American Fraternity Man

by Nathan Holic

  “Real question? I don’t ask you if all New Mexicans have cacti in their yards.”

  “You do have an orange tree back home, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Everyone’s got orange trees. And everyone lives on the beach. And Mickey Mouse is our governor.”

  “Don’t laugh.” She play-hits me again.

  “This is good stuff. I’ll have to remember this.” And I can’t stop smiling, because everywhere I’ve been, I’ve only noticed those things that are different from my home state; I’ve viewed the world through the lens of Florida, and now suddenly I’m being viewed through New Mexico.

  But the dinner, and all conversation, ends abruptly when Sam and Nicole reappear at the front doors of the chapter house, Sam with his arms folded before his body, Nicole with her hands at her waist and her foot tapping an impatient rhythm. “All right, gentlemen,” Sam says, “I need you outside now. Out the back door. Courtyard.”

  And there is no explanation following this statement.

  The pledges rise from their seats, fifteen confused young men with spaghetti-full mouths, marinara-stained napkins falling to the floor as they stand. One of the pledges on the far end of the room tries to continue his conversation with his sorority partner even as he rises, but Sam just says “Now!” and he jumps forward as if poked by a cattle prod.

  “Thank you gentlemen,” Nicole says with a fake sing-tone in her voice.

  So I tell Maria and Shelley “Thank you for a wonderful time,” and shake both of their hands (but only the very ends of their hands, their fingers, not a full-hand grip like Michael gives) and I join an awkward line of pledges out the door and into the back courtyard.

  I realize, also, that I didn’t stain my shirt with marinara. Score.

  *

  For a moment—here outside in the fraternity house courtyard (there’s no yard, just pavement and sand and cacti), where it has grown dark and where the distance affords only jagged black outlines of miles-away mountains, no city lights—all is quiet. Fifteen young men stand with hands in pockets, disappointed looks on their faces because they can’t believe the Etiquette Dinner has come to such an abrupt and anticlimactic end. The same kind of look you might see in a theater when a movie cuts off unexpectedly, some electrical failure ripping the audience from the experience. They wanted phone numbers. They imagined themselves wooing their women, winding up back in dorm rooms beneath bedsheets: for 18-year-old men, the mind inevitably unveils this scenario whenever conversation is struck with an attractive female, no matter the occasion.

  But the disappointment lasts only a moment.

  Soon, the scattered pledges converge in the center of the lot to re-form their fifteen-man Pledge Clump, and quickly it becomes a jubilant mass of howling laughter, of “Yo, that was money, baby!” and high-fives, pats on the shoulder, fist-pounds and “I almost got her number, man,” and even spiky-haired Michael is high-fiving his pledge brothers, bragging as though he was the model of “true playa,” as though he wasn’t reciting Shaq’s rebound totals for Shelley or slurping his spaghetti and splattering the meat sauce across the tablecloth.

  I stand on the periphery to avoid drawing attention to myself, but I can’t help loosening my tie and unbuttoning my wrists, my own minor victory celebration. For one night, I was a pledge at a college party, not an angry storm trooper blasting his way inside the house.

  After a few minutes, though, Michael breaks free of the Clump. “Yo,” he says, “I would’ve fucking had my girl’s number, too, bro. She was all up on me. But this other guy, yo, he fucking cock-blocked me all night.”

  This other guy. Cock-blocking.

  “I kept trying to talk to her,” Michael says. Has a cigarette in one hand, and this time it’s lit, a trail of smoke swirling about as Michael makes wide slashing gestures with both hands. “Kept trying to work my way into the convo, but this fucker kept brushing me off, knahmean?”

  “Brushing you off?” someone asks. “Who was it?”

  And outside, here in the unlit parking lot, I suddenly feel the need to tighten my tie again, to button my cuffs. Just another pledge? I hide behind a section of the Pledge Clump and scroll through my cell phone for nothing in particular.

  Michael glances in several directions, looking for me. Takes a drag of his cigarette.

  The New Mexico night growing colder, but still I can feel dried sweat and desert dust caked over my skin. Waves of it, like this state wants to bury me one sand grain at a time.

  “Yo,” Michael says, and he’s located me in the crowd. He walks to me, motioning for a companion—a heavy-set kid with spotty facial hair over smooth cheeks—to follow him. Michael’s body sways from side to side, boxer style, the sort of pose he probably saw on a 50 Cent video. Wipes fist across dry lips. “Yo, who the fuck are you, man?”

  Silence in the Pledge Clump. Heads turning to watch the three of us. Smiles creeping across faces. Elbows nudging ribs. Whispers: “this is gonna be good!”

  “Um. My name is Charles,” I say. “We met.”

  “No, no,” Michael says. He waves his index finger at me. “Who are you?”

  “We sat at the same table. I’m Charles.”

  “Course we did. You think I don’t know that?”

  All eyes on us, the Pledge Clump breaking apart like a patch of scattered seagulls on the beach taking flight, all sorts of flapping noises and “Come on, come on,” and “Let’s go!” and they charge forward and re-converge quickly around us, surrounding the three of us in the same way that a mob might form around a middle school fight, almost as if they’ve been waiting for a confrontation all evening. Like they’ve known all along that I’m too polished to be authentic.

  “Who the fuck are you, bro?” Michael asks. “I never seen you before. Never seen you at any parties, at any pledge meetings, nothing.”

  His finger in my face, ember-tipped cigarette centimeters from my eyes.

  “I’m Charles,” I say. “Charles. What do you want me to say?”

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, yo, but I know my pledge brothers. I know that this is Tony, right here. I know that that’s Ro, over there. That’s Miguel. That’s Richard. But nobody knows who the fuck you are.”

  And I don’t want to lose this night, don’t want to reintroduce myself as “someone from Nationals,” but all eyes are on me, violence in the glares, and so there’s only one thing I can say: “I’m an Educational Consultant from the Nu Kappa Epsilon Headquarters.” Vague looks from the Clump. “You might have read about my position in your pledge books. A consultant? From Headquarters?”

  “The fuck…?” Michael says.

  “Yo, this guy’s a fucking spy,” Tony—the stocky sidekick—says.

  “The fuck?” Michael says again, head shaking.

  “Brothers were testing us,” Tony says.

  “Oh, shit,” Michael says and his chili-colored face immediately drains and his anger is gone and I could swear his pupils dilate and his spiky hair deflates and he looks like he’s going to throw up. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”

  “Hold on,” I say. “It’s, um…”

  “I’m so fucking sorry, man,” he says and takes my hand and tries to shake it, but he looks like he was dipped in wax, barely moving or breathing, and—startled—I pull my hand away. “Oh shit, sorry, man. Don’t tell the brothers. Don’t tell the brothers I didn’t know who you were. Oh shit. Don’t tell them I stepped to you, bro.”

  “Stepped to me?”

  His cigarette has fallen to the ground. He ambles backward, crushing it.

  And, for some reason, the rest of the Pledge Clump is shrinking away, too, faces white with terror. One of them has turned around, is digging his fingers into his hair with the sort of stressed-out “I’ve lost everything!” panic that I’d expect of a stock broker after a market crash. Another has closed his eyes, is breathing super-slow, gripping his chest.

  “Oh God,” I say. “What just happened? It’s all right. Don’t wo
rry.”

  I feel like I knocked into a fire alarm accidentally, like I just set something in motion that cannot be taken back, sounded an evacuation and killed the entire workday.

  “My life’s over,” Michael says. His knees have gone weak. He’s shrinking.

  “Yo, yo,” someone says. “Michael’s a little slow. He’s not usually like this.”

  “He doesn’t usually make these kinds of mistakes,” Tony says. “He’s a good kid. He just has…you know…issues. We’ll work it out, man, really.”

  “The brothers are good to us,” someone else says. “They don’t do nothing wrong.”

  “No, I’m just here to have a good time tonight,” I say. “I’m not spying on you guys. I’m not here to get you in trouble or tell the brothers anything. All right?”

  Silence from the Clump. They don’t believe a word I’m saying.

  Michael still isn’t moving, breathing, so I repeat, “All right?” and finally he nods and some color appears to re-enter his face. All around me, I see the same debilitating and senseless fear on every face. Maybe I did pull an alarm, and this is the resulting loud-speaker blare that this fraternity chapter hazes with reckless abandon: Etiquette Dinners are the fun activity, but on any other Saturday night? Maybe the pledges are woken up in the middle of the night, herded here to the house backyard for hundreds upon hundreds of push-ups and jumping jacks and dehumanizing drill instruction, then briefed on how to keep secrets from authority figures, how to protect their own suffering. I should ask questions, right? I should take Michael aside, ask him if he’s been hazed, if he’s suffered physical abuse? I should stop this charade immediately, call LaFaber, find the necessary forms—

  But inside the house are Maria and Shelley, and maybe the Etiquette Dinner isn’t over…and these kids have only been in the fraternity for weeks…they wouldn’t be hazed yet. That was the Fun Nazi talking, and he’s not here.

  “Oh fuck me,” Tony says. “Look. It’s Sam.”

  And we all look back to the fraternity house, all of us at once, as though we’re a group of high school kids caught smoking in the bathroom by the campus rent-a-cop, and Sam Anderson stands in the open doorway of the house, a featureless silhouette framed by the muted orange light of the dining room. The pledges back away from me quickly—I’m the cigarette butt they’ve tossed into the urinal. Nothing to see here, smoke hidden behind puffed-out cheeks.

  “Gentle-men,” Sam says. “You may now re-enter the house. And let’s make this quick, ‘kay? No pussy-footing around.”

  The pledges form a single-file line, myself at the back, and smiles are finally—finally—returning to their faces. Like the threat of push-ups and air chairs and whippings has ended because there is still an Etiquette Dinner to be finished. There are girls present. Brothers can’t haze when girls are present. I breathe easy. Sam wouldn’t haze, I’m thinking. Jose wouldn’t haze. Much too disciplined. Not reckless. I was wrong, I’m wrong.

  *

  We march through the front doors, myself at the end of the single-file line, and when I pass Sam at the doorway he gives me a handshake and says, “I hope they haven’t been too much trouble for you, man,” and I shake my head and manage a good-natured shrug, and then I’m inside the living room again and it has changed considerably in the last ten minutes. Sorority girls gone. Tables folded up, shoved against the wall.

  The eerie emptiness of this chamber is broken only by a single chair in the center of the room, sloping brown plastic and uneven rust-eaten metal, a piece of furniture that looks as if it was swiped from a condemned elementary school. A single broken chair at the center of a dark room: looks like the scratchy minimalist poster for a Saw movie.

  But as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I see that there are at least ten older fraternity brothers standing behind the chair, grouped together along the room’s far wall near the entrance to the kitchen, some with their arms crossed over their chests, others with their hands on their hips. Jose, chapter president, foregrounds this thick side-by-side mass of intimidation, this Brother Wall, collective glares fixed intently on the line of pledges entering the empty room.

  As soon as he sees the chair and the brothers, Tony skids to a stop and says, “Aw, shit.”

  Jose steps forward and waves his hands in a calming manner, smiles in a friendly way to reassure the line of pledges, but somehow he still looks military, unimpressed with the sudden burst of terror the young men are feeling; somehow it still feels like a “quit acting like pussies” smile, a “be a man” smile. As if the fear is unwarranted, and the brothers have done nothing to deserve such a reaction. And maybe they haven’t: no matter how innocent the fraternity chapter, a pledge semester can be scary, rumors and stories of other chapters’ horrendous physical and emotional tortures constantly circulating, parents and friends and fellow students sharing clipped newspaper articles detailing the Big Brother Night mishaps from Arizona State or Southeast Missouri, movies featuring ultimate pledge humiliation seeming to play endlessly on HBO —Van Wilder, Revenge of the Nerds, old episodes of Tales From the Crypt where pledges are locked inside haunted houses and then disemboweled by malevolent spirits. No matter a student’s safety, the pledge drifts through his semester in a culture of fear and paranoia. That happens everywhere. And here in this room, even if nothing bad happens, these young men are processing thousands of embedded mental images from Court TV, USA Today, Rolling Stone, each concocting different scenarios for his own imminent abuse.

  But it’s just an empty room. Just a chair. It’s nothing.

  “Everyone, if I could have your attention please,” Jose says from the Brother Wall, his accent more pronounced now that he’s projecting so loudly. “I would like to introduce you to our Educational Consultant, Mr. Charles Washington. Everyone is familiar with the duties of our national consultants, yes? He will be staying with me for the next few days. Attending our meetings, observing our fraternity. Please make him feel comfortable.”

  And it feels as if he says “comfortable” like a warning to all of the brothers: The Nationals Spy is here! Watch what you say! Watch what you reveal! My hands fumble in an effort to loosen my tie, but I realize I’ve already loosened it. Now that everyone knows that I’m a consultant, the suit works against me, widens the age gap between us all. When I try to smile, only half my mouth will cooperate.

  “Thanks, Jose,” Sam says. “All right. For all our pledges who don’t know what an EC is, make sure to read up in your pledge books. There’ll be a quiz later.”

  Laughs from the Brother Wall. Big heaving laughs from the shadowy figures.

  “‘Kay,” Sam says. “You might be wondering what happened to the girls. That’s a legitimate question. Here’s your answer: they’re gone. While you were out back, their sorority sisters picked them up in the front parking lot. Poof. Gone. So the social part of tonight’s activity is over. Before they left, though, we asked each of them to fill out a short questionnaire so we could assess”—he lets the word linger, like he’s proud of using it—“your progress as pledges.”

  Tony, the stocky pledge in front of me, says “shiii-iiiittt,” grinds his teeth together and forms his hands into such tight fists that he eventually has to shove them into his pockets to retain some composure. “I knew it,” he whispers to no one. “I knew it. This was a test. Whole time, this was a test.” He looks like a student after a final exam, bolting out of the classroom to confirm his answers in the textbook and then learning that he was dead-wrong on more occasions than he’d expected.

  “Without further adieu, we will begin with my favorite douchebag pledge,” Sam says, holding the stack of etiquette questionnaires. He reads from the top sheet: “Michael Garcia, step to the front.”

  Michael, he of the spiky hair and the red shirt and black pants and white socks, gives a who me? look, eyebrows raised in utter disbelief, and Sam responds with his own twisted facial expression, the intractable kind that says, yes, Retard, YOU. Sam points to the chair and Michael shuffle
s over with heavy feet. “Stand on the chair,” Sam says.

  Michael obeys; he steps reluctantly up, stands atop the seat of the chair—creaking noises as he climbs, the sound of strained metal—and glances over his shoulder at the dark figures behind him—they snicker, and one says “What the fuck are you looking at?”—and then back at his pledges, searching for support. Spiky-haired Michael is on display in the center of the room, a limp shadow of a man standing at Sam Anderson’s mercy. More accurately, of course, he stands at Shelley’s mercy, since Sam holds a paper filled with her questionnaire answers.

  “Heard you were giving our consultant a tough time tonight, Garcia,” Sam says.

  “Wha…?” Michael asks, trembling hands rubbing his red shirt. “Wha…?”

  “Being a little troublemaker.”

  “Wha…?” Michael asks again, wobbling. “How’d you…?”

  “No,” I say from the back. “No, he—”

  “Don’t need to defend him, brother,” Sam says, and the Brother Wall laughs, shadows bouncing. “Just giving him a hard time. Only way these fuckers learn, you know?”

  “Well,” I say.

  “We will keep it clean,” Jose says. “No need to worry.”

  I close my eyes for a moment, rub them. Many of the hazing stories that earn headlines— whether it’s a college lacrosse team, a high school soccer team, or a fraternity—are the sort that involve physical abuse, that result in injury and lawsuits. The true definition of hazing, though, includes not only “bodily harm or danger or disturbing pain,” but also any activity that “causes embarrassment or shame in public” or makes someone into “the object of malicious amusement or ridicule.” Name-calling, silly late-night tasks (“Go get me a burrito, pledge!”), scavenger hunts. This type of hazing generally goes unreported, but it’s just as illegal as paddling or push-ups or thumb-up-the-ass “elephant walks.” As a consultant, I should raise my voice. Stop this.