The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters

by Chip Kidd

  “We need some sort of secret signal,” I offered, “in case we're stuck in a conversation and really want to get going.”

  “Okay, our secret signal will be, ‘Say, let's blow this piss-ridden meat pit.’ ”

  “Fine.”

  We advanced to the main hall, already aroar with a saturnalia of sozzled gestures and gibbering. The air was a rancid-sock tang of beer—on the breath of all and spilled on the backs of the unsuspecting with clumsy fake apologies. A fleet of aluminum kegs lined the base of each wall, all fitted with acrylic taps stamped with the logo for a brand that could be had for pennies a gallon and was rumored to be brewed purely from Skuylkill River runoff. I stood in line to get us two jars. Suddenly the room went dark and people started chanting in unison.

  “Snake! Snake! Snake! Snake! Whoooohoooo!” A spotlight snapped on, focused to a far corner. Claps and cheers, as a penny-pretty blonde got up onto a wooden dinner table and stepped into the glare. Two goons in Fiji sweaters joined her, one holding a rubber hose and a funnel, the other with two glass pitchers of beer. They had everyone's attention. She got on her knees and folded her arms behind her, to wild screams of approval.

  “Snake! Snake! Snake! Snake! Sna—”

  The frantic mantra drove her on, as she threw back her head, closed her eyes, and opened her mouth. The tube was lowered, her lips clutched it, and the hose goon fit the funnel into the other end, which he held up like Miss Liberty's torch. The brew goon, on tiptoe, held the pitchers to either side of the funnel.

  “Snake! Snake! Snake! Snake! Sna —”

  He slowly tilted them symmetrically, producing a steady stream. The tube shuddered and she gave a slight recoil with the first gulp, then opened up her throat to allow for the flow. Her body started to undulate, slightly at first, then building into spasms.

  Half the beer to go. No stopping. I found myself chanting along with the crowd. Her nostrils flared to pull in oxygen. A quarter left. She was jerking now, but still in a measure of control. Occasionally it would fill her and leak out the sides of her mouth, but she'd rebound and suck it back up and into her gullet. The slightest flame of teared eyeshadow started to bloom from the edge of each lid.

  “Ulllk!”

  And it was done. Unanimous approval.

  “HHHHHHYYYYYAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY!”

  She was on all fours, heaving air, trying to hide the panic. Then she sat back on her haunches, eyes closed, and smiled the smile of a drowned corpse. The goons got her to her feet. And the cheering went on for minutes, till the lights and ukulele music came up.

  I brought Swoozie her Skuylkill punch. “You catch the floor show?”

  “Serves her right, that hosebag.” She bolted the brew.

  “Hey there, doll, refill?” A towering guy in a Hawaiian shirt whose shining face looked very familiar cocked a pitcher at Swoozie. Oh my God—yes, it was him.

  “Sure, slugger.”

  But his pitcher was empty. “Shucks. Be back in a sec. Don't move.”

  He went to fill it. I was in disbelief.

  “Do you know who that is?”

  “What, that big jamoke? Damfino.”

  “Hims— Swoozie, that's Lacy Rocklins.”

  “Who—?”

  “The quarterback. I thought you read the Collegian.”

  Appalled. “Not the sports page.”

  “Jesus, try the front page.”

  The Lawrence C. Rocklins story had been the multiteated dog that college newspaper stringerpups just dream of sucking from. Despite his modest beginnings (naturally), little Lacy showed great promise on the field from the age of ten. Won a scholarship. Then, in one of those situations that'd seem woefully contrived if you saw it in a movie—as a freshman he was called on to sub for the quarterback (due to an unlikely combination of injury and illness, taking out the first and second stringers) in the squeaker of the year against Georgia Tech. Bagged it in a spectacular thirty-yard bomb with two seconds to go, and has started ever since. He was still only a junior, with his senior year to look forward to, and the pros after that.

  It was also reported, more that once, that Lacy was one of identical twins—the other having died in the womb.

  “Here ya go. Fill 'er up, Miss—?”

  And just looking at him, I knew why: even as a fetus this guy couldn't stand any competition. He filled Swoozie's glass. I held mine up. He ignored it.

  “Moonshoe. Swoozie Moonshoe.” Flawless straight face, like it was etched on her birth certificate. “And this is my cousin, Derrick.”

  Gee, thanks a lot.

  “I'd have remembered a knockout like you, Swooze,” Lacy crooned. “You a transfer?”

  Mr. Smoothie. Please. Hims didn't disappoint.

  “Oh, Lucy, are you out of your tits? I go to Babson.”

  “Lacy.” He was caught off guard, probably for the first time in three seasons. “R-really. Gosh . . . do you know Casey Carmichael?”

  Mills nodded at the name. “Know her. God, we practically have the same spit.”

  “Wow. She's swell. Is she really pinned to a Beta?”

  “A Beta?”

  “Beta Theta Pi?”

  “Nah. Apple Brown Betty, actually.”

  He tried to place it. “Hmm. Do they have a chapter here?” Not joking.

  “Um,” she bit back a smirk. “Beats me. Actually, it's funny you asked about her. Isn't it a shame?” She became serious.

  “What?”

  Whoever Casey was, I felt sorry for her already.

  “Oh. Never mind. Thought you heard.”

  “Aw, don't leave me hanging, I won't tell. Casey's a great gal, I think the world of her.”

  “Well, you're not alone on that score.”

  “Oh?”

  “Last weekend . . . oh, I really shouldn't.”

  “Swooze, please?” Amazing. She was making the BMOC into her pinky ring.

  “Oh, all right . . . but you did NOT hear it from me.”

  “Scouts.” He held up his right hand.

  “Well.” We huddled. Thrilling. Lacy, Derrick, and Swoozie: the State center of the universe. “It seems that Case had to be . . . rushed, to Emergency.”

  “No soap! Is she all right?”

  “Well, she is now. But they had to pump her stomach.”

  “Drink too much?”

  “Yes, actually. But not . . . hootch.”

  “No? What then?”

  “Now remember, you dragged this out of me . . .” She gave it her coquettish best. “Jism. At least a pint.”

  Lacy reared in shock.

  “And it wasn't just one—”

  “Pardon—” He turned and bolted for the kegs.

  I leaned into her. “Swooze, ease up.”

  “Derrick, can I help it if Casey Carmichael is just a bouncing, bubbly bed bauble?” She drained her jar and signaled for more. I obliged.

  “So Swooze,” I asked, when I got back, “whaddaya think Winter's gonna lay on Hap and Girleeny for the final crit?”

  She sighed. “Oh, he'll probably go easy on 'em, like ‘redo the Sistine Chapel ceiling with me as God’, or ‘design a hangar big enough for my ego.’ Something simple.”

  After ten or so minutes, Lacy came back.

  “Hey, Swoozie, you up for a kick?”

  “Sure.”

  He motioned for us to follow. We went out of the main hall and turned into a small brick passageway. A left, and then fifty feet to an oak door. Lacy pounded three times—once, a beat, then twice. It creaked open. The din of another party leaked out. We descended steps, sort of down to a Skeller within the frat house. Fascinating. A full service bar down here. Pledges darted about, stepping and fetching for the brothers—some at tables, playing cards and quarters; others leaning on the bar issuing casual demands. Lacy asked us our pleasure.

  “Martinis,” Swoozie chimed, and that's when I noticed, with not a little unease: she was the only girl here.

  She lit a cig and met all the stares with, “What's the matt
er? Never seen a skirt before?” A few chuckles, a few sneers.

  Not in here, Miss Moonshoe.

  A nervous pledge came up to me with a fat roll of ones and started to take bets.

  “What'll ya have? Three or three-ten. Rest are taken.”

  “For what?”

  He looked at me as the tourist I was.

  “The bluck chug.”

  Vermont had taught me the term when he was rushing AGR. Bluck: the noisome effluvia that collects on a frat's basement floor—a combination of spilt beer, grime, puke, and piss. My eyes strained in the stale light, to gutters that ringed the room, which caught and drained it into a single shoe box–sized basin in one of the corners. By eleven-thirty it was a good six inches deep.

  “Th-three.” I handed him two bucks. “Um, three, what, actually?”

  “Minutes, squid.” He handed me a little red carnival ticket with the number on it and left for the next brother, muttering, “. . . three-ten left . . .”

  Lacy started tapping on a glass with a spoon. Soon all the brothers joined in. The pledges put down whatever they were doing and gathered in the center of the room. Playing cards were dealt to each of them and affixed with tape to their foreheads. They all looked as if they were waiting for biopsy results.

  Lacy presented Swoozie with a deck and bowed. “Doll, you may have the honors.”

  “Cut it?” she asked. He nodded. She picked up half the stack.

  “Four of clubs.” Looks all around. No one had it.

  “Try again.”

  “Ace of hearts.”

  Shouts, as a boy with the matching card on his face wobbled forward, accompanied by a brother holding a stopwatch. Beads of sweat sprouted on his temples. Lacy went over to the bluck drain, dipped a large shotglass into it, and hoisted it up—full to the brim. It looked like molasses and smelled just the opposite.

  Ace of hearts, terrified, took it from him, his trembling hand threatening to lose it.

  “Skizzy, you ready?” asked Lacy.

  “Check,” grinned the stopwatch goon.

  “Okay, on the count of three . . .”

  “One! ” the brothers wailed in unison.

  Ace shut his eyes.

  “Two!

  ” And closed his nose. “

  Three!! ”

  And, yeek, filled his mouth. His bottom lip shook violently, ready to jettison all of it.

  “You spit it out, you drink two,” said Lacy, calm but firm, like a mother with a sick child who doesn't want his Vicks. Ace squeezed his eyes tighter and downed it in one greasy gulp. He lifted the empty glass and Skizzy started the timer.

  “Ten seconds . . . twenty . . . ”

  Ace's peepers opened.

  “. . . thirty . . . forty . . .”

  And bulged.

  “. . . fifty . . . one minute . . .”

  His torso: in peril. Quaking.

  “. . . seventy seconds . . .”

  Gasping. Ready to burst.

  “In the trough, Einstein, in the TROUGH.” Lacy snapped.

  He just made it to the bluck basin before erupting in a wet explosion that sounded like a giant pig falling to its death. Then he passed out.

  “Eighty seconds.” Skizzy clicked the button.

  “Yeah,” Lacy said, lazily. “You never buy bluck, you only rent it.”

  “A minute twenty!” roared a letter-sweatered Neanderthal the size of a DeSoto with four leis around his neck and a beer stein in the shape of half a football in each hand. “I win!”

  Swoozie looked at them all like a microbiologist observing malignant germs on a slide.

  Then the barking started.

  A three-hundred-pound, seven-foot-tall Sal Mineo just started howling like a Saint Bernard in heat. Another joined him, and then everybody did. Swooze gaped at me in wonderment— astray in hell's kennel. Something, skittering across the floor, bumped into my leg and headed for the middle of the room, joining the others— the pledges, on all fours. Dogs, screaming, pawing the cobblestone floor.

  “Alright,” Lacy declared, quieting them down. They sat like adoring pets and waited for instruction. “Who has a joke? Someone, amuse me.”

  “I do, sir,” panted a stocky, black-haired guy with a unibrow and a neck as thick as an oak stump.

  “Okay, you. If it makes me laugh, you may get up.”

  “Yessir.” He cleared his throat. “W-why didn't the niggers mind when their baby was stillborn?”

  “Dunno.”

  “At least they knew where their next meal was coming from.”

  Jesus.

  Lacy broke up, as did everybody else—Derrick and Swoozie excepted. “Alright, good job, Tinky.” The lummox stood.

  “Me next, sir?” said another dog-boy, with red hair and freckles—an Irish setter? Lacy nodded to him.

  “Why'd they bury the nigger in a turtleneck?” asked Irish.

  “I'll bite.”

  “To hide the rope burn!”

  A real yuckfest. A nice pat on the head for Irish.

  Swoozie threw her cig on the floor and crushed it. She looked, as she would put it, miles south of charmed.

  “Hey, LUCE!” She yelled, and a startled hush descended—she had the floor. “I heard a real oner the other day.”

  Lacy: bemused. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. How many football players does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

  His face: a dark question mark. Didn't answer.

  “Six. They each get three credits for it and still end up screwing each other by mistake!”

  Angry silence, everywhere. Then hisses. This was not good. I whispered hotly into her ear.

  “Himillsy, that's the limit. Let's blow this pissridden meat pit, when I get back from the can, I mean it!”

  “After we get our drinks.”

  I went to the john, off of one corner, and holed up in a booth. Just as I was wiping, two people barged in and I heard a familiar voice.

  “-king bitch. Teach her. Hell with her cousin . . . ”

  I finished and put my eye to the gap between the door and the jamb.

  “That it? Swell.” Could just make it out: A Feege goon and . . . Lacy, pouring a fine white powder into a martini glass. Stirred. The door squeaked and I couldn't see them anymore. I put my head to the floor—no feet.

  I slipped out of the loo, cracking the door onto the main room of the cellar and easing myself out. Oh, no—Lacy was talking to Swooze, who swilled, slurped . . . and swooned. Into his arms.

  Animal cheers.

  Lacy: heading up the stairs. Carrying Hims.

  No. No.

  Me: hopeless, helpless. Impossible to follow them—they'd all be on me like mush-huskies with a pork chop.

  My heart: destroying itself.

  I slid against the wall, looking for an escape route. None. No fire exit, or any other way out. Something scraped across my back. I turned—a knob. A row of knobs. Not labeled, but they had to be . . .

  I studied them, then the path to the steps. Closed my eyes to memorize it, opened them, and in a single stroke, turned all the switches to Off.

  Nightfall.

  Made a break for it, pushing through the pitch bluck black, the air stolen to the hoots and shrieks of the lout menagerie, which pawed at me and fought itself in the dark, in the hot beer breath. Someone grabbed my arm. I thrashed and wriggled out of the sweater and kept going. I found the stairs, and charged for the door. Just through it, the lights came back on.

  Into the passageway. No one in sight. Footsteps, shouts, behind me.

  The main hall. I struggled through gaggles of Fiji Islanders to lose the dogs and get to the grand staircase. At the top: Lacy and his prize, leaving the balcony. I bounded up the steps and into a hall of suites, just in time to see the door to Lacy's pull shut, the lock clicked.

  Shit!

  Think, think. It worked in the basement— maybe if I found the main power switch for the whole place, I could . . . forget it. Take too long.

  An
d . . . no, not the lights, the . . . yes!

  Racing like a madman. Whereisitwhereisit. Has to has to be here. No luck . . . but weren't they required by law on all campus buildings? Came to a door marked UTILITY CLOSET. Pulled it open. Yes! Sweet Jesus: a red Bakelite unit, on the far wall, in the dark. I pulled the ceiling bulb's ball-bearing cord to read it.

  IN CASE OF EMERGENCY BREAK GLASS

  With what? Pounded. Cracks. Got out my dorm keys. Made them into brass knuckles.

  Crick! Crick! Hurry! He could be . . . no don't think it, don't think it pull at the glass, the metal handle. Jerked it.

  CLLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAANNNNNGG!

  The sprinklers went off. Somewhere people started shouting.

  I sprang from the closet and screamed my lungs out, running, banging on doors. “Fire! FIRE! Everybody OUT!” Beat on Lacy's. “Lace! Lace! Fire! Hup TO buddy!” I ran around the corner and hid so I could see his door. Come on, you big jamoke. And please be alone . . .

  It popped open a moment later. The fairhaired Frankenstein was furiously tucking his shirt back in his pants. Muttering vague profanity, he shielded his face against the sprinklers and went down the hall to investigate. When the coast was clear, I bolted into the room.

  She was lying on the lower bunk, still Swoozie. Out cold. I yanked off the wig, threw it out the window, and put her arms around my neck. Lifted.

  Into the hallway. Pandemonium. People running now, every which way, including me. From the balcony I looked down onto a soggy, orderless glob of havoc. I turned and made for the other end of the hall through the spray. Followed two brothers to a back stairwell. Down it. Tried two doors. Wouldn't budge. Another flight of steps to a third, which opened, onto . . . the lawn.

  On a trip to the zoo when I was seven, my cousin and I were presented with the opportunity to hold in our very own hands a large and supposedly harmless African tarantula. My response was to pass out immediately. But Jay, two years older and never known to shy away from anything that held the possibility of total catastrophe, practically grabbed it. When I came to, I asked him what it was like. His response was uncharacteristically thoughtful: