Chapter 13: Cause and Effect

The shit really hit the fan on Wednesday after Homecoming. Fortunately, it was blowing in a different direction than at me.

Westy and Jason, along with everybody else from their pledge class, got summoned to their fraternity house that evening after dinner. They left the dorm thinking it was just another pledge hazing, joking a little and complaining about the short notice.

They returned to their rooms three hours later pale, very quiet, and still sweating.

I watched Westy rummaging around his desk, but he wasn't really looking for anything. He was just fidgeting.

"Westy, what's up?" I asked.

He glanced over his shoulder at me. "Nothing, dude. Just forget about it, okay?"

"Well, it's obvious something's fucked up your head, man. Don't forget I've got to live in this room, too, so why don't you tell me what's happening?" I persisted.

He sighed and shuffled over to the couch and tumbled down into it, throwing his knee over the arm and leaning back to rest his head on the back cushion.

"I fucked up, Sean," he said quietly. "You know that party last weekend? Friday?"

I nodded. "Where I saw you and Jason with your dates," I said. I was straddled across my desk chair, and I rested my chin on my hands on the back of the chair, ready to listen to his story.

He snorted. "Yeah. What a hairball that date turned out to be." He shook his head at the memory.

"What's the matter? Didn't get lucky?" I probably shouldn't have said it, but he deserved anything that was coming down the tube at him.

He gave a short, humorless bray of derisive laughter. "Not with what's-her-face."

"Angelina," I reminded him.

"Yeah. Angelina. Big tits, high morals, dried-up cunt." He shook his head as he remembered that night. "What a fuckin' waste of time and money she turned out to be. Couldn't even get a fucking handjob out of her. What a cunt."

"So, she's your problem here?"

"What? Angelina? No, man, what gave you that idea? She just wouldn't give it up, that's all."

"So what's got you all fucked up tonight, then?" This conversation was getting irritating. I was fast losing what little sympathy I had started with toward Westy.

"Ah, it was that other shit from that night," he said, now a little hesitant.

"At the party?" I prompted.

"Yeah, that night at the party. Anyway, I saw a girl there I'd been out with before, you know?"

"A girl you'd been out with before? Or one of your one-night boinks?"

He smiled, a flash of the old arrogant Westy again. "It's all the same thing, Porter."

"Maybe to you," I said disgustedly. "Okay, so you saw her at the party."

"Her name was Amy. Shit, when I did her a couple of weeks ago I thought she was a fucking tramp, but I didn't think I would ever run into her again." He looked a little puzzled for a moment. "What do they call it when something odd happens to you, like something appears out of your past?"

"Serendipity? Or do you mean deja vu?"

"Yeah, serendipity, I think that's it." Westy settled in and continued. "I thought it was, like, serendipity, when I saw her at that party. I was a little buzzed, you know? And my fuckin' date was getting more and more uptight as the night went on, and I had the feeling I was gonna be shut out on nooky." He gave me another glimpse of that Westy grin I had come to despise. "Can't have a Friday night without a little action, you know."

"Yeah, right. My heart's bleedin' for you. So you ran into one of your old squeezes." I tried to get him back on track. I was really regretting offering a sympathetic ear.

"Man, where do you come up with this shit? An old squeeze. Is this all part of those sappy Midwestern values you've been saddled with?"

I stood up. "Fuck you, Westy. I'm here trying to give you a hand, and all you've got for me are insults?"

He sat up straighter, and actually managed to look apologetic. "Ah, shit, Porter, I'm sorry. You're right, I'm an asshole."

I sat back down, albeit reluctantly. "Get back to the party, then. I'm assuming this is all leading somewhere?"

His look turned sour and introspective again. "Yeah, sorry. It'll all come around in a minute, you'll see. Anyway, Amy was at the party, hanging all over Arthur Burns - he's one of the Sig Tau brothers who live in that apartment, you know?"

One of Jeremy Peters' roommates. "Okay," I said. I motioned for him to go on.

"Okay, okay, don't get your panties in a knot," he said, a little roughly. He slumped back down on the couch and squirmed around to get comfortable. "Amy was there, I think she was stoned to the max, and I was buzzed and horny, like I said, so I got this crazy idea. I cornered her one time when Angelina and Kitten were in line for the can, and I sweet-talked her into a quickie. We couldn't use the bedrooms, because we'd have had to pass by the line waiting to use the john, and Angelina would have spotted me, so we snuck downstairs and found a blanket in the back yard."

I knew where this was heading. It was like watching a car wreck in slow motion, fascinating and morbid, but still irresistible.

"She peeled off her panties in about record time, Sean, it was really something." He smiled again at the recollection, and then remembered the consequences, and he sobered up quickly. "Anyway, she was laying there spread wide, so I dropped my own shorts, hopped on, and rammed home. When I climbed off her, Jason was there, watching, so I asked him if he wanted a ride. Amy wasn't particular, so he just pulled his dick out and hopped into the saddle for sloppy seconds."

"Yuck," I said.

"What's the matter, Porter? Never had sloppy seconds?" His lip curled. "Wait'll you try sloppy sixths or sevenths, dude."

"Ain't never gonna happen, Bridges. Skip the gory details, okay? Then what happened?"

"Got a weak stomach, Porter?" He saw the look on my face, and his own expression was hard. "Yeah, I know, I'm a degenerate. So what?"

"Hey, what you do on your own time is your own business," I said. "You want to be an asshole, go right ahead."

"I may be an asshole sometimes, but at least I'm not crying every night because I'm young, dumb, and full of cum," he said with a knowing smirk.

"Nope, you're not," I said tightly. "You're just hanging on at the frat house by your fingertips. What happened with the girl in the back yard?"

He sat up a little straighter. "Okay, anyway, so while Jason's taking his turn with her, getting his rocks off, I run back upstairs and let a few of my pledge buddies know what's going down, and there's a line forming to the right. I figure I'd better get back in there before Amy gets too loose and squishy to be any good, so I do her a second time, and Jason hops back on, and by the time she had done everybody in line, that bitch had taken about twenty loads, and she was still on her back, squirming around and moaning for more."

"Jesus Christ, that's disgusting," I muttered.

"Yeah, it is," Westy said, almost happily. "Best damn night in this rathole of a college yet."

"For Chrissakes, Westy," I said.

He waved me off. "Anyway, the upshot of it all is that Kitten caught Jason with his fly open, put two and two together, and flew off the handle. She told Angelina about it, and that was all she wrote. Angelina took off, Kitten grabbed Jason and dragged him off to look for her, so I had no choice but to tag along."

Apparently the memory of that part of the night wasn't very pleasant, because his expression was dour again.

"So, I found out later somebody found Amy wandering around dripping cum all over the floor, and then Arthur and Jeremy and some of the other brothers started asking her about what had happened, and they found out about my involvement in it all..." He paused, clearly uncomfortable about telling this part of the story. It figures, I thought. Consequences just aren't something an asshole like Westy would consider before jumping in on something.

"And?" I, on the other hand, was looking forward to listening to him confess about the aftermath.

"And so tonight the brothers called the entire pledge class over to the house, and they really reamed us out. Me and Jason really got hammered, not only by the brothers, but by the other guys in our pledge class, too. Shit!" Westy pounded his fist on the arm of the couch. "It's not like they weren't willing to take their turn at her, and yet it's like they're blaming me for getting them in trouble!"

"The thankless bastards," I said facetiously.

Westy glanced at me, wondering if I was serious. The look on my face must have told him I wasn't.

"All right, so maybe it was kind of my fault," he grudgingly admitted. "Even so..."

"So how much trouble are you in with the fraternity?"

"On probation," he spat. "Jason, too. We ain't got no freedom at all. Starting tonight, the two of us have to spend every spare minute either at the fraternity house, or in the company of a designated brother. Homework gets done there, and they're going to check it to make sure it's done right. If I gotta go to the library, somebody will go with me. I can't hardly go to the can by myself, for Chrissake."

"So you're not going to be around here very much," I said. Inwardly I was smiling, though I was careful to not let it show on my face. Things are looking up.

"Just to sleep," he said. "From now until the end of the semester."

"Well," I observed, "it ought to keep you from finding mischief."

"It'll do that," he agreed. "Besides that, training for the swim team began this week. I ain't gonna have energy to go sniffing poontang during the week, anyway."

"You really have a way with words," I said sourly. I felt like I needed to take a shower, and that was just from talking to Westy. He got up and started rummaging around again. If he's looking for a conscience, he isn't going to find it in his dresser drawers, I thought to myself. I did manage to keep my mouth shut, though, even when he turned to me a little expectantly. Is he looking for absolution? Understanding? He wouldn't find it with me. No way was I going to shake his hand. I almost looked around the room to see if there was a ten-foot pole handy, just so I could say I wouldn't touch him with it.

I suddenly felt the urge to call Reggie to see if she wanted to meet me for coffee or something. I needed to talk to somebody sane, so I could rinse the Westy taint from my psyche. I waited, watching as Westy packed up his backpack with books so he could study at the fraternity house. He left a few minutes later, still grumbling under his breath. He left our door open and stepped across the hall to pound on Jason's door. Music was floating down the hall from several rooms, so I didn't hear them leave, but I was sure they had plenty to talk to each other about as they walked over to the Sig Tau house to begin their probation.

Despite my feeling at that moment to call her, I resisted. I tried to concentrate on my own homework that evening, and for the next couple of weeks after Homecoming I tried to cool down my association with Reggie just a little. Beer is a wonderful relaxing beverage, but I had learned that both she and I were prone to being more... attentive when under its influence, and in this instance, attentiveness was not what we needed. We still went out on the weekends together, but we were both trying to fit back into the molds we had originally made for ourselves. Guilt, even implied guilt of the soul, can sometimes be a blessing in disguise.

Even so, on our Saturday all-day bus ride up to the tournament in Washington, D.C., I found myself thinking about Reggie. It was a little dismaying when I finally recognized the truth I had been avoiding for a long time: I already missed her, and I had only been away from her for about eight hours, having spent most of Friday night with her at another party, this one at Jesse and Bryan's apartment.

Christ, Porter, Reggie isn't the girl you're supposed to be missing. What is wrong with you?

Which brought me to another naked truth: I had been away from Kayla for so long, I barely missed her anymore. This truth, instead of setting me free, only made me sadder. That was not what I wanted, and I knew it was not what Reggie wanted, either. It was just another tangled knot my clumsy fingers would never be able to untie.