Lookaway, Lookaway (7 page)

“You’ll do whatever the Pledgemaster demands!” Cory barked.

There was noise and the sound of, maybe, a chair being overturned, some muffled cursing … Then Skip was present, holding one end of a dog leash, lingering in the shadows. Kevin and Cory stood on either side of the doorway, affecting dire solemnity. Joey D slowly, as if marching in a funeral cortege, stepped into the TV room with his long black robe with its Death cowl, a costume rented and never returned for a Halloween some years ago.

“Within the brotherhood of Zeta Pi,” Joey D intoned, “there is a more ancient and secret society going back to the days of the fraternity’s founding in Tulane in the 1800s, when French aristocrats, uh, you know, down in Louisiana where they’re French—French aristocrats laid out the initiation rites that we practice today and have practiced through the centuries. A society with a special name and coat of arms and, um, the seal of Côte d’Agneau…”

Scrotum was sniggering, trying to hide it.

“Something funny there?” Joey squinted to read the name on the sweaty forehead. “Scrotum. Something strike you as amusing?”

“No, sir.”

“Assistant Pledgemaster Baylor!” Joey D called out, surprising Skip who wasn’t aware he had a title. “Bring forward Shelly.”

The pledges exchanged anxious glances.

Joey D explained that the University of North Carolina has a mascot ram and Zeta Pi has Shelly, a ewe, hence the Society of Ram and Ewe. Skip pulled the sheep into the room, its four legs rigid and stationary, its hooves sliding evenly over the linoleum. Shelly, née Furball, having shed itself in the back of Justin’s mom’s van of every fluid and solid a sheep could manufacture, was remarkably passive after its being fed a ground-up Valium in a bowl of water. It stared at them unblinking and the pledges could have been forgiven for wondering if Shelly was stuffed.

“Blindfold these gaylords,” Joey D continued, as Kevin and Cory obeyed. “Everyone has, in the Zeta Pi archives, an incriminating photo which is your passage into the Society of Ram and Ewe.” Joey D, who had taken a Valium himself, after a six-pack and two Red Bulls, was having trouble focusing. He had thought of making everyone bestialize the sheep or having green feed pellets eaten by the sheep from their buttcrack but Skip reminded him that a simple nude photo, with the sheep tactically placed to cover the genitals, was traditional and incriminating enough. If anyone ever betrayed the Society of Ram and Ewe, this picture would then haunt them for eternity.

Scrotum cleared his throat and announced his jockstrap was not coming off, he was going into pre-Law and might run for office one day and he was not interested in this photo being sold to
The National Enquirer
and then shown on CNN.

“Assistant Pledgemasters!” Joey D screamed, not used to being defied. “Take Scrotum away and begin the ceremony of … of depledgerization!” Scrotum was shuffled away, mumbling, “You can’t throw me out. My dad paid for the building of this house.”

And then two others said they also did not want a picture with Shelly. “Okay, you pieces of shit, there’s the door! You see it? You walk out that door and … you walk out and there will never—don’t you go and think that—there will be another…”

They were walking out the door.

“Does nobody,” screamed Joey D, “wish to be part of the fraternity’s most sacred obligation, the Society of Ram and Ewe?”

“Sir yes sir!”

“Drop that jockstrap, Smegma!”

“Sir yes sir!”

“You wanna be a Zipperman, don’t you?”

Skip was laughing and he could barely hold the camera.

“Sir yes sir!”

Now Joey D noticed, too, that the pledge was completely aroused.

*   *   *

The party upstairs was in full tilt. At least two hundred people spilling out on porches, verandahs, in the back by the pool, crammed into every room, with music loud enough to shake the foundations of the whole edifice.

At first Jerilyn was a little shocked to see the pledges running around in jockstraps with matted hair and other caked-on indignities, but then she got used to it. Layla had shared a line of cocaine and, eased by several beers, she was, as promised, feeling good about everything, as her eyes followed two strapping pledges’ bare rear ends down the hall to the kitchen where other Zetas and Sigmas were filling a giant industrial-sized trashcan with every liquor known to man—cheap vodka, cheap gin, cheap tequila, 7UP, Hawaiian Punch, box wine. A frat guy, bellowing some rock-song chorus, held aloft an emptying bottle of Everclear over the trashcan while the girls brayed in mock-horror,
Oh no you didn’t!
Cortney dunked her cup beneath the surface to fill it, then sampled. “Ellch. Needs something sweet,” she called out, as someone went looking for where she had set down the discount-brand triple sec she had brought.

“Jerilyn!” It was Skip, with his trademark drunken-red face. “I was hoping you’d be here. You know, I told Corinne and Layla, hey, if Jerilyn isn’t going to be a Skank, then I may have to change fraternities.”

“Thank you so much.”

“We’ll figure out some way you can pay me back,” he said. Then suddenly he was tongue-kissing her. She pulled back.

“Caught me off guard,” she said, trying to make a joke of it. She looked at the floor, and by the time she looked up, Skip was off down the main hall of Zipperhaus, towel-whipping the buttocks of some passing pledges.

Back in the kitchen, the trashcan had nearly brimmed thanks to what some guy promised was a gallon of moonshine.

Overheard, from two of the Sigmas:

“My dad can get rid of all of that upper-arm fat,” Georgina said, volunteering her father’s plastic surgery practice for a Sigma Kappa Nu discount. “Not to mention up your cup size.”

“Puh-leeease tell me,” Cortney said, “that your own dad didn’t do your boob job.”

Georgina straightened her posture and let the kitchen admire her newly titanic prominence. “You better believe he did them—so they’d be done right. It’s all like working with meat to him; he doesn’t think about these as boobs.”

Boy, that was another thing Jerilyn did not get in the least. Some girls bragged about their surgery; some hid it and got whispered about (“I heard she had two nose jobs…”). Some girls said they loved to make out with girls and were so popular and funny and beloved; yet one girl, Amanda, whose name was nearly always sneered, hit on another girl while drunk at a party and she was whispered about as some kind of creepy dyke. And then the frat brothers and sex. What on earth were the rules there?

Taylorr bragged about having oral sex with all but two of the Zeta Pis her third year at Carolina; in fact, she said they were renaming the BJ Room after her when she graduated. This set off a contest of sorts about who had come in second, who had been through the most guys, Lew, Richard, Andy, Joey D, and Frank—no one had Frank, he was still in mourning for some girlfriend that dumped him, but two or three of the really slutty-popular sisters were determined to get him in a threeway. And yet, while all that was acceptable and breakfast-bar gossip, Jerilyn heard girls talk at dinner about Sara who was with two guys in a ménage à trois and what a slut she was, how she had “a problem.” The rule, Jerilyn decided, was this: the popular ringleading girls could do or say or screw anything and it was all right.

Jerilyn always listened to see if Skip’s name was mentioned as a frequent conquest, but so far no.

“Jermaine!” called out Britannie. Jerilyn corrected her about the name. “Aw honey, I got close! You be our taste-tester.”

A plastic cup was dunked into the mire and something opaque and brown was forced into her hand. Jerilyn took a tiny sip from her cup, and almost retched at the strength. “It’s a little like drinking mouthwash,” she reported.

As the mixmasters tinkered some more, Jerilyn slipped away to the pantry where no one was standing. She felt she was getting sad again; the cocaine was slowly wearing off, the brightness and tingle was becoming intermittent.

“You don’t like it?” some guy said.

“Hm, oh it’s all right,” she said, lifting the cup. “Not exactly delicious.”

“Yeah, I’m more of a beer person,” the tall boy said, almost apologetically.

“Me too, but I couldn’t get near the fridge.”

“Tell you what. I’ll get us both one.” He flashed a shy smile and she smiled back. God, he was a cute one! Didn’t sound like he was from the South. Some trace of the cocaine reignited within her; she felt her heart pick up.

“Here we go,” he said a moment later, handing her a beer. The boy took the trashcan cocktail from her and dumped it into an already dead potted plant. “I’m Joseph, but the guys call me Joey D.”

“Jerilyn, you can call me Jeri.”

Just then a shirtless young man walked down the hall—a pledge, she figured, given the wet and matted hair, though he had put on a pair of jeans. Joey D and all the guys erupted into “Baaaaaa baaaaaa!” as he walked by. He angrily gave them the finger and everybody laughed.

Then there was a crash in the next room, some raised male voices, a door slamming, another crash …

Joey D muttered something under his breath and bounded upstairs, away from the action in the kitchen.

Jerilyn stuck her head around the corner: some guy had another guy—Justin, right?—pinned to the wall, while he sputtered, “Look, man, she just ran off—I couldn’t help it!”

Then the new guy hit Justin squarely in the face, then once in the stomach, which bent him over double. Another young man in a red windbreaker kicked Justin once he was down on the ground. Lot of screaming. What woman were they fighting over? Two Zippermen came to Justin’s aid … and soon had smashed noses, too. Then one of the Sigma Kappa sisters ran in to do the screaming-stop thing …

“I saw your sheep! It was out by the pool, I just saw it!”

The three interlopers stopped using Justin as a punching bag and backed toward the door. By the time Corey and Kevin got to the kitchen, a gathering mob of Zeta Pis was ready to avenge Justin’s pummeling. The man in the red windbreaker and his friend then took the full trashcan of alcohol and tipped it. To deafening shrieks, the fifty gallons of hard liquor and fruit juice flooded the kitchen, flowed into the carpet of the hallway, out the door, soaking people’s shoes.

“You’re gonna die for that!” yelled one Zipperman.

But now the guy in the red windbreaker held an old-fashioned cigarette lighter, which he opened and sparked the flame. Jerilyn hopped up on a chair. “Stay right there or we’ll see if this all is flammable,” he said calmly.

Everyone stood where he was.

The young man and his friends escaped out the back door.

The fumes of the spilled alcohol, the weed smoke, and her little bit of athletic activity made Jerilyn feel sick. She decided she would go out the front door, avoiding the mess, and get some fresh air … maybe just wander back to McIver, although Corinne said there were rooms back at Sigmahouse set aside for crashing and composing oneself. She wanted to dispose of the rest of her beer; she looked for another garbage pail only to see the stack of paper cups reeking of the trashcan cocktail, plates and saucers piled high with cigarettes ground into congealed dollops of chip-dip … and her nausea renewed itself.

She made it outside to the front curb where the Zeta Pi sidewalk met the street and sat down a yard away from another party refugee.

“I may hurl in the next minute,” Jerilyn said in the stranger’s direction. “I’m apologizing in advance.”

“Whatever,” he said, barely audible.

“You all right?”

He turned toward her. It was the boy everyone was making baaaa noises at. “I guess. Not sure if they’re gonna vote me in.”

“I wonder if the Sigma Kappa Nus are having second thoughts about me, too. I can’t really hang with the professional partiers.”

“You wanna lie down?”

He held out his hand and she wobbled to her feet, and then they were walking back into the Zipperhaus, past the foyer, toward the stairs … Jerilyn thought of the woman in the cool green formal wear, the man in the formal suit with his hand at her lower back walking toward Thetahouse, the way she looked up at him, the way he smiled back at her …

“Watch that,” he said, steering her away from a puddle of vomit with a high concentration of Cheetos. She looked around the strangely quiet Zipperhaus, now a war zone of party debris, alcohol stink, Doritos ground into the rug, the hallway to the soaked kitchen and sodden carpets. Some guys were going in and out of a small room across from the stairs where the lights were off; female laughter emanated from within. She saw Skip Baylor come from the bathroom heading to the little room; he looked up and did a double take seeing Jerilyn ascend the frathouse stairs with … what was his name again? Well, fine. It’s not like Skip and she are a couple. Skip clearly is playing the field, so why shouldn’t she?

And then suddenly they were in a dark room with two single beds—one for each of us, she thought. But as she lay down he snuggled up beside her. He slid his hands around her waist and buried his head in the crook of her shoulder. To slow him down she reminded him, “I still could throw up, remember.”

He didn’t say anything. “You just tell the Skanks I’m not some gay weirdo who wants to screw a sheep. These guys are … it’s so fucking unfair…” He punched at their mattress once with a clenched fist.

Then he was kissing her. He tasted of beer and she imagined she did too. He was very insistent, a little rough but … but he kissed better than Skip who always gave her a tongue bath. Then he was undoing his jeans, and guiding her hand between his legs.

Someone opened the door and light from the hall poured in; Jerilyn instinctively hid her head in the pillow. “Uh … okay. Next time use your own room, all right?” said the voice, before leaving and pulling the door shut.

Then he rolled on top of her. He kissed her some more and she felt the pressure of his erection through her clothes. Okay, well, this was all right if it progressed no further … She was certainly willing to do things with her hands, like she’d done with Skip, so she reached for him down there and he took her hands in his own hands, which was sweet, and … wait, he pinned them back behind her head as he straddled her. He was inside her. Was her underwear off? When did that happen?