The usual complaint was that her family just didn’t understand her. I had always chalked it up to standard issue complaining. Nobody’s family ever understands them! (Jesus Christ! I should know, right?) In Marilyn’s case, however, I knew this to be true. Marilyn was actually a lonely girl, and visits home didn’t help a whole lot. Her father was a workaholic obsessed with his business, her mother was buried by trying to raise ten-plus kids, and the next seven kids were all boys and useless to boot. Depending on who she was dealing with at home, she was either the unwanted older sister or free labor. The only other woman in the family she could talk to was her four year old sister. Even if she could sit down with her mother or an aunt to try and have a discussion about something adult, it still wouldn’t work. Her family was hard core Catholic and in no possible way could she talk to them about boys or sex. Likewise, she was the only person in the family to ever go to college, so that wasn’t a topic either.
Mind you, Marilyn’s family was far more supportive and loving than mine, even on its worst day. Still, on more than one occasion, she’d visit me at Kegs and cry on my shoulder after a bad time at home. I now realized that I was one of the first people to ever talk to her like an adult and treat her like one. Even her roommates at college weren’t much help; one was a snob who looked down on Marilyn’s white trash upbringing and the other was a doper. I was the only one who really understood her, and even more now than before.
One thing that I got back in the habit of doing was giving blood. Every couple of months the Red Cross would have a blood drive on campus. They would set up tables in the gym or the Armory and the vampires would come in and drain a pint off anybody who got close enough to wrestle onto a table. You couldn’t donate unless you were over 18, so I missed the first few chances, but by February I got back in the habit.
For me it was very easy. I don’t have any problems with seeing blood, although I would always look away when they stuck me, so that I wouldn’t flinch. (I did have a friend or two over the years who would pass out at the sight of anything medical, even a hypodermic needle!) After that, I would just lay back and rest. I remember one time I actually fell asleep on the table, and only woke up when I heard someone next to me yell out, “We’ve got a deader here!” I woke up and looked around, much to the consternation of the vampire who thought I had passed out.
I mentioned this to Marilyn once. She couldn’t donate blood, since she had had some sort of jaundice or liver disease as a child that prevented it. It wasn’t anything fatal or dangerous, but it was something that kept her from donating. On the other hand, I gave a couple of gallons while I was in college.
Professor Rhineburg was actually quite interested in helping me navigate through the hurdles of staying at Rensselaer as a grad student. At the time, most colleges wanted you to go to grad school elsewhere, to broaden your outlook. The standard practice was to get a bachelors at one school, a masters at another, and your doctorate at yet a third. RPI was different in that they offered a large number of five and six year masters programs in engineering and architecture, and I knew a chemistry major who stayed there for eight years and got his doctorate. When I discussed working on something involving both information science and topology, he smiled and nodded and invited me to see him after class at least once a week to discuss possible research.
Eventually it stopped snowing and winter was declared over. Mid-April saw the end of pledgehood. We all knew it was going to happen, and eventually Hell Week was upon us. We were summoned to the house a week before and handed a list of instructions and banished from the environs for a week, and told to report back to Kegs the following Sunday at 2:00 in the afternoon. We all ended up walking back to campus reading over our lists and trying to figure things out.
We had to show back up at the frat in a week wearing a suit, but also carrying a suitcase filled with work clothes and a pair of sneakers. We were also to each have a pledge box (matching cigar boxes) painted in the fraternity colors (magenta and gold) packed with a variety of very strange items:
A travel size packet of Ex-Lax
A road map of Danbury, Connecticut
Two packs of matches
Three pencils
Two pens, purple ink
A small notebook
An emery board
Three marbles
Two quarters, a dime, and four pennies, all minted within the last five years
A green lollipop
Four large paperclips
None of us knew what was going on. The first major crisis was finding fifteen matching cigar boxes! None of us smoked cigars, or even knew anybody who did. I had smoked cigars on my first trip around, but not now. Eventually Bill Pabst called his father, who did smoke cigars, and conned him into sending us enough empty boxes to take care of things. He apparently saved them for knick-knacks. Leo Coglan volunteered to go out and buy the paint, and we split up the remaining purchases among ourselves. We almost didn’t get it all done. The cigar boxes came in on Friday and we weren’t sure they would dry in time. We painted the sides of the boxes magenta and the folding lids gold.
Sunday afternoon we all trooped back up to Kegs, making sure we got there early. We were kept waiting on the street until 2:00, at which point the door was opened and we were marched into the formal room. It was there that we learned trouble was brewing! The entire brotherhood was sitting there, watching us solemnly, with Hank Barlow, a senior, facing us with a gavel. Once we were lined up, he said, quite mildly, “You were told to be here at 2:00. It is now 2:05.”
Joe Bradley took the bait. “We were kept outside until 2:00.”
Hank jumped up and leaned over the table and started screaming! “DID I ASK YOU FOR YOUR OPINION? YOU ARE LATE! YOU FAILED THE VERY FIRST TEST! YOU DO NOT SPEAK! YOU DO NOT THINK! YOU ARE NOTHING!” He went on in this vein for another five minutes before settling down and sitting back in his chair.
He pointed over at our Pledgemaster. “This is your fault. You failed to train them properly. Now I have to do your job for you.” Bill Gasic simply stared at the floor and looked miserable.
Hank turned back to us and ordered us to place our pledge boxes on the table in front of him. That started another tirade. “YOU CALL THIS MAGENTA AND GOLD? THIS IS FUCKING PINK AND FUCKING YELLOW!” He actually picked up one of the boxes and flung it at a wall, where it popped open and spread everything around that side of the room. Much cursing by the brotherhood was done at this moment, but all directed at us, since if we had done it properly, this wouldn’t have occurred. It was Leo’s turn in the box, explaining that the labels on the paints said magenta and gold. It made no difference, they were fucking pink and fucking yellow!
After about an hour of abuse, we were all sent up to the attic and told to change out of our suits and into work clothes and sneakers. We would expiate our sins with hard work. The attic was a place on the third floor stuffed with ancient and diseased mattresses. Our suitcases were already upstairs, and had been opened and ransacked, and our clothing had been dumped into a single pile. We spent valuable time sorting it out and changing, so we were late for our return to the formal room. Time for some more screaming.
Fifteen of the brothers were sucking on green lollipops. We hadn’t brought enough. We had the wrong maps of Danbury, so they were being taken away; we would not be able to use them later in the week. Some of the brothers were sitting there flipping quarters, obviously from our pledge boxes. We were then divvied up into work parties and sent off to various sections of the house with a senior brother to supervise us, all under the instruction of the House Manager. I ended up in the kitchen, where we completely dismantled everything and removed it and cleaned a year’s dirt and grease out. We didn’t get done until almost 7:30, at which point we were sent to the pantry and told to repeat the process there. We were dirty and exhausted at 9:30 when we all reassembled in the formal room.