DESPITE DETERMINED EFFORTS over many decades by Devon administrators, fraternities remained a part of the school ecosystem. There was a time, back in the 1970s, when the administrators had almost succeeded in purging them, but then the drinking age was raised to twenty-one and off-campus fraternities sprouted like invasive weeds.
Tonight was party night at Beta Psi. Various pledges—goats, they were called—scurried around, making preparations and taking the edge off the general state of disarray. Beta’s interior, with its uneven couches and secondhand furniture, was in a long-term war against entropy, with entropy consistently enjoying the upper hand.
The older brothers were mostly relaxing, enjoying that wonderful lull before the evening’s coming pleasures. It was almost Winter Break, what used to be called Christmas Break, and with most of their exams in the rearview mirror, the Betas were in a partying mood. Tonight was sure to be a rager. They had that EDM guy, RoofRaza, plus the goats doing all the work.
Swipe, swipe … swipe. Digger was working Tinder hard. He, Tug Fowler, and the Mound, all seniors, were prone on the common-room couches.
“How’s hunting?” asked Tug, president of the Beta house.
Digger Brooks didn’t look up from his phone, still swiping. Digger was the FOGO on the lacrosse team, which stood for “face off, get off.” It was his job to win face-offs and then run to the sidelines to be immediately replaced by another player. A lacrosse face-off resembled two people with sticks wrestling each other, and Digger’s particular style lent him his nickname back in high school. His skills had earned him a 40 percent break on Devon’s tuition, despite his being from a wealthy family in Greenwich, Connecticut.
“Hey, dill weed. Asked you a question.”
Digger, without looking up: “It’s a digital kennel out there, my friend. When we pre-gaming, anyway?”
Pre-gaming had first emerged in the mid-1980s, long before any of the current Betas were born. Congress, acting as institutional scold, passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which withheld highway funds from states that didn’t raise their drinking age to twenty-one. Most states caved immediately. Louisiana held out for a little while, but Northeastern states folded faster than you could say, “Jäger shot.”
The effect on college campuses was complicated, and not at all what any Washington politicians might have imagined, assuming they’d given it any thought. Colleges were forced to implement compliance regimes to keep an army of avaricious tort lawyers at bay. Complicating matters, most seniors could still legally partake, while underclassmen could not, creating a great schism of haves and have-nots and a compliance nightmare.
No one really thought underclassmen were going to abstain; this was college, and no Devon freshman walked through Phipps Gate without having seen Animal House, howling at the sight of John Belushi smiting beer bottles on his head. The federal fucking government was not going to get in the way of a good party, no sir. But big, campus-wide parties? Those were now a thing of the past. Students slithered into the nooks and crannies, mainly dorm rooms and fraternities, consuming what they wanted behind closed doors where they wouldn’t be caught by RAs and other mandated busybodies. Beer, the college beverage of choice since the first student was forced to read Proust, faded away. Too bulky. No way to sneak a keg into your dorm. Vodka was the new poison, its primary virtue lying in its efficiency—a mere ounce was equivalent to a whole beer, so it was easy to sneak around, and it mixed with about anything. Gatorade, say. No RA would be the wiser if you were sipping from a Gatorade bottle.
There were other, subtler consequences. Unintended ones. Social life became cliquey, balkanized. With the open-to-all, campus-wide parties gone, students now huddled in groups of six or ten or twelve. These groups had an irritating habit, from a progressive college administrator’s point of view, of self-selecting almost completely along demographic lines. No one saw that coming, and no one much wanted to talk about it. The higher drinking age became accepted wisdom along with the parallel conceit that some sort of transcendent diversity had been achieved with new admissions policies.
A few college presidents squawked, mostly because they didn’t like the liability. Some even signed a letter, but Mothers Against Drunk Driving was a powerful lobby, and no politician was about to commit career hari-kari by pushing for eighteen again. Twenty-one was here to stay.
Not that anyone in the Beta Psi house knew much of this. A few may have heard stories from their parents about the wide and varied social life that existed in their day. Devon in particular was once known for some legendary blowouts such as house-on-house chugging contests and a “saloon” night that featured a shot bar.
It might as well have been another planet.
Most of today’s Devonites only knew the world they inherited, and they made the best of it. So, the idea behind pre-gaming was to get drunk in small groups before the party, just in case the party was dry.
Technically, the Betas didn’t need to pre-game at all since they owned their own property and so could do whatever they damn well pleased. Tonight, though, they would get drunk before getting drunker.
A goat walked through the common room, carrying a case of Popov vodka, Beta’s most revered of spirits. Tug and Digger nodded approvingly. Popov was described in a well-regarded spirits periodical as a “yeasty, vanilla putrescence,” but it possessed the highest single virtue in the eyes of the brotherhood: it was cheap. Years back, one of the more analytical Betas, pondering how to reduce a spirit’s usefulness to a single number, came up with the “Beta ratio,” derived by dividing a liquor’s proof by its price for a fifth. For instance, a fine single malt like Macallan had a Beta of 1.6. This was inefficient, even gauche. On the other hand, Popov’s Beta was 7.3, a number worthy of approbation. When the house Alcohol Requisition Officer came back with anything new, the first question was always “What’s the Beta?” If it wasn’t 7 or higher, there were repercussions.
The only time anyone had ever seen a higher Beta than Popov’s was when someone purloined several gallons of pure grain alcohol and made jungle juice, a grenadine-laced concoction mixed to look harmless by its friendly red color. House mythology put the Beta north of 10. It was said that Havenport General had to use stomach pumps on several of the female guests. The subsequent banning of Beta from all university activities for two years was enough to cut grain alcohol from the weekly shopping list, even as it cemented Beta’s reputation as the best party house.
Finn Belcher, a slovenly but tech-savvy brother from the Midwest, came in, waving his phone. “I’ve been working on an app,” he announced.
Everyone, it seemed, was working on an app. Jimbo Peters had one that required you blow into a Breathalyzer—attached to your phone—before calling or texting anyone you had previously tagged as an ex. The default blood-alcohol threshold was .08, same as drunk driving, but you could set it wherever you wanted. Someone else had an app where you could calculate your carbon offset based on how much you farted. You had to take the phone out and notify the app with every fart. The brothers, all recruited as beta testers, turned this into something of a contest. In the end, the Mound, a football player of prodigious girth, had no real competition. He was readily appointed House Flatulist.
Unlike most of the brothers, though, Finn was a Comp Sci major and actually had some coding chops. This had the others listening in semi-interest. “You point your phone at someone,” Finn said, “push this red button, and the app randomly pairs a word with douche.”
“A demonstration, if you will,” suggested Tug.
Finn pointed his phone at Tug and pressed down. The phone suddenly spoke in an irritating, nasally voice. “Douche bucket!”
He pressed again.
“Douche nozzle!”
“Again!” said Tug, who sat up with growing interest.
“Douche licker!”
“Or if you want, you can stick with the classic…” Finn pushed a second button repeatedly.
“Douche! Douche! Douche!”
“You can also change the voice.” Finn clicked again, this time producing a “Douche!” in basso profundo.
“That is fuckin’ awesome!” squealed Digger. He and Tug high-fived. “I so need that.”
“Of course, it’s not completely random, since you can only pair with nouns, and not every noun is funny when you pair it with douche. Something like douche motherboard would, you know, suck.”
“Would suck balls, sure,” Tug said.
“But a surprising number of words actually work.”
“How many you up to?” inquired Digger.
“Seven hundred and forty-two.”
“Do you have douche rocket?” asked Digger intently.
“Nice one! Consider it added.”
“Does this app have a name?” asked Tug.
“I was thinking of Douche Buddy.”
“Belch, we are humbled,” said Tug. “You are a credit to the fraternal order.”
Another brother wandered in, Bryce Little from New York. “Hey, guys, I know this freshman chick from the city. Smoke show. Mind putting her on the list?”
“Our man Mound is manning the door. Hey, Mound, wake up!”
The Mound was buried in a nearby couch, sleeping.
He reluctantly rolled over. “The fuck.” He meant, Why did you bother me just now and what do you want? Mound was gifted with an economy of speech.
“Bryce’s got some chick he wants on the list.”
“Name.”
“Lulu Harris.”
“Done.” Mound rolled back over.
“Hey, Mound, any good hit-and-runs today?” asked Digger. Mound’s thing was to tour Devon’s newly designated transgender bathrooms where he’d lay down tremendous bowel movements. It was about as political as Mound got. The brothers tracked his progress with great interest.
From deep in the couch: “Fuckin’ A.” Why, yes, I had some success in that matter.
“Good man, Mound,” Tug said.
The Mound was also an anchor on the Devon football team. Last year, he led the team with forty-eight tackles. He was not, however, destined to be remembered for gridiron heroics, but rather for an academic misadventure of sorts. During last year’s football season, Mound had taken Art History 101 because he heard it was a blow-off. Students were assigned to pick any artist that was well represented in the Devon Gallery of Art and write a paper about that artist’s stylistic evolution. Venturing to the gallery for the first time, Mound examined the small labels next to each painting with care and picked an artist who seemed prolific, who painted in many different styles, and whose career was extraordinarily long.
That artist’s name was “Circa.”
Mound’s teaching assistant handed the resulting paper back with Are you a moron? written in big red ink letters. That was it. Are you a moron. No grade. Apparently the F was understood.
Confused and seeking elucidation, the Mound made the mistake of showing the paper to his roommate, Jimbo, who was also in the class. Elucidation was not forthcoming. Jimbo promptly ran into the dining hall, laughing hysterically and wielding the paper for all to behold. One student wag pointed out, between fits of laughter, that if Mound had turned the same paper in as an ironic statement, he’d surely have scored an A.
The Mound was less amused.
Tug now barked some orders to some passing goats. Yes, this was a swell place, and it was going to be an epic evening.