American Fraternity Man Read Free Page A

the upstairs bathroom, that I took the time to look at myself in the mirror and see what my father had been looking at during our conversation: at some point in the night, I’d rolled over into my own vomit, and now it was caked in my hair, caked in my sideburns, smeared across the front of my red polo. Yes, here was the model young man who’d just planned a splendid end-of-the-semester Family Weekend, full of presentations and live music and meet ‘n greets and—soon—a Saturday brunch. Here was the young man who was supposed to win both “Freshman of the Year” and “Leader of the Year” honors at the upcoming brunch, the young man who wanted so badly for all the world to know how ambitious he was, even as a freshman, how responsible and dedicated, how smart and full of potential. I picked a piece of floor fuzz from my eyebrow, brushed some drywall from my forehead, and headed to the bathroom’s paper towel dispenser, dutifully restocked the afternoon prior by a woman named Sonya who sometimes smiled at us, and to whom we sometimes nodded.
    For the next three years, I tried to pretend that this moment hadn’t happened, that maybe my father had never even come to visit the house, had never seen me on the floor, and that I was indeed the young “Leader of the Year” I was supposed to be.
    For those three years, I worked my ass off to maintain a near-perfect GPA, to turn those grades into solid internships by my junior and senior years, to win spots in the Edison Student Government and on the fraternity’s Executive Board. Freshman of the Year became Sophomore of the Year became Junior of the Year. For three years, whenever I’d talk to my father, my voice would sound like a bad Christmas letter, a list of updates on my leadership activities, my academic progress, my career development. Sure, I kept a few things to myself: no mention of how many 25-cent Beer Nights I’d conquered, how many Bladder Busts, how many Power Hours, how many Beer Pong tournament wins. I was a Public Relations expert when it came to my own persona. And whenever possible, fraternity took the spotlight: when we appeared on the front page of the campus newspaper for organizing a Toys For Tots event, I sent my father the cut-out article; when the EU school web site posted on their front page a photo of our Executive Board receiving the Florida Leader magazine “Organization of the Year” award (I stood dead-center in the photo, holding a framed magazine cover while my brothers crowded around me and held up #1 fingers), I captured the screen shot and convinced my mother to make the jpg into his computer’s background image so that he’d see it every single day.
    But still, I’d have to wait three full years before my parents would visit the fraternity house again, before I could change their minds by showing them who I’d become. By now, I was the outgoing President, a more accomplished student-leader than I’d ever imagined I could be. And yes, I’d just accepted a job offer, too, so it felt as if everything in my life was on schedule, as if I was passing each mile marker at the right time: college degree, first job, then up ahead, family and house and pool and all that. My mother even kept asking “how serious” it was with Jenn, and we were at that strange-but-exhilarating moment in a relationship when Jenn was receiving birthday cards and Christmas cards in the mail from my parents. At the Senior Send-Off, I was prepared to lavalier her, the first step toward a planned proposal around Thanksgiving. Everything on pace.
    But there was something I still hadn’t told him.
    My job: it wasn’t just any job.
    I’d just taken a position with the National Fraternity Headquarters.
    *
    There at the bar on the afternoon before the Send-Off, my father still gripping the wine bottle tight, I finally gave voice to the one thing that could take the emphasis off of my own ambitions and failings. “Where’s Mom?”
    “What?” he