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All those motherfuckers, including my dear pledge brothers, and especially Vysell, were laughing like hell as I pulled off my pants and put the diaper on.

“Now parade around!” Parker demanded.

Humiliated, I slowly walked around the room, becoming angrier and angrier that my pledge brothers laughing louder than the actives.

I walked back to Parker. “Why don't you make the other pledges wear diapers too?”

“No. You're the asshole of the pledge class. Now put your pants on over it and wear it for the rest of the night!”

While I got dressed, Zoom was clicking the remote control buttons as fast as possible from channel to channel checking every nightly news show. The film of me in the car in the driveway was shown a couple of times on the local stations. My spot only lasted about ten seconds but I looked and sounded great even though all the guys laughed, obviously envious.

“Hey,” Vysell whispered, “I'm really sorry. I never thought they'd make you wear diapers.”

I stared at him, almost ready to tell him to go to hell, when the look in his eyes convinced me that he was sincere. “Forget it,” I said, faking a laugh.

_____

It was nearly 8:30 when me and most of the pledges went to eat at the Third Street Deli on the Promenade where I yanked off the
goddamn diaper and threw it in the toilet, intentionally jamming the plumbing since they made us wait even though I offered the hostess five bucks to be seated immediately.

“Got some news, guys,” Grossberg announced, when I got back to the long table that about a dozen of us crowded around. He pulled out a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of his black T-shirt. “Adams gave me this before we left the house,” he began. “It's a list of how each pledge should dress on the first night of Hell Week, called Costume Night.”

When he got to me, he said, smiling, “Stafford. Guess what? Parker selected your outfit. You'll be wearing a Marine camouflage uniform.”

_____

After we got back to the house, there was a great surprise that greeted us in the back yard.

“I'm de-pledging,” Higgins announced in a cracked voice, hobbling down the back stairs toward me and the rest of the guys who were smoking dope. “This fraternity isn't worth the humiliation. I can't take it any more.”

QUIT MOTHERFUCKER! I wanted to scream out. ADIOS PEGLEG! SAYONARA GIMP!

Grossberg, in one lunging motion, almost leaped over to him. “What're you talking about? You're a good guy. Please don't quit. We need you.”

We gathered around them. Even though Higgins was wearing a heavy wool coat, he was shivering as he looked down at the damp grass.

“You know what they want me to wear on Costume Night?” he babbled, whining. “A ballet costume and ballet shoes. So everybody can laugh when I walk funny.”

“They're just fucking around,” Grossberg said quickly.

“Everybody's bringing stupid shit,” Rawlings answered. “So what?”

“Yeah, next week you'll be an active and this'll be nothing but a funny memory,” Froggy added.

“When I was in grammar school,” Higgins mumbled, “the
other kids always mocked me. Called me spastic and two-step. I was always ridiculed. Everywhere. I never went to high school, studied at home. That's why this was one of the few schools I could get into. Years of therapy finally made feel OK about myself.” His voice became lower and lower, almost to a whisper. He looked around at all of us. “I felt good when I came here and started pledging. Liked everybody.” He stopped and looked between me and Froggy and then back at me. “Not mentioning names, but I heard another pledge, plenty of times, call me a crip. Then this ballet costume shit and even the shoes.” Tears started running lightly down his cheeks. “Undid everything I worked for here.”

It was silent.

Adams walked through the crowd and up to Higgins. “Don't be such a pussy. It's all harmless fun.”

“That's what you think,” Higgins said, almost pouting.

“Why do the guys call me Gyp when my real name's Danny?” Adams suddenly challenged. “Why?”

Higgins shrugged his shoulders. “I don't know.”

Adams pointed to his red bandana. “Because these rags I always wear on my head make me look like a gypsy. Gyp's a nickname.”

“So what?” Higgins asked without much interest.

Adams pinched a corner of his bandana and in a quick swoosh, yanked it off, revealing almost a completely bald head with only a few short tufts of light hair.

Adams stared at Higgins. “Hair's permanently gone thanks to chemo.”

“Jesus,” Higgins muttered.

“Better no hair than dying of Hodgkin's,” Adams continued. “So stop feeling sorry for yourself. OK?”

A few uncomfortable seconds of silence passed. Then Higgins shook his head. “No, I'm transferring somewhere else, even to a junior college,” he mumbled. “Bye everybody.” With his head down, he turned around and walked back up the stairs and into the house.

I wanted to offer him a ride to the airport before he changed
his mind.

I was exhausted from this miserable day but at least it ended on a high note. Another pledge down, leaving seventeen, with only half a dozen more needing to get the ax.

Monday, January 20
1:15
P.M
.

“M
AILMAN'S HERE
!” G-S
POT YELLED FROM THE FRONT LAWN
.
“Grades are coming!”

A short, squat, redhead whose roots were about three months late for a beauty parlor touch-up, wheeled the brown mailbag to a stop at our front steps. She held out two thick bundles of mail, each held together by a rubber band. Everybody was grabbing for the bundles. It looked like starving, third-world refugees shoving each other away trying to reach for a single grain of rice.

“Who's in charge?” she yelled.

“Me,” Adams called out laughing from the top of the stairs. “Everybody get away from her!”

Adams took the mail from the woman and walked inside the house with it. Everybody followed him into the dining room. He pulled off the rubber bands and shuffled through the dozens of postcards.

“For all you guys who left postcards with your teachers for grades before the Registrar sends out the official ones at the end of the week,” he announced, “I got a bunch of them here.”

Tacked on the dining room wall was a huge chart with black
printing on white butcher paper with the names of all the pledges and spaces after each pledge's name for their grades. “Here we go!” Adams called out, looking at the first postcard. “Pledges' grades only. Actives can read their own postcards when I get done. “Batman. You got a B in English.”

A loud cheer went up while Adams wrote a large B after Batman's name on the chart after the word English.

“Rainey! Grossberg! Hymen! Vysell! Holmes! Dung!” Adams yelled out, reading off their grades, all B's and C's, except Lyman's A in English, and writing them on the chart.

“Stafford!” he finally announced louder than ever. “You got an F in Man & Civ!”

The room exploded in laughter. A shit-eating-grin was plastered on Lyman's pious face.

“What?” I was shocked. What about Chesterfield and the kiddy porn I faxed him? And my Rolex? “I got an extension to turn in the term paper,” I mumbled, feeling the hot flash in my cheeks. “I'll get a passing grade.” Ali Reza would see to that.

Name after name was called. “Zoom! Rickshaw Boy! G-Spot! No-Wood! Wide-Load! Castle!” Their grades all went up on the grade chart. Nobody got anything lower than a C although there were a hell of a lot of B's and a sprinkling of A's.

“Hymen!” Adams announced. “You got another A. This one's in Man & Civ,” he said, writing this A next to his A in English.

“Watson! Wide-Load! Froggy! Dung!”

Adams put more B's and C's on the chart next to my lone F. Nobody even got a D. My stomach was burning. It was Rolaids time again. I saw my fortune fading as fast as the mounting dot com bankruptcies.

“Stafford!” Adams called out again.

My stomach felt speared by a javelin. I couldn't speak.

“You're improving! You got a D in Econ!”

Another big cheer went up. I felt like an idiot having all these guys see my humiliation with these putrid grades. Especially since it wasn't my fault.

“Postcard must've been mailed before the teacher got the make-up work,” I said weakly, hoping like hell it was true.

“Rickshaw Boy! Holmes! Rawlings!” Adams continued, calling one name after another, while adding an occasional A to all the B's and C's after everybody's name.

Finally Adams finished. He pointed to the grade chart. My D and F, screaming out like flashing, fluorescent neon, were the only grades anybody got that were lower than a C.

Batman looked glum. “What the hell are you going to do?”

“Something. But I don't know yet.”

“We don't want to lose you,” Vysell said, also looking real concerned. “You'd better do something.”

I nodded, without speaking. How could I get the 2.0 average with credit for 12 units that I needed when I got no credit for Man & Civ because of the F? With the one F, the rest of the grades were meaningless. Ali Reza was my only hope.

_____

8:30
P.M
.

Dr. G. James O'Neill, who was the Dean of Men, and some little shit wearing a tan buckskin jacket with fringes, stood in our open front doorway. Both men, in their mid-50s, were rubber-necking like they were searching for something. Word was that O'Neill, with his big, chubby face and sweep-over haircut, got blackballed from the Beta house years ago. That's why he hated fraternities; always looking for reasons to close them down. I'm sure that's what they were doing here now. The other guy, everybody called Buckskin, because of that stupid jacket that he wore daily like a uniform.

I first saw them when I walked out of the bathroom. Most of the other guys were in the living room watching
Gladiator
again on the big-screen TV. As soon as Christianson spotted the two intruders, he leaped off the couch like a jack-in-the-box and ran to the hallway. We followed him.

“Hello,” Christianson said politely to O'Neill. “I'm Jack Christianson, the house president. What can I do for you?”

O'Neill's left eye looked at Christianson's nose while his right eye roamed around like he was tracing the shape of
Christianson's head. I heard of a wandering eye before but I never saw anybody with one.

“Heard you're starting Hell Week now.” His left eye suddenly started bouncing around like an out-of-control pinball.

Christianson shook his head. “No, sir. We know the new school policy. No more Hell Week. Now it's Help Week.”

Buckskin snickered. “Can we look around?”

Besides the buckskin jacket, he was wearing jeans, a chocolate brown T-shirt showing the spare tire around his gut, and black, silver-tipped cowboy boots.

“Certainly,” Christianson answered. “Please help yourself.”

The wannabe cowboy left the hallway and walked slowly and awkwardly into the dining room, beginning his inspection. He took such small steps that it looked like it really hurt him a lot to walk.

“Where're your pledges working during Help Week?” O'Neill asked casually.

“Drug-Alcohol Clinic in Venice. On Brooks, near Abbot Kinney.”

O'Neill grunted, sounding like a croaking frog. “I know it.”

A few minutes later O'Neill's helper with the mid-life crisis wobbled in and joined us in the front hallway. Black-dyed hair plugs were strung like a picket fence across his forehead. O'Neill looked at him sharply.

“Anything?”

“No.” Then Buckskin laughed. “But you got to see their grade chart in the other room,” he said, pointing. to the dining room.

O'Neill followed Buckskin and the rest of us over there.

“Who's Stafford?” Buckskin called out, looking at us.

“Me.”

“With that D and F, you're a regular Rhodes Scholar,” he said laughing.

O'Neill pointed to the opposite wall. “Look over there.”

We turned around and saw the other chart.

“What's that?” O'Neill asked.

“My odds chart,” Bookie answered proudly.

It was easy to spot my name. The odds on everybody else for
making the fraternity varied up to 20-1. Mine were now 250-1.

“Dean, excuse me,” Christianson said politely. “But how'd you happen to come here at this exact time?”

His thin lips smiled. “Got word from a confidential informant.”

Nowadays it seems like everybody talks NYPD lingo.

“Who?” Christianson asked evenly.

“Let's just say an ex-ballet dancer.”

As O'Neill and his Buffalo Bill helper started walking outside, a breeze blew in through the open front door. With the palm of his right hand O'Neill mechanically smoothed over the long part of his brownish-gray hair that swept over the baldness.

We followed them to the lawn.

O'Neill pointed to the Ryder truck. “What's that for?”

“We're donating some furniture and need it to transport the stuff.”

O'Neill grunted something before him and Buckskin walked to a green Honda sedan which O'Neill slowly drove around the corner and out of sight.

We were still on the front lawn when Christianson had a hurried, hushed conversation with Adams who nodded. Then Adams motioned to us. “Come here, pledges.”

We gathered around him like a football team listening to the quarterback call a play in the huddle.

“Those guys are going to be parked around the corner waiting for us to haze you. Then they'll be back to bust us.”