American Fraternity Man (29 page)

“What about this Obama?” Dr. Wigginton ask
s me. “Does he have a chance?”

The whole table star
ing me down. “Gosh, I don’t…I don’t know,” I say.

“They say he won the nomination because of the social media,” Hampshire sa
ys. “Is that true?”

“Maybe?”

“You don’t want him in office, I’ll tell you that,” Guffman says and jabs his finger into the table. “He’ll put a tax on fraternity houses. Guaranteed. Easy money for his socialist agendas, just taxing fraternities, cause who’s gonna complain? Whole world thinks fraternities are a bunch of rich snobs, so get ready,
whoo
.”

And another
pitcher.

“How is the chapter at Pittsburgh, these days?” Dr. Wigginton ask
s Ben, a question he must have asked me four times while we ate chili on his porch, but Dr. Wigginton never seems to tire of fraternity discussion. And I’m now starting to ache for some other conversation topic: the NFL maybe. College football. Even Brad and Angelina. Whatever. How can anyone keep saying some of these words and not feel a dull throb in their skulls? Fraternity fraternity fraternity fraternity fraternity fraternity. After awhile, it even sounds strange on your lips, and when you stop to listen to yourself speak, you wonder what the hell you’re talking about. Fraternity fraternity fraternity fraternity.

“Delta Beta’s doing good,” Ben
says, slicing his steak. He sticks his fork into a thick, fatty cut, holds it up in admiration, and crams it into his mouth. Delta Beta is Pittsburgh’s “chapter designation”; each of our fraternity chapters has a one or two-letter designation (Carolina Baptist is “Alpha” chapter, South Carolina is “Beta,” etc.) used forever to identify that school as part of Nu Kappa Epsilon. “Never better, actually,” Ben says after he swallows. “Kicking ass. I went to their last party, and I was fucking shocked. We never got girls like that when we were in school. We had fun, yeah, but this was ri-
dic
-ulous. How’s Delta Alpha?”

“You went to an undergrad party?” I ask, but softly, and because they
are drunk, loud, overpowering, my words are lost.

“We have a few problems with Delta Alpha,” Dr. Wigginton
says.

“Anyone hear about Delta Delta?” Henry
asks.

“Delta Delta,” Clyde Hampshire
says, shaking his head.

“Are you going to visit Delta Delta?” Henry ask
s me. “There’s a problem chapter, right there. I tried advising them. Too difficult. But I hear good things about Gamma Alpha. Rough campus, but really good group of guys, I hear.”

“Those Gamma chapters,” Dr. Wigginton
says. “In such a tough spot.”

“Fuck the Gamma chapters,” Ben
says, and he is now craning his neck, looking around for the waitress. “I fucking hate upstate New York. Where’s our waitress?”

An evening with
five successful alumni, and we are talking in Greek letters. All of them are talking now, in fact, speaking over one another, saying Gamma Alpha and Gamma Zeta and Delta Beta and Chapter House and Pittsburgh and Penn State and Hey Babe, Let’s Go, and Delta Delta and Fill It Up, Baby, and Do Not Want to Go Home, What a Fucking Headache and Delta Delta and We’ve Gotta Do Something to Help Those Guys and Illinois is a Financial Nightmare, Can You Believe It? and What’s Up With the Sandor Lawsuit?, and Delta Beta and Alpha and Beta and Gamma and—

“We’re starting a new program at the Headquarters,” I
say suddenly, loudly, and maybe I cut someone off, cut everyone off. But this is my opportunity to break out of the irrelevant
not one of us
shell in which I’ve been cast ever since I refused the beer. “A mentor program.”

The table
goes quiet. Five men all turning to me, necks moving so slowly that I expect them to squeak like old wheels on rusty axles, and they stare. Henry Guffman’s bloated face and cheeks seemingly changing shape as he breathes, his overgrown mustache rustling as the air enters and leaves his nose. Anthony’s skeletal face has now taken on cherry tones from all the drinking, his pale bald scalp now contrasting more heavily. They stare, all five of them.

“Mentors?” Ben ask
s. “What the fuck for?”

“
Teach them how to hold their liquor!” Anthony shouts, and his red face stretches into a hysterical smile that looks more like the scream of a dying man. He slaps the table, nearly spills his beer again, and begins a laugh that sounds too demented to really be happening. “Drinking mentors, ha! We could teach them a thing or two!” Smiles around the table, too, expressions that suggest that such an explosion was inevitable from Anthony, that they’ve been waiting for his quiet to crack and the loud drunk man underneath to pop out.

“Breathe, buddy, breathe,” Ben
says and pats Anthony on the back.

“You may continue, Mr. Washington,” Dr. Wigginton
says.

“Well, we just realized, you know, that a lot of students are joining campus organizations for the purpose of networking,” I
say. “And since our mission is leadership development, we decided that
we
—the National Fraternity, with all our alumni—could provide more opportunities for our members. We’re trying to organize groups of alumni in some of our major cluster areas, and we’re building a database, compiling names and careers and we’ll have these roundtables—”

“Sounds like a lot of effort,” Anthony
says, thin face still caught in the grip of that deathly smile as he speaks, but he is no longer laughing.

“Sure,” I
say. “But worth the effort. We’re redefining fraternity life—”

“You see all these movies,” Anthony
says. “Like that one. What’s it called?
The Skulls
. Where fraternities are these, like, highly-organized secret societies that run the world, and new pledges get convertibles and 100-grand jobs when they graduate.”

His smile ha
s vanished.

“Well,” I
say, “the idea of the mentoring program isn’t—”

“
Already doing it. I hired this Nike kid from Delaware,” Henry says, and tiny beads of beer line his mustache. “Straight out of college, I hired him. He tells me, this fucking kid, he tells me he was President of the chapter there, that he was House Manager, that he was this and he was that. This kid doesn’t even have, like, the most basic knowledge…I mean, I guess I can only blame the school, not the fraternity…but this kid couldn’t do shit for research without google. Had the toughest time actually calling people. You got to hire a Nike, though, you know? He’s learning, this kid. He might be all right. You got to hire a Nike, is all I know.”

“I give my money,”
says Clyde Hampshire. “I simply cannot give my time, too.”

“Only retirees can afford to give time!” Dr. Wigginton
says, slaps Clyde Hampshire’s knee. “You’re still a year away, sir!”

“Tell you what, doc,” Ben
says, “I win the powerball and the first thing I do…well, second thing I do…first thing is, I dump the wife and pick up a little piece of ass with
college girl
written all over her…But the second thing I do is I put a couple hundred grand into this fraternity. You match me, we invest that shit, and you see what we can come up with. You and me, we’ll make that Pittsburgh house into something special. Hell, build myself a guest house.”

“It wouldn’t take much time,” I
say. “It’s just that college kids
need
mentors in the business world. They need someone to help them figure things out.”

“Bah,” Clyde Hampshire
says. “Millennials.”

“What does that mean?” I
say.

“Millennials,” he
says again, and I notice now how massive his gray eyebrows are, hairs curling outward. Nose hairs descending, also, and he’s missed a few spots shaving on his neck and on his left cheek; the hair is long, looks as though he’s missed those spots for days. I expected a man with so many business-world accolades, such wealth and prestige, to appear careful and orderly, but Clyde Hampshire shakes, jitters, slurs under the influence of alcohol. “The Mil-
len
-nial Generation,” he says, “that’s what they’re calling kids today. Kids born now, kids going to school. It’s the next generation after Generation X. Kids who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.”

Dr. Wigginton laugh
s hard, but no sound comes out; he holds his belly.

“
Of course they need mentors! They know all about the
Simpsons
and Britney Spears,” Clyde Hampshire says, “but they can’t tie their own shoes. Of course they can’t figure anything out! Everything has been handed to them.”

“Here, here!” Ben Jameson
says, pounding his glass on the table.

“You want me to waste my time mentoring kids who should have their act together anyway?” Henry ask
s. “That’s the idea here?”

“No, I’m not saying that.”

“Everything has been handed to them,” Hampshire says. “Everything.”

“It’s not that they’re lazy or sloppy,” I
say, and I struggle to say “they” and not “we.” “It’s just that some of them, some students, they’re lost, you know? We’re a leadership development organization, so—”

“What about the parents?” Henry
asks.

“What about them?”

“Shouldn’t parents be the mentors? Teach them all this stuff?”

“But the fraternity should
bolster
that,” I say. “Not everyone’s born into the same family, but joining the fraternity should be like joining a
new
family, a perfect support network that’s never going to fall apart. It’s…it’s the
Millennial
Family.”

“A family,” Henry
says. “Already got one of those, thanks.”

“And what do your parents do for a living, Mr. Washington?” Dr. Wigginton ask
s.

“My parents?”

“Yours.”

“My father is in real estate.”

“Your mother?”

“She was an administrator at a doctor’s office,” I sa
y. “But my father made enough that she resigned a few years back.”

“A
hh, they’re still together?” Clyde Hampshire asks. “That’s all the support network a young man should need. A stable family.”

“
That’s not what we were talking about.”

“But here you are, Mr. Washington,” Wigginton sa
ys, and he scratches behind his ear with a professorial pretentiousness, as if settling the matter. “A self-sufficient young man who’s clearly benefitted from the mentoring of your father. A strong work ethic instilled by successful parents.”

“Unlike most of this generation
.” Henry Guffman gulps his beer. “They just use and abuse it, know what I mean?”

“Millennials,” Hampshire
says one last time. “Dependent. The Entitlement Generation.”

“
Indeed,” Wigginton says, eyes half-closed, head swaying. “If it weren’t for
us
, many of these undergraduate chapters would be headed down that dreary road to closure. They
need
us.” He places his cold hand on my wrist and I try not to flinch. “Why, Mr. Washington, just last Spring, we had to step in at Penn State. The administrators, you see, they attempted to shut down the house. Claimed to have evidence of some indiscretion, hazing or sleep deprivation or some such nonsense. We’d warned the undergraduates before, of course. The culture has changed, we told them: these things are no longer allowed.” He releases my wrist. “I had to organize the alumni, men whose combined contributions to that university exceed seven digits. We had to threaten the administration, Mr. Washington: punish the undergraduates, and we will withhold future donations!” His eyes are open now, face smooth but volcanic red. “What Mr. Hampshire says is God’s honest truth. These children are handed everything. What more should we be expected to give them?”

“I don’t know,” I
say. “I don’t know. Nothing.”

A grand tradition stretching back more than a century.

We are leaders
.

A mission to build young men into socially responsible citizen
s.

“Noble,” Jenn
said when we talked about my career.
Noble
.

And
then it is Pitcher Number Seven, and I hang my head each time the waitress stops by the table, and every other word out of anyone’s mouth is slurred, swears speckling every sentence as if they are trying to fulfill the criteria for a Good Ole Boys Club caricature,
titties
from Guffman and
for fuck’s sake
from Hampshire,
buncha cunts
from Ben Jameson,
so very faggy
from Wigginton…

T
he dinner bill comes—I reach for my wallet, but Dr. Wigginton is a king, a provider for his people, and he covers everyone, the alumni all ho-hum like they expect it but I am jubilant because this meal cost more than my daily budget allows. Ben makes one last attempt at the waitress, but she looks beyond patience and so he says “fuck it” (loudly), and I help the Doctor out the front door, take the keys and help him into his passenger seat, and then I am driving us back through dark roads and twisting mountain setbacks, back to Kinston and to his home, but he falls asleep and I make a wrong turn and at one point the road ends and I have to turn around and drive fifteen minutes back to the last intersection and he wakes up briefly and says, “Oh, left here,” then closes his eyes again.