by Nathan Holic
But then again, this could be nothing, right? Back at EU, the fraternities were heavily monitored by the university. We could host parties, sure, but the RAs would have noticed any hazing. We joked with our pledges about the terrible hazing that they’d endure (“Better watch out, pledge, we make you eat your own shit during Hell Week!”), but it was just jokes, just boys being boys, never anything serious.
This is nothing, I tell myself finally. Just loosen up and go with it or else—once again—I’ll find myself in a dark backyard surrounded by orange construction netting, bass thumping from the chapter room inside and signaling that the party is just moments from becoming reality. I’ll find myself once again yelling desperately at Adam Duke—six-pack in hand—to just end it, please, just end it, I need this! “All right,” I say. “Okay. You’re fine. Keep going.”
“Excellent. So, Michael Garcia,” Sam says, reading from the paper. “Your date for the evening was a girl named Shelley DeJesus.” Sam looks back at the Brother Wall. “Pretty fucking hot, too, tight little ass. Got a good look at her when she came in. Garcia here is a lucky cat. Even got to sit right by the consultant, so he should’ve been able to get some pointers. So let’s see how well you did tonight, Mr. Garcia. ‘Kay?”
Michael holds his breath. Maybe choking. Chair straining.
“The first question on this sheet. Did your date introduce himself and shake your hand? Let’s read what Shelly wrote.” Sam pauses for dramatic effect. “‘No. He just matched up with me and told me to come inside with him. Didn’t know his name until after we sat.’”
Atop the chair, Michael stares at his shoes, says “Heh,” swallows.
“That’s not very good etiquette, is it, Garcia?”
The Brother Wall laughs, but the Pledge Clump manages only thin smiles, tension relief against their own approaching fear of the chair. Michael, still wobbling, lets his shoulders drop, his own smile fading. Up on the chair, he stands high above everyone else in the room, but somehow I still feel as though I’m staring down at him.
“The next question on our assess-ment. Did your date help you into your seat?” Dramatic pause. “Hey. I’m no psychic, but I bet I can guess this answer, too.”
The Brother Wall cackles again, laughter that is perhaps not so much earned by Sam’s lackluster wisecracks as it is by Michael’s gushing embarrassment each time a new questionnaire prompt or response is read.
“Next question: ‘Did he wait for you to eat first before beginning his salad?’ Oh, big surprise here. Another ‘no.’ I feel like a broken fucking record.” Despite the cliché, Sam again receives an unlikely amount of laughter from the dark Brother Wall behind Michael. The questions continue, too, from obvious—“Did your date ask you how the food was?”—to odd—“Did your date chew with his mouth open?”—(and Michael attempts to protest Shelley’s answers several times, but Sam silences him with a thunderous “Shooosh!”) before the climactic clincher of a final question: “Would you go on a second date with this man?”
Michael’s face is now bloodless, lips quivering, spiky hair rattling. Once again, he rubs his shirt, the metal legs of the chair rattling and threatening to slide as he fidgets.
Stop this, some part of me screams, the consultant part of me, the Fun Nazi part, but I stifle the scream, shift my weight from left leg to right, position myself near a closed closet door far from the action, a shadowy stretch of space where no one else is standing, where no one can see my facial reactions, where perhaps no one will even remember I was here.
“Let’s take a quick survey of the room, shall we? What do you guys think? Would you give him a second date?” Sam asks, and several brothers make exaggerated “hmm” faces; one shadow-brother strikes the Thinker pose, fist under chin; several others are less subtle, dark silhouettes shaking their featureless heads with unapologetic vigor. The laughter builds, then from the Wall a “fuck no,” then a collaborative “psshhhh” noise and some dismissive waves, a “get the fuck outta here,” a “boooo,” and then Jose quiets the crowd and says: “Be nice to the pledge. Remember we have company.” And amazingly, at just a quick word from their chapter president, all the brothers go submarine silent, hands dropping to their sides, their outrageous pantomimes ceasing. Jose looks at me, face black in the shadows of the room’s far reaches, and shrugs his giant shoulders. “Sorry, Charles.”
“Um,” I say. “No problem.”
“Tell us, Sam. What did Shelley say?”
“Shelley wrote just one word,” Sam says. “‘Sorry.’”
“Oooohh,” I hear.
“That fucking hurts,” I hear.
“Blue balls, baby, blue balls!”
“Douchebag pledge!”
“La chica,” someone says, and speaks several Spanish sentences, and I don’t know what he’s saying but he gets a grand applause, and all of this effects deep failure in Michael’s eyes.
“The Etiquette Dinner was lesson number one for you, pledge,” Sam says and points up at Michael. “But lesson number two? You don’t fuck with the consultant. Hear me? You don’t start shit with your own fraternity brothers. I hear about this kind of shit again, we’ll put you in the Dark Room till the fucking sun comes up.”
“Um,” I say. “What’s the Dark Room?”
But now Sam is helping Michael down from the chair, has his hands on his shoulders as if giving him a rough massage and is whispering something in his ear; then he gives Michael a good-natured shove that sends him careening across the room and into the waiting Pledge Clump where he’s received with back-pats and ass-slaps and hair-ruffles that immediately lift his flopped-over spikes. “Fuck that girl, man,” Michael says.
“Yes sir,” Sam says. “This is brotherhood in here.”
“Bros before hoes,” Michael says, standing tall again.
“Bros before hoes,” Sam repeats. “Yes sir. Brotherhood.”
The other pledges laugh and agree, and when the brothers laugh, the pledges laugh harder. And this isn’t quite the ending that I expected: even though the fraternity put him through the humiliation to begin with, the aftermath is familial. Warm. So yes, if anyone asks about my involvement, this is what I’ll point to: this image, brothers hugging and laughing.
But it’s just a moment. A single sand grain swept away and displaced. Here, gone.
“Remember: you’re still a dirtbag pledge, pussy,” Sam says. “Remember that.”
The moment fades into five minutes ago. And now Sam is saying, “Joseph Santiago, step to the front,” pointing at the chair, and a lanky basketball-player-type with a shaved scalp is emerging from the Clump, stepping forward, standing on the chair, his head almost touching the ceiling and he is raising his arms and grabbing the ceiling fan just to maintain his balance. “Another fucking pledge,” Sam is saying. “Let’s see if you’re as big a fuck-up as Garcia.”
And it’s starting again, this roast of unsuspecting pledges. And I have to watch this thirteen more times? Have that many experiences to record in my mind, that many opportunities for something to go wrong, someone to feel “emotionally” hazed, or remember that I’m here and question why I’m not stopping it?
“Duncan!” one of the brothers catcalls and pumps his fist.
Santiago smiles and responds with a fist-pump, also.
Jose now stands beside me, his face glowing with enthusiasm, and he tells me that this pledge plays for the chapter’s intramural basketball team and that his nickname—Duncan—is a reference to the San Antonio Spurs’ All-Star center, Tim Duncan. “Is all of this a bit much?” I whisper, and he tells me no, this activity is a great “break ‘em down and build ‘em back up” exercise. He tells me that the pledges love it. Trust me, he says. This is the sort of thing that makes these kids into men. These are military kids running the show, after all, tough and disciplined and well-aware of the rules, and their actions can’t be bad if they’re influenced by time-honored military tradition, right?
Jose laughs, leans back, takes a deep breath and s
tands tall. “We all remember the Etiquette Dinner. It is a good memory for all of us.”
“We all know you got a mean hook shot, Duncan, ‘kay?” Sam says. “But let’s see how well you play the ladies. First question: did your date introduce himself and shake your hand? His date, her name was Cyndi, she wrote, ‘He told me his name but he tried to kiss my hand. Very polite, but come on. Who kisses hands? Is this 1950?’” Sam stops, makes a face like he just took a whiff of a bad fart, and holds the paper a few feet away like it was the fart’s source. “Duncan! Wow. This girl sounds like she was way into you, bro. And you ruined it off the bat.”
Duncan smiles, head still lowered so he doesn’t knock into the ceiling fan. “Heh.”
“‘Did he pull out your chair and help you into your seat?’” Sam reads, and now he speaks in a high-pitched girl voice, too, puffing out his chest with mock boobs and rubberizing his legs and wrists to give himself an effeminate stance. The Brother Wall laughs. “‘No. Joseph just sat down. Didn’t help me into my seat at all!’”
And one after another, the pledges take their place on the chair. The questions continue, all of the answers feeling like an unending horror story that could be submitted to Men’s Health for some “social disaster” column. “He swore at the dinner table!” one questionnaire says, and another says, “Someone should tell him to match his shoes with his belt. A woven belt does not go with dress shoes, and a plaid shirt does not go with a striped tie.” Every few questions, a pledge wins a small battle—“He was very friendly”—or even the entire war—“If he asked, I might go on a second date.” But mostly this is a forum for ridicule, improv comedy night for Sam, his material growing more inventive as the night progresses. At one point, Sam tells a pledge that he is dressed like a disposable background gangster from Scarface. He pulls jokes from sources as varied as Spaceballs and The Dukes of Hazzard. He manages to both alienate the pledges and earn their favor. Questions continue. Answers continue. One pledge after the next. On the chair. Off the chair. Humiliated when it’s their turn, relieved when it’s someone else. Until finally Sam motions for the last pledge, a skinny white kid with red hair and thick glasses and an atrocious red-and-green-striped dress shirt (the sort of thing you see only at thrift stores and Christmas parties), to step off the chair and rejoin the Pledge Clump.
“Better luck next time, Ronald,” Sam says, and this red-haired kid does bear a striking resemblance to Ronald McDonald. Just give him red overalls and big floppy shoes and he could have a career as a ribbon-cutter at McDonald’s grand openings. Just good-natured boys-will-be-boys jokes. Nothing more. “All right,” Sam says, “we’ve got just one more. Could I have our honorable Educational Consultant, Charles Washington, step to the front of the room, please?”
“I’m sorry?” I say, and I’d forgotten I was even a part of this. I stand in a corner, watching the activities from neither the Pledge Clump nor the Brother Wall. I’ve become so silent, in fact, that even Jose—still beside me—seems to have forgotten that I’m here.
“Come on, Charles,” Sam says. “Right up here.”
“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” I say, fingers picking at my suit jacket’s buttons.
“Come on,” Sam says. “It’ll be fun.” He stands beside the empty chair, a stack of crumpled questionnaires at his feet, only one sheet of paper remaining in his hand: mine. He smiles with the power of the untouchable because he knows he’s in charge here. He is the sarcastic drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket. Fun, yes. But about a hundred reasons Why I Shouldn’t bottleneck at the entrance to my brain. I’m thinking that I’m a consultant, I’m thinking LaFaber, standing at the window in his office and staring out across the country and spotting me on the chair. But all eyes are on me. Daring me.
Michael Garcia at the forefront of the Pledge Clump…a tiny figure against so many well-muscled ROTC students…his once-crushed face has regained all of the antagonistic biting fight that it had when he “stepped to me” outside. His dream come true.
So I take a step. Another. One foot in front of the other until I’m beside Sam, until I’m climbing the chair, until I’m looking down at eager sets of eyes that are measuring me against everyone else in the room. I’m the consultant, the Marathon Man, the ideal Nu Kappa Epsilon brother, and all eyes are on me, and the pledges—Michael especially—probably want me to be broken down in the same way that they have been.
“Charles Washington,” Sam says, and his tone is different now. Softer, sedated, like he has a full shelf of personas to choose from and he’s re-shelved Pledge-Humiliator and pulled down By-the-Book New Member Educator. “Your date—and in case any of you guys don’t know who she is, let me just say that you’re missing out, ‘kay—your date was Maria Angelos.”
“Oh, shit,” someone says.
“That’s some retarded-ass shit,” someone else says with real awe.
“You are a lucky, lucky man,” Sam says.
I smile, but I think that everyone was hoping for a more dramatic reaction.
“Hopefully,” he says, “you could teach these kids a few lessons, huh?”
“I hope so,” I say.
“First question,” Sam says. “Did your date introduce himself and shake your hand? What did Maria write…?”
I struggle to remain still atop the chair, but the metal scrapes along the floor.
“‘Yes,’” Sam says, and he doesn’t use the sarcastic high-pitched girl-voice again, instead opting for a sultry and sexy Jessica Rabbit voice. “‘Charles was, from the start, a true gentleman. He never stopped smiling, and was very polite in his introduction.’”
Behind me, the Brother Wall—that mob that had formerly been composed of whispers and snickers and rude remarks and shadows—laughs lightly, several brothers singing praises: “Not bad, man. Representin’ Nike in here, man. Rep-re-SEN-tin’!”
The Pledge Clump remains a mixture of straight faces and forced-respectful smiles, slumped shoulders. As though this could all end in a split-second, and any one of them could be called back to the chair for another un-manning.
“Next question,” Sam says. “Did your date pull out your chair and help you into your seat? Maria answered: ‘Yes. Charles made sure I was comfortable throughout our date.’”
Select smiles from the Pledge Clump.
“Straight P.I.M.P.,” a brother says behind me.
“No doubt,” Sam says. “Made her feel comfortable. Looks like we could all learn something from our man, here. Ready for the next question?”
I brush a bit of fuzz from my suit jacket, straighten my off-center belt. I say, “Sure.”
“‘Kay. Here goes. Did he wait for you to begin your salad before he started eating?” And Sam keeps making little quote fingers each time he reads Maria’s words. “‘Yes,’ Maria says. ‘Charles even asked if it was good, and if I needed salt or pepper.’ Damn, Charles. I think I’m falling in love with you.”
Michael still stares back from the Pledge Clump, on edge, still hoping for Sam to deride me, for Maria to dispense with me. But each of the questions is answered in a similar manner, with a “yes” and an adoring explanation of my gentlemanly prowess, and suddenly I feel like it could have been any girl on that side of the table and they would’ve melted under the heat of my conversation. Anyone. Bring on Angelina Jolie! Bring on Jessica Alba! Jenn is doing her thing in Florida? Fine. I’m doing my thing out here.
“Final question,” Sam says, “and this is the best, trust me.” He nods spastically, licks his lips with the sort of comic hyperbole of an old Loony Toons short, the one with the starving prospector who sees his own friend as a turkey. “Would you go out on a second date? And I think everyone already knows the answer to this one, don’t we? But listen to what Maria wrote. ‘I would definitely’—and she drew a smiley face, too—‘go on a second date with Charles. Who wouldn’t? He needs to call me, and Shelley and me will show him Juarez for the first time.’”
Sam stops, a reverent silence fallin
g upon the room.
Pledge Clump stuck on pause, no movement whatsoever. Michael’s hostility appears broken, shoulders crumpled and face overtaken with futility. A loud noise might shatter him.
“And she left her number,” Sam says, staring directly into the pledges. He holds his arm out, stiff, and dangles the paper before me. “Bravo, my friend. You have shown these scumbag pledges the way.”
I shouldn’t need the awed smiles—real smiles—and the applause that follows. But I haven’t seen a friend, a real friend and not a “business associate,” in months. I haven’t seen Jenn since the summer. Six months ago, I sat in a country club banquet room for Alumni Ball, my own fraternity brothers and alumni clapping and congratulating me and thanking me for my dedication to the college and to Nu Kappa Epsilon for four undergraduate years. Graduation was fast approaching; my name was being etched into plaques; I was being given a respectful farewell by the undergraduates, “Thanks for the memories!” and all that. What a moment! What a stage! All eyes on me, and in the best way possible.
But that was a goodbye moment. Right now, this is a hello moment. Welcome back.
So instead of correcting Sam for saying “scumbag pledges,” I pluck the paper from his hands, take in the sweetness of Maria’s responses, the smiley face, the phone number, and wave from my place atop the chair as the applause grows.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Open Space.
First time that Jenn and I got together. Like, together together, a date and not just drinks on the fraternity house lawn. Her sorority’s Grab-A-Date function, a bar called Icy Jack’s.
We sat on barstools beside the gigantic Iron Tee arcade game, the DJ’s heavy bass beats forcing us to lean close to talk. And every word we both said, every comment we made, we leaned just a little closer, until finally she had her fingers firmly on my arm and her lips nearly touched my ear as she spoke. Icy Jack’s is one of those bars that’s cast in the glow of blacklights so that everything around you feels like a photo negative. Jenn and I had been drinking, and the world around us—awash in these cold blues and purples—seemed not only different, but mystical. The normal rules of science no longer applied that night; time either slowed or sped up, depending on the moment, and gravity lost its hold. We floated through the crowd, onto the dance floor, Jenn leading me, holding my hand as she cleared a path. I don’t remember any songs from that night, and I don’t remember how she looked as she danced, what I looked like. I remember only that the entire room, so many bodies under blacklight, no longer looked like a room. I might have been wedged between Jenn and forty or fifty people I didn’t know, between walls and beertubs, but I wasn’t suffocating; I was moving in a space of dark blue, earrings and wristwatches and rings sparkling here and there like tiny Earth-captured stars. The world opened up.