American Fraternity Man

by Nathan Holic

He rubs his chin and stares out the windshield, where a baggage handler is mouthing “What’s the hold-up?” and is holding his palms out impatiently. But Sam raises a finger in a just-a-second gesture and continues to rub his chin. “It’s funny, you know?” he says. “Cause I keep thinking about it, ever since you first got here.”

  “Thinking about what?”

  “We’re similar, you and me.”

  “Are we?”

  “Yeah, bro. We’re practically the same fucking guy. I mean, we woke up in the same place together this morning, know what I’m saying?” And he smiles and hits my arm.

  “We did.”

  “This is my life, too,” Sam says. “This is like the only thing I care about.”

  “But I don’t know that this is a good thing,” I say. “There’s a lot more…”

  “No, fraternity is the only thing keeping me in school, bro. This is it. If I didn’t have the fraternity, I don’t know where I’d be. If I’d be anything. Fraternity is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “Sam,” I say. “I’m sure that isn’t true.”

  “This is all I care about,” he says again. “And it’s over come next semester.”

  My God: he sounds just like me, back in the hot tub.

  “It’s never over, Sam. The friends you have, the house, it’s always there.”

  “But I’m not living in it.”

  “No. But you’ll get a place off-campus. You’ll keep your friends. Then you’ll get married or whatever, and you’ll get a good job, real money.”

  “You think I’d make a good consultant?” he asks. Quiet and patient voice, not the loud wise-cracking smartass who forced each pledge to stand on a chair and absorb his insults at the Etiquette Dinner. And I see him perhaps for the first time. A world opens up. A whole life flashes before me. This is a boy whose father served in Iraq or Afghanistan, died probably, whose high school years drifted by in a haze of duplexes and double-wides and six-week stints at the houses of sympathetic aunts and uncles who quickly wearied, a boy who squeaked into college but never really wanted to be there, only went because he needed to get away from wherever he was, and then suddenly he was in a world of 100-person lecture halls and professors demanding papers and RAs patrolling dorms as if the 10 PM quiet hours were a life-or-death matter, and fee deadlines and a mother back home who said only, Don’t ask me for no help, you made your choice what to do with the money your father left you, and recruiters calling and a world collapsing and then…fraternity was there. Jose and Brandon and all the rest of them, best friends delivered by God himself, and the implosion halted, his life saved.

  I see him. For the first time this semester, I’m seeing someone.

  “Be honest,” Sam says. “This is all I got, brother.”

  “It doesn’t pay well,” I say. “And it’s tough on the road. Away from everyone.”

  “I don’t care,” he says. “Look. You come out here, you have a blast. It’s like a second family for you, and they listened to every word out of your mouth. They took notes. We made a budget for the first time ever. That’ll save us…how much money?”

  “Over ten thousand a year, the way we have it structured,” I say.

  “All I’m saying is, you made a difference, you know?”

  “Are you being serious?”

  “Totally. What could be a better job? Working with fraternity brothers. It’s all win-win. This is my life, and I just…I need it.”

  And I shouldn’t say it, but he looks as fragile as a sand castle on a shifting dune, and I owe him. “If you apply to be a consultant,” I say, “I’ll write a letter of recommendation.”

  “Thank you,” Sam says. “Oh God, thank you.”

  And as I make my way to the airline counter, as I’m processed from one checkpoint to the next, a long line of Blazers, I wonder how any of this happened. None of it feels real anymore. How did I get here? Alone? El Paso, in the middle of September, holding this luggage? All of it—the Etiquette Dinner, Mexico, alcohol, sexual intrigue, bathroom hijinx, Sam Anderson in the car, near tears—feels like the sort of thing I’d watch in a bad American Pie rip-off, not my own life. I hand over my baggage to the woman at the United counter, and for a flash of a second, as I lift my suitcase, I worry that all the extra clothes I bought at the mall, the bottle of souvenir green chile salsa from Café Ranchero and the six-pack of Dust Storm Amber Ale (brewed in Las Cruces) will push the weight of my bag past the allotted 50-pound limit that the airlines set…that I will have to pay a $50 or $75 extra fee for this flight…and then again for the flight to California…and again for the flight back to Pennsylvania.

  But there’s no problem at the counter.

  As I head to the security checkpoint to walk through the x-ray machine, I briefly worry about my necklace, too, about my shoes, about getting selected as the random passenger for a full search…and then I worry—as they screen my laptop—about what criticism I could possibly write in my report for NMSU (How can I write anything negative? When I was there, when I was participating the whole time?)—

  —but I’m through the checkpoint without a beep.

  *

  Just before boarding, my cell phone rings: Walter LaFaber.

  “How was New Mexico, Charles?” he asks.

  He is picturing me in shirt and tie right now, isn’t he? He’s standing at his window and staring out and picturing the Diamond Candidate, just finished with a chapter visit, just finished with workshops, set to write reports on his flight from Las Cruces to Lubbock.

  “Fine,” I say.

  “You sound tired.”

  “No,” I say. “That’s the sound of life, Walter. Hard work.”

  “You must have gotten a lot accomplished, then?”

  “Some big strides in Las Cruces.”

  “It’s always great to be exhausted,” LaFaber says, “but in a good way.”

  “Right.”

  “Just wanted to drop you a phone call. Make sure all is well with you. When you’re so familiar with the driving lifestyle, taking a detour through airline country can be jolting.”

  “I’m good,” I say. “Healthy. Listen, though. I’m about to board. Can I call you back? Later today, maybe? Or tomorrow?” And he agrees, and I hang up, and it’s that easy. There is no lecture, no “change the culture” call-and-response, no catalogue of fraternities-in-the-headlines, or alcohol infractions or famous alumni or lists of accomplishments from former consultants, no praise, no warnings, and I hold the phone in my hand and wait for it to ring again but it doesn’t.

  PART III

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. Onward.

  New Mexico State to Texas Tech.

  A thousand miles from Indianapolis, from the Nu Kappa Epsilon Headquarters, and now—back in Las Cruces—Sam Anderson likely daydreams a consultant’s life. Parties every night, he’s thinking. Girls’ dorm rooms in Pennsylvania and South Carolina and Colorado. Oh, living the dream! What could possibly be better? So he needs me, Sam Anderson does, and any talk of Charles Washington—Charles Washington?—cavorting about with sorority girls, shooting tequila in Juarez—Charles Washington? The guy with all the goals?—any talk that would tarnish my reputation will only tarnish the recommendation letter that I write.

  Texas Tech.

  After hours of surprisingly productive one-on-one meetings and database updates and an emotional “Confront Your Brother” workshop that sees old friendships in the chapter rekindled, old conflicts extinguished, the students whisper among themselves, planning and conspiring to take me out to the bars and get me wasted, and I respond with a lackluster protest (“No, no, I represent the National Headquarters, I’m responsible for enforcing alcohol rules”) but it’s mostly for their sake, so that the fraternity brothers—when they actually succeed in getting me loaded—can feel as if they’ve achieved some small victory against the rule-imposing Evil Empire of “Nationals.”

  And for some reason, Texas Tech is a Miller Genuine Draft chapter, and so we split an ic
y bucket of MGD bottles at my Wednesday night Executive Board dinner in Lubbock, and down 2-for-1 MGDs during a Thursday night Happy Hour at Wanda’s (voted one of the top tequila bars in West Texas). “I can’t believe he’s going out with us,” I overhear one of the brothers say. “This has been the best consultant visit ever.”

  Wednesday night at Texas Tech to

  *

  To Thursday night, when I get so drunk that I have to cancel the Alcohol Responsibility workshop that we’d planned for Friday afternoon. “It wouldn’t be right, talking about alcohol abuse when I look like this,” I tell their president, rubbing my eyes and sipping water. “You guys got lucky. It’s a long fucking presentation.” We understand, we understand, he says. That’s cool, bro. You’re the best. “Just don’t say a word of this to anyone,” I tell him. “I don’t ever get drunk on chapter visits.” No, no, he says. Not a word. “And I can transform back into a Fun Nazi in a heartbeat,” I say. “Then it’s workshop workshop worksop. Investigations. Infractions. You know what I’m talking about.” I know, he says, and we’re both referring to the kegs that they hide in the chapter lodge, an offense which could end them…if I pushed the issue.

  Thursday night in the Texas Tech lodge, to

  *

  To sometime after 1 AM, and I’m standing outside the lodge in the chilly darkness of a mid-September night, MGD in one hand and cell phone in the other. Inside, the brothers are blasting Kid Rock and howling together in a sloppy chorus of voices that they’re “Drinking whiskey out the bottle, not thinkin’ ‘bout tomorrow, singin’ ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ all summer long!” Jenn has been leaving messages all week, but I’ve avoided the call-back because I’m afraid of how I’ll sound when we speak. Is it possible that she’ll sniff out the other girl still lingering on me? Each of Jenn’s messages has grown more frantic than the last, and out in Florida the bars have closed, she’s home, so finally I call her back, though I try to give the impression that I’m tired, that my days have been filled with meetings, that I’m living in constant jet-lag, and that my hectic schedule has made it difficult to find time for a phone conversation. A real conversation. You know, Jenn? One of those talks that matter, where we talk all night about Seinfeld and Futurama and fathers and future families and all that? Jenn’s voice, by contrast, sounds scratchy, and she explains that it’s because she cheered so much at the Homecoming Spirit Rally the night before. “Do you even realize what time it is?” she asks.

  “I didn’t,” I say. “I forgot about the time difference.”

  “I forgive you,” she says raspily. “What time does your flight get in tomorrow night?”

  “My flight? I don’t leave here until the weekend.”

  “Well, I’ll be at the game on Saturday. Who’s picking you up from the airport?”

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead,” I say.

  “You haven’t been calling me back. You don’t tell me things.”

  “I’ve been busy,” I say. “I don’t have my Explorer, so I can’t get a second to myself.”

  “Is that Kid Rock in the background?”

  “Huh? Oh, right. These guys love that stuff.”

  “So what time”—she coughs, clears her throat. “So what time are you flying in?”

  “Not sure. Noon, maybe?”

  “Who’s picking you up?”

  “I need to call the guys at Fresno,” I say. “I don’t know.”

  “Fresno? What does that have to do with anything?”

  “My next visit is Fresno State.”

  “That’s…” she starts, scratchy voice suddenly inflamed with emotion. “That’s not what we’re talking about, Charles.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. I’m in Lubbock, and I’m flying to Fresno.”

  “Homecoming, Charles. Homecoming here at Edison.”

  I rub the stubble on my cheeks, run my fingers along my smooth forehead, perhaps waiting for the world to offer some interruption, a car horn, a plane overhead, but although an occasional breeze rolls past there is only quiet here in Lubbock. Homecoming. In two days. The single mid-semester weekend on which I’d promised Jenn that I’d return home. I’ve forgotten to clear my schedule, to book plane tickets. And while I know that what she should really care about is seeing me, and while I could promise to fly back three weeks from now instead (a compromise!), I also know that this weekend has become symbolic for her.

  It was supposed to have been symbolic for me, too, I realize suddenly. Just months ago—was it only months?—I was imagining a crowd of fraternity brothers surrounding me to sing the Sweetheart Song, Jenn crying as she ran her fingers over the lavalier. I’d imagined sour milk over my head. Hog-tied. A glorious ass-beating. I’d imagined myself tied to the light pole on Greek Row, with Jenn working furiously to free me so that we could go back to the hotel room I’d booked across town…I’d imagined something nice, the Ritz-Carlton, even though I don’t have money for plane tickets let alone for a nice hotel…and I’d imagined the kind of sex I would remember. Not the hot tub kind, not the tequila-drunk kind. Not romantic-comedy sex, either, or ‘80s action movie sex, blue-light special with drapes blowing in the breeze and silhouettes making window-shadows while “Take My Breath Away” breathed behind us. I’d imagined the kind of sex where maybe I’d shower the crap off myself, the yolks and the OJ pulp slipping into the drain and Charles Washington feeling cleaner than he’d ever felt, renewed, and Jenn would be waiting in the room in a hotel robe with only the lavalier around her neck, and then she’d walk slowly to me and I’d slip my hands beneath the folds of the robe and brush it back from her shoulders and it would just be her and the necklace and before I pulled her face to mine and pressed my body against hers I would say, “This is the start. When I get back to Florida, I’ll have a different piece of jewelry for you.” And then—oh, you can imagine the sex then.

  “I can look up some prices,” I say. “Hotwire.com. Bad flights, crazy expensive at this point, but I’m sure there are spots.”

  “Oh please,” she says. “I just want to hear you say it, Charles.”

  “I can make this happen. I’ll get back there.”

  “I want to hear you say that you didn’t book your tickets,” she says.

  “I’m looking for solutions, Jenn,” I say, and there’s a sudden urgency to my voice that I didn’t anticipate. “Solutions. Come on, help me out here.”

  “I want to hear you say that you forgot.”

  “No, I remember. I was just waiting.”

  “Waiting for what? You don’t care. Just say it.”

  “I do care, Jenn. I’m trying to take care of this right now.”

  “Are you high or something?” she asks. “What’s so important about your fucking job that you can’t even call me, that you can’t visit on the one day I care about?”

  “I’m not on drugs, Jenn.”

  “Just say it, Charles. Say what it is.”

  “Jenn, really.”

  “You never booked the tickets. That should tell me something, right? This isn’t like, ‘Hey, remember to call my sister for her birthday,’ and then forgetting. You could have bought tickets back in July, when you were at your office. And you lied about it.”

  “I didn’t know the itinerary for my other flights yet.”

  “Keep telling yourself that.”

  “I’m telling you the truth, Jenn. This is…you don’t understand life on the road.”

  “Here we go. Really, Charles, I’m through with this crap.”

  “Through with what crap? This is my life.”

  “You’re really not coming?” she asks.

  “Just…it’ll be fine. Homecoming will be fine without me, okay?” And now I’m angry, like she’s the one who ripped the dream from me. Look at what I was willing to put myself through: a flight from Texas, the baggage, the lines, the security checkpoints, the Blazers and their leadership books, the take-off, the landing, the decompression headache, the hotel room and rental car, the lavalier, t
he eggs, the swollen wrists and rope-burn and near-suffocation from the hog-tie. Look at what I was willing to do, to go through, and she didn’t appreciate it? “You’ll be just fine. Dancing, drinking to your heart’s content. You’ve got the Jenn Outlook, after all.”

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “I want you to hear yourself,” I say. “This isn’t the Jenn I know. I’m offering to come back, to make this work. If you don’t want me to, that’s on you.”

  “Enjoy the fucking desert,” she says and the line goes silent, and I’m standing outside in the eerie stillness of West Texas with the phone pressed against my ear, Kid Rock having faded to Uncle Kracker or the Zac Brown Band or something. Seconds pass, then minutes, and I know I’m not talking with anyone anymore and I know that there’s no reason to continue standing here like this, but a month ago this would have shattered me, my future consumed in a destructive blaze: all those mature images I’d dreamed of the way life was supposed to be post-college, Jenn as my sorority-girl wife, the two of us living in a downtown condo and driving back to EU for Homecoming every year, wearing NKE and  “Alumni” shirts, young professionals, world figured out. But now, here where the sky is crisp blackness stretching from one horizon to the next over the undeveloped curvature of the Earth, I breathe deeply and try to convince myself once again that blank space is better. If we work it out, we work it out.

  Thursday at Texas Tech to

  *

  To Saturday night, which passes without a single phone call or text from Jenn.

  Convince the brothers to drive me somewhere with cheap drink specials.

  Wedge myself into a crowded college bar called “Moonshine,” blonde hair and skirts and glitter everywhere, girls in cowboy hats and boots, asses bursting from the bottoms of their shredded jean shorts, near-riot breaking out on the dance floor when the country music makes way for Rihanna. Keep myself surrounded, MGD in hand, head nodding, so that I don’t think about her, so that I don’t think about the way my life was supposed to be when I returned home. Saturday night at Moonshine, then Sunday morning at Lubbock’s airport to