by Jeff Klima
A new group of brothers had come into the house and taken over, and I was no longer part of the club. Sure, I still hung out and partied with the herd, but I was no longer an invited presence to outings away from the house. My time had passed, my legend had faded, and I was just another pathetic asshole trying to cling to his glory days.
Even the cops took notice. One night during a bit of hard partying and beer ponging with the stereo blasting, we were rolled up on by the police. This was a regular occurrence, and I'd gotten to know most of the police officers through wisecracking and smart-ass comments that most of them good-naturedly endured. This night, though, I opened the front door of the house to encounter a police officer I'd never met before.
"Aren't you a little old to be a frat boy?" the cop asked me with genuine shock. No "Hello," no "Keep it down, motherfuckers," just surprise at my age.
I affected mock disgust for the benefit of my party mates and said something to the effect of, "Why, Officer! How old do you think I am?"
"I don't know…twenty-three?" he responded, shrugging and guessing the oldest age he could imagine that some dickhead would still be hanging around a frat house. I was twenty-six.
Chris had moved out in July of that year, in what had to be the hardest blow to my happiness. Finances finally had overwhelmed him, and, up to his throat in debt, he had loaded up his electric-blue El Camino, which was more lemon than automobile, and made his way back home to Mom and Dad. It was the best thing for him, really, but I was crushed to see him go. Through it all, he'd been my best friend, and we'd weathered many a storm together.
Now I was alone in the frat house. Anthony, the guy who'd brought me in, had moved out; Christian, the cat-eating insane guy, had moved out; and most of the guys I'd come in with—or had really grown close to—were long gone. Even Donkey Kong was planning his exit to join the military. It had become a place I didn't recognize.
The house was just coming off a massive probation that we'd incurred for underage drinking. (This means eighteen- and nineteenyear-olds, not eleven-year-olds, okay?) To celebrate, we decided to have a party. It would be the last one that house would ever see.
The party started innocently enough with just the dedicated few whooping it up lightly in anticipation of the crowds. Some nights the house was so clogged with people that you could hardly get through the maze of grinding girls, wrestling guys, nerds, drunks, and other revelers. That night's party wasn't expected to be any different.
We'd hung a black tarp across the front entrance to the house, giving us a "reasonable expectation of privacy" per police standards, and there were still beer cans hanging off strands of Christmas lights from our last shindig. Everything was gearing up for the hordes to come charging in and breathe life into the house.
A little after nine, a ripple went through the few in attendance, noting that the cops were outside and that we were to keep it down. It wasn't a real concern, because cops lived on the row on Fridays and Saturdays, and it wasn't unusual for them to run random checkups.
That night, though, the police decided that we had in excess of three hundred people at our house, when in fact there weren't more than thirty. The cops never exited their car to make this determination; instead, they ballparked it horribly and shut us down early as a result.
Since most everyone there was a bro or girlfriend of a bro, we didn't ask anyone to leave but instead turned away most would-be partiers as they arrived. I stayed up for a while having a cigar and being "that weird old guy who keeps trying to look down girl's shirts." Kerry was tired and went up to my room to fall asleep. An hour later, I went upstairs and joined her.
Sometime after 4:00 a.m., Donkey Kong's brother, Napoleon, who was visiting, came and woke me. "Jeff, it's bad," he slurred, sounding alarmed. "There's some guys downstairs starting trouble, and Dan punched one of them and they won't leave."
I knew it had to be bad for tough Ernie to come and wake me, so I ran downstairs. I was usually the guy contacted for such emergencies, as I'd been in the midst of a few of them before.
When I got on scene, I saw two things: 1. Donkey Kong stalking back and forth in a state of severe frustration, and 2. three frat guys holding back a stranger whose face was gushing blood. I didn't know what the stranger had been thinking, because Donkey Kong had at least fifty pounds of hard muscle on the guy and a whole heap of wrestling knowledge.
While this was a surprising matchup, it wasn't a surprising situation—when you're in a fraternity, drunk people often show up looking for a fight. We're sort of a proving grounds for those goddamned townies.
I knew we had to get the stranger separated from the group, several of whom were beginning to get less interested in restraining the frothing bleeder and more interested in pounding his ass. Also being restrained in the scrum was the bleeder's friend, a loudmouthed guy who kept screaming, "Don't hurt my friend," at anyone who would listen. I had size on everyone there, so I stepped in and put my arm around the bleeding guy, leading him politely but firmly off the property.
"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you," he screamed in my face, spitting blood across my cheeks. He tried punching me, but I was used to handling drunks from my club days and kept him away. His friend followed behind us, now almost crying and begging me not to hurt him.
I yelled back that I wouldn't clobber the guy, but that he had to leave the frat house or he would get hurt. The friend was sober enough to comprehend that and attempted to plead with his blood-soaked friend, whom I'd marched out to the sidewalk.
Not being happy with a forced exit, the bleeder jumped back on our lawn and charged me, calling me a faggot and trying to entice me to fight. I could have beaten him to the ground—not because I'm a badass, but because he was drunk and I was sober. The upper hand was easily mine. Instead, I pulled out my phone and called the police.
In the past, I never would have done such a thing. But life had taught me that it was simply easier and smarter to just call the police and save myself the headache. Maybe I was too old to be in a frat after all.
Explaining to the dispatcher that a bleeding drunk was trespassing on our property and making threats, I started to give her the house information when the bleeder came to his senses and allowed his friend to take him off the lawn. I canceled the cops and hung up. Down the block, we could hear the guy punching car windows as he was dragged away.
"He was in my face," Donkey later confided. "He was screaming at me, and he wouldn't leave. I kept pushing him away, and he kept coming back and talking shit to me…Finally, I hit him."
"How many times did you hit him?" I asked, the guy's blood still spattered across my face.
"Just once."
Several months beforehand, I'd had Donkey Kong punch me as hard as he could, just to see how hard he could hit. It fucking hurt a lot, and that was in the arm. The bleeder's senses were probably dulled by liquor that night, but I had to bet he'd be in agony the next morning.
Calm settled over the inhabitants of the house, so I showered and went back to bed, chalking it up to just another night on Frat Row.
On Monday the events started coming back to haunt us. In the beginning it was only the party, which hadn't been "cleared" with the school. Then it was the cops showing up and "finding three hundred people milling around." The actual story didn't matter to the Greek liaison (a school-hired intermediary between the Greek system and the campus), a prick who was new to the job.
He was still deliberating our punishment when a call came later in the week from the bleeder's mom. Furious that her son was now missing his two front teeth and had a broken nose (that sounded about right), she was thinking about suing the fraternity for medical damages and going after Donkey Kong personally.
When the frat leaders had initially told their side of the story to the Greek liaison, they'd neglected to mention the punching incident. They figured that it was an isolated event and that hopefully the bleeder would be man enough to accept that he'd gotten drunk in a place where he had no allies
. (He was a friend of a friend of a bro, but neither the bro nor the friend was at the party.)
In a different frat house and without my intervention, he could have gotten a lot worse. Instead, he whined to his mom, who whined to the school, and a lot of fuel got added to our fire. The Greek liaison, in his determination to make a statement about how he wouldn't tolerate such conduct, immediately decided to come down hard on us.
It was a dark time around the frat house. Already morale was at a low from our previous suspension, and we were certain to get the book thrown at us. We figured it couldn't get much worse…and then came the allegations of hazing.
Sigma Nu was founded as a non-hazing fraternity, a place where men behaved like men. We didn't force guys to consume dangerous amounts of water, alcohol, or anything else. All the activities we engaged in were silly, harmless, and mostly non-degrading.
There is a difference between "hazing," which puts people in challenging situations to foster brotherhood while building respect for the institution, and harassing, which makes naked men walk in single-file lines each grabbing the cock of the guy ahead of him through the guy's legs (that "elephant walk" I told you about earlier). Or leaving people out in the desert to walk home with no shoes on. Shit like that is just mean and sometimes deadly.
Harassment is what gets frats bad publicity, and everyone suffers because of it. We never harassed our guys, but unfortunately, one of the bros didn't feel that way. We'll never know which of the group betrayed the herd (some of us had our ideas), but an anonymous phone call was placed to the school when we were at our weakest.
It was definitely a bro, as the caller spilled information that only a bro would know, such as specific incidents and our rush activities. Not happy with the way we'd done things, rather than address the chapter the Judas spilled it to the school, which then got the Sigma Nu national governing board involved. It was looking like Sigma Nu wasn't going to be a chapter at Cal State Fullerton anymore.
After national came through and met the guys, surveyed the charges, and assessed the situation, they decided that the situation was overblown. We weren't guilty of hazing, which they took seriously and for which they had closed down numerous chapters in past years. The national representative made his recommendation to the school that our punishment not be severe.
But the school went in the other direction and handed down the most severe non-expulsionary sentence in its history. Our ties to the school as a social organization were cut for three years. No rushing, no promoting, no partying, and no participation in any Greek events. If any other Greek organization associated with us, they, too, would be punished. We were lepers, as far as Cal State Fullerton was concerned.
The message was clear—while they weren't kicking us out, with no fun and no recruiting for three years, we would wither and die all by ourselves. We'd be eligible for review in a year, but by that time we'd see our numbers diminish significantly. We'd toed the razor line of expulsion and walked away, and this time the fraternity was determined to clean up its act. In past years we'd ignored any punishment we got and partied harder. Now we were dead in the water. With only enough members left to cover the cost of our house, the actives began looking for alternatives.
I'd been ready to move out for months, giving my thirty-day notice and then redacting it when it became clear that the house couldn't go on without everybody there chipping in their rent monies. It was bad enough that I was in debt to the guys for over a grand; I should have been kicked out for all that back money owed. But that was when the house wasn't hurting for brotherhood and I was still a god.
Now I just looked like some freeloading asshole. My money owed wasn't affecting the present status of the chapter and I was paying the rent currently, so I had a stay of execution, but the earth beneath my feet was eroding fast. The trust was long gone.
* * *
Kerry loved me and, not recognizing a sinking ship when she saw one, offered to move out of her parents' house and get an apartment with me. We'd been together for three years, and she'd put up with all of my shit. More and more, she seemed like she was The One. Maybe it was just that I was a user and saw a good person willing to bail me out of a bad situation, but I like to think it was love.
A good deal came down the pipeline in December of that year. A two-bedroom house with a big yard, a driveway where the streetsweeping police couldn't hassle me, and very reasonable rent came to our attention. It was a wonderful situation, because the landlords were friends of Kerry's parents and didn't run a credit check on me. I had no intention of being a bad renter, but crime scene cleaning had taken its toll on all aspects of my life, financial and otherwise.
I went back and forth with my frat brothers, trying to get an answer out of them about our current situation. One minute they were intent on renting a smaller house; the next they were going to stay at the frat and work to make ends meet. I couldn't move my stuff into Kerry's and my rented house yet, because new carpets were being laid and we were going out of town to celebrate the New Year. I needed an answer, but they couldn't give me one.
So, with a day left before our trip, I called my cousin Brad to meet me with his truck to get what I could out of there. We moved almost everything—including the arcade game, the kegerator, my bed, and a standing suit of armor that Brad and his father had gotten me as a gift one Christmas—into the garage of the new house, working in the rain. (Who said it never rains in Southern California?) We worked until the night got too dark and then had to give up. I left town hoping that the rest of my stuff would still be at the frat house when I came back.
It was New Year's Day when I found out the frat didn't have a house anymore. The few brothers left had made the snap decision to up and move out, basically telling the landlord as they shut the door behind them. I still had friends among the new bros, and they had grabbed what they could of my stuff, but other than that, what was left had been stolen or destroyed. This included my high-school yearbook. What kind of a sick fuck steals a person's high-school yearbook?
Walking into the frat house the morning I came back hit me hard. As part of their exit strategy, the new brothers had hacked apart or thrown off the balcony most of the furniture and mobile components of the house. Toys, games, books, and kitchen essentials had been ripped apart, thrown, and smashed.
Two big restaurant booths that had facilitated many drinking games and poker nights had an ax taken to them, not as some beautiful gesture of release, but as an act of anarchy and chaos. Scavengers from the neighborhood and other fraternities had looted the house as we'd once looted another expelled chapter's house.
The landlord was understandably furious about the mess we'd left and the way we'd disappeared and threatened to sue. Alumni weren't notified or asked for help in saving the chapter. When they showed up expecting to drink and hang out, to bond with the new guys and swap stories of pussy had and pussy lost, they were angry. Everyone was angry. The frat had been through far too much for these youngsters to just give up the fight and walk away. They'd all gone back home to live with their parents. They weren't men of honor, just boys who didn't give a shit.
Personally, I think it was all the fault of old guys like me. We'd been stopping the hazing to a certain degree with every new generation, because we didn't want to lose pledges, but it had come at the cost of their brotherhood. They weren't molded into men who'd bend over backward to help one another, who'd come pick you up in the middle of the night to keep you from driving drunk. Some might say that real brothers would never put one another in that position, but hey, shit happens.
The young ones were sheltered whiners, never understanding what that frat house and a band of brothers could mean to someone like me. We never broke through their emotional walls and made them believe in the liberating splendor of true brotherhood, as had been done with us. In the end, non-hazing cost us our home and almost our chapter.
CHAPTER 23
pray for death: redux
Do what we can, summer wil
l have its flies. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our now sworn enemy, the Public Guardian's office, was pissed off that we'd cleaned up the Targus house. Apparently they bitched to whomever would listen that our being in there before they could secure all the valuables and assets meant we'd "compromised the integrity of their work."
It eventually worked in our favor, though, because the residual smells of the downstairs bedroom were compromising the integrity of their noses. I had to run back out there one day and deploy a bunch of deodorizer bombs. The rotted smell had taken up residence in the walls, seeping in like some low-end paint.
I did my best to warm up to the Public Guardian representative and look professional, despite showing up in the Red Rocket, which could barely crawl up the massive hills to reach the house. She looked sorely out of place among the Mercedes, Porsches, and BMWs.
Hell, a Lexus would have looked out of place up there, and Red, with her numerous scrapes, dents, and overall cheapness, didn't do our company any favors. She was over ten years old, which was like being
109 in car years. But she made it to a gasping stop in the driveway, and I patted her dashboard appreciatively.