American Fraternity Man (31 page)

LaFaber warned m
e about Shippensburg University. Last Spring, they told the Educational Consultant that he couldn’t stay in the chapter house; they locked their front doors, wouldn’t let him inside. The undergraduates were placed on suspension for this, but out here in rural Pennsylvania…so far from the Headquarters in Indianapolis…what does
suspension
mean?

A Jeep grumbles into the gravel space beside my Explorer, and I pretend to look through my center console for something important. Don’t mind the guy with the out-of-state license plates, the guy in shirt and tie with a full wardrobe hanging from a rod stretch
ed across his backseat, the guy who’s going to
spy
for
anything suspicious
over the next three days. The Jeep’s doors open and two guys hop out, one wearing a Penn State shirt with blue gym shorts and carrying a Burger King bag and a Gatorade bottle, the other wearing a red TKE shirt with an illegible slogan along the bottom.

“—on his fucking
couch
,” TKE-shirt shouts as he slams shut his door.

“With that girl?” the other one asks. “Holy shit.”

They both laugh, their voices fading as they hop-scotch the yard trash and pass the NKE house before finally disappearing through the open doorway of the Tau Kappa Epsilon house.

I didn’t plan it this way; I didn’t
want
to sneak in unannounced. I called the Shippensburg chapter president, James Neagle, seven times this past week. Daily emails. No response.

Sitting in my Explorer,
and Jenn’s “Remember Me” mixtape CD of late ‘90s/early 2000s pop hits settles on a Britney Spears song. Earlier, it was N’Sync’s “It Makes Me Ill,” and before that Kandi’s “Don’t Think I’m Not,” each song by now memorized from dozens of listens, and each new listen a reminder of how many miles I’ve traveled. Here I am, past noon on a Sunday, tired from an all-morning drive, tie hanging loose and sloppy over my light blue button-down like a dog’s tongue after a long run. Head pounding. “Toxic,” Britney’s singing. “Don’t you know that you’re toxic?”

I think of walking inside, just walking straight up to the fraternity house and opening the door and finding Neagle. Rustling him out of bed, the same as LaFaber might do. Just walk straight up there, right into that mess. Confront it.

I think of Fall Rush back at Edison, of the four years’ experience I’ve got. The jugs of alcohol, the drunk freshmen. This is something that I should’ve done a long time ago. I think of calling Jenn, too. I’ve got a minute. I think of her happy, high-low voice. I think of her blonde highlighted hair falling over a powder-blue sorority t-shirt. I think of the party, the bar she went to last night. I think of her dancing.

“Toxic,” Britney’s singing. “Don’t you know that you’re toxic?”

I adjust my tie, check myself in the mirror, step out of my vehicle. I tip-toe through the wasteland yard of fraternity row, plastic wrappers and beer bottle labels sticking to my shoes, and I knock on the front door hesitantly, off-and-on for a minute, before I finally check the handle—
unlocked
—and step inside.

*

If the main foyer at the University of Pittsburgh felt like it was on life support, the Shippensburg living room feels like a corpse left in a boiling dumpster for a Florida summer. The room is a square space, a long hallway stretching tail-like out of the back and leading into parts unknown, a sickly staircase at the front leading down to a basement and up to the bedrooms. There’s evidence of a strong history here: a glass-encased trophy shelf (spattered, of course, with something brown), an NKE flag along the back wall, and several oil-painted portraits of gray-haired alumni. But there’s also evidence of the worst of Rush Season: display boards broken in half and color photos that had been glued to the foam boards now scattered throughout the room, sofas standing on-end, burnt or soaked cushions stashed in corners or in the fireplace.

Industrial
-sized trashcans overflow with bottles and cans; cigarette butts are smashed into the scuffed flooring; muddy footprints lead in every direction, keg-dragging scrape marks in the hallway. No residents lurking about, but still I stay quiet.

Despite this lifeless emptiness on the Sunday morning after the first wave of Rush parties, there
is
life here on Greek Row. It hasn’t been awakened yet, but the house is alive, and it’s going to be every bit as antagonistic as it was for the last consultant. Wouldn’t let him sleep in the house? Didn’t care about suspension? That’s how it goes at the Ship. “Small school in a dead-end town,” LaFaber said. “Kids that wind up at the Ship? When they join fraternities and sororities, forget about leadership development. At best, these are drinking clubs.” At worst? LaFaber told me about one of our SUNY chapters, Rochester or Buffalo, one of those cold campuses in rusty upstate New York that the National Headquarters closed several years ago. The fraternities had become gangs there. The administration forbade wearing Greek letters on any clothing. And after an altercation at a football game, our NKE chapter “fire-bombed” another fraternity house with flaming bottles of Everclear.“You’ve got to be tough, Charles,” LaFaber told me. “Pennsylvania is not Gulf Coast Florida.”

I follow the scrape mar
ks down the first-floor hallway into the darkness, tip-toeing across the floor with careful steps. “Oh shit,” I say, feet clicking and snapping as I enter the remains of a once-industrial kitchen at the end of the hallway. How many NKE Sacred Law infractions can I find here, without meeting even a single undergraduate, that would push our National Alumni Council to revoke this chapter’s charter? Have these guys ever looked at, ever
heard of
the Sacred Law of Nu Kappa Epsilon? Keg over there, by the sink (“Law XVI: No chapter shall store kegs on fraternity premises, nor purchase kegs with chapter funds.”). Empty bottles of 180-proof Diesel near the trash can, probably the ingredients to a batch of Hunch Punch or Jungle Juice (“Law XVI, Section 3: No chapter shall make available free-flowing sources of alcohol to members or guests. This includes, but is not limited to, mass-packaged beer (cans or bottles), kegs, open bars, and mixed-drink ‘punches.’”). All of this during Rush Season, too, doubling-down on the rules infractions (“No chapter shall use alcohol in the recruitment of members.”). Could I find drugs, too, if I searched? Criminal activity? And if I found it…what would these guys do to me? If I’d been sent to investigate the fire-bombing at that SUNY campus, what would
those
brothers have done to me?

Above me
the ceiling creaks with activity, and I jump. The bedrooms .They’re waking up. Tumbling out of beds, tossing sheets to the floor, stumbling to the showers, sliding into board shorts or blue jeans, preparing to clean the crime scene before the Fun Nazi arrives. James Neagle has received my voicemails, sure he has, he just didn’t feel like calling back, and now he probably thinks he’s got time before I arrive…an Educational Consultant wouldn’t dare enter the house without his invitation, after all. That would be breaking and entering, trespassing.

The stairs creak, wooden boards under the stress of sneakers.

Someone coming down…

I should never have stepped inside.

I retrace my steps through the hallway, quietly as I can. Ceiling creaks. In the stairwell, someone says “lunch.” Shit, shit. I retrace my steps back to the front door, manage it open gently, walk onto the porch so softly that it feels like I’m floating, down each of the cracked stairs, out to the lawn, turn my back on the house, hope no one is watching me from an upstairs window. Back into the gravel parking lot, back to my Explorer. I picture the first floor now filling with frat stars while I sit in my front seat and stare at the house from a distance.

*

The Fun Nazi card stares back at me from its spot below the speedometer.
Sharp corners, crisp type, just like a real business card: someone took great care in constructing this joke.

T
o the brothers of this chapter, this was just a mindless college party in rural Pennsylvania, but it’s a
fraternity
party during
Rush Season
…I’ll have to ask questions. Document this. All of the proper forms and the proper signatures.
No running away, no hiding in the guest room after the workshop ends. I chose this, all of it. To be the Fun Nazi. To confront the fraternity stereotype.

From the seat of my Explorer, I dial Jame
s Neagle once more, and finally someone answers. “Who’s this?” Rough big-city voice.

“Charles Washington
.” Assertive.

“Who?”

“This is Charles Washington. The Educational Consultant.”

“The what?”

“From Nu Kappa Epsilon Headquarters. I
am
speaking to James Neagle, correct?”

“Yeah, this is him.”

“James,” I say, “I left you several messages about my visit. Emails, too.”

“Huh? Oh. Must not’ve gotten them. Haven’t checked my email in awhile.”

“What about your voicemail?”

“Huh? Should have
Facebooked me.”

“I don’t have
Facebook. I’m not a college student.”

“Don’t have
Facebook? What’d you say your name was?”

“Charles
Washington
,” I say. “The EC? From the Nike HQ? I’m going to be in town for the next three days. To meet with your advisors and officers, to inspect your house?”

“From Nationals?” James asks. “Whoa. First
I
heard about this.”

“James, listen,” I say and I want to swear, want to tell him that I know he’s bull-shitting, but this is my chance to do everything right, to prove that I
can
do it right. “I’m going to be here until Wednesday,” I say. “We need to sit down and make a schedule for my visit. Today.”

“Bob,” James says, but it’s hand-over-the-phone muffled. “Fucking guy from
Nationals
is coming into town. Now.”

Another voice, distant: “The fuck
they
want?”

Then, James again, to me: “Are we in trouble or something?”

“No,” I say. “No. Every chapter gets a visit from a consultant at least once a year. This is standard. I meet with your officers, help you plan your budget, and…Have you never met with a consultant before? You
are
the president, right?”

“Yeah,” James says. “No consultant’s ever been to Ship before.”

Head pounding.

“We got Rush, man,” James says. “We’re too busy for a visit or whatever.”

Head pounding. “Well. I’m here in your parking lot.”

“You’re
here
, already?”

“Parked,” I say.

“Everyone’s asleep. You know…it’s fucking
Sun
-day. Day of rest. You can’t come in here all unannounced and shit.”

“It’s noon,” I say, check my clock. “It’s almost one, actually.”

“Yo, what the fuck? Let us clean the place up a little, man.”

“I’m…” I say. Head pounding. “I’m walking up to your house right now.”

And now I’m ready. I leave my Explorer and walk the same path through the garbage-yard, knock on the door, and when
it opens I make myself look surprised at the inside of the house. “Oh, hello,” I say when a young man enters the doorframe. He is grogginess personified, a lumbering bear ripped from sweet hibernation, the body of a rugby player and the face of a mangled boxer, cigarette wedged behind his ear; he stands in the doorway for ten seconds or so, staring in the distance without any indication that he has control of his muscles, and he is a billboard—a
billboard
—for our fraternity. Sleeveless blue NKE shirt with letters so large that I could’ve read them from the parking lot. I can picture him chugging cans of Coors in ten seconds flat, then crunching the can in his palm.

“You the guy from Nationals?” he asks.

“That’s me.” I extend my hand. “Charles Washington.”

He bumbles forward, pulls the front door closed behind him, and accepts my hand in a bone-crushingly powerful handshake. Reminds me, strangely, of Walter LaFaber’s grip. He pulls the cigarette from behind his ear, sticks one hand down his black track pants, fishes around, and a moment later
retracts his hand and he’s holding a lighter. “House is a little messed up right now,” the rugby player says.

“Looks like the whole Row is. What happened here last night?”

“Had a couple people over,” he says, sucking on his cigarette until the end turns to ember and ash. He blows smoke into the light September breeze.

“Looks like a
lot
of people were here.”

“Maybe,” he says. “I’m James Neagle, by the way. Chapter president.”

“Very nice to meet you.”

His eyes seem to regain life and energy with each smoky inhalation, and his zombified glaze is starting to melt; underneath, however, is suspicion and anger. Two types of chapters:
those who get it
and
those who don’t
. If this is a drinking club, then our mission of leadership development stands counter to everything that Neagle believes his fraternity should be.