American Fraternity Man (22 page)

Says that his name is Gerry and he’s an alcoholic, and everyone laughs.

Shows his timeline. Points to the major events in his college career. Big Brother night. Homecoming. End of Finals Week. End of freshman year. Sophomore year. Junior year. The night of his first sexual experience. The first night he got drunk with his parents. And he tells a story about the first night he lived in the dorms here at Pittsburgh, how his father left him with two 12-packs of Rolling Rock for his mini-fridge, how he and his roommate played Power Hour and they both got wasted and paranoid and didn’t know how to get rid of the bottles and they spent the night sneaking the bottles and the caps and the cardboard cases out of the dorms and across campus to the Meal Hall dumpster, little by little, any way they could. Picture that movie
Shawshank Redemption
, he says, when Andy breaks out of prison over the course of many years by carrying chunks of his chiseled wall in his shoes and dumping them into the prison yard.

And it’s a good story and everyone’s into it, having fun. And I’m laughing, too, caught in the moment and laughing because I did almost the same thing my freshman year at Edison University. Carried a backpack of empty bottles out of the dorms. Got caught, too, and had to explain to my father why I was on university probation before classes had even started.

And he keeps going, listing each spike of his Life with Alcohol timeline, and I
do
understand this guy, Gerry. Part of progress is understanding, not just condemning.

He talks about his twenty-first birthday, and I’m thinking of my own.

Back at EU, back in Fort Myers, Florida. Back at Hem-Haw’s on Central, sinking into the dark cushions of the back booth. Boom. Shot of Jack, from Ronnie. Boom. Sex on the Beach, from Tara. Boom. Three Wise Men, from Edwin. Boom boom boom. Knocking ‘em down. Singing “Under the Bridge” along with the jukebox, making out with Natalie, telling somebody that I’m going to kick his ass cause he called me a pussy, and then it’s boom boom boom and three more shots, and then I’m face down on the floor, under the booth’s table, George grabbing me by my left arm, dragging me under the table, dragging me out the only way that he could get me. Dragging me out of Hem-Haw’s
twenty
minutes before I turned twenty-one.

Gerry walks back to his sea
t and the chapter applauds him.

“We want to see
your
timeline,” someone says from the back of the room.

“Excuse me?” I ask.

“Yours. Show us yours.”

“My Alcohol Timeline?”

“Yeah, dawg. You said you did one.”

“No, no,” I say. “That’s
private.”

“We’re showing our, like, deepest and most personal moments, bro!” It’s someone in the back of the room, and he’s got a milk jug full of water. He unscrews the cap and takes a swig, swirling it around in his mouth. Has thick arms, a 20-inch neck, probably training for some athletic competition or another. “But
yours
is personal? How we s’posed to trust you?”

“Yeah,” someone else says. “How about just, like, the biggest spike?”

“Not a chance,” I say. “Let’s get back on task.”

“Come on!” Water Jug says. “Don’t even need to show us everything.”

The room is grumbling now, kids nudging each other, a bubbling collection of side conversations and under-their-breath jokes and comments threatening to turn to full boil.

Do you want to be a leader or a punchline
? Headquarters doesn’t want us to discuss our own negative experiences with alcohol because Headquarters wants us to be the living embodiment of social responsibility. We are not cautionary tales. I’m picturing our Educational Consultant Code of Conduct: “While you’re a representative of the fraternity, the four D’s are off-limits,” the Marathon Man tells us. “No dating, no drinking, no drugs, and no digital footprint.” Consultants cannot accept a drink at a fraternity house, cannot accompany undergraduates to a bar, cannot purchase drinks for (or accept drinks from) alumni, cannot purchase a drink for an undergraduate female, cannot…Well, there are dozens of scenarios. And failure to meet these guidelines results in immediate termination as an Education Consultant. “You’re not ‘one of the guys,’” LaFaber told us. “Watch what you do, watch what you say. Everywhere.” We had a consultant two years ago who talked about his DUI during college. A great story. Very compelling. Guess the chapter’s response. “Our consultant got a DUI. Fucking hypocrite.” A three-day chapter visit, and they were posting that on
comment boards
, as if it was the only thing they’d heard.

“It’s…I don’t even have my timeline anymore,” I say.

“Bullshit, you don’t have it. You can’t remember it?”

“After I went through the workshop training, I tossed the paper.”

Water Jug shakes his head, disappointed. “Tossed the paper? Come on. This guy’s bullshit. We’re listening to this?”

“I’m a traveling consultant. I don’t have a bedroom anymore,” I say, leaning forward from the couch to project my voice, “so I can’t pin it to my wall like a poster, if that’s what you expected. Not like it would make a great interior decorating choice anyway.”

The room breaks into choppy chuckles, amused but hesitant, as if this room of frat stars never expected me to crack a joke myself, and now they’re unsure how to treat it.

“And when you’re driving across country,” I say, “the last thing you want is for a cop to pull you over and find a giant timeline of your lifetime of alcohol abuse.”

Water Jug laughs, nods finally. “All right, all right. Fun Nazi is a fucking smart-ass.”

The room joins him in subdued laughter, then settles.

“Back on task,” I say. “Who’s next?”

Again, the stifling silence.

“One more timeline,” I say. “Anyone else? Please.”

“Yeah, I’ll go,” someone says, and it’s James (or Joe, or Jason). The one who smells like gym clothes and basketball courts. The one who hates “Nationals” but loves his fraternity brothers. He walks to the center of the Chapter Room, presses his timeline against the wall, smooths it so we can all follow the Sharpie-drawn milestones. And I can almost feel the room pulsing with electricity now, hairs standing on end, as though we’re all waiting for lightning to strike and sizzle the house from the inside out, reduce everything—the rotting boards and the broken toilets and the broken members—to a pile of post-disaster rubble, a scene of destruction like the one the cable news stations played after the fraternity house fire at Georgia two years ago. Everyone in the room is buzzing, ready to be reduced, ready for the lightning strike breakthrough so we can clean up the rubble, clean up this mess of a chapter.

Develop our members into the socially-responsible leaders of the next generation
.

One more timeline.

“All right,” James (or Joe, or Jason) says, and his timeline is
mostly empty. “Here goes. This is when I took my first drink,” and he points to a scribbled date at one side of his sheet, “and this is when I learned that I’m a huge fucking alcoholic,” and he points to the other side, where the word “TODAY” is drawn in all-caps. “Big fucking deal,” he says. “The end.”

The entire room seems to burp one quick uncontainable laugh, then swallow and fall silent. Silent as the inside of a coffin. Heads turn. All eyes on me. Staring at me like I’m supposed to be offended, and I try to rewind the moment and figure out what was said, the words, the tone, did I hear correctly? “Um,” I say, and all I can think about are those moments when a sports broadcaster accidentally says “Jesus Christ!” while watching a tackle, a slip-up swear word, and you don’t even realize it until the commercial break when one of your friends says, “Wait, did he just say ‘Jesus Christ’ on the air?” and then you’re not sure what has actually been said and what you’ve imagined. And now it’s twenty seconds later, and I know it happened and I’m trying to think of the reaction a role model
should
have. Anger? Surprise? Disgust? To say the wrong thing can be more damaging than saying nothing at all.

But then someone laughs…cackles…And then someone else.

And someone claps with great enthusiasm, and then someone else says, “There you go, Jay, you alcoholic bastard!” and the room descends into a growing cheer chorus, everyone laughing clapping hollering. And then someone pushes someone else off a couch and guys are throwing paper.

Disgust, right?

And right there—fifteen seconds ago—was when I was supposed to have said something, grabbing hold of this slippery moment and forcing it to stay still in my hands and straightening it and making it look meaningful. And I missed it, and once again I’m forcing myself to cough out a chuckle, and all I can do is try to look like I’m supposed to look the way I do, however I do, and I’m clapping and telling everyone that I hope they had a good time and that they got something out of the workshop. “We’ll end here,” I say, forcing a smile.

“You’re all right,” Jay tells me. “You’re all right with us, man.”

The chapter gives a polite but disinterested applause, the sort one expects for the unknown opening act of a small rock concert, and they thank me for coming; mostly, their backs are turned as they clap, eyes already focused on whatever destination—bedrooms, bathrooms—has already been on their minds for the last forty minutes of this workshop. They shuffle out of the Chapter Room, pushing couches back into bedrooms and folding and stacking metal chairs.

*

The President—another semi-familiar face, another forgotten name—walks up to me a short while later, tells me that I was better than the Educational Consultant who came to Pittsburgh last Spring, that I know how to take a joke, and he invites me to come out with the chapter tonight, to hit up a place called “The Mill.”

“It’ll be a damned good time,” he says. He’s wearing a tank top with a crackling Steelers logo in the center, and he keeps scratching at the flaking screen-print paint. Yesterday, it was a Pitt Panthers tank top. Both days, he’s smelled like beer. “We can talk and shit.”

“The Mill. Is this a restaurant? Or a bar?”

“Little bit of both,” he says.

“What kind of food do they serve?”

“I don’t know. Burgers? Nobody ever eats there, know what I’m saying?”

“Just drinking, then?”

“I guess,” he says, scratches again, and a white chip of the Steelers logo flutters to the floor. “We get some tables, chill for the night. Nothing formal. But the guys, they’ll listen to what you have to say. If you want to talk. You made an impression, man.”

“An impression,” I say.

“They usually don’t listen to a single word that someone from Nationals says.”

“Well,” I say. “It’s been awhile since I’ve kicked back.”

I
had
reached them, hadn’t I? And what would be the harm in going out…in modeling responsible behavior, responsible drinking?

“Yeah, bro,” he says, burps. “Think of the
Facebook updates you can write. How jealous your buddies will be when they see you’re out on the town, different place every night.”

“Ha,” I say.

But ever since I shut down my Facebook account, Jenn has told me that she has no idea what I’m thinking. “You sound more distant,” she told me over the phone. I’m a thousand miles away, I said. Of course I’m distant. “No,” she said. “I never know what you’re doing. I can’t even picture you, sometimes. Where you are.” You hear my voice, I said. Isn’t that better than silly little comments on Facebook? But she only said: “I feel like we’re drifting.” But I do find myself still thinking in status updates. Every day, all the things I could tell the world. All night long, what I
could
be doing.

“Charles is…out at the mill with the brothers at Pittsburgh!”

“Charles is…loosening his tie, rolling up his sleeves, and blowing off some steam.”

“Charles is…knocking back Yuenglings beneath the Cathedral of Learning.”

I think of the comments I might receive. “Keep up the good fight!” “Drink one for me!” “Stay safe out there, Charles!” From friends, from old classmates, from Jenn. The alternative?

“Charles is…alone in the guest room. On a Friday night.”

“Charles is…waiting for tomorrow.”

“Charles is…a beacon for leadership.”

Because, yes, there’s the idea of the Marathon Man, that fraternity man I’m supposed to be, and there’s this image of Walter LaFaber, also, Windsor-knotted tie under his blazer; LaFaber, sitting behind his metal desk at the Headquarters building, rows of higher education journals in his bookshelf; LaFaber, my boss, who saw someone different in me, a professional with an Organizational Communications degree rather than just a clueless college kid who couldn’t decide on a better major. And yes, there’s this image of my father, also, standing on his front porch back in Cypress Falls, Florida, on his Saturday mornings, coffee mug in one hand and the other hand slipped into the pocket of his pleated khaki shorts. Hair combed, polo shirt tucked into shorts. Business-world poise as he waits for me to come crawling home a failure.

“You’ll come out?” the President asks me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t.”

“You got somewhere better to be?”
He laughs. “This empty house?”