"So are you interested in Greek life?" he asked me.
I did my dead-level best not to laugh. Am I interested in Greek life? Do I look like someone who'd be interested in Greek life? (Insert your own "More like 'Geek life'" joke here.) I sure as hell wasn't interested in Greek life, but I wasn�t interested in being an asshole either. I smiled politely and said I didn�t know.
This was the fourth time I'd had this conversation in twenty minutes. I suppose that's what I get for going to a frat-sponsored benefit concert for a comatose graduate student. All I wanted was to get some free pizza or Subway or 'homemade' cookies and a Diet Coke or two, but I had to be wearing the North Carolina shirt.
"Are you a North Carolina fan?" some girl asked me. This was the second time I'd been asked that in an hour and the second time I'd had to explain that my cousin used to go there and that it was a free shirt. The girl busted on me for wearing a shirt and not knowing enough about girls' basketball or something. Then she introduced her friend before scampering off into a thicket of boysenberries.
Her friend, it turned out, graduated from the same high school as me. As if that wasn't enough, he was also on the first government team Schmitz ever took to Washington. We reminisced about what an awesome teacher she was, how much fun we had in her class, how much fun we had in Washington, how craptacular our high school was. I don't want to get all Jeff Foxworthy on anybody, but you know you had Schmitz for AP Government if you still have your copy of 'We the People' on the bookshelf; this was true of myself and of the frat boy. It's like a cult or something.
Know what else is like a cult or something? A fraternity. Which is why I wasn't altogether surprised when he asked if I'd thought about going Greek. I pulled one out of the random excuse file: "I don't think I can afford it."
"That's what I said, too. I went through rush just to, you know, meet people, and then on the last day, I decided, 'yeah, I'm doing this.'" Ugh. I was going to be forced to produce an actual excuse. The speech about just how much fun Unnamed Fraternity Organization was continued, and who better to offer visual aids than more frat boys?
They were also moving between the concert stage and the food area or the bathrooms, so they tag teamed and took turns trying to teach me their ways. I got to hear variations on the theme of "It's great and it's a lot of fun," a throwback to high school when Jaydolph tried to get us to join his fraternal org. It's the same exact speech, mostly, everywhere and from everyone. In a nutshell: we just want to be your friend. It seems too easy, too good to be true.
UFO had all its ducks in a row, to be sure. They claim to have the highest Greek GPA on campus (which I suspect is still lower than mine). They 'don't haze.' (Excuse me while I snicker subtly.) Oh, they're a substance-free house; no drinking and no smoking on the property. And the final nail in their coffin: they're based on Christian principles as opposed to Greek ones. Yeah, this sounds exactly like the fraternity for me.
It's not that I'm against fraternities per se. It's true what the fat one said about the preconceptions coming from movies like Animal House. I�ve always been partial to that line from Boston Common, which summarized fraternity life in a nutshell: "Eat a grape out of my butt and then we can be friends for four years." There is an archetype of the frat boy, to be sure. They're not all jocks, and as one of my profs pointed out last night, those labels tend to be a little less limiting than in the past, but still...no alcohol? Christian principles? That sounds like the house I just moved out of. They probably have a curfew, too. If I'm going to join a fraternity, it's going to be a gay one (the better to have unending drama) with lots of alcohol (the better to forget that there is NOTHING to do in University Town) and principles of basic common sense (wear a condom, don�t steal my shit, puke in the toilet instead of on the floor). So when College University starts a chapter of Delta Lambda Phi, maybe we'll talk.
Anyway, the UFO boys are having a party tonight and I'm invited. I'm not sure whether I'm going to go, because given their standards or whatever it sounds like game night at my parents'. The alternative is watching djb on VH-1, though, so you never know.
Someone got here by searching for: "adrian brody" college Reading: Finished the Hiassen! Yay, me! Listening to: REM Watching: Hope and Faith (eee!) and Joan of Arcadia (hmm). Eating: A Pop-Tart Drinking: Nothing, if I go to that party.
