Pledged (10 page)

Munching on a chocolate chip pancake, I spotted Riley, a junior who had agreed to let me shadow her for the evening of philanthropy (she told her sisters I was “a friend from home”). Riley had the 1–2 a.m. pancake-making shift, so we headed to a satellite house where Tri-Delts were carelessly flipping pancakes that were oddly shaped, blackened, and occasionally oozing. Fifteen sisters were crowded around a stove, sliding in oil spills and batter droppings while attempting to maneuver a pan on every burner. Having run out of key ingredients like milk, the girls were tossing whatever was handy into the pancake batter. A few girls carried a tray of pancakes out the fire door as they dashed to the Tri-Delt house. “These pancakes are horrendous,” Riley said. “But the people at the party will eat them anyway.”

The girls chatted loudly as they neglected the pancakes. Philanthropy didn’t enter the conversation, which revolved around boys, weddings, other sisters, and
Dawson’s Creek
. One sister danced in from another room wearing a teased wig. The other girls doubled over in hysterics.

“We’re going to be white trash for Halloween,” Riley explained to me.

When I returned to the party at the on-campus Tri-Delt house, most of the crowd was crammed either at the pancake table or in front of a student cover band, where partygoers bounced to the music and watched the Tri-Delt sisters dancing on the furniture. Just before 2 a.m., the Tri-Delts had sent sisters into the bars to advertise the pancake buffet. The tactic worked—the crowd was much thicker now that students from the bars and other parties had filtered in. Edging toward the door, I saw Riley arriving from the satellite house, holding a pancake tray over her head. As I shifted to make room for her, she caught my eye and grinned. “They’re all alcohol now!” she yelled over the din to me as she squeezed by. “Don’t eat the pancakes!”

By the end of the night the Tri-Delts would tally a few thousand dollars—the only philanthropic activity they would perform all year.

Going Out Greek-Style

OCTOBER 16

AMY’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

trasjhed andq goin to bedj :-P

THE DAY OF THE CRUSH PARTY, THE FIRST BIG GREEK
social event of th
e year, Amy and Caitlin spent a few hours “doing a fashion show” for each other, trying on dozens of clothes—their own and each other’s—and, in particular, trying to figure out which bras went best with which shirts. “Man, I love living with girls,” Caitlin remarked to no one in particular, as she tightened a push-up bra she found in the midst of a pile of Amy’s lacy lingerie on the floor. “We never would have done this in the dorms.”

Crush Parties at State U were themed parties to which each Greek partygoer could invite five “crushes”; this party’s theme was “Fire and Ice.” The sororities and fraternities that sponsored the event rented out a bar or club and charged students for tickets to get in. Because it was still early in the year, Amy and Caitlin had decided to invite friends, rather than crushes, and arranged to meet them at the bar.

As Amy waited for Caitlin to get ready, she started to pre-game. Before nearly every Greek event, Alpha Rho sisters, like many sororities nationwide, would pre-game—that is, get a buzz going before the actual activity started, sometimes with their house, sometimes with a fraternity. Pre-gaming was like tailgating a party. This way they saved time, since they didn’t have to spend the first hour of an event getting drunk (having arrived already inebriated), and money, because they wouldn’t have to pay for too many additional drinks at overpriced bar costs. Tonight the pre-game beverage of choice was a jug of wine that someone had left in the kitchen.

A couple of sisters stopped by the suite when Amy was on her third glass of wine. “What are you drinking?” one asked.

“Grape wine,” Amy said cheerfully. “Y’all want some?”

“What do you mean, grape wine?”

“It’s grape!”

“You dumbass,” Caitlin said from the bathroom, “what other kind of wine is there?”

“Um,” Amy paused. “There’s red . . . there’s white . . .”

“They’re all grape. That’s where wine comes from. How much have you had, anyway?”

“But it says it on the bottle—grape wine!”

The girls investigated. The bottom of the label did indeed say, “100% grape wine.”

“Ha!” Amy laughed and the sisters couldn’t help but smile—Amy’s laugh was infectious. Amy launched brightly into an Alpha Rho fight song and proceeded to belt out Alpha Rho tunes for five minutes.

Amy had no idea what her status was with Spencer, the Mu Zeta Nu brother whom she had nearly slept with in August. She still hoped for a relationship with him, but she hadn’t seen him outside of the few times he accepted her regular invitations to cook dinner for him. She knew he wouldn’t be at the Crush Party because he had to study for an early midterm, but just in case, she had done an extra hour on the StairMaster that afternoon. Amy wondered how many other “mishaps” she would run into. Amy had made an effort to remain friendly to all of the boys with whom she had had dalliances during sophomore year, an active year for her—and even to those whom she had turned down. She endured polite small talk with a boy her sisters called “Ugly Dork,” who stalked Amy and repeatedly told her they were meant to be together. While the other Alpha Rhos mocked him, Amy would deftly deflect his overtures with her southern charm before continuing on her way.

But while the Alpha Rhos couldn’t fathom why Amy “wasted breath” on Ugly Dork, they were absolutely mystified by her refusal to be rude to the fraternity brother who had date-raped her during her sophomore year Greek Week. Two nights after she had drunkenly fooled around with Nathan, a Mu Zeta Nu brother, Nathan had spiked Amy’s drink at a party so he could sleep with her. Amy woke up the next morning, realized the ceiling didn’t look familiar, rolled over, saw Nathan lying in his bed next to her, looked back at the ceiling, looked down, saw she was naked, and yelled “Oh Lord!” before dashing out of the room, clothes in hand. Amy was devastated that she had been date-raped and withdrew to her room for days. When she told her gay friend Jake what had happened, he wanted to confront Nathan, but Amy wouldn’t let him say anything because she didn’t want to “rock the MuNu brotherhood boat.” When Amy’s close friend Greg asked her why she was missing Greek Week, she told him, crying hysterically, why she felt degraded and taken advantage of.

Greg, unlike Jake, looked perplexed. “What do you want me to do? He’s my fraternity brother.”

FINALLY, CAITLIN EMERGED, WEARING A MIDRIFF-
baring halter top t
hat matched her azure eyes, tight white pants, and one of Amy’s gold butterfly clips at the top of her ponytail. The girls then produced small Alpha Rho thermoses and filled them with Bacardi rum.

“Hey, we’re Alpha-holics,” Caitlin smirked as they slipped the thermoses into their dressy handbags. At eleven, they left the house, an hour later than they had planned. They walked a block before Amy, rummaging through her purse for breath mints, remembered she had left the Crush Party tickets on her bed. Caitlin made fun of her all the way back home, until she realized she had left her ID on her desk.

It was a breezy night in the low seventies, typical October weather for State U. As they waited for the bar to open, dozens of girls huddled in circles, divided according to sorority and, within those groups, by pledge class. Most of the girls were drunk by now (pre-gaming for an hour would have that effect). Amy and Caitlin headed straight for the Alpha Rho circle in the middle of the lawn. Squeals and hugs ensued.

A tall, thin blonde in Amy’s pledge class lurched toward them, catching her arms around Amy’s neck as she fell. “So great to see you!” Her exaggeratedly drunken expression suddenly drooped into stern concentration. “But,” she spoke haughtily now, “we get to go in first, because we’ve been waiting so much longer than you.”

The herd of girls jostled their way toward the door of a club near campus. They spotted the two policemen checking IDs and swiftly rearranged their purses and their hair—shoving the thermoses down underneath their cosmetics and pulling their hair back to best resemble the photos of the other people on their IDs. Tonight Amy was a twenty-three-year-old from Montana and Caitlin was a twenty-one-year-old from Maine. The officer glanced at the birth date on Amy’s ID and snorted. “Ri-ight,” he said, flicking the ID back to her as he nonetheless stepped aside so she could continue into the bar. “Bring a better one next time.” Amy and Caitlin laughed and continued inside.

By eleven-thirty, the crowd was still mostly girls. The fraternities knew the sororities’ routine: pre-game, arrive, drink some more, dance—so they preferred to get to Greek events later, when the girls were at their most inebriated. Amy and Caitlin headed to the bar, where Amy paid for their drinks: a Cosmopolitan for Amy, a Jim Beam and Coke for Caitlin. After a few sips, they poured the rum from their thermoses into their cups. Amy made a face after trying her new concoction, then downed the drink.

The DJ played Nelly’s “Hot in Herre.” “Man, I love this song!” Caitlin rasped above the din. It was the most animated she had been in a long time, given her angst over her breakup with Chris. “We have to dance!”

The dance floor was packed with girls in low-rise pants and tight tops—halters, tubes, spaghetti straps, red, white, and silver, in keeping with the Fire and Ice theme—dancing with a drink in one hand and a purse slung over the other arm. Midriffs shone with newly applied shimmery moisturizer. The brothers who were starting to trickle in sat on couches that ringed the dance floor and peered at the girls gyrating scandalously with each other.

In the middle of the hardwood circle, Amy and Caitlin made their way to Alpha Rho, the biggest horde on the floor. For half an hour the group shouted lyrics at each other and danced in each other’s arms to Ja Rule, J.Lo, and Missy Elliott’s “Work It” (to which each girl sang different garbled lyrics because nobody could decipher some of the lines). When the DJ yelled over the music, “I have a shout-out for one of our hosts, Alpha Rho!” the center of the dance floor whooped.

On the way to the bar, Caitlin bumped into a friend who happened to be in Kappa Tau Chi, the fraternity of the boy who had raped her. He asked if he could buy her a drink. As they sat at the bar and chatted, Caitlin noticed a group of guys slowly moving toward them, almost surrounding them at the bar. One of the brothers approached them. “She’s a slut. You can’t buy her a drink,” he said loudly. Others at the bar turned and stared.

The brothers pulled Caitlin’s friend away from the bar. As they left, Caitlin could hear what they hissed to her friend.

“She fucked over the fraternity,” one said.

“She screwed over one of my best friends,” said another. “She changed her mind after they had sex.”

Caitlin, done for the night, disappeared. Kappa Tau Chi had finally placed a face with a name. Soon afterward, Caitlin changed her phone number and kept it unlisted.

Screw Your Sister

OCTOBER 21

VICKI’S IM AWAY MESSAGE

another day, another dumb t-shirt

THIS YEAR’S BETA PI SCREW YOUR SISTER, THE EVENT DURING
which sisters set each other up on blind dates, was to take place on a
haunted hayride. The fraternity brothers were supposed to pick their dates up at the house, where the sisters stood, jittery, tapping their heels in the wide entry hall, except for Vicki, who felt silly waiting. The sisters, in their “Beta Pi Hayride to Hell: Screw or Be Screwed” spaghetti-strapped tank tops, congregated in clumps, glancing nonchalantly through the open door to monitor the boys’ arrival. Vicki downed five shots of vodka in her room to try to calm her nerves. She barely even knew her sisters, let alone their taste in dates. She paced around the dining room, pretending she needed glasses of water or a few crackers, afraid to go outside and see whom her sisters had chosen for her. From the entry hall, Olivia called Vicki’s cell to tell her that her date had arrived. Blowing her bangs out of her eyes, Vicki slowly pushed through the girls to the front door.

Vicki was surprised that the rest of the sisters had all managed to get ready on time. The bathrooms had been packed with girls lined up to do their hair. Vicki preferred to get ready in the privacy of her own room, where she had her own, less stressful space, though it didn’t take her long. She simply brushed her blond shag, dabbed on some sheer lip gloss and then IMed with a friend from home while she waited for Olivia, who spent ten minutes combing anti-frizz serum through her hair and spritzing her pungent perfume on the appropriate pulse points.

Outside, Olivia and her date stood next to William, the Iota president whom Vicki hadn’t seen since the night in the club. He was “skater-boy cute,” tall and stocky with unruly blond curls and a scruffy little goatee. Vicki smiled and hesitatingly took his hand when he offered it. She and William stayed close to Olivia during the haunted hayride, which took them from evergreens like those that bordered State U to thick rows of trees that were just starting to turn. As the sun began to set, matching the sky with the trees, William turned to her. “I remember that night at the club you blew me away. Then I found out you had a boyfriend. Everything came crashing down.” Vicki was still trying to gauge his sincerity when he leaned over and kissed her.

For the next several days, as William regularly stopped by the Beta Pi house to see Vicki, she marveled at her good fortune. Vicki didn’t so much care that William was the president of Beta Pi’s favorite fraternity (though others did). But she found some measure of satisfaction that she was dating a guy who was the lust object of many a sorority girl.

Later that week, Olivia took Vicki to a party at Theta Theta, another fraternity house. When Olivia introduced Vicki to her friend Dan, a fraternity brother from Los Angeles whose deep tan matched Vicki’s, Dan invited her to drink with him and some friends upstairs. Eventually the party dwindled and Vicki was left alone with Dan, whom she kissed a few times before starting to feel slightly uncomfortable. She had never dated two guys at the same time before. Olivia came in to say good-bye.