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The scores actually broke down into several categories. The first cutoff point was about 80; above that number was a virgin who had never even dated. The next major range was in the 60s, and meant you were a virgin who had dated, maybe had a handjob or a blowjob, but never actually gotten laid. There were enough points involved in actually getting laid that the moment you became a non-virgin, your score dropped into the 40s. After that, as your sexual proficiency and the number of partners increased, your score would continue to drop. For fairly conventional heterosexual college seniors with a degree of sexual proficiency, they usually stabilized their score in the mid 20s. The lowest on record in the frat was Ricky Holloway’s, somewhere around 19. Much lower than that and neither pets nor your fellow brothers were safe.

We sat around and drank wine and swapped lies for another hour or so, and then I had to return to the kitchen to check on things. Marty had fallen asleep on the couch and Jack went upstairs to his room. Bill wandered out to the kitchen with me and watched me working. “You could be the Kitchen Steward,” he said.

“What’s a Kitchen Steward?” I asked.

“Well, I’m actually jumping the gun, but just suppose you were to be invited to join Kegs and you did so, then you can run for a frat office,” he told me.

“Like what? Chancellor?” I asked.

A hundred years ago, when Kegs had been invented by a bunch of drunken assholes at Amherst, they had created a bunch of positions and titles to run the place. What most frats called the President was named the Chancellor. The Vice-President was the Minister, the Treasurer was the Exchequer, the Secretary was the Scrivener, and the fifth guy, the tie breaker, was named the Provost. These five brothers were voted in every year by the brotherhood and was the Ruling Council, and their names and titles were on the pictures of the brothers in the Formal Room.

“No, the Steward runs the kitchen. There’s all sorts of jobs around here.”

“Like what?”

Bill shrugged. “You name it. The Chairman of the Social Committee runs the parties. Rush Chairman is in charge of recruiting you new guys. The Steward runs the kitchen. The House Manager keeps the heating system and stuff working. There’s all sorts of shit that needs to be run.”

“Freshmen can do this?”

He shook his head. “No, you have to live in, but we have elections for the following year in the late spring.”

“I still have to get in first, don’t I?” I said with a smile.

“There is that.”

Dinner was a rousing success. I used the pan drippings from the bird and separated off the fat, to pour the remainder into the gravy base. I also whipped up a very quick white sauce for the green beans. I cooked the bird until it was quite thoroughly dead, but still juicy, and for the last half hour I had the tin foil tent removed so it would brown. Then, while the other guys set the table, I destuffed the bird and carved him up. By the time we were done, I was fairly certain I had cemented myself into the frat. It was late when we split up. We had gone through two-thirds of the wine, and I left three bottles behind me and drove back to the dorm with my last bottle.

Chapter 27: A Very Important Date

Two Mondays after Thanksgiving, Marty Adrianopolis showed up knocking on my door in Hall Hall. He had in his hand a large envelope in a creamy parchment sort of paper, and he told me to open it while he stood there. Inside it was a formal request to pledge Kegs, also done on the fancy paper. I read it over and asked, “What do I do now?”

“Are you accepting?”

I nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

“That’s good enough for me. Friday we’ll have the induction, so make sure you’re around for that,” he replied. We shook hands and he headed out.

That Friday night the incoming pledges were assembled in the basement, dressed in suits, while the brethren, dressed in black robes, swore us in as pledges. Then we were given our Pledge Books and we went upstairs, where we took off our coats and ties and got drunk.

Pledges had to learn all sorts of strange shit, like the frat’s colors (magenta and gold), history (founded at Amherst College, otherwise known as the Oracle), and even the secret alphabet, a collection of stick figures. A century ago, those clowns at Amherst — excuse me, the Oracle — had way too much time on their hands! We were also taught proper attitudes for proper pledges, namely utter subservience to higher forms of life, like bacteria and viruses. For instance, when the pay phone in the lobby rang, it was a pledge who had to answer, even if he was upstairs in the bathroom, and even if a brother was sitting in a chair underneath the phone. Likewise, pledges were assigned duties helping in the kitchen and around the house.

Now, looking back, I can explain some of what was happening at the time. The Sunday after Thanksgiving, a week after the vacation, Kegs had a house meeting. These were usually held once a month and were supersecret burn-before-reading sorts of affairs. All non-brethren were thrown out onto the street. It was time to select pledges.

House meetings were brothers only. They were held either in the basement (dark, foreboding, formal) or in the formal room, which was a lot more comfortable. You only did basement meetings during the secret ceremonies. Upstairs in the formal room there were couches along all the walls and carpet to sprawl out on.

Selecting pledges was similar to the scene in Animal House, only with a few twists thrown in. They didn’t have a projector with slides, but they did have Polaroids taken at parties that could be passed around. Generally the procedure was that the Rush Chairman would have a list of prospects, and one by one, would propose a name. Often there would be a discussion on the guy, but not always. Occasionally comments such as “We need the dues!” would be heard. Then they would pass the box around. The box was a clunky gizmo with a tray of white and black balls in it. You would reach in and grab a ball, and then drop the ball through a hole into the box. The whole thing was constructed so that nobody else could see what color ball you were grabbing. The box was then passed to the next brother. Generally only sophomores and juniors would vote, since they were the guys who would have to live with their choices. Traditionally seniors would allow the box to pass by, although technically they had the right to vote. A white ball signified acceptance, a black ball signified decline. It had to be unanimous. A single black ball killed the prospect.

You could almost always figure out who was going to vote yea or nay, but not always. Sometimes the most promising candidates would get a single mysterious black ball and be out. Sometimes the biggest assholes would get in. If you went back in history, for many years the national Kappa Gamma Sigma organization had a rigid and written ‘no blacks or Jews’ policy, which wasn’t formally revised until a lawsuit in the Sixties changed it. This was especially bizarre since during the Forties and Fifties the RPI chapter was the Cuban house, where all the rich expatriate Cuban students lived. Even so, I knew of at least one current resident who explicitly stated he’d never vote to allow a nigger to move in — and he was a Jew! Go figure.

After the selection of candidates, the Rush Chairman is out of a job, and a Pledgemaster is selected. His job is to nurture and train the incoming pledges so that they can assume their rightful position as future masters of the universe, or something like that. Generally this was a simple job. He made sure they showed up on time, knew the rules, and didn’t fuck up too egregiously.

A second vote was held before the formal induction ceremony in the spring as a full brother. Theoretically, you weren’t a brother yet, but you really had to fuck up to get thrown out at this point. In four years there, I only saw one case where a pledge was deemed so screwed up that his invitation was rescinded after he pledged. Likewise, once you were a full brother, it was next to impossible to vote you out, requiring a unanimous vote to do so. Again, I only saw this once in four years, and even then the hose job wasn’t formally voted out; a group of brothers met with the asshole and told him he was not being invited back to live in the house the next year, and that if he pushed it, a vote would be forthcoming. He chose to move out.