American Fraternity Man (56 page)

“Next question,” Sam
says. “Did your date pull out your chair and help you into your seat? Maria answered: ‘Yes. Charles made sure I was comfortable throughout our date.’”

Select smiles from the Pledge Clump.

“Straight P.I.M.P.,” a brother says behind me.

“No doubt,” Sam says. “Made her feel
comfortable
. Looks like we could all learn something from our man, here. Ready for the next question?”

I brush a bit of fuzz from my suit jacket, straighten my
off-center belt. I say, “Sure.”

“‘Kay. Here goes. Did he wait for you to begin your salad before he started eating?”
And Sam keeps making little quote fingers each time he reads Maria’s words. “‘Yes,’ Maria says. ‘Charles even asked if it was good, and if I needed salt or pepper.’ Damn, Charles. I think
I’m
falling in love with you.”

Michael still stares back from the Pledge Clump, on edge, still hoping for Sam to deride me, for Maria to dispense with me. But each of the questions is answered in a similar manner, with a “yes” and an adoring explanation of my gentlemanly prowess, and suddenly I feel like it could have been
any girl
on that side of the table and they would’ve melted under the heat of my conversation. Anyone. Bring on Angelina Jolie! Bring on Jessica Alba! Jenn is doing her thing in Florida? Fine. I’m doing my thing out here.

“Final question,” Sam says, “and this is the best, trust me.” He nods spastically, licks his lips with the sort of comic hyperbole of an old Loony Toons short, the one with the starving prospector who sees his own friend as a turkey. “Would you go out on a second date? And I think everyone already knows the answer to this one, don’t we? But listen to what Maria wrote. ‘I would
definitely’
—and she drew a smiley face, too—‘go on a second date with Charles. Who wouldn’t? He needs to call me, and Shelley and me will show him Juarez for the first time.’”

Sam stops, a reverent silence falling upon the room.

Pledge Clump stuck on pause, no movement whatsoever. Michael’s hostility appears broken, shoulders crumpled and face overtaken with futility. A loud noise might shatter him.

“And she left her number,” Sam says, staring directly into the pledges. He holds his arm out, stiff, and dangles the paper before me. “Bravo, my friend. You have shown these scumbag pledges the way.”

I shouldn’t need the awed smiles—
real
smiles—and the applause that follows. But I haven’t seen a friend, a real friend and not a “business associate,” in months. I haven’t seen Jenn since the summer. Six months ago, I sat in a country club banquet room for Alumni Ball
,
my own fraternity brothers and alumni clapping and congratulating me and thanking me for my dedication to the college and to Nu Kappa Epsilon for four undergraduate years. Graduation was fast approaching; my name was being etched into plaques; I was being given a respectful farewell by the undergraduates, “Thanks for the memories!” and all that. What a moment! What a stage! All eyes on me, and in the best way possible.

But that was a
goodbye
moment. Right now, this is a
hello
moment.
Welcome back
.

So instead of correcting Sam for saying “scumbag pledges,” I pluck the paper from his hands, take in the sweetness of Maria’s responses, the smiley face, the phone number, and wave from my place atop the chair as the applause grows.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Open Space.

First time that Jenn and I got together. Like,
together
together, a date and not just drinks on the fraternity house lawn. Her sorority’s Grab-A-Date function, a bar called Icy Jack’s.

We sat on barstools beside the gigantic Iron Tee arcade game, the DJ’s heavy bass beats forcing us to lean close to talk. And every word we both said, every comment we made, we leaned just a little closer, until finally she had her fingers firmly on my arm and her lips nearly touched my ear as she spoke. Icy Jack’s is one of those bars that’s
cast in the glow of blacklights so that everything around you feels like a photo negative. Jenn and I had been drinking, and the world around us—awash in these cold blues and purples—seemed not only different, but mystical. The normal rules of science no longer applied that night; time either slowed or sped up, depending on the moment, and gravity lost its hold. We floated through the crowd, onto the dance floor, Jenn leading me, holding my hand as she cleared a path. I don’t remember any songs from that night, and I don’t remember how she looked as she danced, what I looked like. I remember only that the entire room, so many bodies under blacklight, no longer looked like a room. I might have been wedged between Jenn and forty or fifty people I didn’t know, between walls and beertubs, but I wasn’t suffocating; I was moving in a space of dark blue, earrings and wristwatches and rings sparkling here and there like tiny Earth-captured stars. The world opened up.

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

Anything I wanted to do, I could.

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

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
.
Night Off
.

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

Where r u?

Answer ur phone Charles!

Where r u?

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

This is not funny. U need to call me.

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

*

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

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

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

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

“Yeah, probably,” I say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They’ve got great salsa,” Sam says.

“Another Mexican restaurant?”

“What else?” Sam asks.

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

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

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

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

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