped that restriction.”
“I don’t know,” Guffman says. “Maybe I’m starting to sound like my grandfather, but I just want to go back to the good old days, you know? These kids. So different.”
Soon, the pitcher is finished. And another, before our food arrives.
“What about this Obama?” Dr. Wigginton asks me. “Does he have a chance?”
The whole table staring me down. “Gosh, I don’t…I don’t know,” I say.
“They say he won the nomination because of the social media,” Hampshire says. “Is that true?”
“Maybe?”
“You don’t want him in office, I’ll tell you that,” Guffman says and jabs his finger into the table. “He’ll put a tax on fraternity houses. Guaranteed. Easy money for his socialist agendas, just taxing fraternities, cause who’s gonna complain? Whole world thinks fraternities are a bunch of rich snobs, so get ready, whoo.”
And another pitcher.
“How is the chapter at Pittsburgh, these days?” Dr. Wigginton asks Ben, a question he must have asked me four times while we ate chili on his porch, but Dr. Wigginton never seems to tire of fraternity discussion. And I’m now starting to ache for some other conversation topic: the NFL maybe. College football. Even Brad and Angelina. Whatever. How can anyone keep saying some of these words and not feel a dull throb in their skulls? Fraternity fraternity fraternity fraternity fraternity fraternity. After awhile, it even sounds strange on your lips, and when you stop to listen to yourself speak, you wonder what the hell you’re talking about. Fraternity fraternity fraternity fraternity.
“Delta Beta’s doing good,” Ben says, slicing his steak. He sticks his fork into a thick, fatty cut, holds it up in admiration, and crams it into his mouth. Delta Beta is Pittsburgh’s “chapter designation”; each of our fraternity chapters has a one or two-letter designation (Carolina Baptist is “Alpha” chapter, South Carolina is “Beta,” etc.) used forever to identify that school as part of Nu Kappa Epsilon. “Never better, actually,” Ben says after he swallows. “Kicking ass. I went to their last party, and I was fucking shocked. We never got girls like that when we were in school. We had fun, yeah, but this was ri-dic-ulous. How’s Delta Alpha?”
“You went to an undergrad party?” I ask, but softly, and because they are drunk, loud, overpowering, my words are lost.
“We have a few problems with Delta Alpha,” Dr. Wigginton says.
“Anyone hear about Delta Delta?” Henry asks.
“Delta Delta,” Clyde Hampshire says, shaking his head.
“Are you going to visit Delta Delta?” Henry asks me. “There’s a problem chapter, right there. I tried advising them. Too difficult. But I hear good things about Gamma Alpha. Rough campus, but really good group of guys, I hear.”
“Those Gamma chapters,” Dr. Wigginton says. “In such a tough spot.”
“Fuck the Gamma chapters,” Ben says, and he is now craning his neck, looking around for the waitress. “I fucking hate upstate New York. Where’s our waitress?”
An evening with five successful alumni, and we are talking in Greek letters. All of them are talking now, in fact, speaking over one another, saying Gamma Alpha and Gamma Zeta and Delta Beta and Chapter House and Pittsburgh and Penn State and Hey Babe, Let’s Go, and Delta Delta and Fill It Up, Baby, and Do Not Want to Go Home, What a Fucking Headache and Delta Delta and We’ve Gotta Do Something to Help Those Guys and Illinois is a Financial Nightmare, Can You Believe It? and What’s Up With the Sandor Lawsuit?, and Delta Beta and Alpha and Beta and Gamma and—
“We’re starting a new program at the Headquarters,” I say suddenly, loudly, and maybe I cut someone off, cut everyone off. But this is my opportunity to break out of the irrelevant not one of us shell in which I’ve been cast ever since I refused the beer. “A mentor program.”
The table goes quiet. Five men all turning to me, necks moving so slowly that I expect them to squeak like old wheels on rusty axles, and they stare. Henry Guffman’s bloated face and cheeks seemingly changing shape as he breathes, his overgrown mustache rustling as the air enters and leaves his nose. Anthony’s skeletal face has now taken on cherry tones from all the drinking, his pale bald scalp now contrasting more heavily. They stare, all five of them.
“Mentors?” Ben asks. “What the fuck for?”
“Teach them how to hold their liquor!” Anthony shouts, and his red face stretches into a hysterical smile that
looks more like the scream of a dying man. He slaps the table, nearly spills his beer again, and begins a laugh that sounds too demented to really be happening. “Drinking mentors, ha! We could teach them a thing or two!” Smiles around the table, too, expressions that suggest that such an explosion was inevitable from Anthony, that they’ve been waiting for his quiet to crack and the loud drunk man underneath to pop out.
“Breathe, buddy, breathe,” Ben says and pats Anthony on the back.
“You may continue, Mr. Washington,” Dr. Wigginton says.
“Well, we just realized, you know, that a lot of students are joining campus organizations for the purpose of networking,” I say. “And since our mission is leadership development, we decided that we—the National Fraternity, with all our alumni—could provide more opportunities for our members. We’re trying to organize groups of alumni in some of our major cluster areas, and we’re building a database, compiling names and careers and we’ll have these roundtables—”
“Sounds like a lot of effort,” Anthony says, thin face still caught in the grip of that deathly smile as he speaks, but he is no longer laughing.
“Sure,” I say. “But worth the effort. We’re redefining fraternity life—”
“You see all these movies,” Anthony says. “Like that one. What’s it called? The Skulls. Where fraternities are these, like, highly-organized secret societies that run the world, and new pledges get convertibles and 100-grand jobs when they graduate.”
His smile has vanished.
“Well,” I say, “the idea of the mentoring program isn’t—”
“Already doing it. I hired this Nike kid from Delaware,” Henry says, and tiny beads of beer line his mustache. “Straight out of college, I hired him. He tells me, this fucking kid, he tells me he was President of the chapter there, that he was House Manager, that he was this and he was that. This kid doesn’t even have, like, the most basic knowledge…I mean, I guess I can only blame the school, not the fraternity…but this kid couldn’t do shit for research without google. Had the toughest time actually calling people. You got to hire a Nike, though, you know? He’s learning, this kid. He might be all right. You got to hire a Nike, is all I know.”