Junior year was a lot like sophomore year, in that I had an overload of classes and spent a lot of time with Professor Rhineburg down at Amos Eat-Me. I still cooked about once a month on Sundays, still splitting the duties with Marilyn when I could get away with it. We had some new guys moving in and some old guys who didn’t come back. Jefferson was back too, along with Ricky, who was living in the house until Christmas. He didn’t report to the Army until then, and it was pretty obvious that Jefferson was moving along with him.
I didn’t run for any offices, but acted as chief bartender for the Social Committee. What I didn’t know from before I learned from Marty Adrianopolis over the last couple of years. I did make a name for myself when I handled the advertising for our first fall party. I got the idea from the ad I had run last spring, for the spring picnic up at Saratoga Park, which was an ad we had run once before, on my first trip:
Wanted: Virgins for Sacred Sacrificial Rite
followed by our frat name and phone number. The idea was that we would be up around the hot springs and needed to sacrifice some virgins to the geyser gods. I have no idea if any virgins came, but the phone rang off the hook for a couple of days, and quite a few girls showed up. We ran the ad in the Polytechnic, the RPI newsletter, and had some girls post it on the bulletin boards over at Samaritan and Saint Rose.
My new ad was a little more ambitious, and we paid to put it in the papers at RPI, Saint Rose, and Samaritan:
Virginity Reduction Clinic
Bothered by the burden of excessive virginity?
Meet with our trained counselors for one-on-one help, or participate in a group session.
Anesthetics provided free of charge!
All you’ll feel is a prick!
again followed by our name and number. The response was even better than with the sacrificial virgins ad. Marilyn was not amused, and neither were some of the other house girlfriends, but us Keggers toughed it out. We started planning future ads, which was a good thing, because those two had tapped my creative abilities to the max.
Over Christmas break, Marilyn and I flew to Miami, and I bought her another couple of swimsuits. She still refused to even think about topless or nude beaches, which got me laughing at her more than once. However, just because she wouldn’t go for an all over suntan, it didn’t mean she wouldn’t go for an all over moontan. We managed to rent a car and made a few late night drives over to the Everglades. I made sure to treat her special, and she returned the favor!
Also during Christmas break, Harriet had child number 12! Sarah was born while we were away, so Marilyn didn’t learn until she got home. It’s a hell of a thing to come back from a weekend with my girl and let my frat brothers know that Mom was still in production! Very weird.
Towards the end of the year, I got additional orders for my training during the summer between junior and senior years. I already knew I had to go back to Fort Bragg for more training, but after that I was heading to Fort Benning in Georgia for paratrooper training.
I let Joe Bradley in on the news, which was a bit surprising to him. I would travel down with him and Bruno, but not back. We had agreed to room together for another year. We meshed together quite well, since I wasn’t smoking pot anywhere near as much as I did before. I was an asshole then; I had learned. Room roulette was looking especially chaotic this year, however, as the saying goes, in chaos there is opportunity!
“You thought any about what room we’re going to be in next year?” I asked Joe one day.
He gave me a funny look. “You mean other than here? You got something else in mind?”
“Let’s get a room down on the landing.”
“We’ll never get a room down there. Why?”
“Well, for one thing the rooms are bigger, and they have windows and porches.” Okay, not really, but they all had windows that opened out onto the roof of the wraparound porch. You could carry a chair out there and sit comfortably in the sunshine and breeze. “Besides, we are shoo-ins, or at least you’re a shoo-in. Me, not so much.”
“How do you figure that?”
“You’re still Number Three in our class for ritual order, and crones don’t count. That makes you number three in the entire house,” I replied.
It was like a light went off in his head. “I never thought of that.”
“It’s better than that. Bruno is number one, and he’s staying put in the triple, which he inherits from Lynchburg. No way is he giving up the triple to bunk over here. Agreed?”
“I’ll buy that. What about Barry?” he pointed towards the wall, on the other side of which Barry bunked.
“It doesn’t matter. There are two rooms opening up downstairs. Pigpen and Schlitz are both graduating this year.” Pigpen had inherited the room on the landing from his sophomore year roommate, and invited Schlitz in with him. “So are Harry and Ralph in the front room.” Two seniors were going, too.
“So even if Barry wants to move, we’re a lock either way,” finished Joe.
“That’s the way it looks to me.”
“What’s it worth to you?” he asked wickedly.
“Well, I won’t tell anybody about the stash of queer porn you’ve been hiding, and how you like to bugger sophomores in the middle of the night.”
“Fuck you, Buckman!” he said with a laugh.
“Sounds like we’re moving.”
As expected, Barry put in for one of the rooms with one of the incoming sophomores, and took the front room overlooking Burdette. Joe and I got the second room, on the side of the house overlooking the pool and across from the Black Light Room.
Chapter 43: The Summer Of Our Discontent
Marilyn didn’t like that I wasn’t going to see her for over two months, but she understood. We spent a wild weekend together before I left, and I promised her an even crazier one once I was back.
Summer training was similar to the first time we went through it. Once again, I got separated from Bruno and Joe and never saw them again. I did see my friend from last year, Harlan, but he was assigned to a different training company. We only saw each other intermittently, but we had a pretty good friendship going.
A lot of what we did was similar, although compressed. We requalified with weapons, brushed up on our various skills and drills, and ran and marched some more. This time we didn’t have to play war games in the dirt. We did, however, get introduced to the various branches of the army. Now we actually could see some artillery and tanks, paratroopers jumping from planes, and so forth. The idea was to give us enough info so that when we graduated we could make an intelligent choice about the branch of the service we ended up in.
Personally, I thought this was a stretch. From what I knew of my fellow cadets, 90 % would have been happy getting a demonstration of a typewriter in a clean and dry office. The secretarial branch was their preferred branch of service!