THE CRAZY ONE IN THE CAR--episode 7
THE CRAZY ONE IN THE CAR--episode 7
Going to college 1964-1968
Freshman Year — Winter Quarter 1965
“Downsie!”
I’m in my Baldwin Hall room and ECBIV is leaning in the doorway. His eyes sparkle and the corners of his mouth are tugging to keep a smile from breaking out. His voice even squeaks a little as again he says, “Downsie!”
“You’re back! You didn’t flunk out!” I open my arms and he puts his hands up between us, palms toward me.
“Point three three. Two Fs and a D. Probation. But here I am.”
“Damn, I’m going to make you work this term.”
“Yeah, but right now, Corse and Caraggino are upstairs; we’ve been waiting for you to get in, are you a bridge pro yet?”
“I’m Goren-a whoop yo’ ass.”
He hoots and we go upstairs.
In ECBIV’s room Corse smiles with delight. There’s not much difference between his cynical, belittling smile and a genuine, affectionate one, but it’s there. “Well well well,” he says, “I think I speak for everyone when I say I just sprang some major wood. Right, Jer?”
Jerry’s smiling like a six-year old whose special friend just paid him a surprise visit. He goes quiet, though he keeps smiling and says, “Dunno about major,” and then he shouts, “Let’s play some major bridge!”
None of us is all that good. It doesn’t matter. We play and we laugh and we talk. ECB suggests going downtown Teddy’s bar for dinner and we do. And we laugh and we talk.
January 2, 1965
I am home.
The first week of winter term is a flurry of bridge playing and fraternity rush. And, oh yeah, classes. I go to the Grill with Dan Corse where Independents—upperclassmen and women who do not belong to fraternities and sororities—congregate and my bridge game improves. There are two nights of invitation-only events at the fraternities. The first night the Phi Delts don’t invite me and the Crows don’t invite Corse and ECBIV watches from the sidelines. The first night I go with Jerry to the Phi Psi house and then we meet Paul Felder and go to the Crow house, and that feels like home. The second night Jerry and I go to the Phi Psi house to tell them we’re pledging Alpha Chi Rho and Paul doesn’t get an invitation from the Crows. He comes to my room not holding back tears. “Please find out what I did.” At the Crow house, John Fergus and A. J. Jammer ask me what I think of him. I don’t know how to respond.
“I like him. He has lots of quirks. I don’t want to pass judgment.” It’s wishy-washy and I know it.
John and I go out on the front porch. “I’m one of two or three guys who voted against him,” he says. “I want to know what you think.”
I don’t like Paul enough anymore to advocate for him to John.
“I like him to talk to”—and here it is—“but I don’t think I’d want to live with him.”
Back at the dorm I tell Paul that no one would talk to me about other freshmen. He looks at me stricken and he leaves. I’m telling myself it’s not my responsibility as Corse appears in the doorway.
“Vale of tears,” he says with the amusement of the uninvolved. “I decided not to pledge SAE. I’m gonna wait till next term and get into the Crows.” He expects me to say something but I just keep looking at him and I’m thinking, No, you won’t. He goes on: “While Felder and I flagellate ourselves in front of the South Hall fountain, you can all surround us and fellate each another in fellowship.”
January 6, 1965
We went charging out of Brooks Hall into the Brothers of Alpha Chi Rho today. And I got to hold the Garnet and White flag of the Crow House while the other fraternities greeted their pledges. I’ve never wanted anything so much or been so happy as tonight, being accepted and congratulated, encouraged and just plain liked.
The basement of the house is small and damp. The ceiling is low and the lightbulbs are bare. But there’s a keg and the room is packed with brothers who surround the ping pong table and drum on it and sing and chant and drink. And the next day, my first hangover ever isn’t all that bad.
Every free minute I’m drawn to the house. As I come down the street and the oak tree in the front yard comes into view, my heartbeat quickens in anticipation of something wonderful. And now I can also come to the house from campus by the back way behind Murray Hall. Back of the house is a detached garage that’s been converted into a television room. I love to open the door and to walk through just to see who’s there. Brother Gornack is almost always slouched on the sofa in front of the television, unwilling to look away from the screen, though sometimes he grunts a greeting. Even Brother Gornack fills me with joy. Up the back walk to the back door and down the back hall and into the front study room where John Fergus has his desk. If he’s not there, it’s through the dining room and into the living room where engagement is animated and free-wheeling. Lots of bridge playing even early in the afternoon. And the stereo is always playing. The Beatles. The Stones. The Righteous Brothers. Loud and window-rattling and sing-alongy.
*****
It’s 10:00 p.m. and the pledge class has gathered in the house living room. One floor lamp is on. Everything else in the house is dark. Pledge Master Mario Stefano appears with Assistant Pledge Master Stan Veltcher. Stef is short and round with thinning hair and expressive hands. He’s a sociology major (pledges must learn the majors and the hometowns of all the brothers) and either a psychology or a religion minor. In Saturday morning cartoons he would be the kind, experienced elf who helps everyone get safely through the Forest of the Wicked.
“Good evening, pledges,” he says.
A mumble or two and Stan says, “Let’s hear it: Good evening, Pledge Master Stefano.”
And in unison we shout, “Good evening, Pledge Master Stefano!”
Stef smiles. “This evening,” he says, “you have the honor of participating in your first Pledge Class Happy Hour. Are you ready?”
Yes, sir! Ready! Hell yeah! Go, Crow! Alpha Chi Rho!
From the shadows come several brothers. Each snaps on a flashlight. “Single file!” one of them shouts, I’m not sure who it is. “Alphabetical order!”
As we try to arrange ourselves, I switch into automatic pilot. The way to succeed in situations like this is to go outside yourself, to minimize your response to external stimuli. You hear commands from a safe psychological remove and you follow the commands without emotional engagement.
Take off your shoes and socks and remove your sweatshirts!
Jog in place!
Count off in alphabetical order!
Banker! Barstow! Baylor! Bronkerman! Caraggino! Cragg! Downs! Graize! Hunnicutt! Markets! Ormand! Palumbo! Sarbley! Strothman!
Jog around the outside perimeter of the house!
Again!
Line up in the front yard!
Twenty-five jumping jacks!
Down for twenty-five push-ups!
Run the outside perimeter in the opposite direction! Double time!
Inside the house!
Down on the floor! Give me fifty!
On your feet!
Pledge Barstow! On your feet! Fifteen jumping jacks! Now down for five!
Pledge Markets! On your feet! On your feet!
Pledge Downs! Your pledge brother is having a hard time getting to his feet! Help him!
We get back to the dorm after midnight. And we all want to sleep. But at 3:00 a.m. we execute our first pledge raid on the house. The back door is never locked and we sneak in and up the back stairs. Half of us go into the cold sleeping room, half into the warm sleeping room. At the command of Brother Cragg, firecrackers are lit and thrown and we race out of the house as the popping begins. And maybe we set trays of some gross paste in front of the door to each sleeping room.
It’s all contrived, it’s all obvious, but I love it. It’s juvenile but it’s male, it’s masculine. And even if to get through it all we must mentally detach ourselves, still each of us bonds with the others.
The house phone hangs on the wall in the back hallway next to the pop machine—there are brothers who call it “the soda machine”—and when the phone rings, some pledge in the house must answer it before the third ring or all pledges in the house face the wrath of whichever brothers are about: push-ups, running barefoot around the outside perimeter of the house, especially after a snowfall, facing a wall with the tip of your nosing touching it for as long as a brother wishes, etc. A pledge will respond at all times to any name a brother chooses to call him: Asshole, Worthless, Worthless Asshole, Blowjob, Cum Rag, etc. At all times a pledge will obey commands. A. J. loves to come into the room and in his understated, even off-hand, tone, say, “Pledge Downs, down for fifteen,” and I must drop to the floor and give him fifteen push-ups. This can be particularly dicey if the pledge is commanded to drop to the floor when the pledge is carrying a glass of water or a cup of coffee to another brother. Out of concern for the pledge, some brothers give the pledge a warning of impending push-ups: “Hey, Asshole, on the count of seven you will drop and give me thirty-one. One. Two. Three. Four—” and the pledge has a chance to put whatever is in his hands safely on the floor before “—Five. Six. Seven. Down for thirty-one.” Brother Fergus enjoys commands such as “Pledge Downs, you will play an entire rubber of bridge with me and Brothers Veltcher and Gornack and you will be my partner and we will win.” Most commands are similarly benign: “Pledge Barstow, go to my desk and get my Chemistry book and bring it to me immediately.” While there are a few really effeminate guys on campus and one really masculine girl—I’ve learned the term “bull dyke”—as far as I know, Paul Barstow is the only admitted homosexual here. And while it’s surprising that someone like Brother Klimczak—who thought I didn’t have “the stuff” to be a brother of Alpha Chi Rho—didn’t blackball Barstow, I don’t think about it. I don’t want to think about it. I’m not going to think about it.
*****
Augie Palumbo and I are the first pledges on Tick Duty. When you’re the Tick, you must stay in the house for two days and nights and you may leave only to go to class or to attend official college functions. When you're the Tick, you sleep on the sofa in the library. Or on the floor in the corner of a study room. Or not much at all. When you’re the Tick, each evening you post a homemade wake-up sheet that includes the name of each brother and a space for the morning time each wants to be awakened with a description of the manner in which he wants to be awakened. Further, when you’re the Tick, you will wake each brother in the manner specified without disturbing other brothers. This is a challenge as everyone sleeps in bunk beds and most bunk beds are close together in the sleeping rooms. If he wanted, a brother in one bunk could hold hands with his brother in the neighboring bunk. Not that anyone ever would. Brother Brown asks that the Tick apply the tip of his little finger to whichever of Brother Brown’s ears is most readily available. Brother Stefano wants a feather dragged gently across his cheek but will settle for an equally gentle shaking of his mattress. Brother Jammer wants to be awakened at 7:00 a.m. and then again at 7:10 at which time the Tick will pull Brother Jammer’a blanket down to Brother Jammer’s waist. A tug on Brother Bingamon’s shoulder followed by immediate protection of his head as he snaps into sitting position in the lower bunk is not required but would be appreciated. And so on.
On the outside page of our Tick List I draw a naked woman lying on her stomach: “What goes in hard and dry and comes out soft and wet?” Turn the page to the sign-up section and there she lies next to a wrapped stick of Beach-nut Peppermint gum. I am in the back hall hanging the sign on the door to the basement when Brother Klimzcak comes down the hall. He’s wearing only piss-stained, sagging briefs. His forehead and cheeks are blotchy and there are red pimples on his shoulders. He grabs the pencil from me and writes.
“Read it,” he says.
I do.
“Out loud,” he says.
“6:47—not a minute sooner or later. Do not touch me.”
“You do not touch me,” he says. “Ever. Clear?”
I nod.
“Can’t hear you,” he says.
“Very clear,” I say.
“Very clear, sir,” he says and I’m thinking we’re in a really bad tv movie about basic training.
“Very clear, sir.”
“Dip shit Pledge,” he mumbles and I watch him lumber down the hall, his flat ass after-quivering under his saggy briefs.
I don’t smile, but there’s something about the long game in such a situation that I’ve always liked. Take your shot now because eventually you will go down and I will be there to witness it. Maybe it’s the years of closing out Dad and his anger.
The Crazy One in the Car is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely co-incidental.