American Fraternity Man

by Nathan Holic

  From the front lawn of the fraternity house just days before, just chatting with Jenn, to barstools at Icy Jack’s, to the dance floor, to…well, there seemed to be so much possibility, and even though I’d set no goals and had outlined no real plans or life structure, I felt like I was in complete control. Not some rigid “Marathon Man” back then, no. But a Frat Star?

  Anything I wanted to do, I could.

  Now, I can see for miles in every direction out here in the desert, all this open space. No one is creating my schedule here.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. Night Off.

  On Saturday night, after the Etiquette Dinner ends and after I drink a six-pack with Jose at his apartment and watch the last bits of the Hawaii football game, I sleep on his pull-out couch. But it is in the waning moments before sleep that—as I charge my phone—I scroll through the last few texts I received from Jenn during the day, most of them while I was on the plane:

  Where r u?

  Answer ur phone Charles!

  Where r u?

  We lost the football game. And u didn’t call once the entire game.

  This is not funny. U need to call me.

  And yes, just as she said when we talked on the phone earlier, there are at least ten text messages stored in my cell. But here, now, there isn’t a single message to which I will respond.

  *

  When I wake up the next morning, I find a hand-scribbled note from Jose telling me he’s gone to help his father with chores.

  Without a car, I’ve got no way to leave, and my body is aching for the sort of go-go-go activity in which I’ve been whipped about for the past three weeks. I feel anxious when I sit on Jose’s balcony and drink coffee and stare into the distance without purpose; I cook eggs in his kitchen, and it’s been so long since I’ve cooked—so many restaurants, meal plans, fast food drive-throughs—that it feels strange to see and to know what’s actually going into my food, to wash my own dishes.

  Jose returns for lunch, and we spend the afternoon at a restaurant called El Sombrero. His sister is good friends with the owners, so we sit in a screened-in patio with wobbling ceiling fans where we are joined by several other chapter brothers and alumni, and we talk and eat chips and salsa. “Have a beer,” Jose says. “The first round is on me.” Okay, I tell him, and with a beer in my hand the fraternity brothers sit more casually, swear more easily, share their budget difficulties and “operating procedure” problems without any hesitation. Ben Jameson’s prophecy come true. Eventually I don’t bother to hide my Tecate cans when a new brother arrives; I just take a sip, introduce myself.

  “I should call the Executive Board together for a meeting tonight,” Jose says.

  “Yeah, probably,” I say.

  “That is what you said in your emails. An official Executive Board meeting.”

  “Right,” I say. “Official. We do need to have a meeting, right.”

  “The last two consultants, they came here and they acted like they were better than us. Like we were below them because we are always behind on our national dues payments. It is not our fault, you know?” Jose has a notebook with a printed-out Excel budget on the table before him, and it shows that nearly all the New Mexico State brothers are delinquent in their dues payments. “Money doesn’t come so easily for us as UCLA.”

  “Those consultants were assholes,” I say. “They graduate and they think they know everything. Half the time, they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  “It is good,” Jose says, “that you act more professional than they did.”

  We sit and drink for hours, the tables at El Sombrero filled all afternoon long with Nu Kappa Epsilon brothers. My body is still aching for activity, and she’s on my mind: Maria. The light curls of shiny hair that fell just past her shoulders, that fell into her eyes (and she didn’t care, that was what made it so sexy)…Maria, whose number I programmed into my cell phone, whose body radiated sex—built for fucking—and bad college decisions and I have no doubt in my mind how it would feel to rub against her, hard. Her breath against my face, hot, needing me. I haven’t hooked up with a girl, haven’t made out or kissed or touched or groped, not since…early July, the last time I saw Jenn. When I drove back to Florida for the Independence Day weekend.

  Maria, I’m thinking even as we leave El Sombrero half-drunk on Tecate to meet up with the other NMSU officers for a Sunday evening Executive Board meeting. Sixteen straight weeks of travel—one full year of travel—and I spend my time amidst sweaty males, gym shorts and cut-off fratty t-shirts and the smell of Certain Dry deodorant, stale French fries; I spend my time on grimy beds, slimy couches; with football and rugby players, with gruff alcoholics and spoiled pretty-boys. No women, and it’s Sunday night, and Jenn didn’t call today, not even a text.

  When I arrive at the fraternity house for the Executive Board meeting, seated once again in a room full of brothers and pledges, I’m showered with praises for my performance at the Etiquette Dinner. Pats on the back, cat-calls, howls. These kids have had a full day to discuss my questionnaire with one another, to discuss my “playa status” (as one pledge says), to elevate me to Legend. The out-of-town brother that came into Las Cruces and entranced the beautiful Maria Angelos! Diamond Candidate. Beacon. Tony, the stocky kid, is playing ping-pong in the chapter library when I arrive, but he drops his paddle and rushes to me. “You’re a god,” Tony says. But Michael remains at the ping-pong table, arms crossed over his chest, glaring across the room.

  Jose notices the commotion I cause in the fraternity house and tells the Executive Board that it’d probably be best to meet somewhere else. “He has not been to Buenos Noches,” Jose says. “We can meet there.”

  “They’ve got great salsa,” Sam says.

  “Another Mexican restaurant?”

  “What else?” Sam asks.

  So just as quickly as I arrive, I’m whisked out of the house.

  We take two cars, and because I’m still haunted by the styrofoam-and-spoiled-onion smell of Jose’s car, I ride with Sam, hoping his vehicle will be more pleasant. I’m wrong. There are six of us in Sam’s Honda Civic—six, because Jose had room for only three in his equipment-cluttered car—and only Sam and I can claim front-seat spots. The other four Executive Board officers scream in discomfort from the backseat, piled atop one another, yelling for Sam to turn the air up, accidentally stepping on one another’s feet. One says, “Did you just touch my fucking cock?” Another responds in a meek voice: “Bro. Our Educational Consultant is in the car.” “He’s heard swear words before, dude.”

  “And he’s going to hear more if he doesn’t give Maria a fucking call,” Sam says.

  “I’ll think about it,” I say. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea.” Because there remains the possibility that she wrote those responses out of politeness or cuteness, or that—worse—she knows the truth by now. I’m a Fun Nazi, a liar. And she was deceived.

  The drive is short but bumpy, someone’s knee or foot pounding the back of my seat, and I’ve moved up my seat as far as it will go, but out of courtesy I’ve asked, “Do you have enough room?” maybe four times, and the response has always been, “If this was an orgy,” and everyone’s laughed each time. So I keep asking, and everyone keeps laughing. Finally we enter the cramped parking lot of Buenos Noches, greeted at the entrance by a hand-painted wooden board shaped like a green pepper. Another Mexican restaurant, and I can still taste the refried beans on my breath from this afternoon. As the six of us crawl and squirm from our seats and into the parking lot, Sam’s car rises several inches off the ground.

  Inside Buenos Noches, our table is large and round, looks like it would make a perfect flotation device after a shipwreck, like it could save fifteen people from tumultuous post-wreck waters. And it’s topped with so many baskets—buckets—of tortilla chips and deep bowls of salsa that the entire restaurant sounds as if it’s in a constant state of crunching. Around me are the eight Executive Board officers, and in heavy contrast to the chapt
ers I’ve visited thus far, Sam is one of only two white men: four are Hispanic, one is black, and one is Asian. From their initial conception in the mid-1800s as secret literary societies, fraternities have always been clubs for “Good Ole Boys,” exclusive societies where status is a primary factor in member selection. I’ve heard stories about fraternity life in the 1950s and 1960s (even the ‘70s and ‘80s), when chapters split divisively (or voluntarily closed themselves and disbanded) over the issue of admitting black men. These are regrettable memories today, of course, though the tradition certainly survives in racist bedrock states where members whose fathers and grandfathers wore Nike Red still shudder to think that they could call any black man a “brother.” But Nu Kappa Epsilon’s mission includes an initiative called “Diversity of Brothers,” page 51 of the Marathon handbook, stating: “Every chapter should take extra efforts to seek out potential members from diverse backgrounds. Chapters will be stronger through their difference, and each brother may learn from his fellow brothers about new cultures and backgrounds.” Most national fraternities have made similar proclamations, and some have even revised this statement to include an open-armed addendum on homosexual men.

  Seated here in Buenos Noches and thinking about all of this, I realize that I haven’t said a word about the Nu Kappa Epsilon mission statement in hours, and it suddenly worries me: today, these guys have seen me drink at least eight beers over the course of the afternoon, but I haven’t offered a single piece of leadership development wisdom. Jose, in fact, looked annoyed when he led us away from the fraternity house like maybe I wasn’t doing the job he’d hoped I would do. So after we order our food, I say: “It’s great that you guys are really fulfilling the Nike Diversity Initiative.”

  They give me sandblasted stares, all eight of them.

  “What do you mean?” Sam asks. “Diversity initiative?”

  I search the table—white, black, Hispanic, Asian—and look for a glimmer of recognition. “I mean, it’s great that you guys are so diverse, you know?”

  Sandblasted stares. Silence.

  “Some chapters aren’t quite so…full of people from different backgrounds.”

  “Almost everyone in our chapter is from New Mexico,” Jose says. “So…?”

  “I mean, like, backgrounds. You know?”

  They look to one another, eyes squinted, many of them shaking their heads or shrugging.

  “It’s not…this way…at other schools,” I say.

  “You mean we are not white?” Jose says, and now the others are smiling.

  Sam laughs. “Chapters out in Iowa are just a bunch of white farmboys, huh?”

  “They have never seen a Mexican,” Jose says. “I would scare them.”

  “No,” I say. “That’s not I what I meant.”

  “Sure it was,” Sam says.

  “No. It’s just…some chapters are traditional.”

  “White is traditional?” Jose asks.

  “Tradition, ha,” says Brandon, the short and (by his own admission) enchilada-fattened black Treasurer for the chapter. Earlier today, while we drank on the porch at El Sombrero, Brandon and I talked for over 45 minutes about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Arizona Cardinals; he’s had Cardinals season tickets since he was a boy, he said, and they were the sorriest sports franchise you can imagine (“The Bucs had a rough stretch, too,” I argued, but he wouldn’t budge). But he’s fiercely loyal, kept telling me that dedication is the most important quality of a good citizen. It pays off, he said. Hell, if Arizona can win a Super Bowl, it’ll mean more to the dedicated fans because they stuck with it. “We’ve only been chartered for ten, twelve years,” Brandon says now. “There is no tradition here. That’s what I like. We’re building it.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” I say. “You have a choice of what you want to be.”

  “We met the brothers from LSU at the last National Convention,” Brandon says. “Five feet from us, and one of these pricks says, ‘They’re letting beaners into Nike now?’ Beaners, this guy said. I almost socked his ass. Who even uses that word?”

  “Like he memorized an episode of Carlos Mencia,” Sam says. “Psssh.”

  “Hmm,” Sam says, rubs his chin. “Diversity Initiative.”

  “Diversity Initiative,” I say. “Whether you know it or not, whether you planned it or not, you guys are making good choices. Setting good traditions.”

  “Obviously you don’t know us very well,” Sam says, and the table laughs.

  Jose turns to me. “Tell us about the ‘traditional’ chapters.”

  “One of my first chapter visits,” I say, “was at Green Valley, a little college in the mountains of Virginia. Town of about 5,000, including students. Southern kids who grew up in town, graduated, never left. Nike’s been around Green Valley since the ‘40s, so half the town is Nikes. The furniture store owner, the gas station owner, the mayor, the police chief. It’s like a country club. Lots of pressure in that school to be a Nike.”

  “Fucking inbreeding,” Sam says. “And I thought our school was bad.”

  “The more tradition, the more uptight everyone gets. Serious money on the line, and everyone’s fighting over it. The students, the university, the alumni, nationals.”

  “No money to fight over out here,” Sam says.

  “Just wait a decade or two. Until you’re an alumnus, and some 18-year-old kid is spraying beer all over the ceiling fan that you just installed in the chapter house.”

  “So this is a real job, then, Charlie?” Sam asks. “No joke?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “You get paid?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not in school, still?”

  “I graduated.”

  “Real job. And you just go house to house, hanging out? Is this fun?”

  “It has its moments. But it’s still a job.”

  “You’re visiting fraternities,” Sam says. “Frater-nities.”

  “I bet you get to see a lot of shit like our Etiquette Dinner, huh?” Brandon asks. “I bet you get to see some pretty cool parties.”

  “Chapters are scared of me,” I say. “They think I’m there to spy on them.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Doesn’t matter why I’m there. Most chapters hate me as soon as they meet me.”

  “That sucks. I’d go crazy if I were you.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “If I had to always be a bad guy.”

  The Fun Nazi business card, I’m thinking. Keep it flipped.

  “I’m not a bad guy,” I say. “I don’t want to be a bad guy, anyway.”

  “We gotta take you to Juarez,” Brandon says. “That settles it. You’re going. We’ll treat you like a brother, not a fucking spy.”

  “Okay?”

  “Seriously,” Sam says. “Take the night off, ‘kay? Have fun.”

  “I can’t take a night off,” I say. “I’m always on.”

  “I’ve seen you drink a dozen beers today, bro,” Sam says. “Can’t take a night off? Shit, if this is the working life, where do I sign up?”

  “No, honestly, I’ve got a Code of Conduct and everything. I can’t go overboard—”

  “Have another beer,” Brandon says.

  “We’ll call up Maria,” Sam says. “We’ll have a grand fucking time.”

  “Give this Maria stuff a rest, will you?”

  “Come on. This is a fraternity. Brothers take care of one another.”

  “It sounds nice,” I say. “But I could get in a whole lot of trouble for hooking up with some undergraduate girl. This is bigger than just, you know, a few beers. Dicey stuff.”

  “Don’t be a pussy,” Sam says. “How’s anyone going to take you seriously if you don’t hit that shit, yo? From, like, a professional standpoint, I don’t even think you’ve got a choice.”

  We talk “new member education” for a few minutes, and I slip in the possibility that, you know, maybe the Etiquette Dinner could’ve been intimidating
, and maybe tone it down so you, like, don’t get in trouble. You know? This isn’t me, I say. If it was up to me, hell, do whatever. I trust your judgment. But if a school administrator saw that: that’s what you’ve got to do, I say, think about how it looks to an outsider.

  “Sure,” Sam says. “I gotcha. Makes sense.”

  “Just wanna keep you all safe,” I say. “You’re already my favorite chapter, and I don’t want you getting in trouble for something so ticky-tacky.”

  Dinner ends. Beer at the house, they keep saying. A couple beers on a Sunday night, and so we pile back into Sam’s car and I’m given the front seat again but now there’s no end to the swearing. No caution flags, no loudspeaker warning that “THE EC IS IN THE CAR!” Now, it’s green lights and gas pedals to the floor and Sam saying, “I always have to fucking drive you clowns around,” and Carlos in the back saying, “I’m going to get so fucking ripped tonight, bro,” and someone else adding, “That Phi Mu is working bar on Tuesday night, man, and she is so fucking banging,” and “I want to bang the shit out of her,” and it’s a race track jam-packed with speeding swears and zipping 200-mile-per-hour disregard for professionalism, but it doesn’t matter because now I’m living on the blank side of the card.