Chapter 30: Second Semester

The next two months went by in a pleasant routine. I would call Marilyn from the pay phone down in the lounge every couple of days since she couldn’t call me. Most weekends we would see each other, but a few times she had to beg off and go back home. I did notice that she usually came back to Saint Rose from these trips depressed. I had noticed this way back when, also, but hadn’t been smart enough to pay attention. I also knew that things were not improving on the academic front.

The usual complaint was that her family just didn’t understand her. I had always chalked it up to standard issue complaining. Nobody’s family ever understands them! (Jesus Christ! I should know, right?) In Marilyn’s case, however, I knew this to be true. Marilyn was a lonely girl, and visits home didn’t help a whole lot. Her father was a workaholic obsessed with his business, her mother was buried by trying to raise ten-plus kids, and the next seven kids were all boys and useless to boot. Depending on who she was dealing with at home, she was either the unwanted older sister or free labor. The only other woman in the family she could talk to was her four-year-old sister. Even if she could sit down with her mother or an aunt to try and have a discussion about something adult, it still wouldn’t work. Her family was hard core Catholic and in no possible way could she talk to them about boys or sex. Likewise, she was the only person in the family to ever go to college, so that wasn’t a topic either.

Mind you, Marilyn’s family was far more supportive and loving than mine, even on its worst day. Still, on more than one occasion, she’d visit me at Kegs and cry on my shoulder after a bad time at home. I now realized that I was one of the first people to ever talk to her like an adult and treat her like one. Even her roommates at college weren’t much help; one was a snob who looked down on Marilyn’s white trash upbringing and the other was a doper. I was the only one who really understood her, and even more now than before.

One thing that I got back in the habit of doing was giving blood. Every couple of months the Red Cross would have a blood drive on campus. They would set up tables in the gym or the Armory and the vampires would come in and drain a pint off anybody who got close enough to wrestle onto a table. You couldn’t donate unless you were over eighteen, so I missed the first few chances, but by February I got back in the habit.

For me it was very easy. I don’t have any problems with seeing blood, although I would always look away when they stuck me, so that I wouldn’t flinch. (I did have a friend or two over the years who would pass out at the sight of anything medical, even a hypodermic needle!) After that, I would just lay back and rest. I remember one time I actually fell asleep on the table, and only woke up when I heard someone next to me yell out, “We’ve got a deader here!” I woke up and looked around, much to the consternation of the vampire who thought I had passed out.

I mentioned this to Marilyn once. She couldn’t donate blood since she had had some sort of jaundice or liver disease as a child that prevented it. It wasn’t anything fatal or dangerous, but it was something that kept her from donating. On the other hand, I gave a couple of gallons while I was in college.

Professor Rhineburg was quite interested in helping me navigate through the hurdles of staying at Rensselaer as a grad student. At the time, most colleges wanted you to go to grad school elsewhere, to broaden your outlook. The standard practice was to get a bachelor’s at one school, a master’s at another, and your doctorate at yet a third. RPI was different in that they offered a large number of five- and six-year master’s programs in engineering and architecture, and I knew a chemistry major who stayed there for eight years and got his doctorate. When I discussed working on something involving both information science and topology, he smiled and nodded and invited me to see him after class at least once a week to discuss possible research.

Eventually it stopped snowing and winter was over. Mid-April saw the end of pledgehood. We all knew it was going to happen, and eventually Hell Week was upon us. We were summoned to the house a week before and handed a list of instructions and banished from the environs for a week and told to report back to Kegs the following Sunday at 2:00 in the afternoon. We all ended up walking back to campus reading over our lists and trying to figure things out.

We had to show back up at the frat in a week wearing a suit, but also carrying a suitcase filled with work clothes and a pair of sneakers. We were also to each have a pledge box (matching cigar boxes) painted in the fraternity colors (magenta and gold) packed with a variety of very strange items:

A travel size packet of Ex-Lax

A road map of Danbury, Connecticut

Two packs of matches

Three pencils

Two pens, purple ink

A small notebook

An emery board

Three marbles

Two quarters, a dime, and four pennies, all minted within the last five years

A green lollipop

Four large paperclips

None of us knew what was going on. The first major crisis was finding fifteen matching cigar boxes! None of us smoked cigars, or even knew anybody who did. I had smoked cigars on my first trip around, but not now. Eventually Bill Pabst called his father, who did smoke cigars, and conned him into sending us enough empty boxes to take care of things. He saved them for knick-knacks. Leo Coglan volunteered to go out and buy the paint, and we split up the remaining purchases among ourselves. We almost didn’t get it all done. The cigar boxes came in on Friday and we weren’t sure they would dry in time. We painted the sides of the boxes magenta and the folding lids gold.

Sunday afternoon we all trooped back up to Kegs, making sure we got there early. We were kept waiting on the street until 2:00, at which point the door was opened and we were marched into the formal room. It was there that we learned trouble was brewing! The entire brotherhood was sitting there, watching us solemnly, with Hank Barlow, a senior, facing us with a gavel. Once we lined up, he said, quite mildly, “You were told to be here at 2:00. It is now 2:05.”

Joe Bradley took the bait. “We were kept outside until 2:00.”

Hank jumped up and leaned over the table and started screaming! “DID I ASK YOU FOR YOUR OPINION? YOU ARE LATE! YOU FAILED THE VERY FIRST TEST! YOU DO NOT SPEAK! YOU DO NOT THINK! YOU ARE NOTHING!” He went on in this vein for another five minutes before settling down and sitting back in his chair.

He pointed over at our Pledgemaster. “This is your fault. You failed to train them properly. Now I have to do your job for you.” Bill Gasic simply stared at the floor and looked miserable.

Hank turned back to us and ordered us to place our pledge boxes on the table in front of him. That started another tirade. “YOU CALL THIS MAGENTA AND GOLD? THIS IS FUCKING PINK AND FUCKING YELLOW!” He picked up one of the boxes and flung it at a wall, where it popped open and spread everything around that side of the room. Much cursing by the brotherhood was done at this moment, but all directed at us, since if we had done it properly, this wouldn’t have occurred. It was Leo’s turn in the box, explaining that the labels on the paints said magenta and gold. It made no difference; they were fucking pink and fucking yellow!

After about an hour of abuse, we were all sent up to the attic and told to change out of our suits and into work clothes and sneakers. We would expiate our sins with hard work. The attic was a place on the third floor stuffed with ancient and diseased mattresses. Our suitcases were already upstairs, and had been opened and ransacked, and our clothing had been dumped into a single pile. We spent valuable time sorting it out and changing, so we were late for our return to the formal room. Time for some more screaming.

Fifteen of the brothers were sucking on green lollipops. We hadn’t brought enough. We had the wrong maps of Danbury, so they were being taken away; we would not be able to use them later in the week. Some of the brothers were sitting there flipping quarters, obviously from our pledge boxes. We were then divvied up into work parties and sent off to various sections of the house with a senior brother to supervise us, all under the instruction of the House Manager. I ended up in the kitchen, where we completely dismantled everything, removed it, and cleaned a year’s dirt and grease out. We didn’t finish until almost 7:30, at which point we were sent to the pantry and told to repeat the process there. We were dirty and exhausted at 9:30 when we all reassembled in the formal room.

Our efforts were considered marginal at best but would be accepted for the time being. We were fed a delicious dessert of chocolate pudding. At the bottom of the pudding bowls were small chunks of something that looked suspiciously like Ex-Lax. (It wasn’t; we found out later it was Hershey’s chocolate!) We were sent off for another round of house cleaning. This round lasted until after midnight, at which point we reassembled, got yelled at some more, did some pushups, and received our assignments for the week. First, though, we were handed back our toothbrushes, which had all been used either in the cleaning of the bathrooms or the cleaning of the kitchen. Most of us looked at them with horror.

Each pledge, now known as a neo, or neophyte, was assigned a task. Leo, the shortest of us, was assigned to measure the Hoosick Street Bridge in body lengths. By this they meant his body lengths; he would be laid down and the road would be marked, then he would be lifted and carried head to toe and another mark would be made. This would be done sufficient times to generate a statistically useful sample. Joe Bradley, a very strait-laced fellow, was assigned the task of Condom Control Officer, and would have to quiz each brother and neo about their preferences and again produce statistical modeling. I was handed a gigantic 44G bra. My assignment was to measure the quad down at Russell Sage College, a girl’s school, and get the bra signed by as many girls as possible. Two brothers would be assigned to supervise.

There would be a treasure hunt, and we received lists of the treasures to be found. Most of us stared at the list and simply groaned. Nobody knew where we would find anything! Some of the items included a stripper, a cop, mustache hairs from a Dean, a signature from the owners of the Canty-Hammett Hot Spot (a black bar on Hoosick Street), and so forth. Point values were assigned to the items, and demerits for bad behavior during the week counted against the points.

We were given another bowl of chocolate pudding and sent back to work. At eight the next morning, sleepless, we were fed and sent to our classes. To ensure that nobody skipped out and went to the dorms and slept in, we had to get signatures in our notebooks every hour between classes from a brother somewhere on campus. After classes were over, we had to head back to Kegs for more work.

And so it went for the rest of the week. Our second night we got about two hours of sleep. Our third and fourth nights we got about three. Our pledge boxes were repeatedly ransacked, and strange items were added and subtracted. The brothers made sure we had time to do our assigned tasks. I got dragged down to Russell Sage Tuesday afternoon and handed the bra and a black magic marker. I had made one full pass across the quad, stopping every time a girl came up and asking her to sign the bra. About half signed and half were disgusted. I got a crick in my back from all the up and down movements.

One of the girls must have complained. As we started our second pass, a security guard came up and hustled us off to the Dean of Students and told her about our offense against human decency. He must have been new since she just smiled and sent us on our way. I did, however, ask if she would sign the bra. She snorted and said I was pushing my luck, but she signed it nevertheless and we went back out to the quad.

On the way back, I asked the guys to drive us over to Hoosick Street. I had them drop me off out front of the Canty-Hammett Hot Spot. They were nervous about leaving me, but I wasn’t. I was the only white face in the place, but I just walked up to the bar and sat down on a stool. “Can I get a beer?” I asked.

The black bartender looked me over curiously. “What do you want?”

“What’s on tap? You got a Budweiser?” I asked.

He shrugged and silently poured me a glass. I pulled out my wallet and laid a five on the bar. He left it there and just watched me. I drank some beer as the room watched me. “Is Mister Canty or Mister Hammett in?”

The bartender nodded. “I’m Ron Canty. What do you want?”

“Nice to meet you, sir. If you could just sign one of these bar napkins for me, I’ll finish my beer and get out of your way.” I slid a napkin towards him from a pile at the end of the bar.

He rolled his eyes and snorted with laughter. “What is this, another frat stunt?”

“Yes, sir, that is exactly what it is!” I finished my beer and pushed it forward for a refill.

He refilled my glass and slid it back. “This is one of them silly ass white boy things, ain’t it?”

I stuck my hand out. “Carl Buckman, silly ass white boy. How you doing, sir?”

He laughed at that and signed a bar napkin. I stuck it in my pocket and finished my beer, thanked him again, and left. Outside, I found my keepers nervously standing around the car, worried I was being mugged in the all Black bar. I handed them the napkin and climbed into the car. I was also given five demerits for drinking.

I wasn’t the only one to catch demerits, of course, and Tuesday night we discovered egregiously bad behavior amongst the neos. Jerry Modanowicz had flipped the bird to a brother on campus. As punishment, he was to paint the offending digit Wednesday morning, in shades of magenta and gold. In response, we all painted our middle fingers magenta with gold fingernails, although we almost had to tie Barry Lewis down to get him to agree. This was considered a sign of superior moral character by the brothers, by the way! Meanwhile, a different form of punishment was being meted out to us. During our hours of sleep, hidden loudspeakers were blasting “ The Morning After”, the sickeningly sweet theme song from last year’s The Poseidon Adventure over and over at us. We started singing it back until they realized we couldn’t be broken, and they stopped.

Thank God the professors knew what was happening. No tests or assignments were given to anyone that week, since this was happening to hundreds of us all over campus. Every frat did Hell Week the same week. The only time we had to sleep was in class, and the only time the teachers complained was when we started snoring.

It got seriously weird Wednesday night. We were asked if we had our new maps of Danbury, and then we were blindfolded, handcuffed, and loaded into the back of a panel truck. We drove for what seemed like hours, but it was actually only about fifteen minutes before the truck stopped. We were let out and lined up, our handcuffs removed, and finally we were left standing in a row. After about five minutes, a voice behind us cried out, “What the fuck are you assholes waiting for?” We slowly took our blindfolds off and found we were at the edge of a parking lot facing the Hudson River. We all looked around and saw that behind us, across the street, one of the brothers was waving to us from the door of a bar. Nobody knew what was going on, but we ran across the street. The brothers were all buying us beer, as much as we wanted, and we all got wasted.

Thursday night we had to give our reports on the tasks assigned to us. Leo reported how many Coglans the Hoosick Bridge was long, including sub-Coglan units, like Coglanarms and Coglandhands. I presented the 44G bra and gave the measurements and counts of girls. The supervising brothers gave out with various humorous anecdotes about our performances.

Thursday night we also presented the results of our scavenger hunt. Not everything was found, but a surprising amount was. One of the deans was a brother from the chapter at Union College and donated a few mustache hairs. A cop in Green Island was a brother and was married to a stripper. It seemed that for the last few days brothers had been dropping hints on where to find things, if we were just smart enough to listen.

We were given a few more hours of sleep and sent off to campus in the morning, with instructions to return that night, Friday night, at 7:00 PM, wearing our suits. By now totally confused and mystified, and totally exhausted, we went off to classes.

We were back at Kegs that night, and from the outside, the house looked dark and sinister. No lights could be seen through the windows. The Hell Master, Hank Barlow, greeted us at the back door. “From now until you leave, there is to be utter silence. Nothing can be said, and utter obedience is expected. As I call out your names, you will enter and stand in line. Obey and be silent.”

Everybody looked at each other, with the one single thought - ‘ What the fuck is going on?’

“Bruno Cowling!” intoned Bill. Bruno looked at the rest of us, shrugged in confusion, and went inside. Bill looked down at a slip of paper, and said, “Barry Lewis!” Barry followed Bruno inside. All of us were announced, in no order we could figure out. I was two from the last, and only followed by Tony Defrancisco and Andy Kowalchuk. I found the others all standing silently in the back hallway.

It was obvious why the place looked sinister. Black curtains had been hung over every first-floor window, and over every archway between rooms on the first floor; it was creepy. I could smell something cooking in the kitchen, but that was curtained off also. Hank followed Andy inside and went to the front of the line. “Follow and obey in silence.” He moved slowly down the hallway, and after a second of confusion, Bruno moved along after him. Our little line moved through the dining room, down the front hall, and into the formal room.

It got stranger. Inside the formal room, the folding dining room tables had been set up end to end and covered with black tablecloths. The only light in the room was from the candles burning on every table. On one side of the string of tables were our big brothers, and I noticed how, as we streamed in and down the length of the tables, each pledge’s big brother was already in position opposite him. The upper classmen were all dressed in suits themselves, and were standing in place, with chairs behind them. We had chairs behind us. Hank sat at the end of the table, and I saw Thad, the Chancellor, following behind, and he took a seat at the other end of the table.