American Fraternity Man (28 page)

Anthony look
s down at the table and coughs a chuckle.

“Don’t worry,
doc,” Ben says to Dr. Wigginton. “Anthony drove us. He’s my DD.”

“Oh certainly, certainly,” Dr. Wigginton
says.

“Where’d our waitress go?” Ben
asks. “Little cutie, wasn’t she?”

But who knows? Maybe they just go to the chapter house to play pool, drink Rolling Rock, and watch football.

*

I
’m still dressed in flat-front khaki pants, but I traded my NKE polo for a striped button-down that I pulled from my dirty-clothes bag, sprayed with deodorant, ironed. Already, I’m searching the shirt for wrinkles or dirt splotches or stains, and every time Ben speaks, my dirty shirt is my excuse to smooth my pants and my sleeves, to stare at my chest or my lap so that I don’t have to respond.

“I love these nights out,” Ben
says. “Makes me feel young again.”

Several minutes later, two older Penn State alumni arrive and exchange excited pleasantries with Dr. Wigginton. One, Henry Guffman, look
s like an older, swollen Don Johnson (with the addition of an untrimmed moustache); he “owns a little construction company in Barlow, just down the road.” The other alumnus, Clyde Hampshire, is just as old and wealthy as the Doctor, and also occupies several ceremonial positions in the fraternity. He tells me that he served for eight years as the Housing Board President for Penn State. It was great, he says. That does sound great, I say.

“Our monthly alumni gatherings are always in flux,” Dr. Wigginton
says. “Some months, we have more than fifteen. Other months, as few as four or five. Either way, small or large, these reunions are the perfect nourishment for the fraternal hunger.”

“So what about it, gentlemen?” Ben
says. “Split some pitchers?”

“Mr. Hampshire?” Dr. Wigginton ask
s, looking at Clyde. “Shall we?”

“I might as well,” Clyde
says. “I’m already up past my bedtime.”

Dr. Wigginton and Clyde Hampshire laugh the same huffing, deep-throated laughs
, hands on one another’s knees.

“All right, then,” Ben
says. “Where’s our girl? Where is that little thing?”

I lower my head, smooth my pants.

“Hey, cutie. We’re gonna need some service. Let’s go.” Ben claps.

Scattered laughter around the table. I
keep my head down.

Our waitress arrive
s and introduces herself, and someone—Clyde Hampshire?—cuts her off to say, “Thank God we have
you
tonight. I don’t know what we would have done, had we been waited on by that fat gentleman.” Laughter. “A wasted night,” someone else says. Hearty man-laughter. Some nervous 20-year-old female laughter, too.

When I look up, Ben
is very obviously staring into her chest.

She
is blonde—no, brunette, with clearly visible roots—and has the athletic build of a volleyball player. Almost looks like Jenn, except that Jenn is leaner and
never
allows her roots to show. (And Jenn doesn’t wear choker necklaces as this girl does; the farther I travel from Florida, strangely, the more popular that surfer accessories become. The undergraduates at Pittsburgh wore board shorts and “Rusty” t-shirts, as if they live only a few blocks from the beach and are ready to load up their Jeeps each morning to see what fortune the waves hold for them.) Ben leans into her, lets his voice descend into an
older is sexier
tone, and says, “Need a pitcher of Yuengling and six glasses.”

“
That it for now?” she says.

Six glasses. Six of us. Five alumni, and myself.

And that sounds fantastic. A way to redeem the day. Yuengling. Splitting pitchers with the big boys. Again, I savor the word
alumni
. On Homecoming weekends back at EU, when the alumni came back to the house en masse, we’d buy a couple cases of Heineken and let them have the house to themselves. Loosen up, enjoy yourself, we said. (Then cut us a check for our scholarship fund!) A couple brews with the big boys, I’m thinking, with the
alumni
, with a
District Magistrate
, and I am picturing myself on the edge of my seat, beer in my hand recounting stories from my first two weeks of travel to an alumni audience enthralled, laughing, beers in their hands, too. Stories. Jokes with alumni. Dr. Wigginton telling me that he will hand my resume to his friends, certainly, that it will not be filtered, that he has my back and that this is what fraternity is all about. I’m smelling the beer, tasting it. Yuengling. Crisp and cold, light carbonation.

Six glasses.

But the Code of Conduct: “While you’re a representative of the fraternity, the four D’s are off-limits. No dating, no drinking, no drugs, and no digital footprint.”

So
I say to the waitress, “None for me. Just five glasses is fine.”

“None for you?” Ben ask
s.

“Mmm?” Dr. Wigginton ask
s.

“What are you, the sober driver?” Henry Guffman ask
s in his deep, phlegmy voice.

“No, no,” I
say. “It’s just—I can’t drink with students or alumni.”

“Oh, the Headquarters,” Dr. Wigginton
says, shakes his head. “Silly
little
rules
. Come now, Mr. Washington. I’m certain a glass of beer at a
restaurant
will not get you fired. We’re tight-lipped. We aren’t a bunch of rambunctious college students, after all.”

“No, it’s not that. I should just stay clearheaded.”

“You got to be kidding me, right?” Ben asks. “Some of us are twice your age, and
we
don’t care about clear heads. Do we care about clear heads?” he asks the waitress, who still stands by nervously, attempting a smile, shifting her weight from foot to foot.

“I guess not,” she
says. “No clear heads tonight.”

“Fuckin’ A,” Ben
says. “This is a
fraternity
gathering, for crying out loud.”

I
’m silent for a moment. “It’s a personal decision, is all. Nothing against you all.”

“Is it your gas?” Dr. Wigginton ask
s.

“Gas?” Clyde Hampshire sa
ys.

“Chili for lunch,” Dr. Wigginton
says. “He had very bad gas.”

The waitress still look
s nervous, but now she no longer needs to fake her smile.

“No
. Come on,” I say. “I just can’t do it. It’s the
rule
.”

“Fine. Just five glasses,” Dr. Wigginton
tells the waitress, touching her hand.

“Well, fuck,” Ben
says. “Not going to twist your arm.”

I want to tell the waitress that I
would
drink if I were with my friends, that everything would be different if I was back home, but these are alumni and I’m an Educational Consultant, and the mission, and the National Fraternity and its leadership development programs, and the Code of Conduct I have to follow, and tough choices and goals, and I know that a beer—just one—would show the whole table that I am one of them, that I am
alumni
, part of the Grand Tradition, and
no drink
draws a line between them and me, forever segregates me from their ranks, their club, their favors…I stay silent for several minutes, then, as the five resume or finish bits of conversations from previous gatherings, knowing that I’ve followed guidelines and the New Charles Washington is preserved, but that this is a failed outing nonetheless.

Soon,
I start to catch vital information: I learn that the quiet one, Anthony Simmons, is the District Representative for Western Pennsylvania, an important advisor position. I should have known, but sometimes the names and districts and regions blur together.

They talk fraternity. The state of their chapters, the state of students today.

Beer sparkling in pitchers, while I drink water.

*

And then: so much for sober drivers. Ben drinks his beer in massive gulps and Anthony tries to keep up, taking long and labored sips each time he sees Ben drink. Clyde Hampshire and Dr. Wigginton appear to drink conservatively, small old-man-sips, but by the time the waitress arrives again, both have finished their beers and are ready for a new pitcher. The night doesn’t feel like it’ll be a quick affair, either: these alumni have driven a fair distance to be here, and damned if they aren’t going to suck the night dry.

“Sure you don’t want a drink, Charlie?” Ben ask
s me. “C’mon!”

“I’ve got my water.”

“Just a sip. Just a little siplet. No need to be a pussy, Charlie. You’re among men.”

Anthony snicker
s soundlessly, tries to chug but spills beer on his shirt.

Back at EU, we never really saw the alumni get drunk. Yes, we bought them alcohol, and yes, we came home to trash-bagged beer bottles and flattened cardboard boxes, but we always left them alone at their reunions. That’s the way they wanted it. Much like my grade school teachers, who guarded the door to
the faculty lounge ferociously and who always looked just a little uncomfortable when we saw them at the gas station or the grocery store, blocking our view of their carts, their M&M snack packs, their chewing gum, their tampons or toilet paper or condoms or laxatives, the chinks in their adult armor.

*

And then it’s Ben saying that he wishes kegs were legal in fraternity houses. “We were allowed to have them when I was an undergrad, and we never sent anyone to the hospital,” he says. “That’s the worst thing about Nationals”—and he points at me, as if I wrote the alcohol policies—“they banned kegs. And why? ‘Cause, like, one kid gets alcohol poisoning. Bullshit.”

And then it’s Clyde Hampshire telling us that things went downhill when
they
—“they,” again meaning “The National Headquarters,” or maybe parents, or lawyers, or university administrators, or everyone—outlawed hazing. “We knew how to keep it under control,” Clyde says. “It made boys into men. It made all of us into brothers.”

“The Terror Machine,” Dr. Wigginton says, eyes shut.

“The Terror Machines,” Clyde Hampshire repeats.

The table falls into silent reverence.

“What’s that?” I ask. “What’s the Terror Machine?”

“
Historically, during Week Seven of the pledge semester at Penn State,” Dr. Wigginton says. “Utter humiliation. A contraption that was so physically and emotionally demeaning that pledges sometimes could not speak for days afterward.” He closes his eyes again, shakes his head. But I can’t tell if he’s upset by the memory, or if this is nostalgia for a beloved tradition that has now been outlawed.

“What did it do?” I ask.

“That is something we do no talk about,” Clyde Hampshire says.

“Part of the mystique of the Penn State chapter,” Dr. Wigginton says.

“The Terror Machine,” Hampshire says, and everyone raises glasses high and drinks.

*

Sometime after Anthony spills a beer across the table and into the onion ring basket, Henry Guffman launches into a hearty diatribe about all the things he can’t understand about young people: the tattoos, the piercings, the torn jeans, the baseball caps turned backwards, each new item stated incredulously—“I saw this kid wearing headphones! While he was on his skateboard!”—and with the anticipation of laughter, as if he is a stand-up comic in the middle of his routine. “You know, I read this thing,” he says when the comedian thing is clearly not working, and now he speaks like a researcher with some incredible new finding. “It’s called the Beloit College Mindset. They put it out for teachers and professionals that work with college kids, and it’s this giant list of factoids. Shit that kids don’t know. Like, for kids coming into college right now, it says that Paul Newman is a salad dressing, not an actor.”

“Intriguing,” Dr. Wigginton
says.

“And, like, rap music has always been mainstream,” Henry
says. He sits back in his chair, gulps his beer. “And the Facebook!”

“The what?” Clyde Hampshire
asks.

“The
Facebook!” Guffman repeats.

“Oh, delightful!” Dr. Wigginton
says. “Yes, the Facebook. Mr. Washington here introduced me to it today. How wonderful.”

“Got me an account,” Ben
says. “Who needs porn when you got an endless supply of Spring Break photos, am I right?”

“You too?” I ask
.

“I couldn’t, not up until recently. Needed a school email. But I was first in line when they dropped that restriction.”

“I don’t know,” Guffman says. “Maybe I’m starting to sound like my grandfather, but I just want to go back to the good old days, you know? These kids. So different.”

Soon, the pitcher
is finished. And another, before our food arrives.