American Fraternity Man

by Nathan Holic

  LaFaber warned me about Shippensburg University. Last Spring, they told the Educational Consultant that he couldn’t stay in the chapter house; they locked their front doors, wouldn’t let him inside. The undergraduates were placed on suspension for this, but out here in rural Pennsylvania…so far from the Headquarters in Indianapolis…what does suspension mean?

  A Jeep grumbles into the gravel space beside my Explorer, and I pretend to look through my center console for something important. Don’t mind the guy with the out-of-state license plates, the guy in shirt and tie with a full wardrobe hanging from a rod stretched across his backseat, the guy who’s going to spy for anything suspicious over the next three days. The Jeep’s doors open and two guys hop out, one wearing a Penn State shirt with blue gym shorts and carrying a Burger King bag and a Gatorade bottle, the other wearing a red TKE shirt with an illegible slogan along the bottom.

  “—on his fucking couch,” TKE-shirt shouts as he slams shut his door.

  “With that girl?” the other one asks. “Holy shit.”

  They both laugh, their voices fading as they hop-scotch the yard trash and pass the NKE house before finally disappearing through the open doorway of the Tau Kappa Epsilon house.

  I didn’t plan it this way; I didn’t want to sneak in unannounced. I called the Shippensburg chapter president, James Neagle, seven times this past week. Daily emails. No response.

  Sitting in my Explorer, and Jenn’s “Remember Me” mixtape CD of late ‘90s/early 2000s pop hits settles on a Britney Spears song. Earlier, it was N’Sync’s “It Makes Me Ill,” and before that Kandi’s “Don’t Think I’m Not,” each song by now memorized from dozens of listens, and each new listen a reminder of how many miles I’ve traveled. Here I am, past noon on a Sunday, tired from an all-morning drive, tie hanging loose and sloppy over my light blue button-down like a dog’s tongue after a long run. Head pounding. “Toxic,” Britney’s singing. “Don’t you know that you’re toxic?”

  I think of walking inside, just walking straight up to the fraternity house and opening the door and finding Neagle. Rustling him out of bed, the same as LaFaber might do. Just walk straight up there, right into that mess. Confront it.

  I think of Fall Rush back at Edison, of the four years’ experience I’ve got. The jugs of alcohol, the drunk freshmen. This is something that I should’ve done a long time ago. I think of calling Jenn, too. I’ve got a minute. I think of her happy, high-low voice. I think of her blonde highlighted hair falling over a powder-blue sorority t-shirt. I think of the party, the bar she went to last night. I think of her dancing.

  “Toxic,” Britney’s singing. “Don’t you know that you’re toxic?”

  I adjust my tie, check myself in the mirror, step out of my vehicle. I tip-toe through the wasteland yard of fraternity row, plastic wrappers and beer bottle labels sticking to my shoes, and I knock on the front door hesitantly, off-and-on for a minute, before I finally check the handle—unlocked—and step inside.

  *

  If the main foyer at the University of Pittsburgh felt like it was on life support, the Shippensburg living room feels like a corpse left in a boiling dumpster for a Florida summer. The room is a square space, a long hallway stretching tail-like out of the back and leading into parts unknown, a sickly staircase at the front leading down to a basement and up to the bedrooms. There’s evidence of a strong history here: a glass-encased trophy shelf (spattered, of course, with something brown), an NKE flag along the back wall, and several oil-painted portraits of gray-haired alumni. But there’s also evidence of the worst of Rush Season: display boards broken in half and color photos that had been glued to the foam boards now scattered throughout the room, sofas standing on-end, burnt or soaked cushions stashed in corners or in the fireplace.

  Industrial-sized trashcans overflow with bottles and cans; cigarette butts are smashed into the scuffed flooring; muddy footprints lead in every direction, keg-dragging scrape marks in the hallway. No residents lurking about, but still I stay quiet.

  Despite this lifeless emptiness on the Sunday morning after the first wave of Rush parties, there is life here on Greek Row. It hasn’t been awakened yet, but the house is alive, and it’s going to be every bit as antagonistic as it was for the last consultant. Wouldn’t let him sleep in the house? Didn’t care about suspension? That’s how it goes at the Ship. “Small school in a dead-end town,” LaFaber said. “Kids that wind up at the Ship? When they join fraternities and sororities, forget about leadership development. At best, these are drinking clubs.” At worst? LaFaber told me about one of our SUNY chapters, Rochester or Buffalo, one of those cold campuses in rusty upstate New York that the National Headquarters closed several years ago. The fraternities had become gangs there. The administration forbade wearing Greek letters on any clothing. And after an altercation at a football game, our NKE chapter “fire-bombed” another fraternity house with flaming bottles of Everclear.“You’ve got to be tough, Charles,” LaFaber told me. “Pennsylvania is not Gulf Coast Florida.”

  I follow the scrape marks down the first-floor hallway into the darkness, tip-toeing across the floor with careful steps. “Oh shit,” I say, feet clicking and snapping as I enter the remains of a once-industrial kitchen at the end of the hallway. How many NKE Sacred Law infractions can I find here, without meeting even a single undergraduate, that would push our National Alumni Council to revoke this chapter’s charter? Have these guys ever looked at, ever heard of the Sacred Law of Nu Kappa Epsilon? Keg over there, by the sink (“Law XVI: No chapter shall store kegs on fraternity premises, nor purchase kegs with chapter funds.”). Empty bottles of 180-proof Diesel near the trash can, probably the ingredients to a batch of Hunch Punch or Jungle Juice (“Law XVI, Section 3: No chapter shall make available free-flowing sources of alcohol to members or guests. This includes, but is not limited to, mass-packaged beer (cans or bottles), kegs, open bars, and mixed-drink ‘punches.’”). All of this during Rush Season, too, doubling-down on the rules infractions (“No chapter shall use alcohol in the recruitment of members.”). Could I find drugs, too, if I searched? Criminal activity? And if I found it…what would these guys do to me? If I’d been sent to investigate the fire-bombing at that SUNY campus, what would those brothers have done to me?

  Above me the ceiling creaks with activity, and I jump. The bedrooms .They’re waking up. Tumbling out of beds, tossing sheets to the floor, stumbling to the showers, sliding into board shorts or blue jeans, preparing to clean the crime scene before the Fun Nazi arrives. James Neagle has received my voicemails, sure he has, he just didn’t feel like calling back, and now he probably thinks he’s got time before I arrive…an Educational Consultant wouldn’t dare enter the house without his invitation, after all. That would be breaking and entering, trespassing.

  The stairs creak, wooden boards under the stress of sneakers.

  Someone coming down…

  I should never have stepped inside.

  I retrace my steps through the hallway, quietly as I can. Ceiling creaks. In the stairwell, someone says “lunch.” Shit, shit. I retrace my steps back to the front door, manage it open gently, walk onto the porch so softly that it feels like I’m floating, down each of the cracked stairs, out to the lawn, turn my back on the house, hope no one is watching me from an upstairs window. Back into the gravel parking lot, back to my Explorer. I picture the first floor now filling with frat stars while I sit in my front seat and stare at the house from a distance.

  *

  The Fun Nazi card stares back at me from its spot below the speedometer. Sharp corners, crisp type, just like a real business card: someone took great care in constructing this joke.

  To the brothers of this chapter, this was just a mindless college party in rural Pennsylvania, but it’s a fraternity party during Rush Season…I’ll have to ask questions. Document this. All of the proper forms and the proper signatures. No running away, no hiding in the guest room after the workshop ends. I chose this, all of it. To be the Fun Nazi.
To confront the fraternity stereotype.

  From the seat of my Explorer, I dial James Neagle once more, and finally someone answers. “Who’s this?” Rough big-city voice.

  “Charles Washington.” Assertive.

  “Who?”

  “This is Charles Washington. The Educational Consultant.”

  “The what?”

  “From Nu Kappa Epsilon Headquarters. I am speaking to James Neagle, correct?”

  “Yeah, this is him.”

  “James,” I say, “I left you several messages about my visit. Emails, too.”

  “Huh? Oh. Must not’ve gotten them. Haven’t checked my email in awhile.”

  “What about your voicemail?”

  “Huh? Should have Facebooked me.”

  “I don’t have Facebook. I’m not a college student.”

  “Don’t have Facebook? What’d you say your name was?”

  “Charles Washington,” I say. “The EC? From the Nike HQ? I’m going to be in town for the next three days. To meet with your advisors and officers, to inspect your house?”

  “From Nationals?” James asks. “Whoa. First I heard about this.”

  “James, listen,” I say and I want to swear, want to tell him that I know he’s bull-shitting, but this is my chance to do everything right, to prove that I can do it right. “I’m going to be here until Wednesday,” I say. “We need to sit down and make a schedule for my visit. Today.”

  “Bob,” James says, but it’s hand-over-the-phone muffled. “Fucking guy from Nationals is coming into town. Now.”

  Another voice, distant: “The fuck they want?”

  Then, James again, to me: “Are we in trouble or something?”

  “No,” I say. “No. Every chapter gets a visit from a consultant at least once a year. This is standard. I meet with your officers, help you plan your budget, and…Have you never met with a consultant before? You are the president, right?”

  “Yeah,” James says. “No consultant’s ever been to Ship before.”

  Head pounding.

  “We got Rush, man,” James says. “We’re too busy for a visit or whatever.”

  Head pounding. “Well. I’m here in your parking lot.”

  “You’re here, already?”

  “Parked,” I say.

  “Everyone’s asleep. You know…it’s fucking Sun-day. Day of rest. You can’t come in here all unannounced and shit.”

  “It’s noon,” I say, check my clock. “It’s almost one, actually.”

  “Yo, what the fuck? Let us clean the place up a little, man.”

  “I’m…” I say. Head pounding. “I’m walking up to your house right now.”

  And now I’m ready. I leave my Explorer and walk the same path through the garbage-yard, knock on the door, and when it opens I make myself look surprised at the inside of the house. “Oh, hello,” I say when a young man enters the doorframe. He is grogginess personified, a lumbering bear ripped from sweet hibernation, the body of a rugby player and the face of a mangled boxer, cigarette wedged behind his ear; he stands in the doorway for ten seconds or so, staring in the distance without any indication that he has control of his muscles, and he is a billboard—a billboard—for our fraternity. Sleeveless blue NKE shirt with letters so large that I could’ve read them from the parking lot. I can picture him chugging cans of Coors in ten seconds flat, then crunching the can in his palm.

  “You the guy from Nationals?” he asks.

  “That’s me.” I extend my hand. “Charles Washington.”

  He bumbles forward, pulls the front door closed behind him, and accepts my hand in a bone-crushingly powerful handshake. Reminds me, strangely, of Walter LaFaber’s grip. He pulls the cigarette from behind his ear, sticks one hand down his black track pants, fishes around, and a moment later retracts his hand and he’s holding a lighter. “House is a little messed up right now,” the rugby player says.

  “Looks like the whole Row is. What happened here last night?”

  “Had a couple people over,” he says, sucking on his cigarette until the end turns to ember and ash. He blows smoke into the light September breeze.

  “Looks like a lot of people were here.”

  “Maybe,” he says. “I’m James Neagle, by the way. Chapter president.”

  “Very nice to meet you.”

  His eyes seem to regain life and energy with each smoky inhalation, and his zombified glaze is starting to melt; underneath, however, is suspicion and anger. Two types of chapters: those who get it and those who don’t. If this is a drinking club, then our mission of leadership development stands counter to everything that Neagle believes his fraternity should be.

  “Got my room cleaned up,” he says. “You can stay on my couch.”

  “Um,” I say, “excellent.”

  “You probably want to look through our house. Don’t you?”

  “I’ll, you know, need to document some things.”

  “Phhh,” he says, blowing smoke everywhere. “Figured.”

  Neagle stands a full six inches taller than me. His traps are large enough to make him look like he’s wearing granite shoulder-pads.

  “Lot of guys still sleeping?” I ask.

  “Some.”

  “Well.”

  “Well.”

  “I suppose I’m a little hungry right now. Have you had lunch?”

  “Naw.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Phhh,” he says, flicks his cigarette. “I could eat.”

  “We could take a ride, then. Give your guys a chance to wake up.”

  “I’ll drive,” he says. “I know a place.”

  And I stare at the closed door for a moment, wondering why I need lunch and why I suggested it and knowing I should be inside the house, but I follow him down the rickety porch steps and slide into the passenger seat of his mud-splashed pickup, and I think, there’s still time. The pickup gives a healthy cough and a deep vroom-ing grumble as he gases it and drives us out of the gravel parking lot. The conversation is one-sided for most of the drive: I ask him how he likes Shippensburg, why he joined the fraternity, why he decided to become president, what’s his major and what are his career aspirations, and his answers crackle with disinterest. Quick sentences. Youngest of four children, the first to go to college. Others went into the military. He’s a business major, wants to work in Philly. Bank, maybe. Deeper probes—do your parents like the idea of the fraternity? what do they think about you as president?—elicit shrugs.

  I imagine his fraternity brothers cleaning the house at this very moment, disposing of evidence while I’m gone. I imagine that LaFaber would’ve muscled his way into the house, said “We’ve got a problem,” and would’ve immediately set about recording the damages while Neagle stood watching. I wonder why I couldn’t do that.

  *

  Only two roads in Shippensburg, and their intersection forms the center of town. Along one road is the university, but along the other are little one-and-two-story houses and shops smashed up against one another, white and baby-blue paint peeling from the exteriors. House after house, it’s all the same: gift shop, antique store, gift shop, antique store, like the repeating background of an old Tom & Jerry cartoon.

  Neagle takes me to a downtown restaurant called Little Philly Bagel, and it’s one of those order-at-the-counter-and-get-a-number-and-then-a-waitress-comes-to-your-table-and-delivers-your-food sort of places. The kind where I always wonder whether or not to leave a tip. It bothers me because it’s impossible to budget; I leave 17% at restaurants, always, and I need to know what I’m supposed to do at a place like this. We sit in silence and wait for the waitress to deliver our lunches. When she comes, it feels as if the bitterness lifts, even if only slightly.

  “Your house,” I say, “is a real mess.”

  The waitress places my ham sandwich on the table, smiles.

  Neagle makes a clicking noise with his jaw. “Sure is.”

  “Is that just because it’s the start of the semester?
”

  No response. The waitress slides something deep-fried before him.

  “Were there things in your house that would violate rules?”

  —and then the waitress is gone. And the bitterness resettles.

  “Phhh,” he says, as if still blowing smoke. “What rules?”

  “Rules rules. University rules? IFC rules? City ordinances, laws?”

  “Phhh,” he says again. “Listen. Thing you got to understand is we don’t worry about that. Our house is off-campus. The land is in dispute between city and county, so police don’t come by. They don’t want the hassle. We’re golden: anything goes on the Row.”

  Satisfied, face chiseled into a case-closed expression, he bites into his fried sandwich and an oozing glob of orange-white sauce splashes onto the wax paper. His mouth is so full, chewing so strenuous, that he looks like a predator, a tiger tearing into a tackled zebra.

  “We’ve got Headquarters rules, you know?” I say. “No matter where you are.”

  I open my portfolio notebook, show him the Circles of Danger diagram:

  “You’re in the most dangerous circle,” I say. “You guys could get in a lot of trouble for this stuff. Haven’t you read the alcohol policies in our Sacred Laws?”

  “Do what you got to,” he says. Stares me in the eyes.

  I look down, look into my notebook and shuffle through papers. Anything suspicious, report it, LaFaber said. A well-meaning mandate, but LaFaber doesn’t have to sleep on the couch in James Neagle’s bedroom for three nights, down the hallway from forty alpha males without mercy for guys in shirt and tie, smarmy “Nationals” consultants “out to get them.”

  “Let’s go over the schedule for my visit.”

  He shrug-nods, continues chewing.

  “Did you complete the scheduling worksheet?”

  He raises his head, eyes zero in on mine, and it looks like he’s got rocks behind his cheeks. Doesn’t nod, doesn’t swallow, doesn’t move. “You mean, you’re not here just to count our kegs?”