American Fraternity Man Read Free

was true. My father never talked much about his own past, except random memories (a stint as a farmer in the late ‘70s, a 9-month business trip to London in the mid-80s, a nagging pain in his shoulder about which he’d say only, “Use your seatbelt,” or—here, now—his broken toilet at his co-op in college) revealed during pivotal points in conversations when he wanted to prove a point.
    “I can clean this. Please. It’s nothing.”
    “So this is what we’ve been paying for, then?” he asked. “I trusted you to do the research, Charles. But the big-screen TVs? The pool table? This is what the semester dues pay for? This is the ‘leadership development’ you brag about?”
    He made it sound as if this was a new realization he’d just come to, but really, the fraternity had never stood a chance with my father. As a high school senior one year before, I’d worked out a deal with him so that I could attend Edison University, an expensive private school on the Gulf Coast. I’d pay tuition (student loans), and he’d pay room and board at the campus dorms for all four years. “I still think you’d be better off at the University of Florida,” he said. “Hell, you’ve got scholarships that would cover the full tuition there. But this is the same deal I had with my father. So: room and board it is.”
    T hen I joined a fraternity during the first week of classes. Didn’t tell him. And—because the university owned all housing facilities and approved most transfer requests—I quietly moved to the freshman floor of the fraternity house. The cost of rent, which now included a full meal plan, National Fraternity insurance, and social budget dues, tripled. I kept my father unaware until Thanksgiving break in November, when I drove the four hours back to Cypress Falls and my father held in his hands the first semester’s fraternity house bills. “Room and board,” he’d said softly. “Really pushing this deal, aren’t you?”
    But I’d bullet-pointed the benefits of fraternity life to him as if I was an infomercial host (“But that’s not all! We also have a chapter library full of old textbooks, so I can actually save money on books every semester!” “But that’s not all! We designate two brothers each week as Sober Drivers, so we can call any time, any place, and get a safe ride!”). I’d insisted that the fraternity was the logical continuation of my old days in high school, a new leadership activity to take over for Varsity Baseball and Key Club and the Honor Society. But for every benefit, he’d countered with a news story about hazing, or alcoholism, something to suck the positive energy from my speech. The evening before had been his first visit to the fraternity house. First chance to see it up close, to document the wrong that had before been unseen, intangible, always elsewhere. And there on the floor at the end of my freshman year, I knew that he’d have enough ammunition to keep firing for my full college career.
    I couldn’t look him in the eyes anymore; I just made an “Unnh?” noise, the sort that someone makes when every available response feels wrong…the exhale of defeat.
    “The things you learn,” he said, “when you find your son sleeping in puke.”
    “I don’t…” I started. “This isn’t me .”
    “Who am I looking at, Charles?”
    “I don’t know. But this isn’t…it’s me, but it isn’t me.”
    “I’m going back to the hotel,” he said. “Your mother and I will be back at 10:30 for your Awards Brunch , as your Family Weekend schedule indicates. I assume you can find a way to clean this up before then.”
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “Good. I’m not bringing your mother back to this.” And my father walked down the hallway, through the foyer and out the front door, taking a sip of his coffee while on our front porch, and then he was off and it was just me and the mess. It wasn’t until fifteen minutes later, when I finally found some Windex stored in