American Fraternity Man (77 page)

“Everyone, it’s the consultant,” Bryan says. And then he’s back outside and heading to class and the door is shutting
behind me and I’m standing in the hallway alone and they—the dining room full of hoodie-clad fraternity brothers, their hair pillow-messy or hidden beneath Boilermaker baseball caps—are shaking their heads and making “whoooo” noises, and one of them says, “Really fucking professional, dude. Really classy.”

*

There is a community shower in the second-floor bathroom at the Purdue chapter house, what the brothers call a “gang-bang shower,” and I’ve counted my blessings these last few days when entering an empty bathroom at 11 AM. At Edison, we had individual showers, each separated from the next by cinderblock walls, closed off from public view by plastic curtains. At most of the universities I’ve visited, the bedrooms have shared attached bathrooms with other bedrooms, or—best case scenario—the guest room has enjoyed its own shower. And no matter how disgusting the tile floors or how impotent the water pressure, I’ve always been able to at least savor my privacy; no matter what the fraternity brothers thought of me, how they saw me, I could at least preserve an image in their minds of a man fully clothed. This morning, though, when I slink into the bathroom, it seems as if every brother who wasn’t eating breakfast is now standing naked at the long row of showerheads. One after the next, they turn their heads to see me walk in, towel draped over my arm, toiletry bag in hand, frozen at the sinks.

I can’t leave, not now that they’ve seen me.
The only thing worse than a naked wannabe-professional is a Fun Nazi too
scared
to get naked in front of the boys.

One of them—a blonde-haired
wrestler-type—shuts off his shower, waits for a moment as the water slows to a dribble and swirls into the drain below, and then he turns around fully, proudly, not a flinch of shame or embarrassment. He shakes his hair from his eyes, blows the dripping water from the tip of his nose; there are towels stacked here at the sinks, and so he walks—one leg dragging as if hobbled by a sprained ankle—straight toward me, settles beside me, the air around us suddenly thick with humidity and hot flesh. “You can have that shower,” he says, slaps my back. “I’m all finished.” He grabs a towel, ruffles his hair, trudges out into the hallway still wet and still naked, rubber flip-flops squeaking as he goes.

“Hey, it’s the consultant,” says one of the guys in the showers, staring back at me with giant puffs of shampoo in his hair.

“No way,” another says. “We get the honor of showering with the fucking consultant.”

“Heh,” I say. “
Quite the privilege.”

“Lather up! P
lenty of room for you right here!”

They’re laughing now, an echoing room full of steam and jet-spray and bare asses, naked men who have seen a hundred times before the swirls of hair on one another’s chests, the pimples on one another’s backs, the white nether-regions of one another’s thighs, the sadness or exuberance of one another’s penises. Every single day, every single morning. Just skin, by now. But me? I’m different. My every pore is new to this room.

“Don’t tell me that you consultants shower in your pants! Ha!”

“Heh,” I say. “No.” I pull the shirt over my head, try to take my time in folding it and sliding it to one empty section of the sink. It’s a stupid thought, but I find myself hoping that—maybe—this might all end if I stall long enough. Staring straight ahead into the mirror, I unfasten my belt, roll it as tightly as I can, place it atop my shirt.

“Hope you brought soap on a rope, bro. Crazy things happen in the Purdue showers.”

Slip one leg out of my jeans, then the other.

“Better have a big Nationals-sized cock, homey. Only big cocks allowed here.”

Hold my boxer shorts in front of my crotch for a moment.

But no one is looking at me; they’re washing the soap from their eyes, scrubbing their legs, working the conditioner into their scalps, rinsing their bodies one last time. I toss my boxer shorts into my pile of clothes on the counter, walk slowly and cautiously forward into the community shower with my toiletry bag blocking the view of my Headquarters cock. My feet have never been colder in my life, and my chest has broken into goose flesh, but I eventually take the shower vacated by the wrestler. And when I turn the faucet, the water that hits my forehead is such a perfect temperature—feet thawed, chest thawed instantly—that I already know it will be difficult to shut off and creep back into the cold to grab a towel.

“Best part of the day,” the kid beside me says
, his eyes closed as the hot water hits his face. “After this, I gotta walk halfway across campus for my first class. So fucking cold, the wind between these buildings.”

“Hot water doesn’t run out?”

“No, sir,” he says and spits. “I feel like Kevin Spacey in
American Beauty
. After my morning shower is over, it’s all downhill from here.”

But then he shuts off his shower, squeaks away in his flip-flops.

Then, a moment later, another shower shuts off.

And another.

Brothers flopping away, chatting at the sinks, towel-drying, leaving.

And soon, it’s just me in the community shower, standing under the water and trying to wash the dirt away, and there is no more laughter, no jokes, no comments, no greetings or goodbyes, no adjusting of handles and water temperatures, no more squeaking of sandals, no more rustling of towels or clothes, no blow
-dryers, no scratching of razors. Just one naked man in the second-floor bathroom of a limestone fraternity house on a cold autumn morning, not another sound in the world but the rush of hot water over my head and in my ears, one naked man now shutting off his own shower, tip-toeing across a chilly floor, searching for clothes on the counter. Gone. Searching for a towel, clean or dirty, anywhere. Gone.

Alone, and it’s all gone.

I stand at the sink, dripping water now chilly on my skin, cold wet hair in my face.

“What the fuck?” I say, hoping some merry prankster will laugh and toss my clothes back into the bathroom and this moment will end. But there
’s no response.

I hold my toiletry bag over my crotch again, poke into the hallway, and it is there—naked and still wet, eyes wide and terrified—that the laughter begins and the camera snaps and then my socks are flung back into my face, and I say “Fuck!” again as they clap and hoot, scampering away and retreating into separate bedrooms, knowing that I won’t run—dick flopping—after them, knowing that all I’ve got is a pair of dirty socks, so what else can I do? I ball up the sock over my crotch and I lumber through the hallway, knocking on doors.

“My clothes!” I yell with each knock. “Give me my fucking clothes!”

“Whoop whoop whoop!” someone yells from somewhere, hyena-voiced.

“Who the fuck?” I cry. “Just…Who fucking stole it? This is juvenile.”

Inside one of the bedrooms, a stereo clicks on, heavy bass suddenly shaking the door. So I slam my fist against the door, try the handle, slam and knock again and again. “Open up your door! Open up the fucking door!” I scream.

“Go away,” someone says from inside. “Studying.”

“Open up your door!”

“Gonna call Nationals, dude. Tell ‘em you’re hazing me, not letting me study.”

“Just give me my clothes. That’s all I fucking want!”

And then another picture snaps from the opposite end of the hall, and sock over cock I dart that way, the flash still registering in my eyes, but the photographer has ducked away like a sniper after a successful kill, and then a picture from the opposite end, and I charge that way, and there is music coming from another bedroom, another, and I stand in the center of the hallway, wet argyle-patterned cloth in hand, balls aching from having been clutched so damn hard, and I say, “Fuck it. Fuck it. Take your fucking pictures, you pieces of shit.” And it’s at that moment that I hear a noise behind me, a sound like dirty sheets tossed into the dryer, and when I turn I see a pile of clothes. Not mine. But someone has taken mercy, tossed a gray Purdue sweatshirt and some jeans and a hand towel into the far corner. “Fuckers,” I whisper. “These fuckers.”

After I grab the stack, I retreat back to the bathroom sink to dry off and to warm myself in the sweatshirt. “
Facebook, yo!” I hear someone shout from far away, laughing, and I want to storm out there and scream again, defend myself, defend my image as the National Fraternity Educational Consultant—“
Keep that off the internet
!”—but I know that whatever they captured on film: it is accidental brilliance: because you can find no better image, six months after my own fraternity brothers saw me carrying my mother out of the house, six months after my father saw me in the rearview mirror with the Night Patrol, to show the world what has become of Charles Washington on his mission to save the world.

*

It’s still Friday morning and my visit is supposed to stretch into Saturday, but I pack up and drive as quickly as I can.

Pack up and drive. Without ever finding my t-shirt, my jeans, my belt.

Battery making a pained noise, engine rolling over, Explorer unhappy at having spent a full night idling in the parking lot.

But I pack up and drive. Away from Purdue University.

According to my schedule, I’m now supposed to travel to Indiana University. From here in West Lafayette, straight down south to Bloomington. Directly through Indianapolis, home of the Headquarters. But I find a hotel south of Indy, know that I can’t step foot into another fraternity house right now. Not now.

*

Just as I’m unlatching my suitcase and staring once again into
the tossed-about wreckage that I’ve still not sorted, my phone rings. And it’s Walter LaFaber. Even exhausted and aching from last night, my breath is still caught in my throat for a moment. Was he standing at his window, same as always, tall and military-proper, hands clasped behind his back? Did he watch me drive through Indianapolis? Does he know that I left Purdue early, that I’m putting two hotel nights onto the credit card, that I might not even go to Bloomington and Indiana University?

“I’ve got your New Mexico report here with today’s mail,” LaFaber says.

“You do?”

“Why else would I be calling you on a Friday?”

“I thought maybe there was an emergency,” I say.

“An emergency?”

“Never mind.” I lean back into the stiff mattress, the scratchy sheets, but still this feels more comfortable than any of the guest room beds over the last two months. “Did I do what you wanted? In the report?”

“I’ve just finished reading,” LaFaber says, then clears his throat.

“It was tough to write. I’m, like, really putting myself out on a limb,” I say, and I don’t know why I feel it’s necessary to remind him. He knows. A man who’s made his career marketing himself as the Leadership Guru, the man who can show you how to
Put Values First
in your organization, a campus legend at Alabama, a fraternity legend at Nu Kappa Epsilon, a legend amongst all national fraternity legends, but also a man who has made his career painting over dirty ceiling fans. Yes, he knows what it means to fabricate a report; after all, he’s likely done it a thousand times in order to get where he is now. “I don’t usually do these sorts of things.”

“These sorts of things?” he asks.

“I mean, like, lying about—”

“I d
idn’t ask you to lie,” he says.

“Didn’t you—”

“Charles, I just finished reading this report.” He clears his throat again. “If something is inaccurate, and you know it’s inaccurate, that would reflect very poorly upon
you
if anyone was to find out, and especially upon
me
if I was aware of the inaccuracies.”

“No,” I say. There is a slight fold in one corner of the wallpaper above this
hotel room’s television, almost like a dog-eared page in a book, where the glue must have loosened. I can’t stop staring at it. When I look away, my eyes return just seconds later to the wallpaper to see if it changed. “It’s accurate, is what I mean. I was just making sure it was detailed enough for your purposes. For the, um, good of the National Fraternity, I mean.”

He exhales, and now I wonder if even this—acting annoyed when speaking to me, sighing when I “just don’t get it”—has been part of his performance all along. As if he needs me to feel deflated, reliant upon his expertise. “
For right now, this report will work,” he says. “We’ll be able to suspend the chapter. You did fine, Charles.”