by Kiley Roache
She pauses, probably to see if I’m still following, so I nod.
“And while I don’t think people are wrong when they say that these little things are unjust, I sometimes worry that people will think the fight is over if we talk about them too much. Like they think all that’s left of racism is a rude comment about my hair being frizzy when there are people of color being shot by police and imprisoned at alarming rates. Because as much as it bothers me that working women still spend more time doing housework than their husbands who work the same or fewer hours outside the house, there are still places in the world where women can’t vote or safely seek an education. So, which battles do we choose?”
“Why can’t we...uh, do both?”
She nods like I’ve made a comment as articulate as hers, when in reality I’m struggling to even say anything. “That’s the problem with the social side, right? Because the legal one is clear, you just get the votes. But the social aspect is so controlled by humans and the ways they react. You can’t force people to act a certain way, so we have to play the game a little bit or else people won’t listen. For example, in 1955 a pregnant teenager gets kicked off a bus. That could’ve been the beginning of the bus boycott. But that’s not very good PR, to have a pregnant teen as the face of the movement. So they wait. As a feminist, that enrages me. But they were right. In 1950s America, that movement had enough challenges without adding to it. So they wait for Rosa Parks, a grandmother, and the world is changed. But no grade-schooler will ever be in a skit about Claudette Colvin.
“You think only the bad guys have to spin, but when you are trying to change the world, you have to remember that social systems are made of people, and you have to sneak in change like giving vegetables to a child, make it easy to swallow at first. Because if you’re too blunt with the privileged, they will shut you down before you begin. So we have to worry about what our movement looks like, unfortunately. We have to care what people think of feminism, so it’s not written off.”
She pauses to pour herself a second cup of tea. “If it was up to me, fraternities wouldn’t exist. It’s that simple. I think they’re bad for almost every marginalized community—women, black people, LGBTQA people. But...do I want the next piece of academia with my name on it to say that? Or to say something about education for young women under the Taliban? Am I shying away from it, even though it’s important, because it may be controversial? That would be bad. Or am I shying away from it because there are more important things to focus on and I would needlessly push away those who might otherwise be allies? I just don’t know.”
She’s quiet for a while, sipping her tea.
“So, um, with all due respect...” I catch myself nervously playing with the hem of my skirt. I fold my hands in my lap. “Why’d you take on my project?”
“I’m a researcher, Ms. Davis, so I don’t say no when I’m unsure. I investigate. In this case, you seem better suited to investigate than I would be, but I would like to help you. I guess what I’m saying is, I’m not asking you to go in there and find out if this system is messed up. I need you to go in there and find out if the system is messed up enough that we need to make it our next priority. Is that all right with you?”
I nod furiously. “Yes, absolutely.”
“Excellent. Let’s get started.” She stands, leans down and picks up a large crate, setting it down on the desk with a thud.
“I had one of my assistants compile the research on fraternities, women and minorities, and women and minorities on college campuses more generally. I suggest you get started as soon as possible.”
I pick up an article off the top; it’s from CNN.com and entitled “Are Frats an ‘American Apartheid’?”
“I also have arranged for a series of interviews with average Warren students. They won’t find out what the study is about until they have decided to participate and signed a nondisclosure agreement, of course, to maintain the objectivity of the study. And while you’ll be involved, you obviously can’t be in the room without giving your cover away, so we’ll figure out something with that. But I thought it’d be best to have the greatest breadth of information possible for background.”
I nod.
“Let’s do our due diligence, pay attention to nuance and see exactly what this problem is and what the best course of action may be.”
Her words still ring in my ears as I practically skip across campus, pulling out my phone to text Jay and Alex.
Chapter Six
I’m leaning against the back porch of Delta Tau Chi, sipping a Natty and looking out at the lake, when a familiar-looking guy walks up to me.
“Hi, I’m Marco,” he says. He’s tall and athletic looking, with tan skin, beautiful in an all-American way, with broad shoulders and a strong jawline.
“Cassie,” I say. I don’t think I know any Marcos, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen him before.
He has a clipboard full of questions, like all the other actives, but slips it under his arm.
The Rush party has just begun, and people are mostly still milling about, some aggressively kissing ass, while others seem to be working up the courage to talk to an active. I went for the “this is all beneath me” vibe and have been just hanging out.
“Are you having a good time?” Marco asks.
“Moderately,” I say. “How about you?”
He smiles. “Yeah, this time of year, everything feels very forced, you know?”
I nod.
“Things should be fun and simple.” He reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Torres!” someone across the way yells. “Where’s the vodka?”
“My room—fridge!” he yells back.
And I realize how I know him. I’ve seen that name on the back of a jersey. I’m talking to the quarterback of the Warren football team.
“Shots?” he says, turning back to me.
I shrug. “I’m more of a tequila girl, but I’ll settle.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Tequila it is.”
My phone buzzes, and I’m looking down to check it when he says, “So, Cassie, have you ever done body shots?”
I look up, and for a second, although my mouth is open, no words come out. “I—”
“Hey, Marco.” Peter is walking over to us, smiling.
He pulls Marco aside and whispers to him.
“Really?” Marco says.
Peter nods.
“Well...” Marco says, walking over to me, “I’ve just been informed you’re not a Delta but a possible pledge, so I guess I should be vetting you instead.”
I want to say, Instead of what? But I know the answer and have no interest in making the moment more awkward than it is.
“Okay, then. Let’s do this.” He pulls out his clipboard and flips the pages. “Um, okay.” He scratches his head. “Well, the question I’m supposed to ask all the pledges tonight is, ‘Where did it happen?’ Meaning, uh, like where did you fu—make love for the first time. It’s, uh, meant to be ambiguous to mess with the pledges, so they aren’t sure how to answer. But, uh, we can skip over that.”
“No, it’s fine.” I wave my hand. “I don’t want to be treated any differently than anyone else.”
“Uh, okay.”
“It hasn’t happened yet for me, but the first time I did...like, other stuff, it was in a car.”
He raises his eyebrows and nods, giving off an aura of professional interest. “All right, then. Sooo...what teams do you root for?”
After I tell him my preferences—football: Colts; hockey: Blackhawks; baseball: White Sox—we cover my favorite cheap beer: Natty; nice beer: Corona, with lime; and drinking game: “Does shotgunning count? Okay, then Rage Cage.”
“Kate Upton or Scarlett Johansson?” becomes “Channing Tatum or Chris Hemsworth?” and I ask why not both.
“Ass or boobs? Um, let’s say abs or arms?”
“Hmm, I feel like that’s not quite equivalent.”
“I know, right?”
I try not to laugh as I watch the genuine struggle of this athletic god as he flips through the pages of his questionnaire, trying to figure out the heterosexual female equivalent of ass versus boobs.
He calls in backup, and before you know it, we’ve got a running back, two wide receivers and half the d-line gathered around. The other freshmen are throwing daggers.
“Some girls like nice hair, like the boy-band types,” one guy says.
They all nod in agreement.
“You’d be surprised how insane girls can go about calves,” another suggests. “That’s why I never skip leg day.”
“Calves or hair? Is that for real what we’re going with?” Marco asks.
“No, no, no,” star wide receiver Donald Stewart says. “Y’all are being ridiculous. You know as well as I do that it’s all about the D. We might not like to admit it, but you know it’s true.”
I almost spit out my beer.
“Hold on.” Stewart holds up his hands. “I’m texting my girlfriend.” Everyone leans in. “She says, ‘What is wrong with you?’” He stares at the screen indignantly. “Nothin’, baby, just trying to value your opinion, my God.”
“I think women focus in less on one feature,” I say. “So it’s hard to compare. I think as a girl you kind of find someone attractive more as their entire appearance, and also, like, their personality, the way they carry themselves.”
“Yeah, why do we focus on one thing so much?” Donald says. And for a second I think they might be about to have a breakthrough, to realize the difference between appreciating the sexuality and beauty of people and objectifying them and reducing them to one body part.
“Why do we even have to pick between ass or boobs?”
“Yeah, why not both?”
Aaaand they missed the point.
“We should start a revolution.”
“Hashtag assandboobs?” I say drily.
They all laugh.
“What’s going on out here?” Peter steps out onto the porch.
“We’re changing the world,” Marco says.
“Ass and boobs, Mr. President,” Donald says with dreamy eyes. “Just picture it, ass and boobs.”
“Get back to your freshmen.” He shakes his head in dismay but is still smiling.
* * *
I’m barely back in my dorm when my phone buzzes. It’s a text from an unrecognized number.
J: Freshman! It’s been great to get to know you. A few of us are going to get sushi/go sake bombing tomorrow at 8. Meet @ the house but don’t tell anyone. We don’t need a dirty Rush violation and neither do you. Keep it real—Jake (I’m the Rush chair always wearing a hat)
Yes! One step closer to a bid and, in turn, securing my scholarship.
I lock the door, then grab my laptop on my way to bed. From my desk, someone—and by someone I mean Leighton—could read over my shoulder if they opened the door. But when I sit on my bed I can position myself against the wall and gain some privacy.
I open a private browsing session so nothing shows up in my history and go to the Stevenson website. I log in using my password and a verification code sent to my phone, and open the folder for my field journal entries.
The journal was Madison Macey’s idea. The Stevenson people loved the personal experience part of my proposal, and they want a lot of my voice. What it’s like to piss in a bathroom that has urinals, how the guys eat, and so on. The color of the story, as they say. “The fluff” is what Price calls it.
No Files Uploaded. Well, at least for now.
Entry 1, I type.
Entry 1: The fraternity Rush process seems wholly superficial. Perspective members compete for the attention of actives by “bonding” over objectifying women, whether it be ranking the school’s women’s sports teams on attractiveness or debating the virtues of Kim Kardashian’s rear end vs. Nicki Minaj’s.
Potential New Members (PNMs) also recount their sexual exploits to impress the actives, who seem to value the number of women a PNM has slept with as a good indication of whether he will fit. The phenomenon of “Eskimo brothers”—a term used to describe two men who have had intercourse with the same woman based on quasi-historical misunderstandings of Inuit practices of polyamory by young men throughout the country—seems to be the pinnacle of this ranking system.
Drinking to extreme levels is also valued, second only to sexual prowess.
Sororities are often invited to these events and encouraged to speak to PNMs in a move that seems to associate interactions with these women as a possible benefit of membership. Rush posters often advertise sorority guests alongside food—e.g., the lovely ladies of KAD and sushi, or Pi Beta, steaks and cigars.
An hour later, I submit my entry and close my computer.
Chapter Seven
“I don’t think I can do it.” I stare up at the rock wall, arching toward the ceiling.
The sun is just beginning to set beyond the windows that make up the opposite wall, and it’s casting a pink-orange glow on the stone surface.
People scramble up and down, hopping between footholds that seem way too far apart.
“Nonsense,” Jackie says. She looks different without her glasses and hipster clothes, wearing athletic shorts and a tank instead. “You’re gonna be a natural. I can tell by looking at you.”
I look at her and the biceps that seem almost comical on her petite frame. I turn back to the other climbers. Some are her teammates, using the same blue-and-gold gear she’s strapping herself into. Others, like me, have rented gear from the gym, but they’re all lean men with beards and women with remarkable arms—your classic granola-eating climber types.
People who are actually naturals at this.
“Have you seen me?” I turn and flex my nonexistent muscles.
She laughs. “I’m serious, you think it’d be all about upper-body strength, like the big bodybuilder types would be the best. But petite girls are actually the most suited, because of their low center of gravity. You’ve got to have the right balance of flexibility and core strength, and traditional athletes don’t always have that.”
“Hmm, a sport I actually have the possibility of being good at.”
She smiles. “Exactly.”
She explains the basics as she straps me into my harness. “Okay.” She pats me on the shoulder. “You are good to go.”
By the time I’ve managed to get both feet off the ground, albeit only about a foot up, she’s strapped herself in and started scrambling up the wall like some sort of small forest creature.
“C’mon, you can do it,” she yells down to me.
I stumble my way toward the top. Jackie scales the entire thing and rappels back down before I make it halfway.
She starts up for a second time and catches up to me at about the three-quarter point.
“I’m stuck.” I readjust my feet by a few centimeters; they feel like they might go numb. My fingertips scream, sick of supporting so much of my body weight.
“See that red one, at about your knee?” she says.
I nod but don’t turn toward her, my eyes on the rocks.
“That’s your next step. It’s kind of small, so you’re only going to be able to fit one foot, and you’re going to want to move on quickly.”
My eyes dart from the red rock to my feet, then to the ground far below. “Shit. Maybe I should just rappel down.”
“Nah, you’ve made it this far—no way this one will be hard for you.”
Grunting, I lift my right foot to the tiny red rock. All my weight on my right toes, I push myself up and then grab higher rocks with my left hand, then my right. I scramble to get my feet onto two bigger rocks a bit above the rest
.
“Nice!” Jackie climbs up to my level.
“You sound so excited. I thought you said that part was nothing.”
“Are you kidding? That’s the hardest part of this course! Took me three tries to get past it.”
I roll my eyes and keep moving.
We both tap the ceiling before rappelling back down.
“This is actually pretty fun, once you get past the part where you think you’re gonna die,” I say once my feet are back on the ground.
“I know, right? It’s a pretty cool workout. A great place to think, you know? I like how metaphorical it is. Making progress, reaching higher.”
“Yeah. I guess so.” I hadn’t really thought about it as something so...deep. It was just a sport, after all. “But you don’t actually go anywhere.”
“That’s true. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.” She reaches down to adjust her harness. “Like, there are these Tibetan monks who make these amazing sand paintings, spend weeks with their backs bent over them, working in excruciating detail. And when they’re done, they wash them all away. That’s climbing—you have all this progress, you reach higher just long enough to take a breath, and then you come back down.”
I took up at the wall, at the almost-gone sun, then back to her.
“But that’s also life.” She places one foot on the wall, ready to go again. “You try so hard to live as much as you can, to grow and change and develop, and maybe inspire the same thing in the people around you, but you know that either way, you and everything you do and everyone you meet will be dust in the end.”
She starts climbing again. I stand there for a minute, dumbfounded, before I follow her.
I hate how snobby it makes me feel to say it, but I would never have had a conversation like that with the kids at my old school. They were plenty smart, but not in a daring way, in a get-good-grades-to-get-a-good-job way.
Sure, they knew more when they left school than when they started, about the mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell, and the green light representing Gatsby’s desire, but they had the same opinions on politics and religion and life as they did freshman year and, for God’s sake, as their parents had before them.