American Fraternity Man (38 page)

“We were founded there at Miami. Very exciting.”

“Oh.”

“Miami
University
. In Oxford, Ohio. Not ‘The U,’ in Florida. I’m sure you were wondering that. Miami University was a school before Florida was even a state. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Don’t you want to know about your chapter here?”

“I figured that when I talk to Dr. Jacobs, she’d—”

“Quick objective viewpoint on Nu Kappa Epsilon,” Sandra says. “I know the chapter president, Adam, because I’ve communicated with him so much the past week about the alcohol poisoning. You know the details?” I nearly interject, but she doesn’t give me a chance. “He’s a nice guy, and the brothers are all nice guys. Great GPA. But we have a term in our program, and that’s ‘All-Star Squad.’ You know how some sports franchises will go out and spend money on the best free agents, and they’ll have a group of great individual athletes, but the team itself doesn’t win? That’s Nike! Nice individuals, but not a good team.”

“Thank you, Sandra,” I say. “I appreciate you telling me that. But I’ve got a few meetings later this evening, also. Is Dr. Jacobs ready for me?”

“She’s meeting with the Dean,” she says. “I updated her appointments on Outlook to clear time for your meeting, but you know how it goes? The Dean comes first. It’s hard to cut it short when you’re eating cobb salad with the woman who controls your job.”

“I’ve got to wait, then?” I say.

“I’ll keep you company!” Sandra says and pats a padded chair beside her desk.

I can’t tell if she’s flirting or if she’s just uncea
singly cheerful. This is my first extended contact with a college-age girl in several weeks, but I consider briefly how many college guys Jenn talks with everyday, back at EU. How many other fraternity guys.

Sandra asks me what my favorite campus has been. I start to answer, but then she asks me if I’ve ever been to Indiana University. I start to answer, but then she tells me that MGCA was one of the best weeks of her life. I start to speak, but then she tells me about all of the chapters at Illinois, about how this Greek community is great, the largest in the country. It’s tough work to be a fraternity or sorority member here, she says, but it’s so rewarding, and I’m thinking that Jenn wouldn’t screw around on me, that she’s probably just busy, like me. Such an incredible community, Sandra says, and the percentage of the student population in fraternities and sororities is unbelievable. Every now and then, there’s a small problem, but the chapters are all so old and established that it only takes a call to the alumni and they stop in and have a come-to-Jesus meeting with the undergrads, and the problem goes away.

Jenn has this way of putting her fingers (just the tips) along the upper portion of your chest as she talks, on every guy’s chest, and I never thought about it because I was always around, and it was usually
my
chest.

Sandra is now talking about Miami
, about how—at Miami—the sororities don’t have houses and one sorority wanted to build a house but the other national sororities
blocked
it because that would hurt
their
recruitment numbers and then
they’d
be forced to build houses also and there’s so much
money
at stake. And there’s just as much money at stake here at Illinois, she says, much more than at Miami. Million-dollar houses. Millions of dollars in alumni contributions to the university. She talks about how impressive the new Pi Kappa Alpha house is—have I
seen
it?—and she’s telling me that we have a great responsibility in higher-ed, that we need to ensure that the organizations don’t slip up, and it’s
totally under our control
, she says, but I’m not sure anything is under my control and my vision is shaky and I’m picturing the shirts swaying in my backseat again, and I’m picturing myself packed into my Explorer, surrounded by suitcases and snap-shut cases and boxes of supplies and I can’t even move my arms or turn the steering wheel or reach the emergency brake, and it’s like getting strapped into a rollercoaster and knowing that I’m stuck going wherever this machine wants to take me, up up up, dowwwwwwnnnn, and I’m thousands of miles from Jenn and I have no control.

“I think…” I say.

Sandra’s voice, her giggles…they’re somehow inside my head, cutting into my brain…they’re behind my eyes, pulling my eyes back into my skull…it feels like my face is puckering into an implosion.

“I think I need to make a phone call,” I say, and stand up while she’s talking.

*

Outside Turner Hall, I call Jenn.

I stand on the building’s concrete steps, a half-block from the long grass expanse of the school’s quad where students lay out on towels and fling Frisbees, something I rarely saw back at Edison University. Our students didn’t sport long hair or tattoos, our girls didn’t wear hemp dresses. There were no protests, and there was no literary magazine, no poetry readings. When we wanted a tan, we went to the pool or the tanning beds, not the campus greens.

“How was lunch?” I ask when Jenn answers the phone. I try to sound like I’m interested, but I think my question comes out sounding condescending.

“Fine,” she says. “It was just Applebee’s.”

I try to lighten my tone. “Applebee’s sounds good. I had gas station food for lunch.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very good choice for lunch.”

“Ha ha. I wish I
could
choose. But it’s hectic out on the road.”

“You could have had something else, I’m sure.”

“Well, yeah,” I say. “I didn’t mean, you know, that I definitely couldn’t have.”

This isn’t how I imagined our first conversation in forever would go.

“You look up plane tickets?” she asks. “For Homecoming?”

“I haven’t been in front of a computer.”

“So…
no
, then?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Yes, no? Or yes, yes?”

“Um,” I say. “Yes, no?”

“Yes, no, you haven’t looked up plane tickets?”

“I just—” I say. “I haven’t been in front of a computer, I said.”

“You’re being difficult on purpose, aren’t you?”

“Me? I didn’t mean to be.
I’m
being difficult?”

“Homecoming is a week and a half away. You know that.” And her voice is low and disaffected, not at all the high-low syllables of her voicemail recording, the intonation of some happier time. Where has the Jenn Outlook gone?

“I know that, I know that,” I say. “You told me. Things are just difficult for me.”

“You’ve got a laptop. I don’t understand why you can’t just book tickets.”

“This laptop doesn’t have wireless. It’s ancient, Jenn, I’ve told you that. Every time I want to go on the internet, I have to unpack that gigantic fucking ethernet cord and hope to God that there’s a place to plug it, and that I don’t need some obscure password.”

“You could use someone else’s computer, right?”

“I’m not at the house. I’m…God, I don’t even know where I’m at.”

“You’re at the University of Illinois,” she says.

“I know
that
. I mean, it’s all maps and…I don’t even know where I’ll
be
next week. I have to check my schedule. Like, really.”

“I thought you had your schedule memorized. Pittsburgh to Shippensburg, Shippensburg to Saint Joseph’s, all that. You should have just put it all on
Facebook.”

“No longer an option.”

“Which is too bad.”

“Things have changed,” I say. “It’s…getting harder to stay organized.”

She sighs. “What’s the point of having a boyfriend I never get to see?”

“I just—” I say. “Wait, what?”

“Listen, Charles,” she says. “I’ll, you know, have to call you later tonight. This probably isn’t a good time. We’re supposed to have an Executive Board meeting in a couple minutes.” Someone is laughing in the background. A girl’s laugh, light and innocent, but I can’t help thinking that it’s
me
that this girl is laughing at.

“Sure,” I say. “Oh, sure. I understand.”

“What?” she says, not to me. “Oh, God.”

“Hello?” I say.

“Charles, hold on.” And suddenly the phone grows louder with laughter, and Jenn tries to say something else but her voice breaks up a little and she says, “I’ve got to go, Charles. Why don’t you just give me a call tonight, could you? Or tomorrow.”

“I wanted to talk now,” I say.

“Call me when you get the tickets,” she says, and she hangs up without saying goodbye.

Slipping. Things are slipping. We had a way that we always ended phone conversations back at EU, a cute couple words (
not
“I love you,” but something just as routine, a little inside joke), and I’m thinking but can’t remember, and I’m holding the phone so tightly I’m surprised I’m not cracking the plastic. I run my hands through my hair and shiver violently, like it’s cold out but it’s still oven-hot.

*

Ten minutes later I’m ushered into Dr. Jacobs’ office, past stacked boxes of three-ring binders that spill from her doorway into the hall. Her degrees are posted prominently on the far wall of the office: Bachelor’s from Nebraska, Master’s from Bowling Green, Doctorate from Penn. But there are other certifications scattered about, mixed with group photos from dozens of conferences, fake smiles, none of it actually hung on any wall, the photos and certificates resting in random spots as if still waiting for someone to pound a nail into the drywall and affix them permanently. Bookshelves wrap around the room, and the reading material all feels predictable—notebooks labeled as ASB Manual or Operations or Conference 1999, and probably ten different books called “Leadership”—but it, too, is stacked haphazardly, as if just unpacked and life is too busy to organize.

Dr. Jacobs is a gaunt woman in her early 50s, with
frighteningly jagged black hair and crackling wrinkle lines that make her smile look more like a teeth-gritting gasp. At many schools, I’ve learned, the Greek Advisor position is seen only as an administrative starting point for new Master’s degree holders, with most advisors remaining in this position for only a year or two before rising to something sexier (Assistant Dean, perhaps, or Director of Campus Housing). It’s the climbers who are responsible for so many Greek Communities falling into administrative disarray, thus allowing so many “drinking clubs” to grow without the university’s knowledge. Dr. Jacobs, I’ve been warned by LaFaber, has decades of experience in university administration, but was demoted to Greek Advisor for conduct issues. Foul language, comments that sounded threatening, but nothing ever extreme enough for firing. She is not a “climber,” but instead a “lander.” Perhaps by leaving packed boxes on her floor, she’s registering her disappointment with the Greek Affairs position, still holding out hope for a softer landing in a new department.

“Nu Kappa Epsilon,” Dr. Jacobs says. “I wish I knew more about your fraternity.”

“Nationally?” I ask. “Or here at Illinois?”

“Both,” she says and
holds up her palms. “We have more than 50 fraternity chapters on campus, Mr. Washington, more than 25 sorority chapters. That’s as many groups as most national organizations have across the
country
. By and large, many tend to be complacent, living in the bubble of their houses, sectioned off from the rest of the student body as though their house is just a dorm.
House-Centrism
, I call it.”

“Hmm. Well, I’ve got quite a few meetings today, so—”

“An inability to see beyond the front porch of the individual house.” She points her finger into her desk. “And it extends to the community lexis. Students don’t say ‘fraternity’ or ‘brotherhood,’ here. More often they ask, ‘What
house
do you belong to?’ The fraternity reduced to real estate, binding the members, holding them hostage, depriving them of opportunity.”

“Um,” I say. I haven’t even sat down yet, but this is standard practice for Greek Advisors and higher-ed administrators: a recited speech detailing their theories. “Can I sit?”

“And this, in turn, breeds a revolving door feel for the Greek Community. When a group huddles into itself, it doesn’t feel responsible for others. Last Spring, Sigma Nu couldn’t maintain the membership numbers necessary for keeping up with housing costs. So the National Headquarters dissolved the group and agreed to re-start the chapter in four years, once the current members graduate. Standard practice. But what’s interesting at Illinois is that nobody notices. It’s just another house. Here today, gone tomorrow, back in four years. I’ve been fine-tuning my article on this theory for two years.”

“Sounds like it,” I say.

She is silent. Stares into my eyes as if gauging whether I’m worthy to be taken seriously in her field. Maybe I was wrong. Perhaps she loves her role as Greek Advisor. She hasn’t unpacked her office, but she’s obviously been using her position to further her research.

“And, of course,” she says, “
you can’t ignore the Millennial impact.”