I slowly turned my head over to where Easton was sitting, smirking at me. “Do you really want to do this?” I asked.
“Fuck you, Buckman. Record the vote.”
“I’m guessing this is your vote for the rest of them, too?”
“Fuck you. Figure it out on your own.”
I nodded briefly and then looked over at Billy, the Scrivener. “Record the vote as Passed.” The vote could be either Passed or Not Passed.
There was an immediate uproar as Easton demanded, “How dare you!? You can’t do this! It’s against the rules!” A number of the other crones and Dregs protested as well.
I waited for the hubbub to die down, and then asked, “Why are you doing this, Jim?”
“I’m doing it for Boris and Mike and the Hammer. You shouldn’t have thrown them out! Fuck you, Buckman. Live with it!”
I just shook my head. “Jim, don’t do this. They were my friends, too. You and Boris brought me into this house, remember? And Mike and I became polar bears after dueling for my fiancé. Remember that? Don’t end it all like this.”
“I’ll end it the way I fucking want to! Fuck it!”
I just nodded. “So be it.” I dropped my gavel and said, “We’re going to change things. We’re voting these guys in as a group, all at once. I vote ‘Passed’. How about you, Mark?” I turned to the Exchequer, a junior.
He looked glum, but nodded and said, “Passed.”
I turned my head towards the Provost, also a junior, and he just nodded and said, “Passed.”
I turned to Billy, our Scrivener. “Billy?”
“Is this legal?” he asked me quietly.
“It’s as legal as we say it is. Now, who’s running this place, you and your brothers, or somebody who’d rather burn the house down around your head?”
Easton started yelling “Fuck you, Buckman!” from the corner, as hands held him in his chair.
Billy looked very nervous, but he said, “Passed,” loud enough for everyone to hear.
I turned to my right and looked at Bruno. He didn’t look happy, but on the other hand, he had skipped the vote, since he was moving out as well. “You going to make it unanimous, Bruno?”
“This isn’t right, Carl.”
“And this is?” I asked, hooking my thumb over my shoulder at Easton. More curses came my way.
Bruno looked over at Jim and some of the others. He and they all lived over in Grogans’, and there were some angry faces. “I don’t like it.”
“I’m not asking you to like it. I’m asking you to do the right thing. You know it’s the right thing. It’s just not the easy thing.”
“You’re a sanctimonious prick, Buckman, you know that?”
I sighed. “I am many things. I am certainly a prick. I’m not all that sanctimonious, but I am a prick. Passed or Not Passed?”
“Passed, damn you!”
There seemed to be a collective sigh of relief from around the room, along with some shouting from the crones and Dregs. “Mark them all down as Passed, Billy.”
Jim Easton stood up and stormed out of the room, vowing to have nothing to do with us the rest of the year. He didn’t either, eating leftovers after dinner and skipping out on Hell Week and initiation. I didn’t much care at that point. The rest of the crones stayed away from any future meetings as well, and I don’t think the incoming pledge class had any idea how close they had all come to being dropped at the last minute. At our last house meeting of the year, during elections for the coming year, when the new brothers attended their first meeting, I simply stood up and told them to run it better than we had. Hell, they couldn’t do any worse.
Chapter 46: Graduation
Thursday, May 26, 1977
I made sure I stayed visible whenever the pledges were around the house, and didn’t travel anymore on weekends. Marilyn seemed to understand, and she spent a few weekends driving down to see me. I really didn’t mind, since she would often come down and spend some time lounging around the pool in one of her little bikinis or the crocheted one piece. I watched one freshman as she sauntered up to the pool and undid the wrap around her hips and dropped it to the side; he was watching her instead of where he was going, and walked straight into the pool. Marilyn blushed when she saw what an effect she had. I liked that effect.
Finally, it was graduation week, the week after finals. For the first time in I don’t know how long — years! — I didn’t have something to do. I could goof off totally! My classes were over. My dissertation was done. I had passed my orals. All I had to do was hang around the mostly empty frat house for another week. On Friday those of us in ROTC would be commissioned as either 2nd Lieutenants or Ensigns, and on Saturday everybody would graduate. Marilyn came down as soon as her classes and finals ended, and stayed with me for the entire week. After graduation, she would help me move to my advanced training school.
We had all gotten our orders a couple of weeks ago. A lot of the guys got deferred orders, like Joe. He would be commissioned along with me, but he was deferring his service until he got through grad school. Like before, he was heading to Wharton. All of the rest of us were heading out to our specialization training. Bruno was going to Fort Belvoir in Virginia since he was going into the engineers. I was heading to Fort Sill in Oklahoma for artillery school.
I had a week’s leave following graduation to get to Sill, which we should be able to do in two or three days. As soon as Marilyn showed up, I went out and rented a panel van and we went down to the storage locker I was renting and emptied it out. Then we went back to Kegs and loaded up all the stuff I wouldn’t need over the next week, like my textbooks. Since Joe was going to be around, Marilyn and I moved across the hall to a room abandoned for the summer and camped out there.
That’s where we were Thursday afternoon, taking a nap. We had been swimming in the pool after lunch, and I had offered to help Marilyn dry off — all over!
“You just want to take my swimsuit off of me,” she countered.
I tried to look shocked. “Marilyn, how can you say that!? You know the possible dangers of chafing! I’m just looking out for your best interests.”
“Why do I think you just want to get me naked and have sex all afternoon?”
“Marilyn, I am disturbed by this conversation. It’s not my fault if you can’t control your lusts when I’m around.”
“Bullshit!”
“Let’s go find out. I’ll dry you off and you try to control yourself.”
Marilyn giggled and took my hand and we scampered upstairs. I have to say, she tried to control herself, but ended up totally failing. First I slowly peeled off her bikini, and then gently patted her down all over, before letting her lay back on the bedcovers. Then I brought out some hand lotion and applied it to all the areas that had been covered by the swimsuit, to make sure they were properly moisturized. This did seem to have an effect on her libido, since she was moaning and writhing on the bed as I did this. Then I used some special moisturizer, the kind on my tongue, to reach deep inside and treat the deepest parts I could reach. That was when she simply lost her composure, and demanded that I have sex with her!
Well, I am a gentleman, and Congress was going to recognize that fact in another 24 hours. I helped her out in this time of need. She pulled me on top of her and used her hands to spread her pussylips and guide my cock inside her. We huffed and puffed our way through a very noisy fuck. Afterwards, still not satisfied, Marilyn played with my cock until I was stiff again, and then I rolled her onto her stomach and crawled on top of her, straddling that plump little ass while I fucked her pussy from behind.
So, there we were, starting to nap, with Marilyn face down on the covers and me face up, when we heard a commotion in the hallway outside our room, on the landing. Then I heard, quite clearly, Joe Bradley tell somebody, “He’s right across the hallway. Just go on in, he’s probably got his headphones on.”