Frat Boy: The Museum - Part 2

I don’t remember all of the art that we saw that afternoon. I remember experiencing Monet’s “Water Lilies,” Zurbarna’s “The Crucifixion,” and Rothko’s beautiful untitled blocks of color, but that’s about it.

What I do remember more than the art was watching Debbie experiencing the art. Debbie danced with the works. She would move around the work, tracing the colors and shapes in the air with her hands. I could feel her mind and body settle when a painting pulled her in. Then she would refocus and quickly lead me into the next room, talking quickly in an attempt to capture what was incredible about what she had just experienced. While keeping up with Debbie was exhausting, I never got tired of watching her dance.

Even though Debbie talked a lot, she listened to everything I said with care and attention. She offered me space in the conversation. If I took it, she would listen, but if I didn’t, Debbie was happy to take that space and share her fascinating thoughts and perspectives.

When we got to campus, we walked over to Debbie’s room, and she asked casually, “Do you want to come up to my room?”

“What?” I replied in surprise.

“My room, c’mon, I’ll show you my drum.”

Before I could process what was going on, Debbie had opened the door and led me in her dorms lobby. I stood in her doorway awkwardly when she opened her dorm room's door. This was the first time I had ever seen the inside of a girl’s room. (And no, I had never been in a girl’s room either).

Debbie sitting in a chair looked up at me and coaxed me in like I was a puppy scared to come hither. I sat down on another chair and then Debbie did exactly what she said she was going to do. She pulled a conga drum out of the corner of the room and started playing it.

We talked for a bit, shared a pop tart, and then said goodnight. She gave me playful punch on the shoulder as she said goodbye. I thanked her for a great afternoon and before I left the room, Debbie leaned in and we shared a quick, but very cute hug.

I didn't follow up the museum trip by asking her out. I don't know if Debbie interpreted this as the fade away or was hurt that I didn't reciprocate. I didn't have the maturity to talk to her about our experience openly and I didn't have the confidence to put myself out there.

I don't know what she thought of that outing. Was it a date thing or a friend thing? I may have messed this up, and I hope that I didn’t hurt her feelings, because, I have always been grateful for her kindness and for reaching out to me.  In no time, we fast became friends. We regularly saw each other in marching band practice and during meal times. As the years past, we continued to share good times.

Debbie was always the life of party, first to dance and never one to let me stand against the wall. She was never afraid to tell me I was being an idiot, and she always did this with a smile confirming that all her words were an expression of care.

Debbie still loves to dance. She works as a choreographer, fitness instructor, personal trainer, and a dance instructor in the Philadelphia area. She’s spreads her love for dance, and her amazing spirit to others.

When I’m throwing myself into a dance with my 5th graders and coaxing them to get into it, I’m channeling my best Debbie smile. When I see a “wall-flower” sitting alone during lunch or awkwardly standing by themselves before a faculty meeting, I push myself to go out of my comfort zone, draw on the kindness that Debbie shared with me and reach out to them. And when I’m feeling unsure, and not sure where to go or how to be, I feel the sense of adventure that Debbie sparked inside of me so many years ago, and I face this uncertainty with optimism.  

Frat Boy: The Museum - Part 1

I'm currently on paternity leave, so Friday's posts may not be school teaching focused.  So for now we're going back to college for the next two weeks.  

“The museum?”

“Yes, the museum. The Art Institute in downtown Chicago. Do you want to go with me?”

“Um. . . well. . . I. . .”

“Okay, great we are going. Let’s meet at the ATM at like, 2ish tomorrow, and we will walk to the EL.”

“The what?”

“Okay see you then. Bye!”

I stood there speechless, not sure what had happened. Did she just ask me out on a date? What had I gotten myself into?

Freshmen year band camp had been a whirlwind. Outgoing upperclassmen took in nervous and overwhelmed freshmen like myself. They would introduce themselves and pull us through the marching band activities acting as both mentors and counselors. These mentors relieved fears and deliberately worked to create a community that would sustain us throughout our years at Northwestern.

These upperclassmen were remarkable young adults, caring, giving, and kind. I’ve written about some of these acts of friendship and inclusion throughout these series of posts. They weren’t the only ones that reached out to me, freshmen also took chances with me. . . freshmen like Debbie.

Debbie was one of the fastest talkers I had ever met in my life. It was like her mouth was trying to keep up with her brain, which moved at an awe-inspiring speed. Debbie was not afraid of direct eye contact AND the fact that her eyes were on the exactly same level as me as we were the same height, added a layer of intensity, passion, and confidence to her words. Imagine Ellie from Up! as a college student (who talks three times as fast).



Debbie was the kind of person who wouldn’t wait for a dance partner. If she wanted to dance, she would dance. If she wanted to talk to you, she wouldn’t wait for you to start the conversation and if she wanted to go to the museum with someone, she would find someone to go with.

We only had a few interactions before Debbie asked me to go to the museum with her. She was in marching band and we were around each other quite a bit, however, I wasn’t really sure if it was a good idea to go to the museum with her. I figured she had made the effort to be friendly, so the least I could do was show up.

Somehow I got the impression from the way that Debbie fearlessly guided me through my first experience on the El train and navigating through that part of Chicago that she was a local. No, she was from Wisconsin. She only had a slight idea more than I did about how to get to the museum. For me, this lack of knowledge caused me to pull inside of myself, for Debbie, it pushed her energy outwards.

We entered the museum, and moved through the admission lines. As we walked into the first exhibit room, I heard silence for the first time in almost an hour. Debbie had stopped talking. We were both in awe of the art surrounding. I looked over at Debbie and saw her gracefully walk in a circle looking up at the paintings. Then she stopped moving, and closed her eyes. She slowly inhaled through her nose and gently blew air through pursed lips. She opened her eyes looked at me, and with a raised eyebrow and giddy smile said “C’mon, let’s go!”

Frat Boy: Kerry - Part 3

Kerry’s other friends and I had been touching base with each other about how Kerry was doing and coordinating the best way to support her through this difficult time in her life. It was through one of these friends that I found out that Josh had lied.

There was no other girl. Josh had made up the desire to be with a different girl as a way to make himself into a villain and make a clean break. He knew that if he explained the truth that he was simply not committed to his relationship with Kerry, the break-up process would have taken more effort and possibly been more prolonged. Not only did he lack the guts to break-up with her in person, but also he lied in the process.

I felt a whole different kind of anger in that moment. A couple hours later, I saw him at the frat house and I couldn’t hold in the heat I felt towards him. I told him what I knew, and I let him have it all over again. Here’s the thing, in all of the other times when I had been mad at Josh, he had just taken my anger and absorbed it. This time he had enough. He put his hand up and told me to stop.

“What the hell was I suppose to do?” he pleaded to me. “You know Kerry, do you think it would have really been better if I had driven out there to her internship and had a drag out conversation that would have lasted hours? Would it really have been better if she heard that it wasn’t some other girl, that it was her and that I was simply tired of being with her?”

“Well, it would have been the truth,” I replied as I left the frat house.

Walking outside in the quad, I realized that Josh tried to break up with her in the nicest way possible. Intention isn’t everything but it counts for something. What was between Josh and Kerry was between them, but what Josh did affected the relationships he had with Kerry’s friends, like myself. It was up to me what they meant.

From then on, I never mentioned Kerry to Josh ever again. I didn’t go out of the way to be nice to him, but I wasn’t rude either. He could be that jerk who lied and broke-up with one of my best friends and he could be a frat brother that I treated with basic civility. It wasn’t an easy tension, but it was what I would come to learn understand as what it meant to have grown-up relationships.

Late in the school year during a quiet moment in a fraternity cookout, Josh asked me how Kerry was doing. This caught me by surprise, but I quickly had ready in my mind a sarcastic and mean comment, but when I looked over to him and saw a soft, caring look in his eyes. Instead of telling him how much of a jerk he was for what he did, I told him the truth.

“Kerry is doing great, her internship went really well, and she’s got some cool things lined up for the summer.” Josh replied, “That’s great, I’m glad to hear that, and I’m happy she has a friend like you.” I smiled at him, and we sat for a moment in the late spring sunlight in silence.

I think of Kerry whenever I listen to country music. She was into Brad Paisley and Tim McCraw and her interest opened me up to the world of country music I now love. I think Kerry whenever any of my female students speak their mind and prove as Kerry did that a woman can be tough. And I think of Kerry in my moments of doubt as a member of the chorus of people who believe in me and never gave up on me resonate deep within my soul.

   

Frat Boy: Kerry - Part 2

Kerry was quick to tell me when I was being silly, annoying, or overdramatic. She also never hesitated to tell me when she felt like being by herself, and wanted space from me. While these words stung at times, I grew to appreciate her honestly. As fast as she was to tell me these things, she was even faster when defending me. She always had my back and never hesitated to defend me fiercely to anyone.

Almost every day of the school year, we chatted over instant messenger (online text messaging), and shared meals together. We went to concerts together, went out to eat, and partied together. In the social group that was my family in college, Kerry was one of my closest sisters. She didn’t care about the fact that our relationship was unconventional, a college girl hanging out with a guy who was two years younger, a different major, and a different race. If people ever said anything to her about it, she never let on. I’m grateful to her that she valued our friendship more than social conventions, and the norms that in our society that too often pull people apart.

Kerry started going out with Josh before I met her. I knew who he was through Kerry and because he was in marching band with us. Josh soon became closer to me when we both pledged PMA and became pledge brothers. As this pledge class of about a dozen guys went through the process of becoming full members we all became closer and became to know each other as fraternity brothers. (follow these link for more about the pledge process part 1, part 2).

The pledge process is about understanding the values of the fraternity. Brotherhood was a value that was often discussed and talked about and one saying that got thrown around was “bros before hos.” This was a crude way to express that the bond between brothers was more important than relationships with girls. There was this idea that girlfriends were short-term (which was often true, but not always) and brotherhood was a bond that lasted a lifetime (which was often not true, but sometimes proved to be real).

There was an awkwardness being friends with women who were going out with my fraternity brothers. Many of the girls my frat brothers went out with were good friends of mine.  I heard things about these guys from my female friends, which proved for some awkward encounters. Josh had a sense of this. Whenever, he and Kerry had a fight, I would hear about it from Kerry and Josh knew about this. However, beyond a tacit acknowledgement, we didn’t really talk about his relationship with Kerry . . . until the break-up.

If was different when I saw Josh at the next at a fraternity event. When he saw me, he asked me how Kerry was doing. I responded angrily, “how do you think she is doing?” I chastised him for not having the guts to break up with her in person. This was the start of a series of encounters when I would either ignore him or express anger to him for breaking-up with Kerry.

Just when this feeling was beginning to ebb, I found out the rest of the story.

Frat Boy: Kerry - Part 1

Click here for link to my other posts about my college fraternity life.  And that time Kerry and I “cooked” thanksgiving dinner: part 1 & part 2.

I wasn’t fully asleep when the phone rang. Even though most people in college went to bed around midnight, it was rare to get a call this late night especially on a weeknight. After the first ring, I didn’t move, but then I panicked.  Maybe it was my mom and that there was some kind of family emergency. After the second ring, I rolled out of bed, stumbled to the phone at my desk. At the other end, it wasn’t my mom.

It was Kerry.

She was angry, sad, confused and in disbelief. Kerry’s boyfriend had just broke-up with her. When you are on the other end of a line when someone is in this moment, part of you is glad from the feeling your friendship affirmed. However, the rest of you, most of you, feels powerless, frustrated at that the fact that while you are there over the phone, you can’t physically be with them in person.

I listened to her, trying to make sense of the situation between her sobs and as soon as the story became clear, I got angry. Her boyfriend Josh told her that he wanted to break up with Kerry because he was into another girl. Josh wasn’t just some other guy he was my fraternity brother. The crude saying “bro’s before ho’s” seemed more hollow than ever.

Kerry was part of our marching band, PMA, and SAI social group. I don’t remember how we first became friends. It may have been through Molly who took me in and took care of me who was one of Kerry’s best friends. Most likely, we were sitting at our social group’s lunch table and I said something sarcastic, Kerry as she often does, probably complemented my comment with a her own layer of wit and flash that smile at me.

Kerry had a beauty that reminded me of Audrey Hepburn, with a gentle curve of her cheekbone and her intelligent eyes. This combined with the directness and the intelligence of Holly Hunter’s character from Broadcast News fascinated me.


 (BTW y’all, people really need to this movie).

Kerry loved being Kerry and she embraced facets of her life that didn’t go along with people’s expectations. She had no shame of her love of the greasiest Philly Cheese steak sandwiches and Bugle corn snacks. Kerry freely mixed expletives in her sharp comebacks and commentaries.

Kerry wasn’t fake. When we were eating lunch and someone said something that was offensive or stupid, while everyone else at the table was processing how to react, I would look over at Kerry and without fail, her face would express annoyance, disbelief, or disgust that would confirm my own feelings and make me laugh. Some people may have seen this as being rude; I saw it as being real.

As Americans we are conditioned to smile no matter how we feel on the inside. I’ve found that the women in my life who defined what it means to be a strong women don’t give out their smiles for free. It’s about not compromising one’s own feelings for the sake of making other people feel comfortable. Kerry didn’t smile all of the time, so when she did smile to me, it was significant.  Her smile was an affirmation of that I meant something to her as she meant something to me.

I remember her smiling when she taught me how to take a shot of alcohol. It was Southern Comfort, straight. Then she handed me my second shot of alcohol, another shot of Southern Comfort. At this point she was laughing uncontrollably as I steadied myself against the wall

I remember her smiling when she came to my room as the beer fairy. A couple days earlier a guy who liked Kerry, who she only liked as a friend, asked her what she was up to the next night. Kerry said, “nothing.” So when he invited her out to a movie, she had no way of rejecting him. While Kerry was direct, she was very kind. So she accepted his invitation.

A couple hours later Kerry pulled the same line on me. When I told her I wasn’t doing anything that evening, she invited me out to a movie and even though I had no plans, I told her no. I had homework to do and I didn’t feel like going out on a weekend and I wasn’t interested in seeing the movie she suggested. Kerry sighed and explained her situation and pleaded with me that I go out with her and this guy so it wouldn’t be a date. I hesitated, and then she said that I would get a visit from the beer fairy if I agreed to go. So I sat awkwardly between her and this other guy in a half empty theater. I don’t remember what we watched, but I remember it was long. I’m not sure if the beer was worth it.

I remember her smiling through the crowd in that ballroom.  Even though Kerry was away on her internship she decided to fly in and come to her sororities formal.  As Kerry walked into the ballroom disheveled and carrying her luggage, her sorority sisters huddled around her, screaming in delight to see her and giving her hugs.

I stood back from the group, giving her space to have a moment with her sisters. I was about to walk away, and then through a gap in the crowd she caught my eye. She opened up her arms to me, smiled, and we embraced.

Frat Boy: Gracie - The Gala Part 2

“Where is Gracie?”

I stormed through the ballroom looking for Gracie, yelling as I asked for her whereabouts. Jessica rushed up behind me as Diana and other friends came up to explain what happened. Diana and Gracie had gotten into an argument. Things got heated and Diana didn’t take Gracie’s lecturing and stood her ground. People stepped in and got the problem settled. Diana was a little annoyed but she knew Gracie’s deal from what I had told her so she let Gracie’s condescension roll off her back.

I was relieved that so many people had Diana’s back. Not only undergraduates but also alumni who had the perspective that Gracie lacked. I was proud of Diana that she stood up and that she didn’t let Gracie win this round. But I was still furious at Gracie. After I heard the whole story, I finally got the answer I was looking for: Gracie went down to the bar.

I ran out of that ballroom, down the hallway and down the stairs into the bar and angrily screamed “GRACIE! You do not get to mess with Diana!” Gracie was sitting at the bar with some alumni and calmly turned around to face me. She had a look of satisfaction in her eyes as she held a martini glass. I again yelled at her as I came into the bar and before I knew it two security guards immediately were at my shoulders, “Sir, I need to ask you to leave.” “Fine, no problem here,” I replied breathlessly as I turned around and walked back to the ballroom.

As I walked back into the hallway, I saw Diana and Jessica coming up to me having tried to follow me out of ballroom and hearing all the commotion in the bar. “Let’s calm down,” Diana stated calmly. She looked at Jessica confidently and Jessica left us knowing that while she was once the person who knew me best in this world, it was now Diana.

I was still fuming. “Gracie can mess with me and she has for years, but she doesn’t get to mess with you! For years she’s gotten away with stuff because everyone just explains her crap as ‘Gracie being Gracie,’ but that’s not fair.  We can’t get away with her behavior. This needs to end.” I exclaimed.

Then there was Diana’s hand on my shoulder. Then there were her calm words. She put her hands on my shoulder and looked straight into me eyes and promised, “Gracie gets away with being ‘Gracie’ and you don’t, because you are better than that and all of us here believe in you.”

The anger passed and we walked back into the ballroom holding hands. Jessica came up to me and gave me a hug and whispered, “it’s okay, little man. We still love you.” She led Diana and me to the dance floor and we enjoyed the rest of night dancing with our friends, past and present.

To this day, I have never gotten that angry and I have never let someone get to me in that way. I still don’t fully understand why Gracie made me so angry and I hoped by writing this post that I would figure it out, but I still am not sure what happened inside of my head that night.

I do know that I lost control and in that way Gracie won. The thing is that whatever happened between us that night wasn’t what has really lasted. The reason that I’ve never lost my temper like that ever since that night is because Diana is has never stopped believing in me. She talks about how angry I got that night and reminds me how much she didn’t like what she saw.  I take this reminder knowing that she stuck with me despite of what happened because she knew that this moment wasn’t all I was about.

I think about Gracie sometimes and I still bristle at the thought of her, but then I refocus on the present. Part of me feels hate for her and it’s really sad to hold negative feelings about someone else. I know that the only person I’m holding back is myself.  Gracie let me down in a big way. Once upon a time she seemed like a rock in my life and then she revealed herself as a flawed human being, just like anybody else.

We learn from the past and I have and maybe someday I’ll see Gracie and hash this out. That might be nice but it might only make things worse. Like the colors in a photograph, my feelings towards Gracie are fading. They are not given more depth like the feelings I have for the people I love in my life.

It’s getting harder and harder to remember how I felt when I stormed in that bar, but I still remember like it was yesterday the feeling of her fingers squeezing my arm when she said goodbye after taking me out to ice cream.

Frat Boy: Gracie - The Gala Part 1

Stunning.

This wasn’t any ordinary Formal, this was a Gala. This was a celebration of our SAI chapter as the oldest running chapter in existence. We were at The Drake Hotel, one of Chicago’s most beloved landmarks on the North section of the Magnificent Mile.

I was graduated at this point from my undergrad but continued at Northwestern for my graduate studies. Diana, my girlfriend (and my future wife) is two years younger than me, so she was still an active undergrad member of SAI.

Most people finish their time as an officer of PMA or SAI at the end of winter quarter and only have the spring to deal with watching younger people take over and than they leave. This is a difficult transition because for years you work at making an organization better and then you pass on these jobs to younger members.

No one is really in office for more than two or three years so sometimes the institutional memory doesn’t get passed on and young officers. This is a very inefficient way to run an organization if constant growth was a goal. However, the goal of PMA and SAI wasn’t for the organization to be in a constant upwards trajectory. Instead these organizations existed to help people bond and learn how to run an organization. The rotating officers, and having older people let go, was a great way to accomplish this task.

I did let go, but I was still a presence. I came to PMA and SAI events and I was often asked for my help and advice when dealing with issues. It was hard after being the music director watching the new music director try to figure out the gig, but it was okay and anyways, I had other priorities.

As this big SAI Gala started to come to together, the girls in SAI asked if the PMA guys would sing at this event. This was unusual as the PMA would usually only sing at their Formal and SAI would sing at their own. However, this was a special event and SAI extended the invitation. The current music director didn’t get invited to the SAI Gala, so I was asked to conduct the PMA as they sang a couple songs, and I happily agreed to help out.

The Gala was huge. Usually only undergrads showed up to Formals, but many SAI alumni showed up. There were much older people who had graduated before I was born who came and then there were those SAI members who took care of me when I was a freshmen, since graduated, who came back for the celebration.

It was such a great feeling to see all of these people again, introduce them to Diana and show tell them about how I had “grown up.” I remember seeing Gracie walk in. It had been more than two years since she graduated and we last talked. During that time, my resentment towards her had built. Not because of anything she had done during this time but because of how I felt that I had been mislead by her.

Gracie had her way of doing things, and her view on the way that SAI and PMA should run. I found that many of her opinions didn’t hold true now that my class was in power. For some reason this felt like a power grab and a way for her to manipulate me. Of course, this is silly. She had graduated and of course her views would be different than mine. As much as our organizations stayed the same, they also changed a lot. My negative feelings towards her, were more about my own insecurities and my inability to let go, more than it was about any bad things she really did to me.

When I saw her, I made every effort to avoid her (I know, reeeeal mature). This wasn’t really difficult since we had different crowds that we hung out with at this event. So everything went really smoothly.

I was so excited as I tried to settle down the PMA guys to sing. I gave them the pitch of our first song and we joined together in song. As we sang, I felt the positive energy coming from the guys and the girls behind me cheering us on. It had been almost a year since I last conducted these guys and it was a great feeling performing with them once again.

After the set, I left the ballroom to go to the bathroom, still feeling the adrenaline high from the performance. As I walked down the hall back to the ballroom, Jessica came running up to me. She was distressed and out of breath.  Jessica told me about what had happened in detail while I was gone, but all I heard was “Gracie,” “Diana,” and “fight.” The positive adrenaline and energy in my body, immediately turned into anger and without responding to Jessica, I pushed into ballroom.

Frat Boy: Formal

In high school, except for one exception, I didn’t really like dances, but in college I loved formal dances, which we simply called Formals.

If you want to read about me learning to love dancing in college check out this post.  This story also has a related this related link to a story about a how, a current New Yorker editor helped me learn to embrace what I loved about music and myself. 

In high school, dances consisted of making dinner reservations at some fancy restaurant, somehow making our way to the school, taking a picture, awkwardly standing around for a dance or two and then sometimes going to an after-party. When you were an underclassmen, transportation consisted of parents or older siblings.  When you were older you could drive or because of peer pressure you rented a limo.

I didn’t like dancing and the effort put into being seen and doing things a certain way felt disingenuous and kind of silly.

After the ladies of SAI taught me how to dance and the gentlemen of PMA helped me embrace the fun and silliness of dance parties, I looked forward to any opportunity to dance. It was liberating, fun and one of the best ways to relieve the stress of academics.  In my group of friends there was nothing sketchy about what we were doing on the dance floor and anything that seemed to approach more risqué dancing moves were more silly than sexual.

My frat had a Formal every spring. Our Formals looked like this. We walk over and get our dates (most of which were in SAI) and present a bouquet of flowers (not a corsage).  We would make our way to PMA and all pile into a rented school bus. The bus would take us to some kind of banquet hall in a hotel. Everyone would eat dinner in the room, like in a wedding reception. And after dinner we would dance. Then the formal would end, we would all climb into the school bus, which would drive us back to the frat house.

The guys would suit up and the girls would were nice dresses. However, unlike in high school the girls wouldn’t buy a new dress for each formal. More often than not they would reuse a dress or trade dresses with their sorority sisters for variety.

The school bus seemed weird at first but it was actually a really nice way for us to have some fun on the way to the location and take away the issue of driving. We’d hire a DJ and photographer. There would usually be a cash bar, and the food varied in quality depending on the location. A nice view was a plus, but in general, no one really cared. We just wanted an excuse to dress and get down with our “family.”

That was the main reason that these Formals were so much fun. It really felt like a family event. Most of the people who came were people from marching band, SAI and PMA. These were people we lived with, ate our meals with in Saga and defined the community that made our social group feel like a family.

At Formals we had our traditions. Being a music fraternity we had a way of singing grace and performing as a men’s choir toward the end of the night, which was a highlight for everyone involved. SAI had their formal within a couple weeks of ours and that was also a really fun event that had a similar format and vibe. I loved those events as well.

Formals are really a unique event. Getting together with a large group of friends for the purpose of being together and dancing just doesn’t happen in adulthood past college. The only thing that approaches Formals is wedding receptions. I’ve been to some really fun ones that are really meaningful but they are different. It’s just a different energy with multiple generations and the focus on one couple celebrating their union.

This lack of a focus on celebrating a specific event but rather purely celebrating life is what made these events so wonderful. Formals taught me that its worth putting in time and energy simply for the sake of getting friends together to have a good time. You don’t need a major life event to party; you just need good friends. Th Formals were a reminder of this fact and its something I forget when I feel too tired to call up friends or feel like I need an excuse to have fun.

A Formal may seem like just a bunch of college kids getting their party on, but it's so much more.  It's the feeling of losing yourself in dance, surrounded by friends, feeling no embarrassment, only freedom.  It's a feeling of energy, of love and of life.  It is the expression of the human spirit and most importantly a damn good time.  

Frat Boy: Gracie - The Bad

When Gracie told me that she approved of my first girlfriend I had in college, I was really annoyed.

I was a sophomore and while I still saw Gracie around and thought of her as a friend I didn’t need her like I did the previous year. It was Gracie and a group of girls that made me feel welcome at Phi Mu Alpha parties. For this and many other instances in which she made an effort to bring me into the fold, I was grateful.

But I wasn’t a kid anymore.

Over time, I had overheard people complaining about Gracie. People would say that she was controlling and was a know-it-all. Yes, Gracie did like things to go a certain way, but that way was to be inclusive and yes she did talk authoritatively about PMA, SAI and NUMB but the reality was that more often than not she knew what she was talking about.

So I played by Gracie’s rules. I took her advice during my first election at PMA, which I won. We talked about the politics of our fraternities often and she never stopped standing up for me.

The more I grew into my own person, the more I became a leader in the organization, the more distance there was between Gracie and me. She would always give me an enthusiastic hug when she saw me, especially at parties, but we had less and less to talk about.

I was walking on campus on a beautiful spring day and Gracie saw me and we stopped to talk. She told me that she heard about this girl I was with, who was a new member of SAI,  I wasn’t surprised that she had heard the gossip, but I was taken aback when she told me that she “approved” of me going out with this girl.

Yes, Gracie once upon a time really was my “college-mom” but in a year, I had grown up and out of needing her to take care of me. While I did care about what she thought, the fact that she felt that her approval was important to me didn’t feel right.

We have people who look out for us at points in our life when we need help and Gracie was really there for me.  But I couldn’t help shake the feeling that while I grew up, she didn’t see that in me. Later I would understand how hard it is to let go of being in a place of influence in an organization and watch the younger crowd take over. But at the moment, I felt like she was being condescending. Maybe this was simply the way that Gracie showed that she cared, and I just took it the wrong way.

Some relationships take decades to develop and be fully explored. Other relationships take years to pan out while some arch in even shorter periods of time. At the end of that year, when Gracie graduated, I knew we were done. Towards the end, Gracie and I had gotten in some disagreements and there was tension surrounding her from others as well. Most of us just brushed it as her just being herself.

Sometimes in life we decide a fight isn’t worth it, but sometimes the battles we let go lead to even bigger conflicts. And telling myself “Gracie was just being Gracie” came back in a way that I never expected.

Frat Boy: Gracie - The Good

"What I've got they used to call the blues Nothing is really wrong, feeling like I don't belong. . ."

As the sound of Karen Carpenter’s voice mournfully singing these words from “Rainy Days And Mondays,” filled my dorm room the steady patter of rain accompanied my feelings of loneliness.

The rush and excitement of freshmen year band camp was over. Classes had started and everyone seemed to settle into the rhythm of the year. Everyone seemed to have a place, and a group of friend except for me.

Northwestern University Marching Band (NUMB) had welcomed me with open arms a couple weeks earlier. I spent all my free time hanging out with NUMB'ers during band camp and in the first couple weeks of school. Because I had spent so much time with NUMB people, I never got to know the other freshmen in my dorm and there really weren’t that many people in NUMB that lived in my dorm.

NUMB was great but after rehearsals ended I wasn’t sure what to do. People talked about hanging out but I didn’t know how to reach out and get myself involved. I knew of Phi Mu Alpha (which I discuss getting into in this post), but I wasn’t quite ready to knock on their door.

For those first couple weeks, after eating dinner, I would do some homework in my dorm room (which was a single) and watch a DVD by myself. This seemed okay but the loneliness built up. Every freshman has that night when they hit the bottom and don’t feel like they belong at college. For me that night sitting n my room and listening to the Carpenters.

Then a got a message over Instant Messenger (old-school online texting).

     Gracie: Do you want to go out for ice cream?
     Me: Not really, I got a bunch of stuff to do . .
     Gracie: That’s fine, we’re coming over anyways, be ready in 10 minutes
     Me: Wait, who is coming, what?
     Gracie: Later

Gracie wasn’t our section leader in NUMB, she was our mom. Like the prison mom’s in Orange Is The New Black, she took care of people in her section and took young ones like me under her wing. During band camp, she kept tabs on me and made sure I knew what was going on. She never let me eat at a table by myself if she was around and if anyone even thought to give me a hard time she got up in their face without hesitation.

At first when she referred to me as one of her kids, I was kind of put off. I was still getting used to switching from being a older person who had “kids” of my own in high school marching band. However, by the end of band camp, I was took comfort being under her care.

For Gracie, being a section mom was an instinct. Her warmth embodied the best parts of Midwest hospitality. Even though, I had yet to open up to her, she gave to me, simply because she chose to care.

The knock on my door startled me because I hadn’t really had any visitors to my dorm. I opened the door to Gracie and a collection of about ten NUMB’ers and associated friends. They were all soaking wet, some in raincoats and some in just shorts and t-shirts. Before I could say anything they all entered my small room and started complementing the posters I had up in my room.

Gracie came up to me and began to speak, but put her finger up, motioning for me to wait a minute. She took off her glasses and attempted to wipe the beads of rainwater off with her soaked sweatshirt. After realizing that it was not going to do any good, she giggled at herself, put on her smeared glasses and said, “let’s go.”

“Look, Gracie, I got this thing due . . .”

“Kevin, find his jacket, let’s go. . .”

Before I knew it, I was walking in through the inky blackness of the night to the local ice cream shop. The crowd was giggling making jokes while Gracie walked next to me casually putting her arm around my shoulder, “c’mon Kings, this will be fun, relax.”

As puddles of water collected under our seats, we all ate ice cream. I didn’t have a lot to add to the conversations but everyone was being patient with me, explaining jokes and unpacking background for the stories they were telling.

After we all finished up the group walked me back to my dorm. As they said goodbye, Gracie squeezed my arm and gave me a wink. I brushed my hand through my soaking hair and watched Gracie gleefully skip through a rain puddle to catch up with the group. Then for the first time that day, I smiled.

The world can pour everything it’s got down onto you, and Gracie showed me that you don’t have to let to get it down.  

Frat Boy: Consequences of Long Showers

More stories from fraternity life.  Here's the into.  

Larry took the long showers.

I mean really long. He would be in the shower stall for literally 45 minutes sometimes longer. This didn’t really bother any of us because he usually took these extended showers in the early afternoons while the rest of us took morning or evening showers. However Ric took notice of this, and he couldn’t leave well enough alone.

The afternoon was a pretty chill time in the frat house. People would either be in class or doing homework.  And it always seemed that Ric was around during this time of day.

Now Ric was a great guy and unique in really cool ways. He was in a great shape, worked out a lot. Like me, he was also one of the only one of my frat brothers who was as into professional wrestling and comics books. He was loud, brash and put on this professional wrestling style cartoonish perona. At the same time he was very intelligent, sensitive and a good friend.

My room was right across from the bathrooms and my door was open, which was the custom for most of us when we were in our rooms. Ric came out of the bathroom and observed, “Larry has been in showering for a while hasn’t he?” I made some comment about how that wasn’t a big deal and that I had to finish the paper I was working on.

About 15 minutes later, Ric came down the hallway, peeked into the bathroom, and appeared in my doorway.

“Dude, he’s still in the shower, let’s mess with him.”

I replied, “Really, man, I got to finish this thing. Let’s hang later.”

 Ric apologized and went back to his room down the hallway.

Another 15 minutes passed, and Ric once again, walked down the hallway, peeked into the bathroom. Then he just stood silently in my door with a mischievous grin on this his face.

“Sigh, ok fine, Ric, let’s do this.”

We ran down to Ric’s room and grabbed his trashcan and emptied it out into the hallway trash. We went to the door of the bathroom and paused for a second. Ric pointed up, and I immediately knew what he was thinking. We ran up the stairs and filled up the trashcan with cold water in a shower stall on the third floor bathroom.

Together we carried the trash can full of cold water down the stairs. We slowly pushed the bathroom door open, trying not to let Larry hear us coming.  We struggled to carry the trash can through the sauna-like bathroom, while attempting to hold in our laughter.  We made out way shower stall next to Larry’s and Ric hurled the trashcan full of cold water over the partition.

Larry immediately screamed.  As we ran out of the bathroom, Ric grabbed Larry’s towel, and we both rushed into my room.  I closed the door, locked it and we immediately dropped to the floor sitting with our backs against the door with our hands over our mouths trying desperately not to laugh.

I could hear Larry swearing loudly, storming up and down the hallway, soaking wet and naked trying to figure out who had thrown the water on him.

“Who the &#!@ did this? I can’t believe you did this. You &#!@$ I RUINED my book!”

His book?!?

As soon as he said "book," Ric and I looked at each other knowing that we were about to loose it an that we would be dead if Larry heard us.  I quickly grabbed two pillows off my bed, and threw one to Ric.  Then buried our faced in them desperately trying not to laugh out loud.  I have never had to work harder to keep myself from laughing as I did, sitting with Ric and listening to Larry loose it over his ruined book.

Yes, Larry was annoyed at the cold water and that someone had taken away his towel but the thing he was most angry about was that we got his book wet that he was reading in the shower.  I've heard of people reading a book while taking a bath, but who reads a book in the shower?  If you bring a book into the shower, shouldn't you know that there is a risk of it getting wet?  And you live in a fraternity house.  While these kinds of pranks were not an every day occurrence, they weren't that uncommon.

I don’t think Larry ever figured out who dumped the water on him. Was this prank mean? Eh, kind of, but it’s harmless in the sense that in normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have caused any property damage, just a moment of discomfort. But leave it to Larry to make it something more, a case of bibliocide.

Sometime later, I overheard Larry talking when he was in the shower from my room.  It was kind of weird because I didn't hear any other voices.  A couple days later when washing my hands, I saw Larry walk out of his shower with his shower caddy in one hand and a wireless phone in the other.  At least we weren't responsible for ruining his phone.

Frat Boy: Thanksgiving - Part 2

I spent a lot of time in my mom’s kitchen growing up. I’ve seen fires in kitchens but I never saw the rolling plums of smoke coming out of every possible part of the oven. I had no idea what to do.

I turned off the oven, opened the oven door letting even more smoke fill the kitchen and the basement like water spilling into a valley freed by an opening damn. I ran upstairs yelling for Kerry.

This is where my memory is a little hazy. Something led Kerry and I to get in a fight. Maybe it was me panicking and being a “know-it-all” or maybe it was Kerry being stubborn. Either way we didn’t quite know what to do and we took this out on each other.

This was a time before smart phones or even cell phones for most of us. When we tried to call our parents for help we were doing this on a landline. Somehow we figured out nothing was on fire and grease had simply hit the heating element in the oven.

The turkey was on top of a foil pan and one of us when rotating the turkey must have ripped a hole in the bottom of the pan and grease dripped down onto the bottom of the oven and hit the heating element.

The good news about grease hitting a heating element is that eventually it will burn off and the smoke will stop. The bad news is that this process creates a lot of smoke.

When we were finally done screaming at each other, we got focused on the problem (even though we were still mad at each other). Kerry said she would see what she could do to ventilate the basement and I would go get a box fan from my room.

I ran back to the PMA house, grabbed my box fan and hurried back to SAI. Back then there was a call box that listed the first initial and last name of everyone that lived in SAI. You would dial the listed five-digit number and it would call up to that person’s room. I called the number and Kerry didn’t pick up and then I called again. After the fourth try I realized that she was probably in the basement nowhere near her landline.

I went around the back of the house to and looked into the window-wells that opened into the basement. All I could see was lots of smoke and there was no sign of Kerry. Desperate to get back into the SAI, I jumped into the window-well and tried to open the window from the outside. To my surprise, the window slid up easily providing an opening that was about a foot high. I squeezed through the opening, almost fell face first into the kitchen sink, and retrieved the fan I had left at the front door.  Kerry in the meantime was on the phone getting advice from her mom (these landlines didn’t have call waiting).

After about twenty minutes the grease had burned off and the fan had cleared out the smoke from the house. As the smoke cleared away so did the tension between me and Kerry and we sat on the couch exhausted from the ordeal.

A couple hours later the group had returned from the football game and we were sharing a Thanksgiving dinner. The mashed potatoes were grey because we had cut them up the night before and they had oxidized. We didn’t exactly have fine China, I believe we had paper plates and plastic utensils and try as we might, we could not get the smell of smoke out of the basement where we ate.

A couple things have changed sense then. SAI got smoke detectors that actually work, there is no longer a call box by the front door and the windows to the basement cannot be opened from the outside and can only open about six inches.

Since that Thanksgiving, I’ve shared this holiday with either Diana’s family or my own. In some ways it was strange to spend that day away from my family but I wasn’t alone. I was with my college family.

It was that Thanksgiving that showed me, that this group of people really was my family. Things didn’t go as planned, mistakes were made, disaster seemed inevitable, voices were raised and feelings were hurt but at the end of it all we sat down and shared a meal together.

That sounds just about right for a family get-together.

I miss Kerry.  She moved away to another state, got married and has a beautiful daughter.  We keep tabs on each other over social media but that's about it.  One of the most important things that Kerry did for me was that she never hesitated to call me out when I wasn't being the best man that I could be.  At first I didn't like this directness about her but over time I learned to value this because it came from a belief that I was a better person than I was presenting.  When I met Diana and saw this same quality in her, I knew I had found something special that I needed in my life which had been missing since Kerry graduated and moved away.

No, we didn't burn down SAI and Kerry and I got into a screaming match that day, but we are still friends and I'm grateful that I spent that Thanksgiving with her and my college family.  

Frat Boy: Thanksgiving - Part 1

I never went home for Thanksgiving when I was in college.

Relax, it’s not like there was some huge fight or drama. Thanksgiving wasn't a huge holiday for my family and since it was so close to winter break, it didn't make sense for me to fly home from Chicago to Seattle twice in the span of one month.

My freshmen year, my parents and my brother came out and we had Thanksgiving in Chicago. It was one of the coldest Thanksgivings in the history of Chicago and my brother and my parents have never let me forget this fact. The next year I went over to my friend Erica’s house and the year after well . . . that was an adventure.

There was a group of people from PMA and SAI who decided to stay in town for that Thanksgiving. There was a football game only a couple hours away that a lot of people wanted to go to so a group of us decided to have Thanksgiving as a college family.

Here was the plan: We would do prep the meal Wednesday and one of my best friends Kerry, would stay back from the game with me (neither of us was that into football) and take care of cooking the turkey and getting dinner set-up.

Kerry was an upperclassmen that I met through NUMB. She was two years older than me and was one of those girls from SAI who took me under her wing. Kerry took care of me like an older sister but not the "responsible" kind of older sister. She was the first person I ever took a shot (it was straight Southern Comfort). Immediately after that I had my second and third shot with her.

Kerry was one of the smartest people I've ever met in her life and while many times she would have great advise for me, often her responses to my problems were hilariously sarcastic. After my friend Chrissie graduated (who I discussed in this earlier post), it was Kerry who stepped up and wouldn't hesitate for a second to stand up for me.

Kerry was honest, almost to the point that it would hurt your feelings as a friend, but it was this clarity that taught me about the nuances of what friendship meant in this crazy place called college.

We decided to cook the food over at SAI so Thanksgiving morning I headed over to the sorority house. No one was in the house except for Kerry and I. Everyone either went home or was at the football game.

We put the turkey in the oven in the basement kitchen and went back upstairs to the living room to watch television. We had set-up the turkey in one of those self-basting plastic bags so we wouldn’t have to check on it as often but we figured we should keep tabs on the bird.

After an hour or so Kerry went to check on the turkey and she said everything was fine. Some time later Kerry asked me to check on the turkey. I whined a little bit not wanting to get off the couch but eventually headed downstairs. As I opened the basement door a billow of smoke entered the stairwell. I made may my to the kitchen and saw smoke pouring out of the sides of the oven and up through the cooking range and I panicked.

Frat Boy: Saga Dining Hall - Part 5

We reconvened in the common room of PMA. It was here that we took the time to the let the “chefs” explain their dishes and we revealed the point totals that of course, proved once and forever the superiority of the senior class.

It wasn’t until a day or two later that we went back to Saga. The events of the weekend encouraged us to go out to eat and I think some of us wanted to avoid going back to the scene of the crime.

I remember walking over to Saga with Mary feeling worried and regretful. Yes, we had fun but it felt like we had taken advantage of this place that meant so much to us and had put unnecessary stress on the staff.

We walked in, saw a pretty good sized crowd already at our table, swiped in, smiled to the lady greeting us and got settled down for lunch.

At the table there was a lot of nervous talk about how much trouble we had gotten into and whether or not we needed to make a formal apology. As we discussed and speculated, Mary stood up. We immediately fell silent as Mary walked over and we watched nervously as she discussed what happened a couple days earlier with the lady who swiped us in.

None of us could hear the conversation but we could tell that both Mary and the lady were smiling. At some point she laughed and Mary joined her. Mary came back to our table, quietly sat down and explained that the staff had found our Saga Iron Chef hilarious. The manager (who we didn’t care about) was angry and annoyed at us but the staff who we knew and cared about loved seeing us have so much fun.

A huge wave a relief permeated across the table as we continued our lunch.

When you are in college in a group of people it’s easy to feel like you own a place, and we felt like we owned the Plex. It was our tables, our cafeteria, and it was part of our home. We didn’t think about the consequences of leaving a mess at our table, we didn’t consider when we loudly and openly complained about the food that people who made the food were in earshot and we didn’t always think about the workers who served us as people

Chances are if we asked the staff or the management to help us with our silly event they would have be happy to support us or even participate.

I’m glad that we had fun, but even more than that, I’m glad that this event reminded us that Saga wasn’t just about us and that our actions effected other people. This place that we loved so much, was special not only because of the people who ate there but also because the people who worked there. When I think about things that I miss from college, Saga is one of the first things that come to mind. There’s times at work, when I’m sitting at a table with some of my kids or other teachers that it approaches that same vibe, but its not the same.

 NUMB brought us together, PMA and SAI allowed us to become a family, but it was Saga that gave us that shared experience that connection to each other every day. The food wasn’t great at Saga, but at those tables, I had some of the most meaningful eating experiences of my life.

I love food, but more than my love of food, I value the experience of sharing a meal with people. I’ll never sit at that table with those people eating that food ever again.  And that's what made Saga so special.

Don’t judge a book by its cover and don’t judge a meal by its food.

Frat Boy: Saga Dining Hall - Part 4

My brother was into Iron Chef way before it ever became a show in America. He collected videotapes that came over from Japan and really enjoyed the over-the-top pro-wrestling style presentation with the interesting and dynamic cooking.

When we’d get together we would watch these tapes together and it was a lot of fun so I figured why not do this at Saga?

Dillo Day, otherwise known at Mayfest is a spring celebration when people on campus collectively decided to chill out. The university sets-up a stage, get some mid-level music acts to put on some music and there’s series of events for students. The NUMB-Mu-Alpha-Iota group didn’t really get into the formal organized events too much, but we did get with the program and get our party on.

My senior year we decided to put on a competition between the different classes, freshmen, sophomore, juniors and seniors. A group of seniors including myself and some girls from SAI set up a series of events and points that could be earned towards a grand total. This was of course rigged so that the seniors would win and the underclassmen knew this but they didn’t seem to mind.

One event was a game of softball, there was a trivia game and there was the main event: SAGA IRON CHEF!

People worked in teams of two, one girl and one guy. They were able to use two ingredients they brought in from outside the cafeteria. The teams had to use whatever ingredient we chose, along with whatever food there was at Saga to put together a three-course meal.

We walked into Saga that day in mass,almost forty of us. Mary, a senior from SAI and I scurried around trying to figure out what the secret ingredient was as people nervously stood around.

It was getting weird that people were just milling around, so we told everyone to get food like they normally would and settle down. Once everyone got seated, Mary and I made an announcement.

We welcomed everyone to Saga Iron Chef, went over the rules and announced the secret ingredients: Baby Corn and Bananas.

Immediately there was chaos. The four teams ran around the cafeteria at full speed shoving piles of food on their trays frantically trying to put something together. Unable to simply sit and watch, people in our group walked around and tried to figure out what people were doing.

Before I knew it, no one was sitting at the table and everyone was up and about, cheering people on and getting a little bit too into this event.

Mary and I stood in the middle of the maelstrom when we started hearing whispers that the cafeteria staff was unhappy with us.

Here’s the thing. There were different managers in the Plex all of the time but the staff who worked there was pretty consistent and we loved them. They were caring, thoughtful and really nice. Many of them learned our names and were a big part of the reason we liked coming to the Plex to eat.

These people were becoming distressed. I remember looking over at Mary and not knowing what to do. As I hesitated, she took the lead and went over and talked to one of the staff people that she knew.

Feeling that the end was near, we got everyone to sit down and chill out and we commenced judging.

There was the good: chocolate Courtney had brought in, melted in the microwave poured over a banana. The confusing: slices of baby corn placed on a pizza. And the simply confusing: a plastic cup filled with some kind of pop with bits of floating corn.

About halfway through the tasting, Mary came over to me and told me that we had to leave. The manager was upset about how much food we were wasting and the mess that we had made in the cafeteria.

We huddled quickly and told our group that we had to leave but that we needed to clean this place up and not leave this mess for the staff that served us every day.

In the same whirlwind that people were engaged in during the competition, people swept through the room, cleaned up our mess, cleared our table and got out of that place fast.