Missing the Big Picture (15 page)

The only girl I was friends with who had a boyfriend when I met her was Diana’s roommate, Renee. Renee was a strong, fun-loving girl; she even had two boyfriends at one time. Renee always promised me that someday we would reenact the scene from
Ghost
where they play with the pottery and have a physical encounter at the same time. One time Kaitlin, another of Diana’s friends came back to her room and saw flowers on her desk. Attached to the flowers was a note from Renee saying that the flowers were from her boyfriend Mark, but she had to hide them in somebody else’s room because Tony, her other boyfriend, was there. Her boyfriend Mark was twenty-five, and Tony was twenty-two. Renee was only eighteen, but a very mature eighteen.

In fact, many of the girls I associated with, especially Renee, were more masculine than I was. Renee would usually complain that everything at the dining hall was overpriced, and she often stole silverware or other items in retaliation. She once tried to put some food in my pocket, and I put it back. She yelled, “You’re such a pussy, Luke!” Another time she mixed me an alcoholic drink called a peppermint patty, but it was too strong for me to finish. I spit some of it out. She looked at me and said, “Watch—this is how a real man drinks a peppermint patty.” I was waiting for her to call in some frat boy, but to my surprise, she drank the whole thing straight. Renee was a very confident person. She was always at the bar either getting to know people or playing pool with her friends. One time she told me, “I’m just a girl who knows how to enjoy life.” It was great to spend time with a person like her, since only seven months earlier I had thought about killing myself.

I’d spent all of the fall semester trying to convince Denise to like me, but she made it clear that she wasn’t interested. I knew that she liked rough guys; she said she didn’t want a guy who was all over her, and she enjoyed “the challenge.” Most of the other boys she had dated were jocks, not guys who were known for being nice—like me. Soon after the second semester began, Denise started dating a Middle Eastern student named Rodney. Rodney was loud, athletic, and fond of making inappropriate jokes, usually at another person’s expense. He would pick on Denise’s friend, telling her that her breasts looked like “mosquito bites.” Another time, when everyone was watching television, he told another girl to “get up and a make a sandwich for me now.”

Despite all of Rodney’s negative comments to others, the buttons he most liked to press were mine. He told me how Denise had hooked up with another guy, just to make me angry. When a bunch of people from my dorm were hanging out in our floor lounge one day, he singled me out and asked, “Do you jerk off to Denise?” He also made fun of me because I was still a virgin and the only thing physically I had done with a woman was with a stripper. Finally, tired of Rodney’s crude humor, I decided to wrestle him in the study lounge. This wasn’t an average wrestling match. Nearly every seat in the lounge was taken, and everyone was taking pictures. Some ended up on the Internet for years, which was rare in 2002.

I was nervous having everybody watching me, so I just egged Rodney on and ran around him in circles. I ended up losing the wrestling match. Rodney said that I would have to be his bitch for losing—plus he was dating Denise and I wasn’t.

My main pastime at Geneseo was simply socializing in other people’s rooms. I had no computer and no cell phone, and I had to share my room with somebody else. Yet I loved just being able to walk down the hall and hang out with some friends.

One night Renee and Diana were talking about how they never saw the famous Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee sex tape, and they wanted me to rent it for them. As a loyal friend, I agreed to visit the off-campus video store and attempt to rent it. Unlike any other video store, I was disappointed when the man went onto the computer to look for the tape, but he was all out. I settled for another pornographic flick called
I Came and I Can’t Get Up,
which was made in the 1970s and only cost a dollar to rent. Still, the laughs that came from the movie were priceless.

While many people who watch porn probably sit alone and watch from the comfort of their couches, Diana and her friends gathered around. One girl kept yelling out, “Yeah, I’ve done that,” every time the two sex partners changed positions. Another joke we played was to call one unsuspecting friend to come over to copy some class notes, and then just let the porno play in the background.

Another memorable occasion that semester was when
The Vagina Monologues
came to SUNY Geneseo. As a joke, I would call random rooms or ask people sitting at tables in the campus center if that was where I could get tickets. One man at a table said, “Well, I don’t know where you can get tickets, but I know a lot about vagina.”

My friends were surprised at how open and risqué I was with complete strangers. Diana and I were talking to somebody we had never met before, and she told us that she saw
The Vagina Monologues.
I asked her if there was any moaning, and she told me no. I replied, “That must have been the last time I saw vagina.” Diana started laughing uncontrollably while the girl just gave me a strange look.

After the holiday break, I noticed that Rich and Bruce were becoming good friends. I could never understand how the two of them had such a close friendship; they appeared to be polar opposites. Bruce never liked to drink, and Rich loved to go to parties, smoke weed, and drink. Every other word that came out of Rich’s mouth was “fuck.” He used it as an adjective, a noun, and a verb. He would refer to me as a “sick fuck” if I said something perverted, although he would openly talk about the anal sex that he was having with his girlfriend. Of course, he also used the word as a verb, especially describing how he liked to fuck.

Bruce was more of a loner and spent hours on his computer or playing his guitar. Sometimes he would even play the guitar when I was sleeping. Bruce also prided himself on once almost hacking into his school’s computer. SUNY Geneseo was known for being two-thirds female, and Rich could never really be friends with any girls he wasn’t dating. He had no respect for women. When his girlfriend from Long Island called, the most that he would talk to her would be for fifteen minutes because “That’s all I can take from that bitch.” In fact, a lot of women were known as “bitches” to Rich.

If ever Rich had somebody visiting or somebody new was on the floor, Bruce and Rich would call me to Rich’s room to meet them. One time we had a visitor named Bin, who was of Russian descent. I knew Rich wanted me to ask him strange questions as a joke. I asked Bin how many Russian girls he knew were shaved and whether it was socially acceptable to have threesomes. I knew Rich thought my questions were hysterical, but he knew that Bruce hated me and he didn’t want to say that he liked me. Bruce was so jealous. To please Bruce, every time Rich saw me, he would be nice to me at first but then would try to make fun of me to make Bruce laugh. He would usually make fun of my voice, my walk, or my lack of experience with girls. I tried to spend as little time in my room as possible, but it was hard after Diana and her friends decided they were going to pledge some sororities.

On March 1, 2002, the girls began their pledge program. At around six o’clock on Saturday night, the whole sorority would pick the girls up in their dorms, one by one. All of the sisters would be chanting and singing, telling the future pledges that they were looking for them. Denise also had to say good-bye to her new boyfriend because Rodney had decided to pledge a fraternity. I was so ecstatic to learn that I would barely be seeing him, but they were still together during his pledge period.

The fraternities also picked up their prospective pledges as a group, but everybody was quiet and lined up single file. The pledges were outside of their dorm rooms, and usually the fraternity pledge master would quietly look the pledge in the eye and point his fingers in the direction of where the pledge should go. All of the pledges, no matter what fraternity or sorority they were pledging, were extremely nervous. Final Bids was the name of the night where they were formally inducted as pledges. Everybody went out and got drunk—most until they threw up. Since most pledging programs were dry, it was the last night that the pledges could drink. One boy actually busted an eye vessel from throwing up too much.

The next morning at brunch, a girl approached me and asked if I missed the girls. “Well, isn’t that what they made lubricants for?” I responded. Even though I was being a wise-ass, I did miss the girls. The pledge program at all of the fraternities and sororities lasted six weeks, and every week the pledge program got more involved. In Renee’s and Diana’s sorority, the girls usually had to be up at a designated dining hall by eight, and then in between class, they had to go to the library for study hours. Plus, they weren’t allowed to walk alone. Every girl had to have an escort, and if the two saw one of their sisters, both of the girls had to stop and greet her. The greeting was a special ritual; at minimum it consisted of a hello, then the pledges would have to tell the sister everything they knew about her—her major, interests, hometown, and so on. Since there were over fifty girls in the sorority, Shannon, Diana, and her friends made flash cards.

The sorority Renee and Diana were pledging, the Betas, made their pledges walk two by two—one girl facing forward and the other walking backward. Walking backward was a punishment because one pledge didn’t see her pledge mistress walking behind her and failed to give her the proper greeting.

The girls’ dress was also controlled. They had to wear their pledge T-shirts usually three days a week, and then something that said “SUNY Geneseo” on it the rest of the week. Since the girls were pledging, I couldn’t sit with them at any meal. All of the pledge sisters had to eat meals together, and once when I saw the girls in the dining hall, they said that I couldn’t sit with them or make any jokes about what they were doing. Pledging was supposed to be taken seriously, and if any girl was seen wearing makeup, laughing, or having a good time, all of the girls would have to stand outside the sorority house and get yelled at by their pledge mistress, who was the director of the pledging process.

Another time I was talking with some of Rodney’s pledge brothers in the library. Rodney made a remark that I was a wuss, and he brought up the time he won our wrestling match. Rodney said to me, “I showed you who the boss was, right, son?” I replied, “The last I knew, Tony Danza was still the boss.” Some of the pledges started chuckling, but one of the pledge master’s spies saw them and made the pledges do an extra thirty push-ups because they were caught laughing in the library during study hours. As a result, the next day all of the pledges yelled at me like I did something wrong.

Most of the different missions that the fraternities made their pledges embark on were bizarre and degrading. One night all of the pledges had to steal a squeegee from a gas station, find a vibrator, walk to all of the sorority houses in their underwear, and get at least one sister from each of the ten sororities to sign the pledge’s underwear. If the pledge got more than one signature, it was considered bonus points. One pledge was so ambitious that he had a sorority sister actually sign his penis.

Some other fraternity missions that the pledges had to complete involved carrying a balloon around for one day without popping it. Another time the pledges couldn’t speak for one whole day, and many times the pledges had to run across campus as a group. One time a sorority made all of its pledge sisters get naked, and then a group of fraternity brothers walked around and stared at them. If a girl had some fat or extra skin in a certain place, the brother would circle it with a marker.

All of the fraternities and sororities completely isolated their pledges from any contact with the outside world. If a pledge had a screen name, which all of them did, the pledge master would put it on their buddy list. If the pledge was caught talking online, the whole pledge class would be punished. Most of the pledges got around this by inventing new screen names. All of the pledges, regardless of their fraternity or sorority, weren’t allowed to go to the school gymnasium, and one fraternity told a pledge that he wasn’t allowed to attend church.

By the end of the six-week period, all of the pledges, both the guys and the girls, looked disgusting. The grease in Diana’s and Renee’s hair was extremely visible, as the seventeen girls only had half an hour a day to shower and there was only one shower they could use in the sorority house. Sleeping was another activity the pledges were deprived of. In Kaitlin and Shannon’s sorority, during the first few weeks the girls were allowed to sleep four to five hours a night the first few weeks. During the last week, Shannon and Kaitlin averaged only forty-five minutes of sleep a night.

Even though every pledge had to go to the library every night for three hours of study time, most of the girls’ grades took a sharp decline. Shannon, who had a 3.4 grade point average her first semester, barely had a 3.2 the following semester and she was taking one less course than she was first semester. Kaitlin and Diana, who both had grade point averages around 3.0, started getting Ds in some of their classes. Renee’s grade point average went from a 2.7 to a 2.2.

Even though most of the pledges would never want to relive the pledging process again, the days after they stopped pledging, they were lavished with flowers, jackets, and praise. All of the girls said that it was totally worthwhile—the constant yelling, the lack of food, the sleep deprivation. Any Greek attending Geneseo did have a social advantage. There was a rumor that anybody who played a varsity sport or wore Greek letters was granted instant admission to the bars in town, regardless of his or her age. However, not all underage Greeks and athletes got into the bars; it was just a somewhat-true myth.

The main reason why so many people joined fraternities and sororities was for acceptance and safety. Many freshmen struggle to adapt to living away from home; they miss having a clique or any form of stability, and a fraternity or sorority gives them both instantly.