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Our planning session barely started when Frizzhead, who was sitting next to me at the kitchen table, started rubbing her fuck-me high heels against my ankles. It would've been welcome if she was decent looking but she was a scrawny dwarf. I
kept twisting away from her but she wouldn't stop. Finally I couldn't stand it any more. I leaned over to her, cupped my hands over her right ear and whispered, “I wouldn't fuck you with someone else's dick.” Then I left.

F
OR THE NEXT FOUR MONTHS
,
between mid-September and early-January, things mostly fell into a cycle: going to school as little as possible, getting tan at the beach, getting drunk, smoking dope, scoring X, and hitting clubs.

And the routine around the house was pretty much the same each week. On school days all the pledges and actives would have lunch together, with the pledges being the waiters. The cook was a cranky, Aunt Jemima look-alike, with a fake Jamaican accent, who could cook anything, as long as it was fried. On Monday nights everybody would have dinner together. Then afterward, the actives would have their meeting in the Chapter Room and we'd have our pledge meeting upstairs in the pledge dorm. Saturdays were workdays for the pledges, where we were supposed to clean up the house. But instead, we picked up Mexicans from Venice street corners and paid them to do the cleaning while we drank beer and smoked pot all day watching college football games.

I only showed up at the fraternity house the minimum times required in order to give the actives less time to know me since everybody seemed to dislike me so much. I'm sure, like most other people, they were jealous of my money, my new 4Runner, my Rolex. Besides, it really bothered me that Lyman was so
popular with the other pledges; always kissing everybody's ass by helping them with homework, explaining assignments, tutoring some guys, especially Rawlings, and preparing them for tests.

I tried to fit in the pledge class as best I could, considering that most of them were total dipshits. Almost every day I wore either my emerald green fraternity sweatshirt or T-shirt with ΣOΛ printed in white letters on the front like most of the guys wore. And on colder days I'd wear the turquoise and blue CAS windbreaker over it.

At the beginning of pledging, my only contribution to the pledge class was being over twenty-one and being able to buy beer and liquor. But as week after week passed, something really strange happened. For the first time in my life I was actually starting to, kind of at least, beginning to make a couple of friends: Vysell and Batman, even though they were both eighteen.

Batman and Vysell hooked-up a fast friendship, but more and more, a little bit at a time, I started hanging around with them. It was an odd feeling–strange but good–to be accepted by these guys.

Late one Sunday afternoon at my apartment, after watching two pro games and drinking beer and smoking pot, I felt like really impressing these guys and played the videos of me fucking the San Francisco Sleeping Beauties; all thirteen of them that I drugged with roofies over a two-year period.

Naturally these guys thought it was great, which it was.

_____

So far, eighteen pledges were still left. What I really needed was another Columbine here, sparing only me and Vysell and Batman. Or if absolutely necessary, sparing only me.

Daily, I'd stare, one-at-a-time, at the actives' photographs on the dining room wall trying to figure out who the two Jews were who blackballed me. It was driving me crazy. I had no idea whatsoever who they were so whenever I was on the Third Street Promenade, I'd stop at Borders or Barnes & Noble and
look at books about Jewish holidays and Jewish customs to try to get a clue.

One time I even asked Grossberg who the two Jews were since I'm sure he knew. But he wasn't his usual friendly self.

“Nobody here was in my Bar Mitzvah class,” he answered snidely.

All I thought about was getting some scheme together to oust as many pledges as fast as possible. So far I didn't trust Batman or Vysell enough to confide in them about this.

Finally it was at the pledge meeting the day before Halloween when I got my first shot at getting somebody dumped.

Ovary was sitting hunched over on the edge of his bed reading a letter, holding it just a few inches from his eyes, guarding it carefully. It looked like he was going to cry. He sniffed a little and rubbed the corner of each eye with the back of his left hand. Then he sat up stiffly, squished the letter into a ball and stuffed it under his mattress.

Later, when Ovary was in the bathroom, I pulled the letter out of its hiding place and jammed it in the back pocket of my jeans. In my truck on the way home after the meeting I quickly read the letter. It was from his father who was doing time at a Federal Prison in Illinois. The letter ended by saying, “Be out in six years with an early parole.”

I immediately drove over to Kinko's on Lincoln and made seventy-five photocopies of the letter in minutes. Then I stood there and yellow-highlighted each letter at the part about his father getting out of prison in six years.

The next afternoon, when I was sure nobody saw me at the house, I slipped a copy in everybody's mail slot and pinned a few copies on the bulletin board and then got the hell out of there fast.

Just as it was getting dark, about five, I drove back to the house. A red and white paramedic truck, with its red lights flashing and siren wailing, sped out of the driveway and raced down the street.

As I got out of the truck, Castle rushed up to me, his knees bowed far enough apart to roll a big beach ball through. “Hear
what happened to Ovary?”

“No, what?”

“Tried to kill himself. OD'd. Might die.”

My stomach almost leaped out of my throat. “Oh, Jesus!” I wanted him out but not dead. “How? Why?”

“Swallowed a bottle of aspirins. Left a note. Quit school. Quit the pledge class. Said he was disgraced by the letter.”

“What letter?”

“In everybody's mail slot and on the bulletin board. About his father being in prison.”

“Thought he was in a rest home in Arizona with Alzheimer's.”

“That's what he told us. Sad though. Ovary's note said that a pledge swiped the letter from under his mattress. Then they Xeroxed it for everybody to read.”

“Why'd he say a pledge did it?”

“Actives don't go in the pledge dorm. And if one did, why'd they reach under his mattress and take the letter? And why'd they distribute it?”

“Good point.”

“Yeah. When the paramedics got upstairs, all Ovary's things were packed in a box. The note was taped on top of it. That's when he must've taken the pills.”

“Really?”

“Really chickenshit is what it is. Ovary was a decent guy. Had his problems like everybody else. If we catch the pledge who did it, it's going to be more than just their ass. We're going to turn him in for attempted murder.”

I swallowed hard. “We should.”

_____

Later that night Holmes approached me in the back yard while I was smoking a joint. He looked around furtively, like he was trying to make sure he wasn't overheard and whispered, “Lyman says you did it to Ovary.”

I flinched. “Why would I do that?”

“So there'd be one less pledge. Up your chances to beat The Rule of Eleven.”

“Then every pledge has the same reason.”

“Nope,” he said smugly. “You got five million more.”

My heart lurched, like a guy taking a lie detector test and seeing the examiner's face when the needle jumped a mile. This fucker caught it too.

“What're you talking about?” I asked slowly, trying to keep my voice even.

Holmes' lips were beginning to break into a sneer. “Lyman told me and Watson about the will. He swore us to secrecy.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I mumbled feebly, not even convincing myself.

“Me and Watson,” he continued, “we kept asking Lyman what the hell were the two of you were doing here. Finally he told us. Him we believe, especially with all those pills he takes everyday for stress and anxiety and everything else that freaks him out. But you? You're nothing but a wolf in sheep's clothing.”

“You can tell Lyman for me that he's full of shit. I don't know what you're talking about.”

“He told me and Watson a lot about you. We share an apartment, remember?”

“I'm telling you, he's full of shit. What else did he say?”

“That you're ruthless, vindictive, and real trouble. That you'll turn on anybody. In fact, your aunt and uncle told Lyman, when they drove him to the airport to come to school here, never to have anything to do with you.”

“I don't care what he says, I didn't do anything to Ovary and I don't know nothing about any will.”

“Yeah, well, don't be surprised if you get a call from the police. Lyman told me that he might turn you in. And that the cops would find all kinds of shit in your apartment if they searched it for evidence.”

_____

The next night was Halloween and I was in jail.

Except for Lyman, who flew to Texas to try to find the woman who replaced his mother as his nursemaid/my grandfather's housekeeper, me and the rest of the pledges drove down to West Hollywood in four separate cars to harass the gays that were all over the area. After drunkenly making fools of them for hours, we were heading back to the house. I was zipping along Santa Monica Boulevard, weaving through traffic in the 4Runner with Vysell riding shotgun and Batman, Rainey and Watson in the back seat. Lil' Kim's voice was blasting from the speakers, rapping about being sucked off in an orgy, while all five of us took shots from the last of the five one-pint Jagermeister bottles that we started with.

As usual, the cops were anxious to bust guys who had better cars than they owned, so near UCLA I got pulled over for DUI. All of us reeked with the smell of this licorice-tasting cough syrup and our lips were even thickly coated with that black crap. As soon as the cops got me out of the car I couldn't stand on my wobbly legs and fell down, banging my forehead against the side mirror. I was arrested on the spot and the other four guys got nailed for public drunkenness. And to make matters worse, some guy whose last form of transportation was a fucking burro, even towed my truck away.

We were taken to the West L.A. jail. I was the first one to wake up from sleeping on one of the cold, cement benches pressed against the three, scratched-up jail walls. A husky jailer who looked like a champion body builder, with biceps that were ripping the sleeves of his short-sleeved uniform shirt, was staring at us from the good side of the bars on the fourth wall, sitting behind a desk.

I approached him, leaning against the bars, and spoke in a soft voice. “You let me go if I tell you who provided the other guys liquor since they're all under twenty-one?”

“Yeah. Who was it?”

I pointed to Watson who was sleeping on his back, snoring the loudest. “The guy with the glasses.”

He nodded. Then he unlocked the cell door with a foot-long, dark-gold key that must've been molded in the middle ages.

He opened the jail door and approached me inside. “Come here,” he said, grabbing my right arm below the elbow tightly, almost paralyzing me. He shoved me in front of him in the cell until we got to where Watson was still imitating a buzz saw.

Hercules lightly kicked Watson's shoulder, waking him up.

“You furnish these guys alcohol?” the cop asked, pointing around to Vysell, Rainey and Batman.

Watson rubbed his eyes. “Huh?”

The other three guys awoke quickly and stared at me, probably guessing what I was up to.

“You furnish these guys alcohol?” the cop repeated to Watson.

“Hell no.”

I quickly blurted out, “I never said that guy! I said the Rasta guy at Ahmed's in Brentwood!”

The cop pointed to Watson. “You said he did it.”

“You're crazy! He's a fraternity brother!”

The cop let go of my now-useless right arm and walked out of the cell. He clanged the door shut as he snorted, “Some fraternity.”

Watson's face was flush and his breathing was in spurts. “Everybody knows that you're the guy who stole Ovary's letter,” he snarled. “No thanks to you, he didn't die. Then this shit. I'm warning you right now that I'm helping Lyman get rid of you. And so are most of the other pledges.”

_____

The four guys who were arrested with me were lucky. Unlike me, they were released in the morning without being charged. When I got to court about a month later, because my only witnesses were my drunken pledge brothers, the Public Defender made me plead guilty. I got three years probation, ten days in jail suspended, and a fine of about thirteen hundred dollars that I didn't give a damn about since the court took American Express Cards. Even though I lost my drivers license for a while I still drank and drove. What was I supposed to do? Drink on the bus like a wetback while my truck smiles at me
from the bus stop?

Luckily the Don't-Drink-and-Drive classes near Marina Del Rey that I had to attend weren't a total waste; I scored X from a guy there. And at the weekly AA meetings that I had to go to at the Public Health Center on Lincoln, I met a couple of young, world-class lesbian sluts: Tiffany and Amber, they claimed their names were. As soon as I told the girls about my inheritance—leaving out the part about Lyman—and described my favorite sex act, they couldn't hand me a razor fast enough before spreading their ass cheeks in my apartment that night.