by Robert Klein
Al introduced me to several key members: some gregarious and friendly, some pompous and distant. I went for a few laughs, and Al and I did a couple of our comedy routines from high school for his friends, who loved them. When we got a chance to talk outside, Al told me that I was making a good impression on a lot of the brothers. There were a few, he said, who were ambivalent about me, including one who had heard that I was a clown and a wise guy. I did not reveal to my friend how much helpless anxiety this caused me, to hear that someone who didn’t even know me had already passed judgment. I wanted to know who these people were, but Al demurred on that for the moment, saying he would tell me if it became necessary. He passed on ominous information about the secret voting for new members: four blackballs and you’re out, with as many as sixty or seventy brothers voting. He was cautiously optimistic about my prospects, but he had done the math, too, and he reminded me that a lot of guys were going to choose Kappa Nu on preferential day, with a limited amount of space.
The next day Al was coming to my dorm room at seven P.M. to discuss some strategy. When I heard his knock, I quickly lifted my bathrobe and faced my naked buttocks toward the door, a full moon for my comrade in humor. The problem was, Al Uger was not alone. He had brought with him an important and influential member of Kappa Nu, an officer, in fact, and this guy was not amused by the sight of my anal sphincter staring at him from close range. He was Steve Chaleff, an extremely serious fellow who was genuinely nonplussed by my attempt to get a laugh.
“Oh jeez, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were bringing someone,” I said, pulling up my pants.
“Robert, I want you to meet Steve Chaleff, secretary of Kappa Nu.”
Chaleff shook my hand, but cautiously, as if he feared that I would pull down my pants again, or kiss him, and he made some excuse to leave immediately. “Nice meeting you,” he said with less than total sincerity. When he closed the door, Al Uger revealed his concern but tried to make light of it: “I guess it was just bad timing. Well, anyway, I thought it was funny.”
“Holy shit, man, I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was coming.”
“Steve’s a good guy. I think he was just a little shocked, that’s all.”
“What’s the matter, hasn’t he ever seen an asshole before?”
But it fell flat and the moment was lost, and I had one more thing to worry about in addition to my math and chemistry, in which I had already fallen behind. I was failing algebra and running a D-plus in General Inorganic Chemistry, which, along with this fraternity business, was causing sleepless nights.
Meanwhile, life at Alfred went on. It turned colder, and the autumnal trees made a gorgeous spectacle of the hills surrounding the college. As we walked along the campus, we could see our breath, shivering in clothing that had not kept up with the weather. Dormitory life settled into a routine of three meals, lots of studying, pranks, and incessant bull sessions on any subject that lasted well into the night. There was much short-sheeting of beds and shaving-cream fights. Lighting farts with a match became a popular stunt among the freshman, until someone on the first floor accidentally scorched his ass and had to go to the infirmary with second-degree burns.
The food was terrible; my high school cafeteria had been better. I soon learned to attend breakfast only intermittently, extra sleep being of paramount importance. It was dished out by scholarship football players with dirty hands, wearing white kitchen jackets. The fare was eggs, incredibly greasy bacon, and pancakes that had been prepared hours before, giving them the consistency of birch bark. For whatever reason besides the food—lack of sleep, cold snowy mornings, or cigarette smoking—I had little appetite at that time in my life for breakfast. Lunch was usually canned soup and a sandwich made of commercial luncheon meat, the kind that is an unnatural gray, with large specks of fat embedded in it—surely the kind of meat product that you would never want to witness the manufacture of, à la Upton Sinclair. Dinner was the best of the three, since it was the best-attended and most social meal, and by comparison, the food was slightly better. If you could survive the lousy frozen fish and the mystery Salisbury steak, you got real turkey, roast chicken, and franks and beans with some regularity, though the frankfurters were the synthetic bright pink of a dog toy and looked like they could bounce to the ceiling if you dropped one.
The one dish that confounded me was served every night in the salad section: namely, an orange gelatin mold with specks of celery and carrot inside. Gelatin is a dessert, so why the hell were vegetables in there? But the truly disgusting aspect was that it came with a large dollop of mayonnaise alongside, and never were two ingredients, Jell-O and mayonnaise, more antithetical, at least in my culture. It was like putting ketchup on chocolate cake. All too frequently, the gelatin slid into the dollop of mayonnaise. When this happened, I was forced to carefully cut the mayonnaise-contaminated Jell-O like a cancer from the edible part, and get it out of my sight as quickly as possible. We were required to wear jackets and ties to dinner, and dinner for hungry college boys on a day-to-day basis was a messy affair, so it soon became standard procedure for the boys to designate a particular tie, shirt, and jacket as eating clothes. After just a few weeks, everyone’s outfit was encrusted with old food in colorful, random blotches and streaks reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock painting. These garments were beginning to develop a pungent odor as well, and a directive soon appeared on the bulletin board regarding more frequent dry cleaning.
In addition, each of the freshmen had to have a turn eating at the table of the house mother of Bartlett Hall, Lita Page Smallbach. Well into her seventies, she walked with a cane and an unusual L-limp, by which she locomoted three small steps forward and one to the side, like the knight on a chessboard. Unlike the benign Mrs. Alcott at Kappa Nu, this old lady was tough, quite formal and demanding, given to teaching unruly boys manners and courtesy, especially while eating. Naturally, while a boy was dining at her table, his buddies were behind her back, pulling the old game by making obscene gestures in order to crack up the unfortunate freshman in front of her. One October evening, a boy from Brooklyn named Mike Wiener could not hold in his laughter, lost control, and ejected a mouthful of peas onto Mrs. Smallbach through his nose. He quickly became a legend in Bartlett Hall.
* * *
All in all, there was nothing more ubiquitous on the Alfred campus than the ROTC program. With all the young men in uniform and the frequent marching, on some days one could have mistaken it for a military school. To be truthful, as a sixteen-year-old kid, I loved looking in the mirror while wearing my uniform, which was a khaki marine officer’s tunic with a belt and matching overseas cap. After one of these sessions at the mirror, I decided to take a girl to the military ball.
The gymnasium was all decked out for the occasion in purple and gold, sporting a large replica of the crested school pin we wore on our uniforms, with its motto “Fiat Lux”—Let there be light. There were a couple hundred guys in uniform, and the ROTC faculty had on their dress blue-and-whites, with the officers wearing swords at their sides and white gloves. There was a fair amount of saluting and introduction of dates to the officers. All this was really cool. A queen was chosen from six nominees; my date was not among them.
I really didn’t mind ROTC. I actually enjoyed learning the manual of the arms with an M1 rifle and responding to marching drill commands: “Right shoulder . . . arms! Left shoulder . . . arms! Forward . . . harch! To the left, harch! To the right, harch!” We took turns commanding the platoon in marching formation, which is more difficult than it looks. We were novices prone to panic, and to marching thirty guys into the wall of the gymnasium where we drilled in inclement weather, which was most of the time. The guys did not stop of their own accord if you got flustered and didn’t give them the proper command: “Company, halt!” They would simply pile into one another and keep their legs marching even as they squashed their faces into the wall to make their fellow cadet look bad as he shouted, “Come on, fellas, stop! Stop already!”
&n
bsp; We had classes in military science and tactics twice a week and drill and parades at least once a week. We were taught the assemblage of the M1 rifle. In the first minute, I stuck my thumb in the workings to release a spring that went slamming into my thumb, just as the instructor warned us to be careful about the spring slamming into your thumb. I let out a howl of pain, much to the merriment of my fellow cadets, suggesting a Laurel and Hardy army movie. We also had training in basic marksmanship, but with a lighter gun. I was learning to fire a twenty-two-caliber rifle on the indoor range; in a manner of speaking, that is, for I was making little progress. Sergeant Gemmill, our instructor, was losing patience with my ineptness, having not forgotten the thumb debacle: “Klein, you are the worst marksman I have ever seen in twenty-two years of infantry service. I know you’re trying, son, but you are one for the books.” This resonated badly because I really wanted to be a good soldier, and my feelings were hurt.
Also, the jovial, alcoholic Sergeant Gemmill, with the forty-six-inch beer belly, was the favorite required faculty chaperone at Kappa Nu parties, as it was more than guaranteed that by nine-thirty, having imbibed a sufficient amount of Kentucky whiskey, he would be somewhere on the planet Pluto, and the party would roar on beyond the rules. He was a buddy of the guys at the house, and I didn’t want to get on his bad side. It was well known that inviting faculty chaperones who enjoyed a dram or two in a dry town was a frequent modus operandi of those cool guys at Kappa Nu. Brilliant. One hand washed the other: At the party, the chaperone having a wonderful time at the well-stocked bar looked the other way, either voluntarily or unconsciously. If the chaperone had a snoot too many, the boys made sure he got home safely, with no one in the gossipy little village any the wiser.
In any case, I was humiliating myself on the rifle range, and it was the talk of the platoon. I was getting advice from everyone, including rural upstate guys who had been hunting squirrel all their lives, but none of it helped. At one point I figured it must be the gun, not me, so I changed rifles, with no discernible difference. It took me five sessions before I even hit my target, much less a bull’s eye—though I seemed to have little trouble hitting the fellow’s target next to me. In fact, I hit a bull’s eye, though unfortunately, I was aiming at mine. I suggested to Sergeant Gemmill that perhaps I had stumbled on a successful system for accurate shooting: Aim for the bull’s eye to the right of me in order to hit my own. The wily veteran considered this proposition for a few moments. “Well, Klein, that wouldn’t be by the book. I’d have to check with Captain Reese on that.”
Finally, the sergeant called in his superiors, Major Davis and Captain Reese, to figure out why I was so hapless. The major watched me fire two rounds. He was a spit-and-polish officer from the Deep South. “Klahn, do you shoot raght-haanded or lift-haanded?”
“I shoot right-handed, sir.”
“And which ah do you use to look through the sight?”
“My left eye, sir.” It turned out that all along, I had been closing the wrong eye. No wonder he was an officer and Sergeant Gemmill was only a noncom. The day I hit my target from fifty feet was the high point of my military career.
* * *
It was two days to Preferential Sunday, the day the freshmen indicated the fraternity house of their choice. Al Uger had told me that a lot of guys were voting for me, but several others were noncommittal and not revealing their hand—to him, at any rate. He strongly suggested that I target three Kappa Nu brothers whose vote he wasn’t sure of: to be nice to them, to show them my serious, thoughtful side. The phrase “not sure of” I took to be Al’s euphemism for blackballs, in order to spare my feelings.
I found myself trying to make coffee dates with three guys I assumed didn’t like me; worse, there could be no pretense in these requests for a get-together, the reason for the solicitation being so embarrassingly obvious. One gave excuses and demurred, while my meetings with the others provided some of the most uncomfortable moments of my young life. One feigned cordiality, but it was clear that, like me, he wished he were elsewhere. The other, a short ugly twit from Long Island, seemed to relish the opportunity to talk about how great the guys were and how great the house was, the house that I was certain he would do his best to keep me out of. “I would really work hard to be a good brother,” I said, the banality of my statement nauseating me. “I get along well with people, I—”
“Well I’ve got to go, I’ll be late for class,” said the twit who might ruin my life.
It was down to the wire as Sunday came. The nervousness among the boys was more than palpable; it was seizing everyone’s emotional energy. People were edgy, and no one was studying except the guys who knew they were shoo-ins. One idea had permeated the psyche of the dormitory from the beginning. It was a precept we had been taught, and many of the guys had bought into, that can best be summed up this way: If you didn’t get into a fraternity, you were nothing.
Evening came, and we went at the appointed time to the fraternity house we had chosen. When we got to the wonderfully dilapidated porch of Kappa Nu, I noticed several boys counting heads, as I was. By my count, there were fifty-six of us, which meant that over half wouldn’t get in. Once inside, I noticed that the two coffee dates avoided me altogether, while Al guided me around to several brothers who whispered encouragement. Among them was Steve Chaleff, who had not held against me my attempt at a laugh in the rectal fiasco. There was a brief speech by the president about how “all of you are good guys, and we’re sorry everyone can’t be tapped for the house.” Everyone left with a handshake and a “good luck,” and we were sent packing into the chilly night to speculate and hope, while the brothers commenced the all-night task of voting and choosing. Tap night, when the new pledges were revealed, would be a tense twenty-four hours later. We were told to be in our room after eight o’clock.
I couldn’t sleep and had difficulty concentrating the whole next day of classes. Around nine o’clock that night, cars with horns honking pulled up to the dorm, and great excitement and shouting were heard in the halls. The fraternity brothers grabbed the chosen and threw blankets and blindfolds on them in the manner of a kidnap, carrying them off to the respective houses with much slapping on their heads, cursing, and roughhousing. Wave after wave came and hauled off their targets. For a half hour to the left and right of me, boys were being tapped until it was all over and there was silence. Finally, those remaining emerged from our rooms to see who were the losers, the outcasts, the unwanted. The feelings of degradation and anguish and loneliness were almost unbearable. I immediately felt as if there were a mark on my forehead indicating that I was inferior, an unworthy boy. It was apparent that several boys had been weeping; someone could actually be heard wailing a lamentation into his pillow in the otherwise quiet, half-empty building. I had never felt so lost, so worthless, and tomorrow morning everyone on the small campus would know who the winners and losers were. My grades, which were in the shithouse, were now joined by my social status to torment me. I felt genuine grief at the death of my college career and I was not at all certain that I could handle it.
Predictably, I called my parents to tell them the bad news. Predictably, because they lived in another universe from me, they could not understand the reason for the depth of my despair or the intensity of my pain. “Why didn’t you get in?” my father asked.
“Because a few of them blackballed me—they voted against me.”
“Why would they do a thing like that?”
“I don’t know. They don’t like me.”
“Why wouldn’t they like you?”
“I don’t know.”
“The nerve of them,” my mother said.
“What’s the big deal? Who needs them?” my father said.
“I need them.”
“You hold your head up high,” my mother said.
I hung up with tears in my eyes, feeling almost angry for their futile encouragement. I even envied them; they had no desire to be in a fraternity. Then I felt guilty having s
uch thoughts about my loving parents. It was not their fault. This social catastrophe was the most terrible thing that had ever happened to me, the beginning of a very dark and difficult year. How would I survive it?
* * *
I would survive it by being the biggest brownnosing ass kisser I could be toward the brothers of Kappa Nu. Al informed me that a lot of the guys wanted me in the house, and that I could be tapped later in the second term or early next year. The Interfraternity Council allowed such exceptions. He said I should continue to show the brothers how much I wanted to get in, whatever that meant. I would soon find out. Al’s bit of news gave me a sliver of hope and a modicum of resolve. I was invited to several of their parties, but my good time was tempered by my uncomfortable status: outsider, supplicant, and moocher.
One of the brothers, a diminutive cheerleader nicknamed Munchkin, asked me to be the Alfred Saxon mascot for the homecoming football game. This would involve parading on the field in a short tunic, a cape, and a Roman-type helmet with matching gold boots and sword. No wonder he had a difficult time finding a volunteer. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have rather had electrodes placed on my balls by the North Korean secret police than wear this schmucky costume in thirty-degree weather in front of a thousand spectators. But I soon found myself freezing my ass off on the sideline in a purple cotton cape, cheering Alfred on in driving sleet and rain. Why? Because a Kappa Nu man had asked me to.
Another brother, a soph named Bernie, had approached me a few days earlier: “Could you do me a tremendous favor, Bob? My girlfriend is coming up with her sister from Long Island, and she needs a date. I’ll pay for everything, pizza, Cokes, everything. And of course you’d be invited to the party at the house. Okay?”