American Fraternity Man (52 page)

Freshman year, while fraternity guys are still rough and unrefined, sorority girls at EU are a boiling witch’s brew of wild and uninhibited freedom, of first real experiences with excessive alcohol consumption, of their first sex in bedrooms where parents do not lurk a bedroom away, their first one-night stands, their first one-night stand-u
ps, of boom-boom-boom hook-ups; untamed, everywhere, out of control; if you want a relationship more serious than a drunken at-the-bar make-out, you avoid them. Sophomore year, they settle down, but they’re
pissed off
because the upperclassmen (interested in them the year before) are now turning their attention to the new class of incoming freshmen girls, who are untamed, everywhere, out of control, etc. Junior year, though, EU girls were most comfortable in their skin: 21 and unintimidated. As seniors, they know who they are, and they know how to have a good time without getting stupid or jealous; they are at their most reasonable.

A freshman girl, though? Wild.
Untamed. It’s a matter of years, but it’s a different lifetime entirely. And hell if I even know how to talk to a girl like that anymore.

*

“
Gentle
-men,” Sam bellows from the front doors of the fraternity house, his ensemble now switched from faded-baseball-cap-and-frat-shirt to dress-shirt-and-khaki-pants; he walks down the stone steps of the house with the authority and importance of an old Roman general, surveying the massive crowd of freshmen. This is a new Sam. Not the same kid that met me at the baggage claim. This is
New Member Educator
Sam, the old and mature fraternity brother, the man elected each semester to teach and test the young pledges on fraternity history, on traditions and customs. He walks chest-out toward our clump, passes us without so much as a glance in my direction, and shakes the brunette’s hand.

They give one another soft smiles that seem to hide secret
s.

“The kids are going to have a good time tonight,” Sam says in a low voice.

“I hope so,” she says. “They got all dressed up.”

“Don’t worry, Nicole. I’ll have them home at a reasonable hour.”

They give those conspiratorial smiles again, Sam whispering something inaudible. And then he turns and looks back at our Pledge Clump. “All right, guys, you know the drill. Form a single-file line and then we’ll pair off with the ladies. ‘Kay? Once you get a partner, walk to the front doors of the house and someone will seat you in the dining room.”

“Dining room?” one of the pledges yells. “Ha! That’s what you call it?”

Sam shakes his head. “Thousands of comedians out of jobs,” he says, “and you got the nerve to try to be funny? Come on. Any other jokers out there?”

Silence from the Pledge Clump. Most look down at the dirt
, spirits momentarily crushed.

The spiky-haired pledge is twirling a cigarette in his fingers, lip trembling.

“We’ve cleaned up the house,” Sam says, “made it into a first-class restaurant for the night. Remember everything we taught you. Act like respectable Nu Kappa Epsilon gentlemen tonight—do
not
embarrass me—and I’ll see you again after your dinner.”

My stomach clenches again,
the same no-turning-back sensation as when I first stepped out of my car at orientation.

Nicole
motions with one long and elegant arm for the guys and the girls to begin pairing. Likely, she’s the sorority New Member Educator, Sam’s female counterpart, the initiated sister responsible for her sorority’s young pledges. I hear her say something like, “Aww, my babies are growing up,” and then she’s digging a digital camera from her purse, scrolling through previously captured photos, raising the camera, pointing it at the crowd as we pair.

P
ictures. Likely to post online somewhere.

“
Shit,” I say, and I turn away and see the flash all around me.

Just my back. No one will recognize that.

“Shit,” I say again when I turn around and Nicole snaps another photo and I am suddenly, unavoidably, front and center in the shot.

“Fantastic photo,” Nicole says happily. “That’s going online, definitely. Good luck, girls. You look great.”

Even if I’m never tagged, my likeness—best suit, best hair, best posture—is going to wind up on the front page of the event’s permanent history. I am the cover of a Rush brochure, I am a Facebook photo album cover.

The
other pledges are rushing forward now, shaking hands and speaking in shaky voices (camera’s bright flash continuing to illuminate the parking lot in periodic bursts), and a few have tried to lift their partner’s hands to kiss the tops, but it’s such a forced attempt at chivalry that it’s laughable: they’re about to have dinner in a frat house, not take a romantic carriage ride.

Another camera flash, and I turn to escape it, then another flash, and I
shift away and now stand before a beautiful dark-skinned girl with electric highlights in light brown hair, and when the next camera flash strikes they glow with Hollywood brilliance, and as I stare at her, this gorgeous girl who—like me—looks too confident to be a pledge, too mature in every sense of the word, mental-physical-spiritual, the camera and the photos and the digital footprints no longer matter. She wears dark blue eyeliner and a black cocktail dress that makes the curves of her breasts and her hips shimmer, every subtle movement a revelation begging that you follow the curves to see what will happen next, and she tells me her name is Maria; and I wonder if this is the girl who, as someone noted earlier, has a body built for fucking.

“
Nice to meet you,” she says in a pillow-soft voice.

“No, no,” I say. “It’s nice to meet
you
.”

“Do I know you?” She looks at me with real curiosity, hand on her hip.
And if only she could stand here like this, maintain this pose forever, I would be a happy man until I died.

“Maybe. I’m around the house a lot.”

“I swear I’ve met you.”

“Sure, sure.” Straight-faced. Just another pledge. “Probably.”

All of us walk inside the house, pair by pair; somewhere behind me in the parking lot, Sam Anderson argues with a pledge who claims that there aren’t enough girls to pair up with. “We’re one girl short, Brother Sam,” the kid says. “What am I supposed to do? I don’t have a partner.” I turn around and—just as I pass through the front doorway—accidentally make eye contact with Sam, who has his hand on this kid’s shoulder and is telling him that he’s sorry, that we must have miscounted, that he’ll have to sit this one out, and I’m responsible, I’m Guy Number Sixteen and I ruined this kid’s night, but I try not to think about it.

*

Maria and I enter the fraternity house, and because I wasn’t able to see the interior earlier I have no basis for comparison on how well these brothers have “made over” the “dining room.” The lighting is dim (likely for atmosphere), but assorted wooden paddles still hang on the walls in no particular pattern, no care taken to beautify a cracked empty trophy case in the far corner; and although the cheap fold-out tables are covered with plain white tablecloths to give the illusion of a “first-class restaurant,” the tables themselves are set with clashing silverware, sloppily folded paper napkins, and thick candles that rest on the tablecloth, wax collecting in puddles on the cloth. Not exactly the level of sophistication I’d expect from Carolina Baptist or Cornell or EU, and LaFaber might even question how this décor impresses in its new members the mission to build socially responsible leaders (“Is this the best you can do?”), but it’s a fraternity house Etiquette Dinner in a town without much money. And tonight, it feels fine to me.

Maria sits across from me—I pull out her chair and help her into her seat, and upon seeing me perform this small act of courtesy, several other pledges around the room bumble from their own seats and attempt to do the same
. Beside me is the pledge who asked for a light just fifteen minutes ago. His name is Michael, he tells his date, and I now notice that his violent red shirt (and black tie, black pants, black shoes) is complemented by a pair of white socks. It’s as if he has an image in mind of who he wants to look like, some rapper or hip-hop artist who stands on boats or pops from the sunroofs of limos with outstretched female limbs clutching any piece of him, titties smashed against him constantly, champagne bottle in hand, always wearing sharp blacks to show the world that he is a man of the night life. But Michael has missed the most subtle elements of the costume: matching socks, for instance.

Maria takes a sip of water, regards me from across the table. “You look…older.”

“Ouch,” I say for the second time tonight.

“That’s what I said outside!” Michael shouts, nearly spilling his water as he thrusts it forward to point at me. “Looks fucking older!”

“Yes,” I say. “And thank you for putting it so kindly.”

“Sorry,” Maria says, “I didn’t mean—”

“No, I get that a lot. I took a couple years off after high school. Boring story, but anyway…” And now it’s a race to frame the conversation, to make sure
I’m
the one asking questions, not the one caught in a domino set of lies. “So where are
you
from?” I turn my back to Michael so that he’s forced to converse with his own partner.

“Santa Fe
. You?”

And Michael is sopping up the spilled water now, his partner asking if he’s all right.

“I’m from Florida,” I say.

“You’re kidding.”

“Not kidding. This entire state is brand-new to me. Have you lived here your whole life?”

“Yes.” She runs her fingers through the ends of her highlighted hair, letting it fall lightly on bare shoulders. “My parents moved here from California.”

“Long way away.”

“Not as far as Florida,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone from
Flor
-ida.”

“You’ve never been to Orlando? Disney World?”

“Once, but this is different. I’ve never met anyone from Florida out in
New Mexico
. Why on Earth did you come all the way out here?”

“My story’s not too interesting,” I say and look down at the table, shrugging. Thinking of a story. Beside me, Michael is now struggling to find any response longer than three words to satisfy the polite questions asked by his partner, a girl with intricately braided hair and a complexion so smooth that she looks too young for college; were I not seated at a fraternity-sorority mixer, I might have guessed her a high school student. She’s asked four or five questions, but she looks bored and exhausted already, folding and re-folding her napkin and searching the ceiling for something more noteworthy than her partner, who has again pulled out an unlit cigarette and is twirling it around in his fingers.

“Tell me your story,” Maria says. “I’m sure it’s interesting.”

Back in Florida, Jenn is piling into a car with her sorority sisters, and they’re on their way to Central, to Tango’s or Hem-Haw’s, and for the second time today she will drink free beer and vodka tonics purchased by frat guys at the bar
who maybe have a shot with her.

“Well,” I say, “Florida’s a fun state, but I needed something different. It’s so humid sometimes that you sweat a gallon just walking from class to class.”

“Wow,” she says. “So, where do you live out here—”

“How is Santa Fe?” I ask. “I’ve only been to Las Cruces and El Paso, so far.”

“You haven’t even been to
Juarez
yet?” She holds her hand to her mouth.

“Juarez?” I ask. “Like, Mexico? No. Should I have been?”

“Oh my God,” Maria says and she taps the high school girl beside her and says in a quick burst, “oh my god shelley, charles hasn’t even been to juarez.”

Shelley brightens immediately, turns her attention from spiky-haired Michael and sm
iles at me and says “Oh my God” dramatically, like she was just saved from a burning building, pulled from the window by a firefighter on a ladder.

“He’s from
Flor
-ida,” Maria says.

“Oh my God! What are you doing out here?”

“Just…still getting used to a different state, is all,” I say.

“Yo, I’m still over here, for fuck’s sake,” Michael says. “S’posed to talk to
me
.”

“Florida,” Maria says. “We
have
to take you to Juarez. I can’t believe you’ve never been. I mean, it isn’t the greatest place, but you can drink. It’s nuts. You have to go.”

“I can drink anywhere,” I say.

“What do you mean?” Maria asks. “You’re not 21, are you?”

I’m silent for a second, hear my heartbeat growing louder. Just another pledge, I’m thinking. “No
. I’ve just been to a lot of different places. How do I know Juarez is better than going to, say, LA or Fresno?”

“Fresno?” Shelley asks. “Eew.”

“Fresno’s awesome,” Michael says, and now he’s leaning over onto our side of the table, arms and elbows on the tablecloth, hair almost poking me in the face, the plastic-alcohol odor of hair gel and the stale smell of cigarettes settling over me. Shelley rolls her eyes.