The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 11. Freshman Year - Chapter 11

Erik got his bid to Iota Chi on the Monday of rush week.

“Well, of course Erik would be the first,” Brett Morton told me, as if I was an idiot for not figuring this out. Morton was on bar duty; I’d been lingering, but he promised to take me around to meet a few of the other guys during the barbecue. Barbecue was what it was officially called--enough girls had infiltrated the event, so it was pretty indistinguishable from their actual parties. I hadn’t seen any food either, which meant we were drinking on an empty stomach--how were we supposed to know a barbecue didn’t include food?

“Could’ve been any of us,” I replied. “I mean, we all come around the same amount.”

“No homo or anything,” Morton said, “but he’s a good-looking guy. And good-looking guys bring around hot girls. Which he does. So, you know, cool guy who brings hot girls? Monday bid.”

“I bring hot girls,” I told him.

“Everyone knows Michaela,” he replied, handing out beers to a group of girls. “And she’s not plural, by the way. One hot girl. You bring one hot girl. And she’s a girl Baker freaking went to high school with, so she barely counts. Please. Erik was a shoo-in for Monday. But don't worry. We've got you and Tripp covered.”

Erik seemed to be the only person who didn’t think he was a shoo-in; he was hedging his bets, just like I was, about an hour before the Monday night barbecue when we were playing Battlescar on Tripp’s Playstation: “I don’t think I’ll pledge anywhere. Fraternities just aren’t my scene.”

It was the kind of unprompted comment that we all knew he was just trying to sneak into the conversation, in the event he got snubbed. We didn’t believe him even then. As soon as Brett Morton came up to him, and asked him to go upstairs for a second, he had this goofy, irrepressible smile stuck on his face, and that whole nonchalant fiction of being too cool for fraternities evaporated.

“Well, of course I said yes,” he replied. He was actually giddy. It was a very strange look for Erik, who usually wore it too close to the chest. “I mean, you can’t say no to something like that.” And then, either remembering that Tripp and I had not managed bids by this point or just wanting to be even more patronizing--I couldn’t tell the difference between Erik’s condescension and his empathy; they were awfully similar--he hopped in with, “No, but I’m sure you guys will get bids too. I can tell these things.”

Erik was oh-so-wise, what with his ten minutes of having a bid.

After Erik got his bid, there was suddenly renewed urgency. Tripp and I, for our part, were being led around by Brett Morton, slaving away at meeting everyone who came out of the woodwork for rush week, trying to hope our connections to Morton and Chris Baker would be enough to push us over the finish line. Tripp and I hadn’t discussed how bullish we were on pledging--our conversations ended with a shrugged, “It might be cool,” to save face in the very real event that we would not get bids--but we both knew each other well enough to know the truth of how badly we wanted this.

“You’re being uncharacteristic,” Chris Baker told me, later that evening, once he was free of his own bar duty shift, and came over to hang on around Morton. “Uncharacteristically social.”

“I’m a man on a mission,” I told him, which was also uncharacteristic of me to show my cards--I was a little drunk, and high on adrenaline as Morton took us around.

It caught me off-guard, really, by how bad I wanted to pledge Iota Chi.

I knew it’d be fun, I knew I wanted to continue hanging around with Chris Baker and Brett Morton and Kevin Malley, and all of them, but I could handle the next three years without them.

I couldn’t without Tripp or Erik and, sure, it was that brewing paranoia that I suspected always bubbled under the surface, and the kind of people that would drop me from dance cards because I didn’t make it into their fraternity wouldn’t be sufficient long-term friends anyway, but I wasn’t listening to that kind of logic. I just saw, again in my mind, Erik and Tripp going off together, forging a different life with new people, me sitting alone on a Friday night with Erik’s roommate Barry, watching him play World of Warcraft on his ribboned-off side of the room until he went to bed at 9pm.

Obviously, logic dictated it wouldn’t happen exactly like that, but there was the nagging tempest brewing in my stomach that I just couldn’t get over--everything not snatched away in a moment of melodrama, but just falling away bit by bit, driven by inertia.

The only solace I had was that Tripp was in the same boat as me.

Baker seemed to sense the urgency too, the necessity in selling us off as fraternal chattel; he joined Morton, and they both began to trot us around.

“From D.C.,” I batted back to Tyler Gottschalk, a freckle-faced junior who I hadn’t even seen before, let alone met.

“Nice,” he said. He had a rich Cajun accent, sloshy and slow. “I interned last summer in D.C. Charles Boustany.”

I didn’t know much about Congressman Boustany, except that he was from northern Louisiana. My dad tended to avoid social contact with representatives. “The House is a zoo,” he said once, dismissively, even though he’d spent three terms on the fifth floor of Cannon, the cheap seats of the Congressional office buildings, and feasted on every minute of it.

“Becker’s dad’s a Senator, actually,” Chris sold, going straight for the low-hanging fruit. I bristled a bit at that, and not just because Chris Baker was actually a terrible salesman, lurching from issue to issue, sweat gathering on his forehead. It was so uncomfortable, all of this. At Harrington, everyone would know what everyone else’s dad did, but it wasn’t a lingering topic--everyone’s dad was impressive. Senator from Nevada was noted and then promptly ignored at a school attended by congressional children from fabled political dynasties and less provincial states, whose alumni network included erstwhile First Children and the occasional Kennedy.

“Well, yeah,” I tried to recover, but what more could you say to that? “Nevada.”

Thankfully, Tyler Gottschalk seemed to be appropriately impressed. “David Becker’s your dad?”

I nodded.

“Do you know Patti Hall?” he asked. “She interned in his office, I think, last summer.”

I did not know Patti Hall. I didn’t know interns in my dad’s office--I knew his chief of staff, his scheduler, the deputy chief in the Las Vegas office that was in charge of shuttling us around when we were forced to Nevada, and could probably recognize faces, but that was it. I’d only been to my dad’s office in Dirksen a handful of times, mostly under duress.

“Name sounds familiar,” I decided, judiciously, and that seemed to satisfy this uncomfortably transactional conversation, because the focus then switched over to Tripp.

The rest of the evening was like that, as we got progressively more intoxicated: the stilted conversations, meeting people, Chris Baker and Brett Morton trying desperately to hawk us like used cars, us trying to prove our worth, and I hated every second of it.

Not because people like Tyler Gottschalk weren’t nice--they seemed cool, for as little as I got to know about them--but because of how intentional this all seemed, how much pressure there seemed to be lobbed on top of me. I didn’t have the political gift of gab, like my dad did or Philip did--it was exhausting being so consciously effervescent.

By the time the night was fizzling out, Chris Baker and I had given up and retreated over to the corner by the stairs to survey the dwindling room, per usual.

“You’ll be fine,” he told me, taking a sip of beer. “Everyone likes you a lot.”

I didn’t want to play any of my cards, tell him this was important to me, so I just shrugged. Because if everyone liked me, like everyone liked Erik, I wouldn’t be working the room.

He seemed to gather my anxiousness, because he just continued on with, “I told you, almost no one gets a bid on Monday.”

“Erik did.”

“Almost no one,” he repeated. “And I was surprised he went that early, to be honest. There was some concern over him ditching polo practice all the time. Time commitment and shit.”

“Oh, he’s fine,” I replied. “Ditching here and there isn’t a big deal.”

Chris Baker pursed his lips, in silent disagreement, but said nothing more on the topic of Erik Fontenot. “You’ll be fine, though. We’re giving bids out all week and I’m pulling for you.”

That didn’t really help, but at the very least, it was nice to know Chris Baker was in my corner. I hadn’t ever really doubted that, but this was the first time I really appreciated it.

“Thanks,” I said.

“No problem, bud,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine.”

“I don’t have a lot of time,” I told Kevin, as he ushered me inside the house on Lowerline Street. “I told Tripp I was picking up something.”

He had a half-smoked blunt in his hand--he was shirtless, basketball shorts, he looked utterly fantastic in the dim living room. It took all of my strength not to pounce on him right in the middle of the living room.

“What’d you say you were picking up?”

I grinned. “I didn’t get that far.”

“Okay,” he said. “So you came to pick up something. And I made you stay to smoke a bowl.”

“It’s a Monday,” I told him, looking down at the blunt--though I didn’t intend for it to come out so judgmental. “I mean, I’m already drunk and I have a nine tomorrow.”

He put on a devilish smile. “You’re not actually going to smoke a bowl, dumbass. You’re going to smoke my cock.”

I was not expecting that. The graphic language, of course--I had fully come over here expecting some sort of sexual play; his insistent texts over the last thirty-six hours of us being back on campus weren’t subtle either.

He had his hand on my shoulder, he leaned in close--his eyes were bloodshot, I could smell he was freshly showered. Smelled like soap and pot smoke, his two loves.

“What about your roommates?”

“Library,” he whispered, leaning in even further, his lips millimeters from mine, and then he kissed me. “I’ve been wanting to do that.”

“Good,” I told him, and we kissed again, this time firmer, this time his hand coming up to the small of my back to pull me in closer.

He broke off. “Let’s go to my room.”

And he held my hand, which was weird--not bad weird, just another thing that was unexpected from Kevin Malley--and led me back to his room. The whole house was dark--he was here alone, and it was winter, which always seemed darker, even this late at night.

“I missed you,” he said, locking the door behind us. “I was thinking about you.”

I’d, of course, spent far too much time thinking about Kevin Malley over break. Tossing the scenarios in my head over and over. His texts, at least until we got back to campus yesterday, were utterly devoid of romance: the random thoughts that popped into his head. Kevin was one of those people who liked to share whatever came across his mind, even if it was to me, over text, three thousand miles from him.

The thought of Kevin Malley sitting in his room in California, shirtless and basketball shorts, blunt in hand, thinking about me--that was pretty incredible.

And I wondered what he was thinking about--why he was being so forward now. We’d broken the ice--his nervousness seemed to have evaporated. He’d clearly had more experience in this scenario than I had, both sexually and emotionally.

He was already unbuttoning my shirt, his lips racing down my jawbone, one pucker at a time. Then my neck, then my shoulders. He threw my shirt to the ground, kissed down my stomach, then began to work on my jeans, sitting me down on the edge of the bed.

I was already hard by the time he unsheathed it--I was pretty much hard from the second I agreed to come over to the Lowerline house after the Iota Chi barbecue. And his mouth was hot and wet, and oh, God, he sucked fantastic dick. Not that I had a frame of reference.

He moved to my balls, popped one in his mouth like a gumball, then to the next, then back. Licked his way back up, and sucked, and repeated, and I felt the room melting away, the chills running up my spine. I closed my eyes. I could be anywhere.

Then I abruptly opened them again:

“Wait, wait,” I told him, because I was getting close. It hadn’t been that long, but I was getting close.

Kevin didn’t realize my dick, just shook his head, kept going, and I was so. So close. I grunted, the final warning siren, and finally he released me, just in time for me to shoot all over his chest.

“That’s why I didn’t put on a shirt,” he whispered, looking awfully pleased with himself as he studied the pattern on his chest.

The tide cresting, it dawned on me that I was going to have to take a turn on Kevin--and, as I settled back down and my discomfort seemed to rise again, I couldn’t imagine how I was going to go about tackling such a thing, when I wasn’t horny, when I was exhausted and drunk, and kind of just wanted to lie back down and let the world fall away.

He didn’t seem to be expecting reciprocity--he sat down next to me, yanked down his shorts, and his giant thing flopped out, against his leg.

He lied back, and I did the same, and he just stared at me, began to jack himself off. It seemed like an eternity, before he really started going, and what could I do? I just watched him, let him watch me, until he grunted and dumped all over his stomach.

“Don’t think you don’t owe me a blowjob,” he replied, smirking, staring up at the ceiling. “I saw that deer-in-the-headlights look when you realized it was your turn.”

I didn’t say anything. I sat up, looked around for where my shirt had landed.

“You don’t have to go,” Kevin whispered to me, running his hand up my bare leg. It was more of a command than a question.

“Maybe not for a little bit.”

“Good,” he said. “Lie back down.” I complied; he turned over, halfway, rubbed my shoulder, kissed it once. “How was home?”

“I don’t really want to talk about my family,” I told him, “when your dick is rubbing against me.”

“Ha,” he said. He rolled back over, grabbed a hand towel that was, seemingly purposely, sitting folded on his nightstand for this occasion. He rubbed his entire torso, smearing my cum and his cum into a single splotch. “Well, it looks like you had fun. I already saw pictures. All sexy in that navy blue suit on Christmas Eve. And you and your brother look exactly alike. It’s spooky.”

I rolled my eyes. “What a line.”

“What?”

“I mean,” I said, “please. We look nothing alike. Even you look more like him than I do.”

“No, I can see the resemblance.”

“Yeah,” I said, “it’s like when you see a monkey at the zoo and you can kind of see how humans looked like that at one point? Maybe like that.”

Kevin thought for a moment. “Does that make this beastiality?”

I thought for a moment myself. “Yes.”

“Good,” he said, rolling back over to cuddle with me. “We’ve all got our kinks.”

"She's pissed," Jordan said, her giddy mouth twitching with a suppressed smile, "because she slept with Ken all break."

Michaela looked scandalized. "Not the whole break," was the best of the feeble protests she could come up with.

We were having lunch on Tuesday at the newly-opened University Center, tucked away in a table in the cavernous foyer, next to one of the three giant columns of metal mesh, with water running down them, that dwarfed everything else in the lobby.

The waterfalls were some high-tech eco-cooling system--Tripp had pointed them out on Sunday when we’d just gotten back, through the window--but, like everything in the city, they weren't quite working properly.

We realized why the table had been empty during the lunch rush: it was like we were on the Maid of the Mist, a gentle rolling drizzle attacking us as water sprayed off the side of the mesh. The small bit of water that did make it all the way down to the bottom of the lattice was even too much for the tiny drain, and there was now an ominously-growing puddle creeping across the tile, ready to engulf our table.

It was, also, about eighty degrees inside the University Center.

"It's really a good design though," Tripp said, nervously sneaking glances the top of the waste, as Jordan hitched her Vera Bradley book bag onto her lap.

"Clearly," Jordan said. She returned to her big salad. "I hear Iota Chi doesn't want you."

Tripp narrowed his eyes, slid them over to me to express his disdain for the phrasing. "It's not that we're not wanted," he said. "It's a process. No one gets a bid on the first day."

"Erik did," Jordan pointed out. She was smiling. Jordan, at her best, was casually biting, the kind of refreshing douse of cold water that conversations sometimes needed. At her worst, she was a bitch.

I wouldn't specify what she was being that day.

"We'll get bids," Tripp replied, surly, mouth full of chips. "It's just a matter of time."

"Well," Michaela interrupted, because of course the conversation had wandered too far away from herself, "I got preffed by every sorority I put down."

Sorority rush was incredibly more structured than the other side of the gender aisle: they were all formally registered with Pan-Hellenic; they had to spend time at each house, get ruthlessly judged, and then mark their top choices. Matches went together.

On our side, I couldn't even name all of the fraternities at Tulane--there were apparently twelve, but I could only guess about nine or ten.

"Swell," I told her.

"You guys are so bitter," she said, with some barely couched glee. "I'm just saying. I'll need dates to some stuff. Especially if I get Tri-Gamma or Delta Delta Rho."

"Which one are you thinking?" Tripp asked.

"Mm," Michaela said, pushing her chair back a bit--the water was seeping, slowly, creeping, a lunchtime Poseidon Adventure. "I don't know. Tri-Gamma girls are smarter, but Delta Delta Rho girls are hotter."

"So you're," Jordan said, slowly, "trying to figure out if you'd rather be appreciated for your mammoth intellect or not."

Michaela shot Jordan a look that spelled out she was enjoying our dear friend about as much as we were.

“I’m just saying,” Jordan told her, going back to her big salad.

Tuesday night, Iota Chi took us to Rock n’ Bowl. Tripp got his bid and my world abruptly ceased to exist.

Of course, I still had two more days to get a bid. But knowing I was the last one out of the three of us to get a bid--it was horrible. Tripp and I had met the same people the night before--he’d made some kind of impression that I didn’t.

I could just imagine them sitting in their basecamp, the after-event voting they’d done once they kicked us all out of the barbecue. “The Southern kid’s cool. The gay hanger-on? Not so much.”

Tripp did not accept his bid right away. He told them he needed to think it over, which was a surprise to me--I didn’t actually think he was anything but a firm yes.

"My dad and uncle were both Kappa Phis," he said somberly. "I should at least, like, make an effort over there."

"Have you ever even been to Kappa Phi?" I asked.

"Yeah, once or twice," he said. "I don't know. Everyone there is, like, douchey and Southern."

"Pot, this is kettle," I mocked.

"Hey, now," he said, but didn't offer a rebuttal.

“Who cares,” Jordan told me, as she, Michaela, and I waited in the Bruff pizza line on Wednesday. “It’s just a fraternity. It’s not like you can’t go to their parties.”

“No,” Michaela corrected. “You can’t go to their parties if you don’t get a bid. Why don’t you stop being such a fucking raincloud over this, Jordan? Just because you can’t get in anywhere doesn’t mean we can’t try.”

Jordan pursed her lips, but said nothing. She looked the slightest bit embarrassed, or maybe just irritated, but she suddenly went quiet, was suddenly very interested in the old black lady making fresh pizza. It was a little harsh of an assessment, but Michaela did have the slightest point buried inside that dressing down: Jordan had been nothing but dismissive about the whole Greek system thus far, taking every opportunity to slap it down, to get in a biting little comment.

“I can always talk to Baker,” Michaela told me, ignoring Jordan, “if you think that’ll help.”

I shrugged. Chris Baker was not the problem--the problem was the other fifty or sixty Iota Chi brothers, the ones Michaela didn’t know because she was too busy at parties being wedged into a corner with me and Baker. I hadn’t necessarily thought my last semester’s rushing through--by now, it was probably too late.

“I don’t know,” I said, finally, when it became clear she was expecting an actual verbal answer. “I have to figure it out. Be charming.”

Jordan looked like she was going to say something, but held her tongue and went back to looking at the pizza.

“You’ll be fine,” Michaela told me. “Even Charlie hasn’t gotten his bid yet.”

That was news, but Charlie--for as much pedigree he had as Chris Baker’s brother--hadn’t put in nearly as much of the legwork that Tripp, Erik, and I did. And maybe it didn’t matter--maybe you could come around one day, or to one event or two events, and if they liked you, they liked you. Or maybe you could come around to everything, and they were shaking their heads all first semester, wondering when you would just take the hint and leave.

Wednesday, Iota Chi was playing paintball in Audubon Park, across the street from the front side of campus.

I was still in the running, hhowever barely.

By this point, a not unsubstantial percentage of rushees had gotten their bids. And the events were so packed with people that it seemed clear at least a good portion of the people still coming around were going to get unceremoniously locked out.

I was consumed by this internal panic, by this point. Outwardly invisible--I was still the perfect air of nonchalance, Adam Becker. Tripp and Erik riding off into the sunset, more likely than ever, and I knew what a paranoid load of crazy that was, but I couldn’t shake it. Erik and Tripp going Iota Chi and having their own little club of pledgeship, while I sat at home and waited for them, sounded awful.

I could always go Lambda--the word was they would take just about anyone at this point, with our severely truncated post-Katrina class size. Lambda wasn't my first choice, but at least I'd have my own stories to throw on the conversation.

Paintball was already happening. I was not especially looking forward to it; it took me long enough to find sufficiently old clothes, that I didn’t mind destroying. And the thought of having to aim a gun, when I’d never fired one, and dodge a hail storm of exploding bullets was not my idea of a good time.

It was also a brutally brisk night, by New Orleans standards, dropped into the low 40s; I could see my breath, and I was wearing about five layers of old sweatshirts.

Still, for a bid.

"Judgment day, Cuthbert," Tommy Pereira greeted, as we walked up to him. He was holding a mask, his clothes were already pockmarked with paint. Baker was next to him, also holding a mask, his clothes completely clean.

"I have until tomorrow," Tripp replied. He bit a piece of hanging skin from his left thumb’s cuticle. "Tomorrow at noon, right?"

"Yeah, you're gold," Baker interjected. He turned to me. "Glad you made it tonight, man." He opened his mouth, as if he was going to say something further--I was really hoping he'd spill some gossip about my chances--but then curled his lips up into a smile. "Excited for paintball?”

I’d already discussed with Chris Baker over AIM, earlier that morning, about how we were both categorically not excited for paintball, so I wondered what he actually meant to say. Something like, "Don't be disappointed," or, with a glint in his eye, "Think you're going to have fun tonight." Nothing. He was a locked vault. I hated secrets, and I especially hated them when Erik and Tripp had bids and I was still flapping in the wind.

"And hey, Erik," Tommy said, motioning over to a clump of guys with their masks down, further across the field. "Let me introduce you to a few people. Future pledge brothers."

They wandered over, Baker looked at me again, didn’t betray any emotion.

“I’m surprised they let you play paintball in the park,” I said.

“They don’t,” he said, absently. “But we looked it up, and the fine was cheaper than renting out that place in Metairie and busing you all there.”

“Forward thinking,” I told him. He shrugged, and wandered away, and that made me more nervous--that he knew something I didn’t, that he was avoiding me for some reason.

I felt the pangs of the horrible truth sinking in: I hadn’t made the cut. This was it. It ended at a makeshift paintball course in Audubon Park.

"You know," Tripp said, chewing on his cuticles again. "Maybe I'll just do it. I don't know. Maybe not."

"Decisive," I said. I felt very anxious--I thought about just giving up entirely, and walking over to Lowerline Street, sharing a bowl with Kevin Malley, relaxing myself to death for the night. Talk about how neither of us wanted Iota Chi, and how that was why we weren't there.

"You'll get a bid," Tripp said. "I don't even know why you haven't yet. Everyone likes you."

I was sick of hearing that phrase. Like Lady Thatcher: if you have to say you're a lady, you aren't? If you have to say you're well-liked.

"Not enough, it appears," I replied. The next round of paintball had started; I watched the guys who had accepted a bid, including Erik, take the field against some of the brothers. "It's not really important anyway. It's just a fraternity."

"Yeah," Tripp replied. "We'll still be buds."

So yes, doom had set in, for all of us, apparently, amid the very real idea that I'd be cut out.

Matt Rowen, whose shirts seemed to be getting tighter each time I saw him, came walking by with Brett Morton. "Tripp," he said. "You joining us or what?"

"Tomorrow at noon!" he gasped.

"Well," Matt said, "if you need to talk about it, let me know. I was on the fence just like you, and it wound up being a great move."

"Okay," Tripp said. "Yeah, I'll hit you up later."

Matt smiled, made a silent glance at Brett, then looked back to us. "Cool," he said. "And hey, Becker, we need to grab you for a minute."

Tripp's eyes widened, and he smiled stupidly at me.

And then I was on an emotional whirlwind--this was it, then? End of the line--I couldn't tell which. Maybe my insecurities working: were they coming to give gentle bad news, or coming to give me a bid? Tripp certainly thought the latter; I was convinced it was the former.

They led me a bit away from the paintball; I walked Spanish with them, over to a bench near the fountain that was shaded from everyone else by a thicket of live oaks.

“Sit here,” said Brett. He lowered his voice. “Matt, go get Baker and Winslow.”

I knew Rob Winslow only in passing, only by Chris or Morton pointing him out, me talking to him maybe once in the mad rush of Monday night and yesterday night. He’d recently been elected president of Iota Chi. I'd seen him walk down the stairs with Brett and a third guy, always a third guy, when Erik and Tripp got their bids. I assumed the Iota Chi brother who knew them best?

Okay, so maybe a bid was coming. I at least felt a little bit better about my odds. There was still the possibility this was a let-down but there was a certain amount of particular ceremony I was supposed to be bracing for.

So by this point, my panic had begun to dissolve, like a fizzing Airborne capsule in water, and I felt really excited.

Probably too excited, considering it was only a bid to the fraternity--the kind of thing any mildly-social eighteen-year-old should be able to accomplish. I hadn't cured cancer or anything.

Rob Winslow and Chris Baker came over. Chris stood on one side of me, Brett on the other, and Winslow leaned up against a tree across from the bench.

"Hey, Adam," said Rob. His voice was steady and rehearsed, oddly inhuman. I didn’t know why he was calling me Adam--formality? "I'm Rob Winslow, incoming president of Iota Chi, and you know Morton, who's the incoming deputy new member chair. And you obviously know Baker over here. We saw you’ve been coming around a lot and we wanted to offer you a bid to Iota Chi.”

I was caught a little off-guard by the way they just flopped out the bid like that.

I had been expecting a little more majesty. Candles or a skull and crossbones or something. Some sort of hazing. Philip had always made it sound like such a sacred moment.

Even Rob Winslow himself was lacking in gravitas. He covered in blasts of paint, holding a paintball mask in his hand and a paintball gun in the other. And he was a handsome guy, even under an unruly mop of red curls. Lanky, decent body, but an inch or so shorter than me.

How could this thin ginger, an inch shorter than me, expect to haze me? I felt should’ve felt more relieved than concerned, but I felt concerned. I didn’t want to get raped or peed on, or who else knew what they could do, but I couldn’t imagine taking a guy like Rob Winslow seriously.

“Do you accept?” he coaxed.

"Oh," I said, slowly. "Yeah, I accept."

I didn’t have time to think about it. I didn’t really even need the time to think about it, obviously--there was no doubt in my mind that I'd accept. But not just because of Erik and Tripp, although they were obviously big parts of it. For what Tommy Pereira had said, that night I first hooked up with Kevin Malley: to drink on the porch, go to spring break, be a part of something. I felt good. I felt good about it.

Plus, how fast would this shut Philip up.

Winslow looked momentarily relieved with my answer, then smiled.

"Hey!" Chris exclaimed, clapping me on the shoulder. "Congrats, man. I told you. Nothing to worry about."

"All right," Brett said, cocking his paintball gun. "Let’s get back to the field, pledge."

"For the millionth time, Greek Life says you can't call him pledge until Friday," Winslow said, exasperated. "Fucking retard, not reading my emails." He looked at me, a bit sheepishly. “Okay, well, you’re obviously invited to the date party tomorrow, and you have to be at the house Friday at 7pm for induction. Meet in front of Old Elmer. 7pm, so not 6:59 or 7:01, okay? We’re pretty particular around here with pledges being right on time.”

I nodded slowly, and he stood up.

That was that.

Brett Morton and I went back to rejoin everyone, Winslow and Chris stayed by the bench. From where we were, I could see everyone who had come to play paintball. There weren’t nearly as many people a I thought--I wondered how many of us would wind up with bids.

Once Morton had let me go, I whipped out my phone: “Guess who’s a pledge.”

Philip responded almost immediately: “YES!!! So proud of you. Which house?”

“Iota Chi.”

“Aw, I was still holding out hope for Zeta,” he said. “Lol. That’s awesome though."

"Sorry."

"Don't be! I'm excited for you! Getting back in the swing of things down there, looks like?”

“So glad to be back,” I told him. “No offense.”

“Naw, I’m happy to be back too,” he said. “By the way, don’t put your Christmas pictures up yet. Lindsay keeps pestering to do mine, and I keep using you for comparison.”

“Yeah, I need to do it,” I said. “My friends were looking through Justine’s. One of them said you and I look exactly alike.”

“Ha, you wish,” he said. There was a slight pause; I kept staring at the phone, waiting for a follow-up. “Lindsay says hi, by the way.”

“Hi Lindsay.”

“And we’re just getting to dinner now, so I’ll catch you later. Congrats! You’ll do great.”

“Thanks,” I told him.

Brett had, a little closer to the field, unearthed Charlie Baker, who had just come off a round of paintball. I overheard him: "Baby Baker," he said, "can you come with me for a minute?"

They went towards the bench.

"Shit, man," Tripp said, coming over to me. "You get it? Take it?"

"Yeah, I took it," I said. "I'm a pledge! Almost."

"Shit," he repeated, his cuticles flying back into his mouth. "Shit. Maybe I should take mine."

"Noon tomorrow," I warned.

“I’ll probably just take it,” Tripp said. "Matt has been riding me hard while you were upstairs."

I smiled a bit at that.

"He's the salesman, I guess," Tripp continued. "I saw him laying it on thick with all the undecideds."

"Yeah, well, you'll do what's right for you," I replied. "But it won't be the same if you're not around Iota Chi."

"I know," Tripp said. "I kept thinking: what if Becker doesn't get a bid? That would suck."

I was flattered by that. And I hoped Tripp would take his bid--because it wouldn't be the same without him. I'd been so focused on me not getting a bid, on Tripp and Erik moving into the next phase of happiness, that I hadn't been able to think of what it'd be like if one of them weren't around.

Tripp was right: that would suck.

"Just take it," I told him. "You're going to anyway, because you'd hate watching us do it and wishing you could do it too."

"Ugh," Tripp replied, but said nothing further.

Erik was coming off the paintball field; I saw him remove his mask, expose his handsome head. He had a giant smile on his face. "Got it?" he called.

I waited until he was a little closer--I didn't want to be that guy who broadcast it across Audubon Park.

"Yeah," I told him. "Got it and didn't waffle like Cuthbert over here."

"Hey!" Tripp whined.

"Well," Erik said, "want to meet some of our pledge brothers?" He looked at Tripp with smirking disdain. "Sorry, man--accepted bids only."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Tripp said, and stomped off.

Erik led me back to the group of guys he had been playing paintball with--they were all coming off the field, prying their helmets off.

“This is Becker,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders. “He’s our newest pledge brother, as of about five seconds ago.” He motioned to the group of guys, all splattered with a rainbow of paintballs. “This is Ben Revis, Will Connors, and Patrick Sullivan.”

And that's when I realized Patrick ManFind was staring me back in the face.