Seven years after graduating, a “brother” goes back to college to witness the ritual debasement of fraternity pledges.
“Hey ho, here we go!”
The three of us piled into the car on a spring night, boys’ night out, and headed upstate on Route 17.
“Man, I’m so goddamn psyched,” Cooper at the wheel in his gold-rim aviators and Brooks Brothers suit.
“I been thinking about this all week,” Smothers in the shotgun seat, wearing a blazer and a club tie.
“Yeah, well, we’ll see; you know it’s been a while,” me in the back, fanning my knees, fighting off a bad mood.
“Ten years.”
“Ten years.”
“I don’t feel ten years older, though, you know?” Cooper pushed up his glasses. wrinkling his nose.
“These guys probably don’t have any style.”
“Not like us, huh?” I smirked. “We were bitches.” Smothers licked his lips. “Hey, Price — “ he winked at me, then ducked his head down between his knees, came up again cradling a pledge paddle like a nightstick — “remember?”
I shook my head sadly and looked out the side window.
“Hey, Price?” Cooper caught my eye in the rear view. “You’re above all this now, right?”
“Right.”
Cooper and Smothers laughed up front.
“You were Hellmaster, my man.’’
“So? That was 1969. Besides, so were you,” I snapped to Smothers.
“Yeah, I know,” he grinned and lightly slapped the flat of his paddle in his open palm, giving me a defiantly goofy smirk. I turned away, not so much because I was being stared down as because I didn’t want them to see me smiling.
Hell Week. In my old fraternity that meant two nights of a physical and psychological hazing that was so degrading, so mindfucking, so humiliating, that to this day it amazes me that the house wasn’t torched by some brain-damaged pledge on a vengeance bender, me included. And here we were a decade later, going back to witness Hell Week ’78. I was feeling somewhat torn. On the one hand, I had big plans to tear the lid off the viciousness, the psychopathy, the Neo-Nazi macho dueling-club mentality of the nights to come. On the other, I wanted to make a weekend of it. Something in me was screaming for some of the cut-out brainless Three Stooges action of yesteryear. I wanted to have a ball. But I was worried. Something was off between me in the backseat and the two turkeys sitting up front. None of us were quite the yo-yos we were in 1968; the both of them were now high-salaried golden boys at their respective corporations, and I’d become such a goddam sensitive writer that sometimes it hurt me just to sit and think. We were all in our late twenties. frantically reassuring each other that the other guys from back then wound up screwed up, not us; we were getting into pitched battles. your est vs. my therapy, and the two of them were urgently validating each other’s taking a leave of absence to find more meaningful employment. After about three hours on the road, I was chewing aspirin by the fistful and praying that Hell Week ’78 would be the bitch to end all bitches.
But a four-hour-plus trip gives you plenty of time for mood swings, and the last hour or so I loosened up, got off my horse, and we started dealing out memories at a mile a minute: pledge raids, hospitalizable ex-brothers, ding sessions, hometown honeys giving handjobs in their evening gowns. By the time we got to the town, we were so wired we totally forgot about checking into a motel, plowed right through campus into the suburbs, and came to a rocking halt in the fraternity parking lot. The house, a big sprawling affair, lay squat in the night. We sat in the car, chewing gum, breathing heavily, surrounded by a nocturnal chorus of cricket bee-deets. Cooper checked his watch. All the bedroom windows were blacked out. curtained off with blankets. There were no lights on. Suddenly, the bug choir was drowned out by heavy African rhythms. Olatunji’s “Drums of Passion” throbbed from the house. The music hit us in the face with a flashback rush like an ice-cold tidal wave. Drums of Passion — the start of Hell Week.
Forward into the past! We scrambled out of the car, falling over each other flying up the front steps; the main door’s locked, shitfuck, pounding on the door, giddy with flashback, “Let us in, let us int” Two brothers in suits came running. “Can I help you?” Paranoid frowns. “Rich Roy Cooper, Price, Jack Smothers,” then, in chorus, “Class of ’71,” our hands extended, trembling with anticipation. I could see the old, locked library doors. I knew the pledges were inside, freaking out, standing at attention in darkness for hours while big speakers blasted Olatunji’s Mau-Mau pound at them nonstop as a prelude to God Knows What as far as they knew. But I knew. The brothers checked us out. “We’re expected.” Tentative howareyas, screwem, “Where’s our togas?” Heads nodded toward the stairs. We scampered up three flights to the dorm floor, ran into a bedroom piled with starched sheets. It was Friday night, the physical hazing night, and all the initiators had to wear bed sheets, Roman senator style, and as we stood in our underwear, giggling like girls fumbling with the too-big sheets and the safety pins surrounded by very stoned, semicurious brothers, I thought that for those guys the three of us were living history, legend, hallowed faces of ancient hanging composites in the game room. The present Hellmaster came up and after brief intros led us down to the Hall of Circling Lights, where it was all to begin.
“See you guys downstairs,” Cooper waved at the brothers.
“Who were those assholes?” Shrugs.
Like three retarded rejects from the Continental Baths, we waddled in our sheets down to the dining room, that night known as the Hall of Circling Lights, where we took our seats, Two rows of five chairs faced each other, creating an aisle to a suspended white sheet surrounded by floodlights and spotlights. I was sitting winking and elbowing with my boys and staring at the seven other seated brothers, at their faces and physiques. Christ, I was 28; they were 19, 20 tops. Did it show? Shit. All three of us were gladhanding everybody in sight. “Hi. Joe Blow, Class of ’71.”
Someone distributed lit cigarettes, lights went out, and we started slowly swirling the glowing butts in the air, making ten orange rings in the darkness. I heard unsteadily shuffling feet, could make out two figures standing at the entrance to the dining room. One was hooded.
”Who goes there?” a booming amplified bass from behind the white curtain.
“It is the pledge warden with Pledge Davisl”
”Bid — him — entah!” The hood was removed, and the pledge moved slightly, staggering down the aisle of lights toward the voice.
”Closer! – Closer! — Halt!” Boom! I jumped 20 feet in the air as all the floodlights went on in the kid’s lace simultaneously with what sounded like a minor detonation.
The kid staggered back.
”Don’t turn around!” He struggled to attention, trembling through his suit — staring at the white sheet and the blinding silverfoil-backed lights.
”So you want to be a brother!”
“Yes, I do,” a peepy squeak.
Twenty togaed bros appeared in the doorway behind him, all giggling and shushing each other.
”Sing me a song!”
The kid half-stepped in place like he’d just shit in his pants. “Shi-ine onn, shi-ine on harvest moon.”
”Shut up!”
The brothers were on the floor, silently howling, holding their guts.
”Tell me a joke!”
“Why did the, why do chickens want to cross — “
”Shut up! How big is your cock?”
“What?”
”Are you deaf as well as stupid?”
“Ten inches.”
”Bullshit!”
“Six inches?”
”Wha-at?”
“Four inches?”
”Pledge warden! Get him out of my sight! You disgust me! Continue on your Journey!” The brothers at the doorway were waved out of sight.
Lights went out. We relit our cigarettes, recreated the Hall of Circling Lights, and the pledge was ushered out into the next ordeal.
We sat through three more pledges, and everyone committed self-castration. They all started out with high bids on their cock length (one kid said 22 inches), and by the third ”Bullshit” from the voice none of them owned up to more than 4 inches. One kid kept insisting on six and one-half inches, which made me feel that he actually measured it. But even he got down into the early part of the ruler after a few barks.
At this point let me both backtrack and jump ahead and describe the whole setup of physical hazing. First, the pledges are ushered (”No talking!”) into a long room, where they stand at attention for hours in total darkness while speakers are set up outside the door, blasting African drums and chants at them. Every once in a while, a brother takes a few slams at the locked door with a heavy chain — just as a nice touch. Then scared, exhausted, and night-blind, they are led one by one at roughly half-hour intervals down to the Hall of Circling Lights. The next step is that the kid is told to strip to his jockeys. He is no longer a pledge; now he’s a sperm, and he has to take the sperm’s journey through the uterus to the womb, which is where he is “born” into a brother.
Anyway, the three of us charged up the back stairs to the top floor, cut across the dorm room corridor, and entered the top of the Uterus, which in reality was the main staircase swathed in sheets, lit by red bulbs, and lined with brothers in togas armed with big, plastic ketchup squeeze dispensers loaded with warm water. There were three landings to the top, each with its own special treat.
We worked our way down to a vantage point, leaning on the banister overlooking the first landing. Beneath us a jockeyshorted pledge was led through a door. A brother confronted him, the Keeper of the Uterus. Grinning red-tinted faces leered and loomed down from zigzagging layers of banisters, trickles of warm water assaulted the kid like.
“What’s your name!”
“Pledge Sackstein.”
A chorus of jeers, cackles, cascades of water.
“No! It’s Sperm! Your name is Sperm’ Now what’s your name?”
“Sperm?”
“Louder!”
“Sperm!”
“And where do you think you are, Sperm?”
“The cock?”
Haw-haws, more water. “He’s a stupid sperm! This one’s queer! He’s an asshole sperm!”
“Naw, stupid, you’re in the uterus!” pointing up the stairs.
“And do you know where you’re headed?”
“The cunt?”
Howls, yowls, buckets of water. The kid grinned in spite of himself, drenched and shivering.
The Keeper slapped his forehead and groaned, “To the womb, you twit! Begin your journey!”
The kid took his first tentative steps.
“Stop!” He got yanked back. “You’re a sperm! Sperms don’t walk! Sperms swim!”
“On your knees!” the brothers shouted.
The pledge sunk to his knees and started crawling up the stairs. The brothers began chanting. “Swim! swim! swim!” A steady schpritz from the dispensers held between legs. The sheet-lined steps were sopping wet, and each hand and knee motion made a squishing sound. Brothers yelled out, “Nice legs! Nice ass! It’s a Sackstein sperm!”
“Swim! swim! swim!” Brothers did Molly Pitcher takes, running up and down the stairs, supplying warm water for the troops. Someone handed us dispensers; I squeezed off a couple of token squirts. I was lost trying to remember if anybody my year refused to crawl up the stairs. Not a one. Not me; that’s for sure.
As the kid hit the second landing:
“Halt!” Two brothers jumped out at him dressed in some weird boola-boola getup of sheets, hockey face guards, momo masks. The kid was on his knees before them.
“What kind of sperm are you?” one bawls. “A virgin sperm?”
“Or a lying sperm?” Tweedle Dee chimed in.
That one happened to be a virgin sperm. “A virgin! Haw! Haw!”
The kid grinned helplessly under a Niagara of ersatz urine. I knew from the past that if the kid had answered “a lying sperm,” the yell-outs would have been “What’s her name? What’s his name? Was she good? I had her too,” etc. I looked up and down at all those bullshit cherry-virgin motherfuckers howling with glee, dumping on that kid, and I understood one thing about why at least I stuck around after 1968. I wasn’t going to leave that house until I got a chance to lay some of the same bullshit on the next class — that was for sure.
“Before you continue your journey to the womb — “
“ — you have to kiss the sacred cock!” Tweedle Dee produced a silver-foilwrapped baton between his legs.
“Kiss the cock! Kiss the cock!” The sperm leaned forward and gave it a loud, wet smack. The other sperms who followed kissed the cock with a variety of smacks, smooches, pecks, and coy passes. A few of the sperms took the “swim” chant literally and made breast stroke motions up the stairs.
A pledge passed my knees on his way to the third landing. I held my water bottle at parade rest, turned my head away, and whistled a tune, an observer from the U.N.
At the top of the stairs, there was the halt to end all halts — some nude dude wearing a Viking helmet with stereo horns, lying casually on his side , propped up on an elbow, coolly regarding the shivering sperm. He introduced himself as the Keeper of the Womb. Resting six inches from his cock and balls on the inner part of his extended thigh sat a maraschino cherry. After some of the same jive semisolemn sexual banter the pledge had to bite the cherry in order to enter the womb. He had to crawl over, bend down, and bite the cherry, no hands. The kid balked; they couldn’t make him; the Keeper of the Womb relented and put the cherry on the floor, and the kid scarfed it down like an anteater. Now he could enter the womb, which was the dorm-floor shower room, blue tiles, six shower heads, pubes in the drain. All the previous sperms that had made it through the Uterus were in there to welcome him. There was a quart of scotch and a stack of stroke books to keep them company.
Not to sound like a killjoy. but the whole thing was just a bunch of jive, displaced homosexual S&M ritual acted out by the naïfs on greater naïfs.
“Hey, Price! Price! Let’s send up the next kid! Let’s do Uterus Keeper I” Cooper grabbed my arm. “C’mon, man. Remember how we used to send them up the stairs with underwear on their heads?”
“Yeah I Remember Davis?” Smothers chimed in. “We sent him up with his shoes on his hands!”
“Yeah, man. these kids got no style. Let’s show ‘em how we really did it”’
“Get real,” I sneered. Suddenly, I flashed on myself standing there ankle-deep in water, dressed in a bedsheet, holding my mustard dispenser, giving them a self-righteous riff. No place to cop an attitude.
Besides, we really did have more style than those kids. We all broke out into the giggles on the stairs, slapped palms, and zoomed down the alternate stairway to beg the Hellmaster. Please, oh, please. Hellmaster, let us be the wardens of the Uterus. We’re old pros. Within five minutes the three of us were standing there at attention in the first landing, two golden-boy execs and a novelist. I’m fucking 28! I saw heads looming over us, expectant brothers; some still didn’t know who we were. Suddenly, a kid in his underwear shakily entered the stairwell. Stared at us. us at him. He was wild-eyed, knotted. about six-feet-ten. I was scared. He’d kill us.
An endless moment of hesitation. They were all looking down at us. Put your money where your mouth is. Please. God, somebody start talking. Finally, Cooper got it together, “Welcome to the Womb. In order to continue your journey, you have to wear the traditional white helmet. You are wearing your traditional helmet — only it’s on the wrong part of your body” Silence, The kid got it. “Put on your white helmet in the proper place.” The kid didn’t move. His eyes got wilder; muscles tensed. I was praying; please don’t hurt me. Suddenly, the kid slipped off his shorts and put them on his head. Somehow, he managed to make it look stylish like a rakish beret, and up he went. The “swim’” jeers and cheers start again. When he got to the kiss-thecock boys, one guy bellowed, “What the fuck is that stupid thing on your head?” Hah! Hah! We did it! The good old days! The three of us jumped up and down hugging each other on the landing. Minutes later, after the kid had gone all the way into the Womb, the Hellmaster told us gently and firmly, as if addressing respected senile ex-generals, “Hey, guys, please don’t send up anybody else like that. The frat’s changed a little since then.”
Immediately, I was mortified, humiliated. Asshole! Asshole! Big journalist hotshot! The other guys got defensive and angry at my vibes. I was stunned with embarrassment. No, you don’t understand! They made me do it! I’m sensitive! My two contemporaries were indignant at the flack. I stood there, listlessly pissing on the chain of pledges crawling past my feet. My boys got right back into it. My sulk was making them squirm. Smothers went into the Womb to talk to the kid we sent up, returned triumphant. The kid was in a good mood. All the sperms were in a good mood. “Hey, Price,” he smirked at me as if saying “I told you so.” “You look like you’re gonna cry; you want a Kleenex?” offering me the hem of his towel.
“No, you douchebag, I don’t want a Kleenex.” I wanted to get dressed, leave, write an indictment of the stupid emasculating homo momo bullshit and fuck you, est, big business, the fraternity, and the article. I didn’t want a Kleenex; I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I didn’t give two shits whether that pledge crawled up those stairs with his underwear on his head or a pledge paddle hanging out his ass. What had me wigged was that somehow, somewhere, I was under the smug illusion that ten years of intellectual sophistication had an automatic corresponding blooming of a deeper and more sensitive heart, and, frankly, I got caught in my bullshit and was embarrassed. As they used to say back in ’68, “Bummer, man.”
After the last sperm had hit the uterine trail, we went to check the packed Womb. The kids were all laughing, joyous, checking out the stroke books, happy. I was happy, too, my year. On one hand why? No pride? No dignity? Fuck it. You want to belong. Besides, despite all the lessons of powerlessness and degradation, the overriding mood was silliness.
They all got marched downstairs for more mumbo jumbo: splashing water, coffee grounds in their crotches, eggs cracked and smeared over their chests, ugh, gross, big deal. Then it was “Everybody to HoJos! It’s over! Yay!” All the pledges charged back upstairs to the womb to shower, and they were singing “Teenager in Love” and bawling out for soap, and the mood was a high. Camaraderie. Rubbing asses. Four pledges under one showerhead. And the three of us left in the night, me still arguing how much I admired how considerate and sensitive this new brotherhood was by telling us what assholes we were, and the other two guys telling me to get stuffed.
As far as the pledges were concerned, that was the end of Hell Week. They were to come back the following night for the formal swearing-in ceremony, and that was it. There’s a poem by the poet Ai called “Child Beater,” which ends: “O daughter, so far, you’ve only had a taste of icing / are you ready now for some cake?” Fuck cake; those kids had a whole bakery ready to drop on their heads. Saturday night was tribunal night. In order to explain, I have to backtrack again, this time about two months.
During their four-month pledge period before initiation, the pledges are given a pledge manual that lists all the lore, data, and history of the fraternity. It’s a national fraternity, and they are told that at some point before they can become bros they have to pass an exam distributed by the national headquarters to all the chapters. This exam can come at any time of the day or night, any day or night, and they are told to be prepared. They are also told that if they flunk the exam, they can’t be bros but not to worry, because no pledge ever flunks. About six weeks before initiation the exam arrives (my year it was at midnight).
With all the solemnity of a NYS. Regents examination, each pledge is assigned to a room in the house with a brother as a proctor, and at a given signal the red seal on the exam is broken, and the kid is given an impossibly short time to complete an impossibly difficult exam. The kid freaks. The brother freaks. The brother breaks down and helps the pledge with the answers. The kid is sworn to secrecy for both their asses. In some cases, the kid is just left to flounder on his own with no help from the brother. For the next two days every pledge is batshit with anxiety. The exams are mailed back to “National,” nothing more is heard, and in a week the exam is forgotten.
That was six weeks ago. Now it was swearing-in night. The “initiation” was over. The brothers all showed up at the house in their best suits. There was a delay. Some had to fly out to pick up a representative from National.
Meanwhile, downstairs in the dining room, all the tables were arranged in a horseshoe. Seated at the crown was the president and “The Brother from National,” an older alumnus never before seen be the pledges. He had volunteered for what was to follow. In front of him were the pledges exams in a neat pile. We all took our places at the table, unknotted our ties, blew cigarette smoke in the air. Looked like we’d been there for hours, days.
“Who’s coming down first?”
“Cummins.”
“He a cheater or a flunker?”
’’A flunker.”
“Okay, who’s for?”
“Me,” a few hands.
“Who’s against?”
“Me,” other hands.
“Dobyns, signal us when they come down the stairs.” We all relaxed for a few minutes.
“So how do you like it?” a kid asked me, smiling.
“What, initiation?”
“Yeah, was it the same back when you did it?”
“More or less. You a soph?”
“Yeah.”
“Lemme ask you something. All that stuff last night — you know, the stripping of the pledges, the kiss-the-cock-bite-the-cherry bit, the nice ass comments — didn’t that all seem, I dunno, gay, in some ways?”
He jerked back like I had shoved smelling salts under his nose, chortled with embarrassment.
“Nah, it’s all about sex, you know, the womb, the uterus. That’s sex; it’s not gay.” He laughed again. “If you think that’s gay, you got a pretty weird imagination.”
Suddenly, Dobyns gave a short whistle. Immediately, the room broke out into a cacophony of curses and shouts, people shaking fists across the room at each other. An emerging African nation having a jam session about what kind of constitution it should adopt.
A pledge appeared in the doorway, wobbly, squinty, “What’s goin’ on?” knit into his forehead. The furor died into absolute silence. He was ushered to the head of the horseshoe by the Hellmaster. The mood was “The Last Mile.”
The president stood up, nodded grimly, looking drawn and exhausted.
“Pledge Cummins? This is Brother Stark from National. He has a few questions for you.” Brother Stark was stern, sober, thirtyish, scary, immobile, piercing.
“Fuck National’”
“Fuck Cummins!”
A brief firefight across the room.
“Will you guys shut up!” says the prez.
Cummins’ eye caught his pledge exam in front of “Brother Stark.” His Adam’s apple almost shot into his chin; there was so much red scribbled and scrawled on the exam that it looked like the grader had hemorrhaged. Stark handed it to him with two fingers as if it were a big, dead bug.
“Read the comments,” he said deadly soft.
Cummins was made to read out loud the comments of the president of the national fraternity, who had personally graded the paper.
“This pledge is a disgrace to both the chapter and the National. If this is your idea of a potential brother, then your whole chapter is an embarrassment to the National,” or something like that. The grade is 32. Immediately, the outbursts and the bellowings picked up. The kid looked gutshot.
“Fuck ’im! Kick him out!”
“Fuck National! It was a stupid test!”
“They can’t tell us who to take! It’s our chapter.”
“That test was a disgrace!”
“Cummins always sucked! His attitude was shit from the git go!”
“Where’s his pledge paddle? Man, he didn’t even care enough to make a pledge paddle!”
“Fuck you, asshole, where’s your pledge paddle? He’s the best pledge we got!”
After about three minutes everybody was shushed.
“Pledge Cummins,” the prez said softly, sadly. “Can you give us any reasons why we should allow you into the brotherhood? Can you give Brother Stark, who flew all the way in from Philadelphia, any reasons why — “
“Hey, he don’t need to say shit! Fuck that testl”
“Hey, shaddup!” the prez bellowed.
“Let him speak!”
I sat tensed and corded, almost frightened that Cummins saw it through my eyes ten years later and was about to explode, kill, scream in rage. But no. What came out was the same gibbering, quivering horseshit I spouted. “I- I feel I can be a productive brother. I can — share — grow — help my frat mates. I — I — I — “
I can’t tell you how many times since my freshman year in 1968, when I stood up there with shit in my underwear and in my mouth, that I had fantasized about shooting a moon, throwing a punch, walking out, but I stood up there just like Cummins, slightly bent over, mouth gaping in shock. I gave the same stunned recitation.
As Cummins spouted his terrified litany, he knew it was bullshit. We knew it was bullshit. It was the most horribly embarrassingly naked moment of the weekend. I am a bullshit person. We are all bullshit people. But we are full of the shit that gets us accepted, that shit that gets us in, gets us by. Cummins yammered his drool for a few more minutes before he was ushered out so the brothers could “vote” on his case. As soon as he was out the door, the entire brotherhood ran after him, grabbed him, hugged him. It’s a fake! It’s phony! Surprise! Did he get pissed? Not on your life. He was almost crying with joy. In 1969, when it was my job to usher the pledges into the tribunal room, out of a class of 38, half broke down and cried and two fainted.
The next kid was a cheater. He walked into a room ringing with applause. He got the highest score in the East or something like that and won a trip to Atlanta. Brother Stark flew in from National for personal congratulations.
“Yay! Way to go!”
He started walking out of the room like Rocky. Good boy! Another A! Just as he was about to leave the room, his proctor blew the whistle and broke down crying, “I helped him cheat.”
“What!!”
“What!!!”
“A cheater!!??”
The kid quickly admits. Explosion, disgrace, shame. Once again, “Is there any reason why we should let you in after this — this – [words escape him] — Don’t talk to me! Turn around; face the brotherhood. You owe them an explanation.”
Once again, I was a knot. The kid was going to kill someone. Not a chance. The same recitation, the same litany, the same rush of jubilant brothers embracing him after he leaves the room to tell him it was a fake. By the third kid there was no fear in me, no tension. No one was going to explode. Those kids were “good kids,” successful kids. Crack students. Education in America teaches two things: (1) retain data, (2) recognize power and kiss its ass. This was a highly competitive, prestigious school, which meant just by virtue of the fact that they were accepted, they had earned their lessons well.
I could sense among the brothers a strange mixture of sadism and tenderness. I noticed that the more distraught and freaked the pledge got at his tribunal, the more fervently and lovingly they embraced him after it was over. The pledges who were a little more in control, a little more defiant, who at least had glimmers of seeing the whole thing as an assault on their integrity, got cooler congratulations. When I was the Hellmaster, I was absolutely jubilant every time a pledge broke down in tears. I was flooded with a gush, a warmth; those were the ones I hugged. The ones that stood up for themselves, even though they thought the tribunal was real, just about rated a handshake. I felt like they had cheated me.
And now I sensed that same dynamic in play ten years later. The same pseudoloving. “It hurts me to hurt you like this. Why do you make me do this to you?”
The fourth kid was ushered in, tall, stoopshouldered, with a frizzed-out talmudic beard and narrow, rectangular glasses. Somebody should have treated him to a barber and a chiropractor and fronted for a pair of contacts instead of putting him through this rigmarole.
The kid was a flunker. Too bad. As he went through his trauma, I felt like a numbed-out emergency-room doctor. After a while it just doesn’t get to you.
Suddenly, I felt a hand on my wrist. Cooper nudged me and then rose to his feet.
“Brother Stark? Mr. President? Roy Cooper, class of ’71.” He pushed his glasses up his nose again. “Now we’ve been sitting here for two hours, discussing Pledge Lasser’s — ,” he grimaced, “performance — and frankly I don’t want to hear it — I don’t want to hear excuses — I came up here with my alumni friends,” gesturing to me and Smothers, “to greet the new brothers — This fraternity is an important part of my life — I have always prided myself on being associated with this particular chapter — its tradition of excellence.” He sighed deeply, sucking in air. “I’ve always looked forward to the night of the ceremony, but after this — this — ordeal — this time wasting — “
Move in for the kill, Roy. Tighten it up and zing it in. Don’t drag it out. My heart was thumping. Cooper was taking too long. He was getting boring.
“ — This pledge is a disgrace — he — I — get him the hell out of here. I don’t wanna hear it.” Cooper waved in disgust and sat heavily in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose in depressed and angry exhaustion.
“Get him out!”
“He’s a fuckin’ embarrassment!”
The kid was hustled from the room, gawking at Cooper. The room broke into cheers for Roy’s performance. I licked my dry lips. He wasn’t that good. He was okay. Cooper smiled and waved. He wasn’t that good. I felt my stomach muscles give each other butterfly kisses. The next kid was brought in. He had gold horseshoes on a crimson tie. Sideburns. My armpits were two baby Niagaras. He was a cheater. Trip to Atlanta down the tubes. Stunned outrage. I counted to ten and rose to my feet, cutting off someone’s spiel.
“Brother Stark? Mr. President?” My voice was trembling with stage fright. All the better. “Brother Price, class of ’71.” Guys were staring at me. unnerved by the quaver in my voice. I gulped down air, scratched my palm. “I have driven four hours tonight to personally congratulate this pledge on his exemplary performance and wish him well — I won the trip to Atlanta in 1968; my associates here, Brothers Cooper and Smothers, won it in ’69 and ’70, respectively — Look, I’m a busy man and not a wealthy man — My time is money, but I was so impressed with this pledge’s test score — “ clip it, clip it; you’re dragging, “I feel like I’ve been made a goddamn fool of.” I started to sit down but had a better idea. “I think we all have.” A harsh whisper, jaw pulsing. I stepped behind Cooper, exhaled noisily, and stormed from the tribunal room almost shell-shocked with anxiety, looking to all the world like the epitome of suppressed moral outrage, the overworked prosecutor at Nuremberg or Welch saying to McCarthy at the hearings, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”
I sat on a couch in the lounge, body totally soaked with sweat. 1978, 1968, 1978, I felt like I had just started smoking again. The sociologist Hellmaster.
Was I good? I was good. I could’ve done better but I was okay.
Down the hall, seconds later, I heard the raucous laughter of the guys informing the pledge he was now a brother. I hauled myself upright, took a deep breath, and headed toward the cheers. He was probably a good kid, and I felt the urge to congratulate him.
