Chapter 9

I arrived at my parents with a lot of desire to spend time in the horizontal position. If a guy was involved, well and good. But just lying in bed for a few extra hours sounded good. I had not really had any time off in months. I wanted to stretch out, bask in the sun—courtesy of SPF 75—and just try to catch up with myself.

Mother was fully agreeable to this. I was her last child at home, and she wanted to savor that. I'm not sure she was dreading the "empty-next" aspect or not, but for the two weeks I'd be there I had a feeling I was going to get a lot of attention.

I arrived from Ft. Worth on a Sunday afternoon, too late to do anything other than greet my parents, unpack a little, and try not to see the highway in front of me. I'd driven from Ft. Worth, and while it isn't that long of a trip, it was the farthest I'd gone as the driver, and I was a lot more tired than I expected.

The first couple of evenings were spent doing little more than settling in, relaxing, and having quiet conversation with my parents. We talked about everyday things, and that welcomed me home more than anything else. I had missed having conversations like that. It was wonderful.

Tuesday was one of their party nights.

What do you do with a daughter fresh home from college? You take her to a party, everyone gets naked and has sex with everyone else. That was a lot of fun, too. I met a couple of guys I hadn't known before, renewed my intimate acquaintances with a couple of more, and went home well satisfied—it'd been months since I'd done anything like this—relaxed, and a little sore down there. It was a great party.

As I settled into my bed that night I realized I'd needed something like this. Exposure to all of that sex over the summer, without my getting any of it, had left me really tensed up. I needed the relief; guys aren't the only ones who need sexual relief, just the only ones who can get away with openly proclaiming it. I ended the party in a much better frame of mind than I'd started it. There's something about joining male and female body parts that makes everyone much happier.

What's one of the first things a college student does when she gets home? Yup, I spent the next morning doing laundry. Guys, I've been told, wash their clothes and throw them in the closet. Girls iron things as well and it doesn't matter if it is a dorm room, sorority house, or what, you'll find a girl has some way to iron her clothes. I set up Mom's ironing board and did all of my clothes. It's unglamorous, it's unsexy, it's utterly necessary if you're a woman. Guys might not notice, but other women will. It's one of those things that's expected of a female of the species.

As I sorted through the clothes I made a mental note: don't wear panties to the adult parties!. I vaguely remembered that I'd worn a light blue pair of bikini briefs, and now they were missing. It wasn't the first time I'd lost a pair at the adult party. Janice had given me some good advice: bring a pair to wear home.

There are guys who collect women's underwear as some sort of trophy. Maybe they get excited by it, or whatever. That's something I've never understood. It doesn't matter if they're something really cute and tiny, or "granny panties", they vanish into someone's collection. You get all types, and some of the people in the world of swingers are a few steps beyond what is "normal" even for us.

I hadn't heard of anyone stealing some woman's bra, but it probably happened, I just hadn't heard about it. Panties are inexpensive, but a good bra isn't cheap.

With the chores out of the way, I could try to get hold of Eric. I didn't get any answer when I called, and there didn't seem to be any strange cars in his parents' driveway when I went past. Was he even home?

That completely ignored a larger question: should I be doing the calling? Wasn't it the boy's duty to call the girl? Didn't he pay court to her, not the other way around?

When I was younger I used to be so very smug about how the guy called the girl. Then I watched the agony my brother Rick went through before he called a girl. Of course he saw the uncertainty Krys and I went through, wondering if the boy was going to call at all. And if he does, what does he say, and how do you respond? We'd talk it out, trying to anticipate each and every possibility. There were times my sister and I did not get along, but there were also those times when we were closer than can be imagined. Waiting for a boy to call was one of those shared experiences all girls go through.

I thought of calling Wesley, but he didn't live anywhere near. We had talked over the summer, texted, e-mailed, and so on. In some ways I felt closer to him than I did to Eric. But the latter was, at least officially, my boyfriend. I felt I owed him something, if no more than a final meeting. But...

Then I did hear from Eric. He asked me out, not to a party, and things were ... nice. We didn't hop into bed, we were remarkably celibate. I say "remarkably" because of what we had done when we'd been in high school. But here, now, we had regular dates. We went to a movie, we had dinner, and we sort of caught up with each other.

He was an engineer, pure and simple. That's a different mind-set, a different approach to the world, and if he hadn't been that way before, he was now. I'm not sure if more can be said. I can say someone is an engineer at the sorority, and heads will nod all around the room. We all know what that means, but it's hard to put into words.

In so many ways, we had grown apart. I think there was a place for a woman in his life, but I wasn't sure if it included what I had in mind. But then it was possible I would just end up as an HR person in some corporate behemoth, and that would fit in with being the wife of an engineer. I gave that a lot of thought as we rode back from a dinner and concert.

A girl has dreams, but so many of us subsume those dreams into whatever is needed for husband and family. There were a few lucky ones, usually writers or artists, who could pursue their dreams and still have a family, but too many times a girl's dreams were set aside. She had a husband and kids to manage, a house to run, and so on. Those dreams became silly things to laugh about with her girlfriends over lunch.

Some women are strong-willed enough that that doesn't happen. Robbyn was one of those people. But was I? I lay awake nights, staring at the ceiling, feeling the self-doubts.

I think that's why you get so many women in therapy later in life. The dreams they'd had as a young girl come back to visit, and they vaguely realize that what they'd made of their life wasn't what they'd wanted. In short, they weren't happy, and they spent a lot of money never quite realizing that.

I liked to think I was honest enough with myself to ask the question: what would make me happy? Of course I had to define what "happy" was, first. I'd taken a philosophy course or two and they'd forced me to ask the really tough questions. So it was here.

What made me happy? Well, getting laid on a regular basis, that was obvious. I don't think I was happier than when I was having sex. I didn't even have to come, though I much preferred sex when that happened to those times when it didn't. But what else?

I got some pleasure in helping people, but most girls did. Scientists had concluded that women were natural caregivers. Back in hunter-gatherer days that was one of the primary duties women had in the tribe. But what turned me on intellectually?

College is meant for such ruminations. In theory every college student goes through that. We examine who we are and what we want to do in our lives. That's a good theory, and in some cases its true. But most people don't do that kind of introspection. Instead they get caught up in something bigger than they are, and let someone else do the thinking. This isn't aberrant behavior on their part, it's one of the ways the human race works.

For most women that "larger thing" is a family, their kids, their husband, and all of the responsibility that came with that. Others went into service organizations, such as the Red Cross (mother) and the military.

Wait a minute, Amber, you just called the military a "service organization". It is. Their service is to defend and protect all of us through armed force. And there were two girls in the sorority who were in Naval ROTC. We had several graduates who had followed that route and served our country, including one, Cherise Winston, who had won a medal for saving a lot of lives.

I didn't want to put on a uniform. Serving others felt good, but was there something I liked to do with my mind that was fun?

I'd sort of reached this point when I had to leave for school. Eric and I had had a couple of dates, but we hadn't had a chance to be alone together. I had a lot of unanswered questions about our relationship, and no real chance to get them worked out. Guys hate questions like that, preferring to "go with the flow" as one guy put it, and they don't understand how that frustrates girls. We want that certainty in our lives, and unanswered questions doesn't provide it.

School didn't start until the second week of September, but we had Rush Week before that. This is when we size up girls who might pledge, and they size up us. Before then, though, you have an "all hands on deck" as you give the House a thorough cleaning. I know one fraternity on campus that brings in a professional cleaning service, but I don't think the thought ever entered the heads of any sorority girl. A girl learns to clean from her mother, but there's also that hunter-gatherer vibe going, too. You keep the nest clean. We had leased rooms out to summer school students, and while they had kept things neat, there's a difference in a woman's mind between neat and clean, really clean.

We set to, and after three days of work we had the house in decent shape. We were showing off, and a sloppy or dirty house wouldn't get anyone, and a Greek house needs a certain number of new students to continue to thrive. We knew we needed to get at least twelve girls, preferably fifteen.

With the house in good shape, we all trooped off to get ourselves tricked up. You're on your best behavior, you want to look nice, be nice, and yet be just a little critical, too. Each sorority looks for certain types. We wanted a certain kind of girl who would fit with what the sorority was all about. They were out there, we just had to find them.

Girls pledge sororities for a lot of reasons, but mostly because the girls they meet are enough like them that they feel comfortable. Also, a sorority serves a higher social purpose, and we showed that off, and girls tried to find one that fit what they wanted to do. It's a complicated procedure because it's all done with smiles, social affairs, and intimate chats. You promote what you are and what your graduates achieve, and try to invite back the girls who fit that, while they're doing the same thing on the other end.

Of course we had our "legacies". I was one, though I fit Alphas like a glove on a hand. We had a list of six that we knew were coming through, and they would get extra attention, and probably an invitation. It wasn't a lock. Girls don't always follow in their mother's or older sister's footsteps.

The week started, and the first girls came through. This is actually funny to watch because the girls travel in groups, I think that's instinctive, and so you get a bunch of them at one time. They introduce themselves, you do the same, and you hold an open house. You7 have food, the kitchen is constantly busy, and you get to know one another.

Now Rush Week actually isn't confined to things like that. There had been Rush Parties where girls who had been recommended by actives were invited. Usually these were cook-outs, barbecues, and things like that. This being Louisiana, there was food, traditional fare such as gumbo and beignets. We'd had several of those, but I was in Ft. Worth at the time, so hadn't attended. But those girls were in the first lot to see the house.

We met the girls, they met us, and we spent the rest of the day in a constant "party". This was the "summer cocktail" type of party, not the beer-swilling, carousing, and so on depicted in the movies. Greek houses aren't constant "party centrals" with members getting drunk every night. A lot of depictions of that are wish-projections by those who are envious of the whole Greek thing. Instead you nibbled finger-food, sipped non-alcoholic punch, and talked. Oh how we talked. We're women, how else do we find out things and get to know people?

In the evening, after the last girl was politely ushered out the front door, we went over who had been there and what each person's opinion of them was. We didn't use the "black ball" method of sorting them out. There were a few girls who were good at "reading" people, we knew who they were, and we relied upon them for a lot of the judgments we made. I was one of those lucky people, I figured it was my years of swinging where I'd learned to pick up on cues that did this. It was a heavy responsibility.