The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 21. Freshman Year - Chapter 21

“You’re going to be living at the house for the next week,” Harry Capuano told us, crisply, pacing around the front of the chapter room on Sunday night. “No booze unless Morton or I give it to you. Or you’ll be depledged. You won’t be allowed to leave, except for class. Or you’ll be depledged. And I have your class schedules, so don’t try to bullshit me. When you go grab food, be in groups of four or more pledges. Or you’ll be depledged. This week isn’t about doing your own shit. It’s about your last chance to prove to us that you can function as part of this brotherhood. That you’re not worthless pieces of fuckwad.”

Justine’s flight was roughly somewhere over Lake Laurel, Arkansas. It was amazing at how much had changed in so little time, how quickly we had been whipped back into the throes of pledgeship.

“So you need to be back in one hour,” Harry continued, “for the start of hell week. Take a shower, and bring your toothbrush and shit, because you won’t be allowed back in your dorm until you’re depledged or initiated. Change of clothes won’t be necessary. We’ll have something for you to wear.”

That last bit sent all of us pledges glancing anxiously at each other, because there were so many routes that could take. We didn’t have specific ideas of what they were thinking--and I reminded myself that this was a fraternity full of people like Chris Baker and Brett Morton and Tommy Pereira; people who didn’t, exactly, seem like they had been subjected to or enjoy subjecting others to newsworthy humiliations.

So there was that.

I still didn’t want Morton or Harry picking out my clothes for the week.

“If you forget anything,” Morton added helpfully, tempering Harry’s bad copy with his good cop, as they’d been doing all semester-long, “tell me, and I’ll send someone to get it for you.”

“Unless it’s a teddy bear or something retarded like that,” Harry replied. “All right--go. Move, fuckers.”

 

“I think I might ditch geology on Wednesday,” Erik said, cross-legged on Tripp’s bed, as me and Tripp packed duffel bags full of stuff we’d need for the week; Erik was bringing a backpack that looked like it had nothing in it, but didn’t seem too concerned about it. “I don’t think I want to let a week go before I bang Channah again. It’ll be a nice mid-week, mid-afternoon thing.”

Hannah Metzenbaum had made quite an impression on Erik Fontenot, for reasons unbeknownst to me. Of course, she was beautiful and had big boobs, which seemed to be his two most vital qualifications. And--according to Erik who, granted, though casual embellishments were part of the storytelling experience--they had sex after formal, and twice again the following morning, which easily shot her to the top of his list.

Kevin Malley was hot, and I enjoyed sex with him immensely, but I liked the trip we had been on together: friends who spilled into something more. It made it all more meaningful, but I knew I was being sentimental.

“Come on,” Tripp said, rolling his eyes, as he surveyed two separate architecture books, and then decided to take neither of them. “Hanukkah will be doing sorority stuff all week too. She won’t have plucked up by someone else in four days.”

“She’s a sophomore,” Erik said. “It’s nothing when you’re already a sister--they’ll be putting in, like, an hour a week, tops. And sororities barely even haze during their hell week. You can bet Channah’s pledges aren’t sleeping on the floor of the DDR house.”

Tripp had been chewing on one of his cuticles, on and off for the entire time we were packing; he did so again, asking, “What do you think will happen this week?”

“I don’t know,” Erik said, though his voice was suddenly contemplative. “Rowen told me not to worry too much about it.”

“We can handle it,” I told both of them. “Look at everyone else who handled it.”

Tripp and Erik both gave me slim smiles in agreement, and maybe I was the only one who didn’t quite believe what I said. It wasn’t the same; I wasn’t the same--for all the guff we gave Baker, he was well-respected, someone people enjoyed knowing. If they liked me in Iota Chi, it was on false pretenses.

“We’ll be fine,” Tripp said, nodding along with me. “What’s the worst they can do to us?”

“Depledge us,” Erik replied. When Tripp responded with a face, Erik threw his hands up. “You asked!”

 

When we got back to the Iota Chi house, with pillows and duffels, we found out why we didn’t need a change of clothes: we were all given a pair of red basketball shorts, and a red t-shirt to match.

“All you’ll need for the week,” Harry said. “Red is the primary color of Iota Chi, and it symbolizes blood--the gravity of the oath that you will take at your initiation to be a loyal brother of our fraternity.”

It reminded me of the Harrington School’s gym uniforms, where they adopted prison-like ambitions of being able to see children at a great distance--lest the scions of privilege escape through the fence and spend the afternoon raining terror down on sleepy, unsuspecting Kalorama.

I wasn’t sure if this was similar logic. I suspected it was, that we could be spotted sneaking out of our dorms or out of the wrong building when we were supposed to be at class. A lot of practical things in the fraternity were explained away with ornate symbolism.

“Most importantly,” Harry told us, his voice deep and serious and full of warning. “No washing it. Not even with water. And no taking it off until you’re depledged or you’re a brother. You can wash your face and your hands, but that’s it.”

“It’s like prison,” Erik whispered, fingering the expansive waistband of the shorts. “Why’d they have to get us all extra-extra large? I blame Eddie.”

We received the rest of our instructions--which were all iterations of the same thing: stay at the house, travel in groups, don’t bathe--and then the rest of the night was ours, ostensibly to “study” but none of us seemed to do that. The room was uncharacteristically anxious, because we didn’t know what to expect. Pledgeship had become second-nature to us, almost, the way it was before: we went to events, we were called to the house, and we did what had to be done. The calculus, at least for the next week, had changed tremendously: we were at the house around the clock, sleeping on the floor, cognizant of the fact that any potential action or task could crop up at any minute. The days were not ours, and I was not used to that kind of oversight, that kind of intrusion on my freedom and privacy.

So we explained on Tuesday morning, when we congregated in Jordan and Michaela’s room to book our housing.

“Look at you, all matchy,” Jordan said, mouth twisted into a schadenfreudig smirk as Patrick, Erik, and Tripp--all in red--filed into the lobby. “How cute.”

It was not lost on any of us how distinct a profile we cut walking through campus, how explicitly labeled as part of a tribe we were. And we weren’t the only ones: there were the Sigmas, who were wearing suits; the Zetas, who had shaved their heads; the Lambda Nus wearing beards, unable to shave since January--everyone had some sort of wacky demarcation this week, the final days of pledgeship. I was just happy that, unlike Charlie Baker’s bald head reflecting the fluorescents in our dorm hallway, our misery would be done by the weekend. Red, baggy clothing was temporary. At least, unlike, say, Will Connors or Eddie Darien, I hadn’t begun to smell quite yet.

“We have to travel in groups of four or more,” Tripp explained, which is why Patrick had agreed to come with us. “So we’ll always look this retarded.”

“And I feel so disgusting,” Patrick added, as entered into the elevator. “I haven’t showered in three days.”

Jordan winced, wrinkled her nose as the elevator filled up quickly with our collective stench. “You guys don’t get to shower?”

“We can’t even take off these clothes,” Tripp replied. “Except Erik and Will, who got special permission to fucking shower every morning in the gym.”

Erik giggled manically. “I was never so excited to wake up to swim as I was this morning.”

“Yeah, it’s practically the only time he’s ever bothered to show up for practice,” Tripp replied, acidly. In a high-pitched mocking voice, he added, “‘The chlorine will hurt my skin if I don’t shower.’”

Tripp, among anyone, seemed to be taking this week the hardest, even though we were two nights in, even though he showered less than 36 hours ago and I’d personally seen him go longer without.

Erik seemed to have noticed this too--and, for his part, he was taking it with a surprising amount of nonchalance. “What time is it? Let’s get moving.”

“8:56,” Jordan said, unlocking her door. “We have four minutes until registration opens. Hold on.”

“Perfect,” Tripp said, his bad mood falling away as he started snapping into action. He whipped out a notebook that I knew contained his list of preferred rooms, because Tripp was the one who was our ringleader over this housing situation--the one who cared most. Of course it mattered where we lived--and, more importantly, who we lived with--but Tripp had taken this down to the granular level, as if nothing else mattered quite as much. I’d watched him spend evenings pouring over the plans to the sophomore dorms. “I made a list of all the rooms we would want,” Tripp explained, lying the notebook flat on Michaela’s bed, then hopping up next to it. “So we can, like, just type it in while everyone else is looking on the map.”

“That’s,” Erik said, searching for the correct word, “insane, man.”

It was, in fact, insane, but Tripp was perhaps the least insane of all of us on any given day, this week notwithstanding, so I was willing to indulge him. Especially if it got us a better suite.

Tripp bristled. “I’m an architecture major. I look at floorplans all day.” He pointed to the top one on the list. “Okay, so what we really want is the fourth floor, courtyard-facing,” he said. He ran his finger further down. “Lower floors are okay, too.” He went further down. “Okay, so then the first floor is all handicapped accessible, so the floorplan is a little different--”

“Oh my God,” Erik said, throwing his head back in mock frustration. “Shut the fuck up.”

They were going to be an interesting experiment as roommates next year.

It was almost by chance that I wound up living in the same room as Patrick, across the bathroom from Tripp and Erik, because it was Tripp’s choice. Patrick had been planning to live with Ben Revis and two other guys from their floor in Monroe, but he found that to be increasingly less desirable after Ben dropped out of Iota Chi--he put out feelers for who in our pledge class needed a fourth roommate.

I thought about what Kevin said last semester, that friendships can’t always survive fraternity drama. Or, at least, the fragile friendships of convenience you make first semester of freshman year. Erik and Tripp and I would’ve been okay, I’d like to hope, but then I think about Justin and Charlie and everyone--people I see in passing, but have their own lives, their own friends, their own pledgeships--and I understand. The people who don’t matter that much, in the grand scheme of things.

At any rate, Tripp had swooped in to secure him from free agency, because Patrick had an early registration time and could, thus, book a good suite for us before they were all snatched up.

It was a rather clinical way to look at our housing options, especially since Erik preferred Eddie Darien who did not have a registration time that was spectacular enough for Tripp. I didn’t mind. I offered to live with Patrick officially as a sort of calming measure between Erik and Tripp, who were at odds over the choice, but really, it was because of the opportunity it presented: easy escaping. No racing back to the dorm to cover my tracks, when I wanted to be with Kevin, because Patrick wouldn’t ask questions; he already knew the answers.

“Aw, the end of an era,” Tripp had said, and I felt bad because he felt bad about the whole thing. We were great roommates--it had been a fantastic year.

“We’ll be on the other side of the bathroom,” I told him. “You’re not going to see me any less.”

I really did feel terrible about it. I wondered if he would’ve understood the reason, and I figured of course he would. So I took solace in that, at the very least. That he would’ve understood, if he knew.

“Just log me on, Jordan,” Michaela said, cross-legged, in front of the floor-length mirror, judiciously applying mascara to her eyelashes.

“You put on this much makeup for class?” Erik asked, skeptically.

She glared at him, then begun smearing foundation on her cheeks. “Tate’s coming over later. You think I roll out of bed looking this good?”

Erik was about to say something snide; Jordan cut him off. “Well, she can do both of those things in her own room next year,” she said, “because we should be able to get a pair of singles in Mayer. I checked.”

“Michaela and Jordan don’t like people,” Erik explained to Patrick, our foreigner. “It’s better if they don’t have to share a bathroom with anyone but each other.”

“Awesome,” Tripp said. “That’s crazy lucky. I can’t believe that.”

“Yeah,” said Jordan. She clicked on the floorplan for Mayer 412-414, and ran her finger along the screen. “Two bedrooms, joined by a bathroom. Balcony and everything. Still available, so I’m ready to pounce when the clock strikes nine.”

“Nice,” said Tripp. He had his own computer on his lap, was frantically consulting his list. “Oh, shit, 420-422’s open.” He shook his head. “So are some on the first floor. Or on the odd side. We really don’t want to be on the first floor, or on the odd side though. Odd side faces Drill Road and you can hear ROTC marching in the mornings. We definitely want to face the interior courtyard.”

“You’re just insane, bro,” Erik replied. He laid down on Michaela’s bed, stared up at the ceiling. “Wake me up when we’re not homeless.”

“Can you not lay on my bed in those dirty clothes?” Michaela asked, without looking away from the mirror; Erik said nothing, but propped himself up on his shoulder.

Tripp’s phone alarm went off. “Okay, 8:59,” he said. “I’m so nervous, you guys.” He turned the page in his notebook, then set it down on the bed. “I’ve got everyone’s registration information right here.” He refreshed the page, then refreshed it again, and then began frantically typing.

“We got singles,” Jordan said, clicking her mouse triumphantly. “Fourth floor.”

We all gave a groan of approval. Tripp didn’t seem to notice--he kept staring at the floorplan on the screen with overwrought longing, like a father waiting outside the delivery.

“It’s loading,” he said, his voice pained. Then, breathlessly, “We got it. Four person suite on the fourth floor! And the RA’s all the way in the other building.”

“Our side of the floor,” Jordan replied, logging off the housing site and heading back to Facebook.

“It’s just like Christmas morning,” Erik mocked.

Tripp flipped him off, but the obscenity couldn’t detract from the look on Tripp’s face, the broad and adoring smile of, yes, a child on Christmas morning. I was always disappointed on Christmas morning--the reality never having a chance of living up to the preceding days of internalized excitement, the hopeful optimism. I could imagine Tripp, in that big house in Pass Christian, jumping up and down over every single gift.

“We’re going to be neighbors!” Tripp exclaimed to Jordan.

Erik leaned back against the wall. “At least we don’t have to live in Irby or Phelps with the gutter trash.”

“Amen to that,” replied Patrick.

 

We were blindfolded, sometime after dark the next night--maybe dark; it felt dark, it felt late. They were leading us down some sort of ravine. Maybe not ravine. Smaller than a ravine. The levee? Definitely near water--I could hear the bugs, the splatter of mud as I stepped, feel the thick stickiness of the humid air.

Hell week had, true to form, been the first hot days of the year. April, even late April, was supposed to be nice in New Orleans, but it was already sweltering.

“Okay, stop,” Harry said, from behind us. “Take off your blindfolds, and face forward.”

We were on the very edge of the Mississippi River levee somewhere out of town, on top of a retaining wall that dropped into the river.

In front of each of us was a cinderblock.

“Pick up the blocks,” he ordered. He cradled his arms; we all craned over to see him. “Hold it like this. Now, pledges!”

We all scurried down to pick them up.

“Step forward,” Harry continued, “so your toes are right on the edge of the wall. Don’t look behind you.”

We moved forward, as far up as we could. The front inch of my Sperrys were curled over the edge of the wall; I was staring straight down into the choppy black water. And I wished I hadn’t worn Sperrys.

The cinderblock was heavy, the rough texture cutting into my forearms. But I didn’t want to think about dropping it--it’d fall right into the river.

“Becker,” said Baker’s voice, oddly booming behind me--I hadn’t known anyone else was there, although at this point of pledgeship, I had stopped being surprised, considering how many times the brotherhood would pop up behind us. “What are the three colors of Iota Chi?”

“Red, white, and gold,” I said.

I was greeted by silence. I knew it was the correct answer. I waited. There was rustling.

Then:

“Connors,” said either Ryan Wyatt or Rob Winslow, who I suddenly realized sounded oddly similar to each other. “What date was Iota Chi founded?”

“1850,” Will Connors, who was standing next to me on my left, said.

“Date,” the voice repeated. “Month, day, year.”

Will suddenly looked suddenly grave, trying to think as hard as he could, or trying to stall enough time for one of us to be asked the question. Neither happened effectively. “July,” he finally began, “Fifth. 1850.”

With that wrong answer, I tried to glance over to Harry out of the corner of my eye, without twisting my head or my neck. Harry was stone--no expression on his face, no words about the incorrect answer.

Then:

“Becker,” Harry boomed. “What date was Iota Chi founded?”

“June Fifth,” I said, as quickly as possible. “1850.”

“Good,” Harry said. “Connors, since Becker saved your ass, give him your block. Put it right on top of his.”

We both turned to face each other, and he gave me this incredibly apologetic look, his eyes wide and sad like an anime cow. He slowly raised the block above his shoulders, and set it as gently as he could on top of mine.

It was heavy. It wasn’t unbearable yet, but the roughness of the concrete was beginning to cut into my arms.

“Then turn back around, Becker,” Harry said. “Connors, take a step back.”

As I spun back around, I felt myself trying to steady the doubled weight of my concrete blocks. It was just beginning to feel awful now--I wasn’t especially strong, and I could feel myself wobbling a bit, on the edge of the wall. My arms were already growing sore. I wasn’t scared of pledgeship--we hadn’t been subjected to the horror stories of hazing, by any means--but I didn’t want to test their kindness if I dropped either of these blocks. My goal for the week was to attract as little attention as possible until initiation.

“Fontenot,” came the voice of Brett Morton. “Who founded our chapter, the Sigma chapter, of Iota Chi?”

“Jack Peters,” Erik said, proudly.

There was another long pause. I saw Harry silently turn back to where the brothers seemed to be standing, and point at one of them.

“Darien,” said Chris Baker. “Why is the tree at our chapter house called Old Elmer?”

“After the jazz song,” Darien said, quickly. “‘Old Elmer’s Rag.’”

Another long pause; more quiet rustling over from Harry Capuano, who remained a terrifying totem pole on the side of my periphery.

“Callender,” came Josh Weinman. “What’s my middle name?” He paused. “This is Josh Weinman.”

David. He had the same middle name as Philip. David. David. David.

I looked at Tripp, who so clearly didn’t know the answer to the question, and tried to silently communicate the name, as if some sort of cosmic, telepathic osmosis would puddle the correct answer into his head.

It didn’t work.

For the love of God, Cuthbert, it’s David.

“Look forward, Becker,” Harry hissed.

Tripp let out a short, nervous giggle, and then, in one swift motion, Harry, out of nowhere, wound up like a baseball pitcher, and launched a big clump of wet river mud, which smacked Tripp in the side of the head.

Tripp wobbled a bit, but maintained his blocks and his balance. He stood there, a look of uncomfortable alarm on his face, staring out at the river, as mud rolled down his cheek and neck, onto the collar of his bright red t-shirt.

It was something that would’ve been funny--the brotherhood behind us erupted like hyenas in mocking laughter--but none of us dared to laugh, not after what happened to Tripp. Our backs stayed ramrod straight, our expressions neutral, trying to see Tripp out of the corner of our eyes.

The mud quickly canalling down Tripp’s face and red t-shirt made me nervous, for some reason.

“This isn’t a fucking joke,” Harry boomed. He was starting to lose his composure, starting to get furious. “If you’re going to laugh when we ask questions about the brotherhood you can only hope to join, you might as well go home. Fucking ridiculous. Answer the question, Callender.”

In the quietest I had ever heard come out of Tripp: “Mark.”

“Speak up, Callender.”

“Mark,” he said, a little louder.

I felt genuinely bad for Tripp in the moment--Tripp, who was always so warm and optimistic, looking terrified and filthy. And he had just gotten the answer wrong.

“Rodrigue?” he bellowed. “What’s Weinman’s middle name?”

Terrence Rodrigue bit his lip, but got the answer right: “David.”

“Callender, give your block to Rodrigue. Rodrigue, you’re a useless piece of shit. Learn your stuff. Be better.”

God, I did not want them saying something like to me.

That went on for what felt like fifty more rounds, until I had four blocks, balancing horrifyingly against my chest and cheek, as I tottered on the edge of the retaining wall. My arms felt almost numb, felt almost removed from my body, but I wouldn’t let them go. I would not.

Patrick, next to me on the right, had five blocks, and looked like he was about to die; Erik had three blocks, seemed to be doing okay; Eddie Darien had five blocks too, but they only came up to just below his chin, which was resting on top of his stack. The other pledges were standing in front of us, between us and the river, watching us with nervousness.

“Who wants a break?” Harry asked. “No one? Becker, you could use a break. If you need one, take it.”

Oh, after four months, I knew better than to fall for that one.

“I’m fine,” I said, my teeth gritted, my voice hoarse.

I felt a mud ball smack me in the side of the face. Soft and disgusting, right on the side of my neck, and I felt it dripping down the inside of the shirt I knew I’d have to wear until at least Saturday.

“How about now?”

I stayed silent, and that seemed to placate him; he moved on to his next victim. “Darien,” he said, “who’s Becker’s grandbig?”

Dear Lord. Bix. Theo Bix.

I tried to communicate telepathically.

Eddie stood there, thinking for an agonizing amount of time. It was one of those questions he really wasn’t going to be able to guess. In his gruff, deep baritone: “You are.”

Fuck.

“Give your blocks,” Harry said. “One to Sullivan, one to Fontenot, and three to Becker.”

Three to Becker. Oh no, oh no, oh no. I was not going to be able to hold something that heavy, let alone balance it--a tower of seven cinderblocks?

“Tripp, help them,” Harry commanded. “One at a time. Let’s go.”

Tripp gave Eddie a pitying look, and he took the top block, and loaded it onto Patrick’s stack. Patrick did not groan, but he looked like he wanted to; he bent his knees, bit his lip.

Three blocks. My heart was pounding, with the terror of what would happen to the blocks, to me, when I inevitably fell apart.

Tripp took another one of Darien’s blocks, moved on to Erik, and put it on top.

Then he took another one, and we turned to face each other.

The right side of Tripp’s face was covered with caked, flakey mud where it had dried; in the moonlight, it had the jagged inconsistency of a burn scar.

He sighed quietly, gave me an apologetic look, and put the first block on top of my proliferating stack.

The pain was immediate, and searing, and I felt my eyes voluntarily watering--two more blocks was going to be impossible. Not even close. I locked my knees, but I knew that, one more block, and everything was going into the river.

“Bend your knees, Becker,” said Harry. “Don’t you dare let any of those blocks touch the ground, Callender.”

Tripp went back to Eddie for another block, and then faced me again. I bent down as low as I could, so he could reach the blocks, which were now just above my head. He put the second block on top, and I felt the entire stack shaking, off-balanced, my head no longer acting as a counterweight.

And, from the top, I saw them fall, in slow motion, into Tripp, who was standing there, wide-eyed. And then he disappeared. The block fell into the sticky wet mud, and there was a large splash as Tripp, who had instinctively dove to his left instead of his right, fell into the Mississippi River.

I was staring at the blocks, in horror, unsure of what was going to happen.

Surely, they couldn’t depledge someone for not being able to carry seven cinderblocks. I thought about Baker or Tommy, no stronger than me, having made it. Ryan Wyatt, who was a beanstalk.

There was a few offhand giggles from the brotherhood, as Tripp picked himself back up; he had fallen into waist-deep water, drench from head to toe, a big mud print on his back.

Harry went to the edge of the wall, knelt down and offered his hand. “Come on,” he said. “Up the wall.”

Once Tripp had braced his left foot on top of the retaining wall, and then pulled his way up to the riverbank, someone yelled, “Tiiiimber!” and the entire brotherhood cracked up again behind us.

“Becker,” Harry said. “You couldn’t hold the blocks, and now they’re gone. Step back.”

I turned around, and stood in the open spot next to Tripp, in the line of brothers who had been tapped out for answering questions wrong.

Harry, with his foot, pushed each of the cinderblocks into the river; they fell in with a high-pitched ploop.

Behind Patrick and Erik was the entire brotherhood, coldly staring us down. Patrick and Erik’s faces were mostly obscured from where I now stood, in the dim light, but I could feel the palpable anxiety radiating off of them like an unwanted smell.

“Fontenot,” Matt Rowen said, “which brother is from Lake Havasu, Arizona?”

No one knew this. I didn’t know this, and I had been acing my tests--I thought I knew everything. I tried to think: my first instinct was Rob Winslow, but he was from St. Louis--obviously; I’d been to his house.

Erik didn’t even have a ghost of an answer either. “Harry Capuano?”

Patrick let out a low groan of impending doom, and for that, he was quickly and mercilessly pegged in the side of the face by another mud ball.

“Connors,” Harry said, “give Sullivan’s blocks to Fontenot. Let’s go.”

Will was standing off to Patrick’s side as he loaded them up, seemingly learning from Tripp’s mistake. One block. Two blocks. Three blocks.

And then splat, into the water they all went.

Harry walked over, took the last block from Erik, and then launched it as far as he could into the water.

“This is what happens when you don’t know your shit,” he said. “When you fail, you make everyone else carry your weight. And then, when they can’t anymore, everything falls apart. We fall apart. Those blocks are what being an Iota Chi brother is all about, and now you’ve gone and fucked it up, and they’re lost in the river. Because you couldn’t put learning this shit first. And if you can’t put this fraternity first now when you have literally nothing to do, how the fuck do you think you’re going to put it first later?” He paused for dramatic effect. “Blindfolds back on.”

 

Back at the house, we were all worse for the wear. Mud up almost to our knees. Mud running down my face and torso. Tripp was soaked from head to toe, smelled like a sewer. Water was pooled in the bottom of his sneakers, which he dumped down the drain in the upstairs shower.

The mood, overall, had reached a citadel of grimness; previous nights, the chapter room, with all of us in our sleeping bags and on the couches, had been like a big slumber party--everyone joking, playing around, wrestling with Rob Winslow’s dog, enjoying the life we had so nearly entered. Tonight, nothing. Silence. Irritation. The fact that we were all covered with mud and couldn’t do much about it.

“This sucks,” Tripp said, shaking out his sodden shirt; it had turned into a misshapen, mud-smeared mess. “This really sucks. Thanks for holding your fucking blocks, Becker.”

“Thanks for getting every question wrong,” I replied lazily, chiseling hardened mud off my face with a piece of toilet paper from the bathroom. “Come on. Ryan Wyatt’s hometown? Everyone knows that shit. All he talks about is Columbus.”

Harry came into the chapter room, and everyone’s head snapped over. “Hope you all learned something,” he said, gruffly. “I have some bad news. Terrence has been depledged.”

Terrence Rodrigue was the pledge brother I knew the least, so his demise didn’t registered very much emotion--not like I did when Ben depledged.

“He was depledged?” Erik clarified. “Or he depledged himself?”

“Goodnight, gentlemen,” Harry replied, with the satisfied smirk of having withheld a critical piece of information, and he walked right back out the door.

Well, that sucked out the little bit of energy we had remaining in us--because the logic we were depending on, that I at least was depending on, was that, sure, hell week would suck; we’d be miserable; but it was temporary. We had made it this far, and we’d make it the next few days. We were practically in.

No one spoke about Terrence Rodrigue, and the silence was, proverbially, the deafening kind. We sat quietly, reading our pledge manuals, going over the flashcards we had all made of the brothers’ personal information, remembering Theo Bix’s middle name, or Matt Rowen’s hometown.

And maybe I wasn’t the only one to be nervous--the fact that everything could come crashing down so suddenly and so thoroughly.

Theodore Michael Bix.

Christopher Thomas Baker.

And so on.

All I could think in the back of my mind was the fragility of everything. How close to the edge we were all standing. Figuratively, if no longer literally, in regards to the river.

I texted Kevin.

“You’ll be fine,” he replied. “Look, I knew a lot of Iota Chi pledges last year. A lot. And they all made it. So don’t worry. You’re not the worst pledge, and you won’t be the worst brother they admit.”

Maybe it was my rampant insecurity--the fact that we were so close, the fact that I didn’t trust everything to actually work out in the long run.

Another text from Kevin Malley: “And someone falls into the river every year.”

“I’m just glad it wasn’t me,” I replied, as I watched Tripp disappear into a mist of Axe.

I went back to my flashcards. Brett Michael Morton. No, Brett Matthew Morton. Theodore Michael, Brett Matthew.

“Can you toss me a highlighter?” I asked Erik. Without looking at me, he tossed it to me; it smacked into the cushion next to me.

“Nice catch,” he replied, lazily.

 

“Just take a shower,” Jordan said, at lunch. “Use our shower, if you’re so scared of shit. It’s getting embarrassing being with you guys.”

Tripp bristled. His shirt and shorts had dried, but the scars on both his demeanor and his red uniform--partially-shrunken, misshapen and limp--lingered on. He was still muddy, though the mud was flaky and beige now; he was leaving a trail of silty dandruff wherever he went, as it fell off his neck or the back of his shirt. The Axe he had bathed himself in the night before had done little to mitigate the smell of the river; now, he was two off-kilter smells, neither of them especially palatable, certainly not together.

I couldn’t imagine the kinds of looks he was getting in the architecture building.

“Oh, well, I’m sorry,” Tripp snapped, “that it’s so hard to look at us. We’re having a field day over here.”

“Tripp doesn’t like being dirty,” I explained.

“I smell like the fucking river!” he said, his voice twisted and high-pitched. “And I didn’t sleep last night because I was soaking wet, and I was freezing, and I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t, you guys.”

“It’ll be a day and a half,” Erik hissed. “Of your entire life. You can make it a fucking day and a half, you vagina.”

Jordan squinted at Tripp’s shirt. “Why did someone write, ‘Titanic,’ on your shirt in Sharpie?”

Tripp glared at her, as if he couldn’t believe she had the audacity to ask. “Because of my massive cock,” he replied, icily.

Tripp had his quirks and idiosyncrasies--how could you not notice things like that when you shared a cell with him for nearly a year--but, for the most part, he was one of the most stable and level-headed people I had met at Tulane. He knew what he wanted to do in life; he was a dependable friend; he was kind; he had that sort of perennial optimism that came with being an overachieving rich kid from a loving family, the idea that everything would always work out okay because everything always had worked out okay.

This Tripp, the filthy and miserable Tripp, the so close to going on a rampage through the University Center Food Court at the slightest provocation Tripp, was darkly comedic to watch. And highly entertaining, as bad as I felt admitting that sort of thing.

“Because he sank in the river,” Erik told Jordan, giggling. “Morton has a sense of humor.”

“Shut your face,” said Tripp. He looked irritated for a second, then started getting up. “I’m going back to the house.”

“No, no, not yet,” Erik said, quickly stuffing food in his mouth. “We’ll only be three without you.”

“Um,” Jordan said, glancing around between the three of us. “I’m not mathematician, but there’s only three of you now.”

Erik looked around, as if this hadn’t occurred to him; it had; Patrick was a few tables away.

“Patrick wanted to have lunch with Annie Rue,” I explained. “If we see a brother, we’ll text him and he’ll come running over. Say he was buying food.”

“Modern technology,” replied Erik, proudly. “More ways to cheat the system." He looked up at Tripp. "Oh, sit back down, Tripper, for fuck’s sake.”

Tripp glared at him, but then did sit back down, saying nothing.

“We have our final test tomorrow night,” Erik told Jordan. “And then, I don’t know, I guess they grade it pretty fast? Because the word is that initiation’s on Saturday. So I don’t know. I just can’t believe pledgeship’s almost over.”

“Yeah, shocking,” Tripp deadpanned.

“Whatever,” Erik said. “I’m having fun. Don’t be such a little bitch. Maybe you should join Tri-Gam.”

That reminded me: “Where’s Birdrock? I thought she was meeting us.”

“Tate surprised her with sex,” Jordan said, running her fork absently through her big salad, like a zen rake. “Again. He’s been busy hazing his pledges all week in the evenings, so apparently they have to have mid-morning sex. I’m not allowed back in the room until three o’clock, apparently.”

“You’re going to hear Al Gore speak after this,” I reminded.

“It’s the principle,” Jordan replied, stiffening. “I mean, what if Al Gore cancels at the last minute?”

“Well, he’s already here,” I said, pointing out the windows, in the direction of McAlister Auditorium. “We saw him pull up. He parked his Prius on the grass, next to three security Hummers? You admitted those were bad optics?”

“Optics can be inconvenient truths, too,” Tripp echoed, cracking his first, anemic smile in roughly twenty-four hours.

“God, why do I surround myself with Republicans,” Erik said, rolling his eyes.

“Well,” Jordan said, ignoring Erik altogether, “I’m just saying. I’d like to be able to go back to my room in the middle of the day without wondering if Tate and Michaela are done having sex.”

“Seems like all they do is fuck,” Erik told her. “It won’t last.”

Jordan gave me and Tripp both eyes, then looked back to Erik, a saccharine smile on her face.

“So,” she said, “how’s Hannah Metzenbaum? I ran into her last night.”

Erik tried to look as nonchalant as possible. “Grabbed breakfast yesterday, when I was supposed to be in class,” he replied. “And banged. How do you know her?”

“Through Hillel,” Jordan said. She pointed at herself. “Jew, remember? Though she’s more of a Chabad kind of girl.” She paused, as if we understood the nuanced difference she was attempting to make, but of course our gentile was shining through. She sighed, put-out, then continued: “More doctrinaire. Which is probably why Hannah thinks she needs to pronounce her name like she’s a prostitute from biblical times.”

“You mean, you don’t say it Channah?” Tripp asked, with a smile.

“Oh, please,” Jordan said, rolling her eyes. “The girl’s from Bergen County, not Jerusalem.”

“Which is not in Israel anyway, but who wants an argument,” Erik replied, saying it as fast as he could to wedge in the last word.

“Yeah, well, you’d better watch that mouth before your next date with Golda Meir,” Jordan warned, clawing at the skin of a clementine with her fingernails. “Hell hath no fury like a Jew scorned. We’re still hunting Nazis.” She shuffled in her seat, looked at us. “So is anyone going to see Gore with me?”

“I can’t,” I said. “I already have plans to burn a lot of coal after lunch, so.”

“Becker’s already met him,” Erik said, his voice mockingly falsetto. “Because he’s a snob.”

“I was eight,” I rebutted.

“Oh, the rarified life of the U.S. Senate,” Jordan said, popping a piece of clementine into her mouth. “You’re not going, Erik? I’m surprised. I thought you’d be in the front row, blowing kisses.”

“Our whole pledge class is meeting at the library to study for tomorrow’s pledge test at one o’clock,” he said. “Unfortunately.”

“Wow,” Jordan said, putting her hand to her heart with mock surprise. “You’re studying? Do I have to watch out for flying pigs, or that cold front coming up from Hell?”

“Sorry we not pre-med,” he replied, “and we don’t have to study our ass off for nothing.”

“Yeah, well,” Jordan replied. “I’m switching my major. Did I not mention?”

Jordan did not mention, and as much as she played off the last bit like it was some trivial anecdote, I couldn’t shake the thought that she had intentionally not mentioned it. As of last week, she was stressing to me about her grades vis-a-vis the nation’s medical schools, flirting with the idea that she might have to drop out of the program.

“What’d you switch to?” Erik asked.

“Marketing.”

“Talk about night and day,” he said. “So no more Dr. Jordan Fleischer? Your parents are going to be so devastated.

“Dr. Jordan Fleischer had to study her ass off to pull out a C in organic chemistry,” she said. “So Dr. Jordan Fleischer is turning her tricks elsewhere next semester, because otherwise she’d have to go to med school somewhere in Honduras or Myanmar.”

“Mazel tov,” Tripp told her.

“Welcome to the world of going out on Tuesdays,” Erik said. “You’re going to love it. Now we just have to get Tripp to drop out of architecture.”

“No chance,” Tripp told him. “3.7 this semester, assuming my final projects don’t get too fucked up.”

“How on earth did you manage that,” Erik said, “with pledgeship.”

“It’s called having no life,” he said. “You know all those hours you wasted dicking around on Battlescar 3? Pledge, study, drink, repeat.”

It was a little rich, in the sense that Tripp had played Battlescar 3 just as much as Erik--usually with Erik--and he did work hard, but he wasn’t quite the robot he was portraying himself as.

Tripp looked over to Jordan. “Do you think I could shower in J.L., actually?”

“They’re going to notice,” Erik warned him. “You’re the dirtiest one. They’re going to notice.”

Tripp slunk back in his chair, looking more defeated than I had ever seen anyone before. Except maybe Al Gore.

 

That night around nine o’clock was the night of our big pledge test. Everything we learned, which we had spent the entire afternoon cramming for. Desperate to retain every single nugget of wisdom, of useless information.

Except there wasn’t a test.

“Blindfolds on,” Harry barked, as he tore through the front doors, and by this point, we were so conditioned to listen to his orders that we did exactly that.

Once we were in the dark, he gave the next instructions: “Line up.”

But, of course, we couldn’t see anything; I stood up, trying to squint through the dark fabric, before I felt a hand grab my shoulder and force me into line. The same hand grabbed my wrist, and dropped my shoulders on the shoulders of the guy in front of me. Eddie Darien, probably; I could tell from the height.

Tripp was most certainly behind me. I recognized his odor.

There was some frantic whispering, and rustling.

“Okay,” Harry said, “I’m coming around to collect everyone’s wallets and phones, before you take the test, to make sure there’s no cheating. Empty your pockets.”

There was no grumbling; just the efficient movement of fabric, as we quickly spilled out our personal belongings, and held them out in our hands. I felt Harry’s big hand on top of mine, grabbing my things, ripping them away from me. And then a few more seconds rolled by, and we started moving through the house in a chain--into the kitchen, onto the back deck, and down the stairs to the driveway.

“Get into the car,” said a voice I didn’t immediately recognize, and then I was pushed into the backseat of something--cloth seats, the vague smell of mustiness, like the car had been sitting. The door slammed behind me. I was in the middle; next to me was definitely Eddie Darien; aside from the measured height, he took up half the backseat by himself, kept elbowing me in the shoulder as we tried to get comfortable.

The door opened again; I smelled Tripp sit down next to me.

And the door slammed again, and then suddenly, the Sesame Street theme song filled the car. I had not been anticipating that. And then the car whipped into reverse and skidded back down the driveway.

The Sesame Street theme song had repeated six times before it abruptly turned off, replaced by Top 40--Gwen Stefani’s “The Sweet Escape,” in particular.

“Okay, take your blindfolds off, you guys,” said Chris Baker, reproachfully, from the passenger seat, and I did. We were in the backseat of Kevin Malley’s Tercel; Tommy Pereira was driving. And I was, in fact, wedged between Darien and Tripp.

“Surprise!” Tommy said, gleefully, as the three of us blinked in our surroundings. “There’s no test. You’re getting initiated tonight.”

That did not immediately compute.

I looked at Tripp, and then at Eddie.

That did not immediately compute for any of us.

“So wait,” Tripp said, trying as hard as he could to sound this out, “there’s no test?”

Tommy Pereira was laughing at us.

There was no test. And so pledgeship was over. Almost over. Here we were: driving along I-10 to who-knew-where, to get initiated. Decision final.

“Well,” Baker said, slowly, as if trying to string the most diplomatic words together, “if you think about it, this whole semester has really been one big test.”

“But there is no actual test,” Tripp clarified. “You’re not shitting us? Because I have my book. I can keep studying.”

“There’s no test,” Baker confirmed, “but Harry’s right--it’s so fun not telling you guys.”

I suddenly felt a modicum of betrayal, from Baker, of all people, for not spilling the beans. We had lunch two, three times a week for the entire semester--we drank together every weekend--and for all of the insider knowledge he had promised me, all of the trade secrets from his official role as my big brother, there had been no mention of the fact that the test, the gargantuan test that they had been stressing all week, was a load of shit.

No matter who my little was next year, I decided: I would not keep them in the dark.

Tripp, for his part, didn’t seem to believe this new nugget of information. He kept fingering the edge of the pages in his pledge book, tempted to open it, tempted to start studying again, just in case this was some elaborate ruse to distract us from the task at hand.

“Oh, Becker’s mad,” Baker said, with a big smile on his face, as if that was the goal all along. “Come on. The mystique is half the fun.”

I folded my arms, did not reply.

Baker did not seem to be as affected by my freeze-out as one might have hoped. “God,” he said, “you guys are about to be initiated. It’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“It’s just,” Tripp pleaded, staring out the window, “we studied so hard. We all pulled an all-nighter.”

“Yeah, well,” Tommy said, “you should take a nap then, because it’s going to be another long night.”

Our blindfolds didn’t come back on until we were well into Mississippi, driving down a rural two-lane highway. Once they parked, some twenty minutes later--I couldn’t even imagine where we were--we sat in the car for what seemed like an eternity.

“Do you think we can talk?” whispered Eddie, but of course, his whisper was like a sonic boom.

Tripp and I both instinctively shushed him but, after about thirty seconds when there were no repercussions--Baker and Tommy had long since decamped to somewhere--Tripp whispered, “Where the hell are we?”

“Mississippi,” I told him.

“I know that,” he whispered back. “But where?”

“Your state,” I replied. “You tell me.”

He didn’t say anything. We continued to wait. I fell asleep for a while; I woke up, without opening my eyes, and could hear Tripp snoring for a while; I could feel Eddie Darien’s head lop onto my shoulder. We were exhausted from the night before; we were bored, we were confused.

 

“I’d say Justine,” Eddie said, when Tripp asked him which Iota Chi brother’s sister he would sleep with, roughly twenty thousand hours after we first pulled up.

I elbowed Eddie.

“I’m just saying,” he replied. “Out of the ones I’ve seen. I haven’t met Megan Pereira or what’s-her-face, Rowen’s hot sister.”

“Kate,” Tripp offered. I could not recall Rowen’s sister’s name either, but I knew for a fact it wasn’t Kate. “I’d go for Megan Pereira, sight unseen. Exotic.”

I wasn’t going to point out that a Portuguese-American from Grand Rapids didn’t necessarily qualify as exotic, or even vaguely ethnic under the census definition, but then again, I wasn’t from Pass Christian, Mississippi.

 

“No, I don’t know where we are,” Tripp said, when I posited the question, what felt like hours later. “For the last fucking time. I can’t identify the Mississippi woods by scent, like a fucking Boy Scout.”

“You were a Boy Scout,” I told him.

“Only for three years,” Tripp replied. “And it might have still been Cub Scouts. Wait, what’s Webelos? Cub or Boy? I made it to that one.”

I had absolutely no idea what any of the hierarchies of the Boy Scouts of America. My parents were not exactly outdoorsy to begin with, and they didn’t put all that much effort into forcing us into extracurriculars against our will; they were too busy to be tiger parents. Philip had done Cub Scouts; I remembered him outright refusing to do anything that required reading or writing--“It’s not school,” I remember him yelling at my mom, as she chased him down the stairs brandishing a Cub Scout workbook. And that was the end of that. They never tried with me, though I recalled Justine selling cookies at some point in our childhood.

“We-blows,” Eddie said, with a giggle.

We were all very tired.

I couldn’t quite picture Tripp as a Boy Scout; for being from Mississippi, he was much more of an indoor kind of boy, consumed with the majesty of the man-made, of architecture, rather than, say, surviving in woods like these with a canteen and a good view of the North Star.

I heard Tripp snoring again.

 

“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall,” Eddie sang, in his deep baritone.

“Don’t,” Tripp warned, and that was the end of that.

 

I woke up.

“Your brother’s name is Davis?” Darien was saying. “As in, Jefferson Davis?”

“God, no,” Tripp replied. “My mom’s maiden name. We’re not David Duke.”

I had always wondered that too. Not that I would toss such a question to Tripp, who was proud to be from the South, proud to be a Republican, but he was no backwoods boy—he was certainly cognizant of the fine line between regional and ideological pride, and Confederate apologism.

“My dog’s name is Sherman, though,” Tripp said, “after William Tecumseh Sherman. Union general.”

There was a long pause, as I assume Eddie Darien surveyed the logic of that statement, considering Tripp’s heritage, his genteel accent, his general pride for his ostentatious Southernness. “Why?”

I had already heard this story. Tripp took great pride in telling it.

“Because Sherman burned down Atlanta,” Tripp replied, enthusiastically. “And fuck Atlanta. Who dat!”

I fell back to sleep before we tangled into the family nomenclature of the Dariens.

 

“I’m just saying,” said Tripp, “is 10 and 6 is an incredible record—do you know how we did last year? 3 and 13. We didn’t even have a stadium—the fucking Alamodome. I thought we would move to San Antonio for sure, especially after fans chased Tom Benson out of Tiger Stadium.”

I awoke again to the sound of the door being clicked open, and Eddie Darien was pulled from the car. I felt his mammoth weight leave my shoulder, and then we plunged into silence again.

“Eddie?” Tripp whispered. There was no response.

“He’s gone,” I said, feeling around the empty void where Eddie Darien’s hulking body had been. I scooted over into his seat, the first bit of comfort I had felt in several hours. Or what had seemed like several hours; my concept of time was flooded.

“Shit,” Tripp said. “Good sign?”

“Good sign,” I confirmed. “He’s getting initiated.”

“So we think,” Tripp said. I could hear the sound of Tripp’s teeth clicking on his cuticles.

“Baker wouldn’t lie,” I said. “Not about this.”

“Well, I believe we’re getting initiated at some point tonight,” Tripp replied. His voice was grave and hushed, as if voicing the thought aloud might cause it to cosmically come true: “But what do you think they’re going to make us do beforehand?”

I didn’t have an answer for that.

 

The door opened again, some amorphous period of time later; the bell tolled. I felt a hand on my shoulder, yanking me out of the car.

Once I stood up: “Hands on my shoulder, Becker,” came the unexpectedly curt, but still vaguely comforting, voice of Brett Morton, our ally through this whole thing. I did not know what to expect; I could feel my heart suddenly rhythmic, in eager dread.

We were somewhere deep in the woods; I could feel it. Morton was leading me up a hill, a shallow incline that seemed to get steeper with each step. I could feel the stillness of the air, hear the dim echo of the insects and the leaves crunching underneath my Sperrys as we went.

I was hoping my blindfold would be coming off at some point, but that didn’t seem to be the case. The lack of sight was giving a tremendous amount of anxiety and uncertainty; when we stopped, I could sense that Morton and I were no longer alone, that we were possibly surrounded by the entire Iota Chi brotherhood, and maybe even some of the pledges who had come before me.

That didn’t give me very much comfort either.

The horror stories about fraternities abounded, all of them garish in my mind. In porn, of course, there was some moment where everything would dissolve into dick sucking in communal showers, everyone’s latent homosexuality bubbling to the surface, but we weren’t that kind of place, and I wasn’t remotely that lucky.

More likely, it would be some sort of hazing ritual.

Horror stories abounded on that, too.

And I was in the woods, alone, blinded, surrounded by a group of people who could basically do anything to me that they wanted to, at this point. The possibilities were endless.

Who’s cock would I suck, if it came to that? Matt Rowen, obviously, but that was beside the point.

No, it wouldn’t come to that. Baker had made it through. Morton, and Tommy Pereira, and everyone. People whose odds I didn’t like in the Mississippi forest, especially blindfolded.

Morton’s shoulders fell away from me as he stepped away. And then there was a sharp knock, on some sort of wooden door. I did not move.

“Magister,” said Tommy Pereira, “someone seeks entrance into our hallowed ring.”

“Open the gate,” came the sudden voice of Rob Winslow, authoritarian and clear, cutting through the stillness of the night. We still did not move. “Who stands at the gateway to the esteemed society of the Iota Chi brotherhood?”

“I do,” Brett Morton said, his voice also suddenly grave and serious. “Brother Xi Zeta.”

“Brother Xi Zeta,” Rob Winslow repeated. “You stand at the gate of Iota Chi, but you are not alone.”

“I am not, Magister.”

“Who do you bring into our most honorable brotherhood?”

Brett Morton’s hand rested on my right shoulder.

“A solitary traveler,” said Morton, his voice also suddenly grave and serious, “who feels he’s worthy of admission into the sacred bonds of Iota Chi.”

There was a long pause, possibly for dramatic effect, possibly because something terrible was about to happen. I was expecting the former, bracing for the latter; I hated not being able to see, not knowing who was standing around us, though I expected everyone. If everyone was around me, they were being uncharacteristically quiet; all I could hear was the constant chirp of insects, the crackle of a campfire, whose warmth I could not yet feel--I was suddenly aware of how cold I was, in my red shorts and red shirt and nothing else.

“Do you believe this traveler to be the man he claims to be?” Rob Winslow asked.

“I do,” said Morton.

“Do you believe this traveler to be of honorable character?”

“I do,” said Morton.

“Do you believe this traveler is a man worthy of our estimable fraternity?”

“I do,” said Morton.

“Brothers,” said Rob, “shall we let this traveler enter the sacred ring of our brotherhood?”

There was chatter. There was a lot of chatter, and it all sounded like, “No.”

No?

No.

No?

I did not have the luxury of panic; I felt sick, almost, my heart lurching upwards, like I had just begun a fall down a very long elevator shaft. But I was cool as a cucumber on the outside; I wouldn’t be anything else, especially if this was really the end.

“Brother Xi Zeta,” said Rob, his voice now slow and mournful, “the brotherhood has spoken. Your word alone will not be enough to guarantee this traveler entrance into the sacred bonds of Iota Chi. You must send the traveler back into the dark, and back on his way.”

There was, in my mind, another glacial silence; there was, from the brotherhood, just some light rustling, probably for not nearly as long as it felt.

And I wondered if this sort of thing was unprecedented--like they hadn’t even rejected someone so close to the finish line. Like they had to quickly figure out how to dispose of me painlessly and efficiently, while I stood there, blindfolded in front of them.

Begging did cross my mind. For all my big talk. And I might have attempted some, if I wasn’t so worried that

“Honorable Magister, I will give my word too in defense of this solitary stranger,” said Chris Baker. I felt his hand rest on my left shoulder. “I too know him. And, my word as my bond, I know him to be a worthy friend, patriot, and Christian. And I too believe he deserves to be welcomed into the sacred ring of brotherhood of the Iota Chi Society.”

“Do you believe this traveler to be the man he claims to be?” Rob Winslow asked again.

“I do,” said Baker.

“Do you believe this traveler to be of honorable character?”

“I do.”

“Do you believe this traveler is a man worthy of our estimable fraternity?”

“I do.”

“Brothers,” said Rob. He paused once more. “Shall we let this traveler enter the sacred ring of our brotherhood?”

There was a long pause, almost dramatic, as if no one had the audacity to ask a second time. Another unsettling silence, considering how many people were encircling me. I focused again on the crackling of the campfire.

Maybe there was some sort of appeals process that he had taken advantage of? I didn’t know how any of this worked. I wasn’t sure if it was scripted--the language seemed scripted; I couldn’t tell if the sentiment was--or if Chris Baker had stood up to the rest of the fraternity to help me overcome some last minute objections.

I didn’t know which was more upsetting. I certainly appreciated Chris Baker, like I always had.

There was no chattered response this time. In unison, a booming, “Yes!”

I felt the sudden pangs of relief, the fact that this was all part of some show--theoretically--but I didn’t have time, before it all started again.

“Stranger,” said Rob Winslow, and I felt him suddenly standing directly in my face, no more than two inches in front of me. “You come with quiet solemnity, in the eyes of God and the eyes of this honorable brotherhood. For all your life, you have been a solitary traveler, seeking the mystic bonds of fraternity, of acceptance, of love, of faith. And for all your life, these bonds have eluded you.”

“Out of many who seek admission into our brotherhood,” returned the voice of Tommy Pereira, “you have been deemed worthy by two of our esteemed brothers. Their word is their bond, and they believe you to be a man with the sterling character necessary to stand with us in the mystic bonds of brotherhood. Do you believe you are worthy of this honor and privilege?”

I did not have long to answer, obviously, but the thoughts carouseling through my head seemed to scream by fully formed, and quickly. Because no, of course I wasn’t worthy of Iota Chi, no matter how many brothers’ middle names I knew, how many loads of laundry I had done, how many dogs I had picked up from St. Louis. That no, of course I was not a man of sterling character, an honorable man, a trustworthy brother who they would be lucky to have. That no, I clawed to secrets like carnival prizes, and no, I was not planning on changing that.

Instead: “I do,” I said, because a simple “yes” seemed too informal occasion, and the other answer, a more philosophical no, was not an answer I was ever tempted to actually give, no matter how much those thoughts seemed to crowd my mind.

I was tempted to add, “Magister,” but I didn’t want to push the bounds of appropriateness. I was still operating under the idea that I shouldn’t do anything they hadn’t explicitly told me to do.

But “I do” seemed to work; they seemed to accept that; we moved onwards.

“Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” said Josh Weinman, which I couldn’t imagine I was the only one who found that funny, because he was Jewish, “trained his disciples to honor their Christian faith, and to live their lives in his service. In like manner, we have selected you, guided you, trained you, and trusted you to be reborn into the bounds of our honorable and worthy brotherhood—to live your lives in Iota Chi’s service.”

“The esteemed brotherhood of Iota Chi has accepted you into our hearts and arms,” said Rob Winslow. “Do you accept us into yours?”

I couldn’t believe it was that easy. The paranoia of pledgeship had left me thinking there was a trap door, that the bottom was going to fall out from under me the second I got complacent.

I said, “I do,” and I braced for impact.

Which came swiftly: both Baker and Morton’s hands gripped harder onto my shoulder, and yanked me backwards, off my feet.

Except I didn’t fall onto the ground--but rather onto a cloth that was stretched out behind me.

I couldn’t, exactly, tell who was carrying me or how high I was above the ground--there seemed to be at least one person on each corner, and I felt myself being hoisted upwards, suspended somewhere in mid-air.

And then, suddenly, it was hot. I was over a fire; I knew that much, and I did not like that. I did not move; I did not say anything; I would be a cool customer, but I didn’t like that I was over fire.

“Stranger,” said Rob Winslow. “Like the phoenix from the ashes, and like our Savior Jesus Christ, you will soon be reborn into the brotherhood of Iota Chi. In accordance to your wishes, and the wishes of the ring of our brotherhood.”

It was getting progressively hotter; I swore I could feel the flames licking the bottom of the cloth I was suspended on, but I lied as still as I could. I was not going to give them the satisfaction of watching me squirm.

Then I felt the cool splash of water, suddenly, on my chest.

“And the water,” Rob Winslow said. He gave a long dramatic pause. “It’s cooling touch represents the cleansing nature of Iota Chi. Your baptism into our sacred brotherhood.”

I was hoisted out of the fire, and placed gently on the ground.

There were a few crunches leaves; I felt Rob Winslow standing over me, looming.

“You have been reborn,” he said. He gave another pause. “Almost. Before we welcome you as a brother, we must mark you as one of our own, so the friends of our brotherhood can identify you as an honorable man. And so the enemies of this brotherhood can identify you of a man of courage and conviction.”

I felt my right arm pinned to the dirt beside me, and then a sharp, burning pain on the inside of my right wrist.

“Brother Omicron Gamma,” said Winslow, “you have been reborn into the Iota Chi Society. From the solitary traveler you once were, you have now been welcomed into the sacred ring of Iota Chi brotherhood. The brothers of our Society shall be your comrades forevermore as you walk the path of life. May God help you.”

“May God help you!” echoed the booming voice of Iota Chi.

I didn’t know if I was supposed to say anything else; I was being lifted up on both sides by my armpits, and then I was being dragged--not led, but mostly dragged--back down the hillside.

I still did not, entirely, know if this was the end. Whoever was dragging me brought me to another car, and told me to get inside, to not talk. So I did. The presence I felt next to me, in the middle seat, was Eddie Darien.

“Was that it?” I whispered.

“I don’t know,” said Will Connors, from the other side of Eddie.

And what more could we say, except that.

 

I woke up when the car door I was sleeping against was coldly removed. “Up,” said Harry Capuano, “blindfolds off.”

It was almost dawn, still dark but just light enough where I knew sunrise was coming quickly. My eyes stung; my blindfold must have been on for twelve hours by this point.

“Move,” he said, again.

We were all pouring out of the cars by this point, all in red, all looking more decrepit than we ever had looked, confused, but we followed Harry and his flashlight up the hill; the leaves were crunching under my Sperrys; I felt this all feeling exceptionally familiar, this deja vu. Birds were just beginning to chirp.

I looked down to my wrist, which was still stinging by this point; in the dimness of the light, there was a blood-red burn, almost a perfect circle, the size of a fingernail.

When we got to the top of the hill, there was everyone, standing around a campfire, illuminating in the dimness of the dusk, of the fire, and they were all wearing long white robes.

Rob Winslow was standing there, in the same robes he had worn for our induction, holding the same scepter with the bird on top, but now he had a long flowing red cape, which was caught on the bottom by some brush, though I wasn’t going to point that out.

“Magister,” said Harry Capuano, to Rob, “it is my duty and honor to introduce the Omicron class of the Sigma chapter of Iota Chi.”

In the crowd, I caught Chris Baker smiling, and it made me smile too. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be smiling--I had immediate fear of another mud ball smacking me in the face--but we were beyond that now, weren’t we.

“Brothers of Iota Chi,” said Rob Winslow, “greet your newly-initiated brothers.”

There was a jubilant scream, celebratory shouting; the brothers and their euphoria washed over us. There were claps on my shoulder, excited screams in my ear. What I was not expecting a bear hug from Chris Baker.

“I knew you could do it,” he told me, once he released me. He was beaming, like a proud parent on graduation day. “Are you happy? This is everything.”

“Of course I am,” I replied, curling my lips into a narrow grin. “I just can’t believe it.”

There wasn’t a moment in the last year where I imagined that I wouldn’t be standing here, that I would’ve been disposed along the way. I think I might’ve had tears in my eyes, but I was too tired, too overwhelmed, to feel very much of anything. Except relief. I felt relief.

 

They dropped us off, Saturday morning, at the Iota Chi house. I had somehow wound up in the backseat of Rob Winslow’s Sebring, driven by Ryan Wyatt, Josh Weinman in the passenger seat--Rob Winslow not actually present, just like he hadn’t been present the last time I’d spent a substantial amount of time in his car--and they dropped me off at the University Center.

The whole way back, I was thinking of Kevin Malley. And, when we arrived, I knew I wouldn’t have Tripp or Erik lingering around me--Tripp texted me; their cars had both stopped at the Waffle House in Picayune, Mississippi. So I set my sights on the one prize I hadn’t yet received this week.

“I’m in the library,” he texted back. “Paper due Monday. But you can come by and say hi. Among other things.”

I didn’t know what “among other things” constituted, but even the whisper of sex was enough to send me trekking across the quad immediately; I didn’t want to wait for Tripp and Erik to get back and risk missing anything. I was still filthy, but at least I wasn’t wearing red; the bigs had brought their littles sweatshirts to cover up the ridiculous pledge uniform we were still wearing, but Baker had the good sense to bring me a t-shirt and a pair of jeans too. I could not have been more appreciative.

Kevin was on the third floor, alone at a table wedged between two towering bookcases on the far side of the floor.

“Everyone forgets there’s a table back here,” he whispered, as I sat down in the chair next to him. “Because it’s so cold.”

He was wearing a Northface, and had a blanket draped over his thighs. The air conditioning system in Howard-Tilton Library was a casualty of Katrina; in its place were temporary tubes running across the ceiling that shot torrents of arctic wind out from intermittent openings. We were sitting directly beneath one, which Kevin seemed to have plugged up with the butt of a solo cup.

“Smart move with the cup,” I told him.

“Doesn’t really help though,” he replied, with a grin. “Here.” He pulled the blanket off his legs, offered it to me. I was cold enough where it seemed like a good idea; I spread it on my lap.

“Better,” I told him. “Thanks. But I can’t stay long. I know you’re working.”

“You can stay long enough,” he replied. “Happy to be a brother?”

I was expecting the opportunity to deliver the good news.

“How’d you know?”

“Oh, I always knew it was going to be last night,” he replied. “I’ve been through this all before. The prison jumpsuit, the late nights, the mud, the Mississippi wilderness. The fact that you’re wearing Chris Baker’s high school water polo sweatshirt.”

“You think you know everything,” I told him. “You think you’re hot shit.”

“I do know everything,” he said. “Brother Becker.”

Brother Omicron Gamma, if we were really being particular, but I wasn’t exactly sure how much information I was able to share with laypeople at this point. Even Kevin.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” I said. “Pledgeship, I mean. It’s nice not having to worry about whether or not I’ll make the cut.”

“Please,” he replied. “They don’t cut people. You’d have to fuck up pretty badly for them to actually kick you out.” He glanced down at his open notebook. “Well, too late to kick you out now, at any rate. Feel good? Feel like a kid on Christmas morning?”

So far, we had only been blanched: we had our first official meeting as brothers--we put on the white robes, we stood on the hillside as the sun crawled up over the treetops, we learned the deepest secrets of the fraternity that we were told never to tell anyone, penalty of death, all that. Learned secret handshake; got a little trinket, our metal Iota Chi pin, pinned to the breast of our robes, and were told just how much it should have meant to each of us.

“Exactly,” I told him.

And just as when Chris Baker engulfed me in a hug four hours ago, I still hadn’t processed my emotions--certainly not enough to articulate them. I hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep since Wednesday, and it was Saturday morning. Of course I was excited about it--the culmination of a whole year of groundwork and effort and trial. I was still more thankful, relieved at the permanence of everything. But of course I was excited, of course I was proud.

I needed to text Philip to tell him. I made a mental note.

“Good,” Kevin said. “Hope you stay in the holiday spirit when they still make you clean the house next semester, before you get spring pledges.”

“Someone’s jealous,” I taunted, “because he couldn’t hang with Iota Chi.”

“Yeah, I’m super jealous,” he deadpanned. “I like having a life, thank you.”

I wasn’t going to point out that Kevin’s life was a suburb of Iota Chi; a different jurisdiction, maybe, but undeniably fused to the larger city. He was Hamlet.

“Well, I’m happy,” I told him. “Do you have a lot of philosophizing to do?”

“Paper for my minor,” he said. “Psychology. It’s due during study days--I didn’t even know they allowed that. But at least that means I’m done earlier than anyone else.”

“When are you sprung from school?” I asked.

“May 6th,” he replied. “I’m done morning of the 4th, but I wanted to be around for Cinco de Mayo. Veracruz has dollar margaritas. And I’m driving myself anyway, so I can leave New Orleans whenever I feel like it.”

“Long drive,” I told him. “Three days? Four days?”

“Not to California,” he said. “New York. Smith Barney.”

It was the first news I’d received that he had actually picked an internship--I had been far too self-involved, far too remote the last week with pledgeship, to keep tabs on his decision.

I was, briefly and unexpectedly, disappointed that he hadn’t come through with the internship in Washington, D.C., although I knew that wasn’t a realistic thing, that I would be silently thankful for the remainder of the summer, except for the stolen moments when I was desperate for dick.

“Well, I’ll visit,” I told him. “We’ll have New York. It’ll be like a different world.”

“You’d better,” he said. “I think I found a place. I’ll have my own room and everything, so we won’t have to sexile some poor kid when we fuck.”

I instinctively looked around, but of course there was no one around us; of course no one could hear us over the hiss of the makeshift air conditioning, rebelling against its solo cup warden.

“I wish we could now,” I told him.

He looked shocked, but oddly titillated. “What, you mean in the library?”

I had not meant in the library--I had meant back at his place.

But the library suddenly did not seem like a terrible idea.

If we could find somewhere secluded enough.

I was really tired. And I was horny as balls: something about sleeping in a room with thirteen other guys and only travelling in groups of four for an entire week didn’t lend itself to easy release.

I couldn’t say if it was my insomnia-tortured mind or my desperate, dick-deprived dick that replied with: “I mean, do you know a corner or something?”

He was grinning at the prospect of some rogue sex between the stacks, but shook his head. “I guess they didn’t cover Matt Rowen and Meredith Greenblatt getting caught in the anthropology section during your sunrise knowledge dump? They keep this pretty patrolled. They know the worst impulses of Tulane students, especially during study days.”

I did not doubt that.

Instead, Kevin leaned over into me, placed his hand on top of the blanket covering my lap, over my inner thigh.

I exhaled nervously, arched my shoulders a bit, eyes darting across the faceless bookshelves. We were alone, but we were exceptionally exposed. “What are you doing?”

“I’m showing you everything you were missing while you were off being Brother Adam Becker of Iota Chi,” he whispered. He burrowed his hand under the blanket, began playing with the top of Chris Baker’s jeans, which were slightly loose on me, then moved on to the waistband of my grimy boxer briefs. “Maslow would be so disappointed if I let psychology get in the way of physiological needs. Even if you do reek. Even if my hand is going to smell like a corpse flower after contact.”

Kevin had quite a way with analogies. He snuck his knuckles underneath the elastic waistband of my underwear.

“I’m sure you’ll get past it,” I told him, and he said nothing; the next sound was my stifled groan as he ran the tips of his fingers alongside my already swelling dick. “It’s really cold in here,” I whispered.

“Doesn’t seem like it,” he whispered back, as he wrapped my fingers around my dick.

He had his nose, his face, buried into the side of his neck; I could feel his hot breath as he leaned into me, slowly pumping my dick, up and down. “Are you thinking about me?”

“Yeah,” I said, breathlessly. “You know it.”

He kept pumping, picking up the speed just a bit. Then more, harder, faster. I arched my back, I bit my lips, I exhaled. It was not going to take much--it was not going to take much more than this. I hadn’t jacked off since, damn, before Justine was here--more than a week ago. I was a balloon--the slightest pin prick.

“I want that tight little ass,” he whispered, jacking me even harder. “Think about me inside that tight little ass. Think about how much you want my cock.”

I bit my lip again, but a moan poured from out of my lips anyway. “I’m really close,” I whispered. “It’s been way too long.”

And then--nothing more. He released my dick and, in one quick motion, withdrew his hand, out from my jeans, out from underneath the blanket. He leaned back into my chair, and I looked up at him.

“I didn’t mean stop,” I told him. I l looked down; I was sporting a substantial bulge, even through my underwear, through my jeans, through the fleece of the blanket. “Another few seconds, and I was going to be done.”

He raised his hand to his nose. “Corpse flower. Uncanny.” Still casual, smiling now sarcastically, he picked up a yellow highlighter, as if heading back to work was a completely rational thing to do. “You’re going to have to wait for the rest. You can’t have everything all at once; it’s about time you learned.”

I leaned into him. “Why not?” I whispered.

He was still smiling, enjoying being able to toy with me, because I was so exhausted and so ready to erupt. “You’re going to thank me. Two weeks of pent up frustration shouldn’t be wasted with a handy in the library, shot into dirty underwear. So you go shower, I’ll go finish this paper, and then when we’re both free tonight, you can come over to my place and I’ll fuck you senseless. As many times as I can”

I shifted in my seat a bit, trying to shake my bulge loose; I was not successful. It had been too long since anything; Kevin had revved the engine, left the parking brake on.

“I can’t exactly go yet,” I told him.

“So stay,” he replied, lifting his smirk. He lowered his voice, nearly inaudible. “And think about the damage I’m going to do to your hole. How I’m going to tear you up inside before I skip out.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not going to let you leave until tear me apart,” I whispered back. “I’ll chain myself to your porch if I have to.”

“Oh, we’ll go out with a bang,” he said, with a smile. “Literally. Count on it.”