* * *
One night, I was setting up the mess hall for dinner when I got called into the kitchen by one of the older brothers called Cuz. Cuz was from the Panhandle, and he had the kind of happy-go-lucky attitude that made everyone like him. A couple years later he would go on to work for Nabisco and show up at my house with rejected boxes of cookies, and we would get stoned and feast on broken Nutter Butters. But back then he was just a brother working in the kitchen to help pay his dues. And I was his pledge.
Cuz was hollowing out pumpkins for a pumpkin-carving social we had with a sorority later that night, and when I walked into the kitchen he had his hands full of pumpkin innards.
“Yo, Bert. You take a look out there and tell me if there is anyone wearing a suit.”
I looked out and noticed that, in fact, there were quite a few brothers wearing suits. I told him so and he smiled.
“Do me a favor and reset the tables for an outside dinner.”
“Okay!” I said. The word no has never been a strong part of my vocabulary.
I got all the tables on the basketball courts and set out all the plates. When I came back in he had an even bigger smile on his face.
“Bert, you wanna play a hilarious prank on the brothers? I mean this is a legendary, next-level kind of prank that will be talked about for years, just like the donut prank.”
The donut prank had occurred a few years earlier and was the stuff of folklore. The pledges at the time, after spending a night getting hazed beyond belief by irate and drunk brothers, woke up early the next morning and left the brothers a couple dozen donuts in the lounge as a peace offering.
The brothers woke up, hungover, and feasted on them. Later that day the pledges posted a blow-up picture of themselves in the same lounge, with the same donuts, only with them skewered on their dicks. The brothers got pissed, but the prank was so legendary it was worth it. And that was the ultimate job of the pledge class: to grow enough balls to prank the brothers.
“Will they get pissed?”
“No, come here.” He led me into the storage closet. “Take all this flour up to the roof and hide. When they start saying grace, I want you to run to the edge of the roof and throw all the flour on the brothers. Then I’ll come out and spray them with the hose and yell, ‘Looks like ya’ll got the ol’ papier-mâché treatment!’”
Cuz started laughing so hard at the idea of his prank that the laughter became contagious, and soon we are both smiling ear to ear. I was already figuring out the dance I’d do up on the roof afterward, kind of a mix of the Ed Lover Dance and the Icky Shuffle. He told me to grab Accardi, the only other guy to get hazed as much as me—if not worse—and to get on the roof through the only access we had: Brother Bongwater’s window. After we dumped the flour, we’d go back into his room and hide until it all blew over. He said if there was any fallout, he would take it for us. But when time passed and everyone realized just how funny the ol’ papier-mâché incident was, we would get full credit, and it would become legend.
Accardi and I grabbed four sacks of flour, went to Brother Bongwater’s room, locked the door behind us, climbed onto the roof, and waited like snipers. Many a thought passed through our heads while we waited, including, “Is this a good idea?” and “Is this really how you make papier-mâché?” and “Will everyone know that this was how you make papier-mâché?” and “What does mâché mean?” and “Why exactly is this so funny to Cuz?” But when we heard Cuz start off dinner by announcing, “Brothers, please. A moment of prayer,” we leapt into action like soldiers. I covered the near side and Accardi dumped the brothers on the far side. We thrilled at coating the brothers who’d hazed us the most, waiting for Cuz to come out with the hose.
What happened wasn’t what was planned. Instead of Cuz, one of our pledge brothers showed up with a hose, and he proceeded to shower our suited brothers.
Cuz stood by his side feigning astonishment.
“What have they done? The balls on these guys to hit you with the ol’ papier-mâché treatment.” He turned his gaze toward us. “Look, on the roof, it’s Kreischer and Accardi! They’re going to Bongwater’s room! I’ll get the keys!”
We crawled back into our only escape, eyeing each other in panic like we had been running a train on a hooker in Haiti and both our condoms simultaneously broke.
“They’re gonna beat our asses.”
“They’re not allowed to hit us,” I said hopefully.
“They hit me all the time,” Accardi said.
At that we heard the keys to the door jingling outside, like a Drunk Santa coming in to discipline his unruly reindeer.
“Bert, whatever you do, don’t hit them back.”
The door opened and to my relief, I saw that the first to enter was the most religious brother of our fraternity. He stood, covered in flour, but I knew that without a doubt, despite being enraged, he wouldn’t resort to violence.
That’s when I got punched.
It turns out he had been on his way to meet his girlfriend’s parents—in a suit and tie—when Cuz had asked him if he could do him a favor and hang out long enough to say the prayer, which he happily had agreed to do.
He hit me pretty squarely in the jaw, but since he was a devout Christian, it didn’t really hurt. Behind him was Siminson, wearing a huge smile. Accardi immediately took a swing at him and missed. As many people as could fit in Bongwater’s room jumped on us and dragged us downstairs. So began the longest hazing session of my life. Pumpkin innards were placed in just about any spot they could find. Brothers took turns in sort of a lazy-Susan manner hazing me, including Cuz, who I could see smiling as he did it. Then he would retreat to the back of the line and egg on the brothers covered in flour.
“You look absolutely ridiculous, he ruined your suit with the ol’ papier-mâché trick … no respect!”
We stood our ground and didn’t say a word for fear that it would only make things worse and because no one would believe us.
I wasn’t really sure why Cuz did it to us—just fucking with someone for fuck’s own sake, I guess. But I did notice the next time I saw him, it was as though we shared a secret. He never hazed me again, even treated me like something of a friend, if not exactly an equal.
And that was how we were taught to bond: by treating each other horribly and sharing a laugh about it later. It’s like the Friars Club motto, “We only Roast the ones we love.” The more you liked someone, the further you could take it.
When it was my turn, it was a great feeling to set up a pledge you liked and watch the result. Like lightly covering the mouth of a bong in shoe polish and offering a pledge a bong hit during Hell Week. Hell Week was the week at the end of the semester, just before the pledges were about to be made brothers, when all the hazing was crammed into 120 sleepless, drunken hours. We’d get one of them high with the ol’ shoe-polish trick and watch as he walked around the house with a brown ring around his lips. Or we’d discreetly ask a pledge for a glass of water during an important meeting, then wait till he was gone to yell to the masses, “Can you believe this guy? He said he wanted a water and just walked out like it was nothing at all. If that dude comes back with a water, we better give it to him.”
Fucking with each other was an art and we got so good at it, you would assume we hated each other. Bottle rockets under a door. Yelling from a balcony to the pool at spring break, “Kaiser, you forgot to put on your butt-rash medicine,” or passing a guy on campus who was standing with a hot chick and greeting him with, “Damn, you have a new chick every time I see you!”
* * *
By the time I was a sophomore I was out of the dorms and a full-fledged brother of my fraternity. This was the first true year of my independence. The summer before, I had started growing out my hair and listening to Widespread Panic. I bought a dog, an iguana, and a mountain bike. Needless to say, I was also smoking a great deal of weed. This was going to be the new version of Bert I presented to the masses. The high-school athlete/meathead/f
inger-fucking-in-the-back-of-a-Jetta guy was dead. Now I was a sensitive guy with social insights and longer hair.
I moved in with two friends, Hartley and a guy we all called Cheese. The three of us had all gone to high school together, and we’d known each other since before that. Hartley was—and still is—an alpha male. But he was an alpha male with a twist. He had been a twin, and his brother died when he was ten. What that does to an average boy, I can’t tell you, but I can tell you what it did to Hartley. He was a massively compassionate friend when it was just the two of you, but in groups, he was an unyielding bully. He was tall, strong, and aggressively handsome, something he was well aware of. With a blazer on he looked like a Baldwin; with a whiskey in his hand he acted like a Kennedy. He loved to fight and always won. When he saw the changes that I was making in my lifestyle, he openly mocked me. But then, privately, he asked me to help him buy a dog, an iguana, and a mountain bike.
Cheese, on the other hand, was a beta. He had known Hartley and his brother since before his brother died. Cheese would always say Hartley’s brother was the true alpha of the two. He and Cheese had been close mostly because they were the biggest kids of their age. Cheese had developed before most of his peers—he was already shaving in eighth grade. But by the time we got to college, the rest of us had caught up with or even passed him in size. This either humbled him or put things into perspective, because he was a much quieter, sensitive guy by the time we were sophomores in college living together.
Hartley and I joined a fraternity, but Cheese waited to make sure his grades were up to snuff first (“like a faggot,” Hartley said). So he joined the next semester, and by the time we all moved in, Hartley and I were brothers and Cheese was finishing up his pledgeship. Cheese and I hung out very easily, as I find I do with most people. Hartley and Cheese meanwhile were closer with each other than I was with either of them, but Hartley was relentlessly rough on him. I wonder if Cheese saw in Hartley the little brother he really was, and that bothered Hartley. But still, Cheese was quick to get pissed, and Hartley loved it. Cheese forgave even faster—I knew that was the reason deep down Hartley felt so comfortable fucking with him. If Hartley was a bully, Cheese was passive-aggressive to the core. Hearing one day that Hartley had a fear of snakes, Cheese promptly drove to a pet store and bought a large python. That was Cheese’s way of fighting back.
On our first day in our new apartment, Hartley walked upstairs and decided who would live in what rooms.
“With the amount of pussy I get and my new dog, I’ll need the room with the private bath and balcony. You two faggots can share a bathroom. Bert, you get the room on the corner ’cause you have a girlfriend, and Cheese, you get the room that looks like a closet.”
Hartley agreed to pay one hundred dollars more for his better room. I took the medium one, and Cheese took all his worldly possessions—which included a big-screen TV, a desk, wall-sized cabinets, and stereo with surround sound—and turned his closet into a personal oasis. (The only thing he left downstairs was his snake, of course.)
“The guy’s got electronics worth ten grand in his room,” Hartley said, “and we’ve got a twenty-inch TV and a goddamned alarm clock for entertainment downstairs.”
“He said if we pay fifty dollars more a month, he’ll leave it downstairs,” I offered.
“I’m not renting his fucking entertainment system. I’ll just watch TV in his room when he’s not here.”
Which Hartley did, often. In retaliation, Cheese would leave Hartley’s dog in Hartley’s room with food and water, and then shut the door behind it.
One day, Hartley walked into my room with a smile and closed my door.
“My dog shit in my room again, so … I greased up Cheese’s brakes on his mountain bike; let’s see if we can get him to do the Widowmaker with us.” The Widowmaker was a steep hill near our town house, as grueling an uphill ride as it was a lightning-fast downhill one.
“We’ll get him with the good-cop-bad-cop routine.”
“Good-cop-bad-cop?”
“Yeah, the good cop is going up the hill … the bad cop is the ride down.”
Not sure if that was the correct way to use that analogy, I said nothing and smiled. We walked into Cheese’s room and Hartley plopped down on his bed.
“Hey, buddy, you wanna go mountain biking with us?” Hartley said.
“No, I’m gonna take a nap.”
“Come on, it’ll be fun.”
“I said I’m gonna take a nap.”
“What are you, nine months old? You want me to put socks on your hands so you don’t scratch your face? Come on, man, let’s go hang!”
“No!”
“Don’t say no. Hang out with us. We’ll go mountain biking, head over to the house, get a few cold beers, ride through campus, check out the talent, come home, shower up, and we’ll go out tonight.”
“You guys go. I’m gonna take a nap, and I’ll go out with you later.”
“Come on, dude.”
“Fuck off, Hartley. I said no.”
“Fine then, be a little faggot.”
Defeated, Hartley and I got on our bikes, went for a ride, and retreated to our fraternity house to explain how close we got to pulling off a legendary prank. We went out that night and forgot about it.
A week later Cheese asked us to go biking. We agreed and later we all met at the peak of the Widowmaker. In typical Hartley fashion, he decided the order.
“You guys are both faggots, so I’ll take the lead.”
“I’ll go second,” I said.
“Well, I don’t want you two assholes trying to ride your bikes up my ass to prove to me what a faggot you think I am. So I’m fine with the anchor,” Cheese said.
“Anchor is a great way to say you’re riding bitch.”
“I’m riding anchor.”
“Alright then, I’ll see you faggots at the bottom,” Hartley said, then led off fast and furious. I followed, with Cheese staying well behind to give himself an ample cushion.
I was completely on my own, flying over bumps in the trail and whistling around corners—when I heard the shrill squeal of compromised brakes, as they struggled to stop two hundred pounds of Cheese. I slowed down to look over my shoulder and that is when the gap closed. Within seconds, he’d flown past me, Top Gun flyby style, glancing alternately at me, his bike, and the trail. I heard him say as he blew past, “What the fuck, man, something’s wrong with my bike! My fucking bike is broken!”
His pace was breakneck. I sped up thinking I could do something to help, but I couldn’t catch him. Cheese was howling down the Widowmaker like he was being poured over nachos, and by the time he caught up to Hartley I was still well behind. All I heard was the smashing of tree branches and the shrieks of terror as Cheese flew off the designated path, shredded.
A minute later, I caught up to Hartley about twenty yards away from the path Cheese had just created in the flora.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Hartley said.
“We greased his brakes.”
“What?”
“We greased his brakes last week and forgot about it.”
Hartley’s face turned from confusion to terror, then to absolute joy.
“Ohhh fuck me! I fucking forgot about that. How fucking great is this moment? It’s even better this way than if we’d gotten him to go with us then.”
“We would have stopped him,” I said.
“You would have. I wouldn’t have. But you didn’t get a chance to, and that’s why this is so perfect.”
“He might be dead!”
“He’s not. I can hear him crying in there.”
Cheese emerged from the shrubbery with his bike in his hand, in pain, and enraged.
“This thing is a goddamned piece of shit!”
“What happened?” Hartley said, feigning concern. “You can’t throw caution to the wind like that and ride recklessly; we care too much about you, Cheese!”
“It wouldn’t stop. I was pulling the br
akes as hard as I could and it wouldn’t fucking stop. I could have fucking died.”
“Are you hurt?” I asked timidly.
“No, I don’t think so.”
Cheese dropped his bike next to us on the ground and started examining it. “I just can’t figure it out; it seriously wouldn’t stop.”
“I’d check the brakes,” Hartley offered. I shot him a look, but he only smirked.
“No shit I’m gonna check the brakes.” There was a pause. “What the fuck?”
Hartley started to laugh. I took a deep breath.
“There’s something on my brakes.”
“That can’t be good,” Hartley said, helpfully.
He wiped the frame of his tire and the brake pads and found substantial amounts of WD-40.
“There’s fucking grease on here. Can you fucking believe that?”
“No way,” Hartley said.
“How the fuck did WD-40 get on my tires and brakes?”
“Did you ride through some on your way here?”
“No.”
“Do you normally grease your brakes up before a ride?”
“No.”
“Did you recently grease your chain, and maybe get some on your tires?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
We were stumped.
“Well then, I guess the only other thing I can come up with,” Hartley said, “was that last week Bert and I greased your brakes and tried to get you to come out on a ride with us but you were being a bitch.”
Cheese looked at us in confusion while what Hartley said sank in.
“And had you not taken a nap, we would have stopped the prank before you flew off the trail.”
Cheese looked to me for confirmation.
“But you didn’t, and we forgot, and you almost killed yourself. You only have yourself to blame, if you think about it.”
“In our defense, we did forget,” I said.
Silently he picked up his bike and walked up the trail, away from both of us.
* * *
Cheese was the ultimate patsy. It was as if he was setting himself up sometimes. He would buy himself something special, like a celebratory steak and a six-pack of Mickey’s, leave them in the fridge, and write a note on top of all of it to the effect of, “Dear Cocksuckers, DO NOT touch this steak and six-pack. I am saving it for after finals.”
Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child Page 3