That got a snorting laugh out of the others, and we ended up talking quite awhile about high school girlfriends and who had done what to whom. Once the preparations for all the side dishes were out of the way, we grabbed another couple bottles of wine and headed to the living room, and continued the discussion. Jack said, "We need to give Carl the Purity Test!"
"What's the Purity Test?", I asked.
"It rates how pure you are!", replied Marty with an evil laugh.
"Oh, it's a requirement!", agreed Bill. Jack was sent upstairs to find a copy, and a Bible.
The Purity Test consisted of 100 questions, all related to some form of sexual activity, from the mild ('Have you ever seen a girl?') to the deviant ('Have you ever fucked a barnyard animal?'). Your score was the number of NOs you gave. A score of 100 meant you were probably an alien from Mars and had just landed. A score of 0 meant you generally spent your nights gangbanging sheep. Male sheep!
Jack came back down with a stack of tests and handed them around, and placed the Bible in front of me. I was ordered to place the Bible in my hands and swear on pain of eternal damnation and torture to tell the truth. I then took the test. It only took about five minutes or so, maybe less. I scored a 29, which seemed very impressive to the others. Jack wasn't sure he believed me, since my score was actually a good 15 points lower than his, but the truth came out that his girlfriend had just popped his cherry that September, which got him razzed by the other two.
The scores actually broke down into several categories. The first cutoff point was about 80; above that number was a virgin who had never even dated. The next major range was in the 60s, and meant you were a virgin who had dated, maybe had a handjob or a blowjob, but never actually gotten laid. There were enough points involved in actually getting laid that the moment you became a non-virgin, your score dropped into the 40s. After that, as your sexual proficiency and the number of partners increased, your score would continue to drop. For fairly conventional heterosexual college seniors with a degree of sexual proficiency, they usually stabilized their score in the mid 20s. The lowest on record in the frat was Ricky Holloway's, somewhere around 19. Much lower than that and neither pets nor your fellow brothers were safe.
We sat around and drank wine and swapped lies for another hour or so, and then I had to return to the kitchen to check on things. Marty had fallen asleep on the couch and Jack went upstairs to his room. Bill wandered out to the kitchen with me and watched me working. "You could be the Kitchen Steward.", he said.
"What's a Kitchen Steward?", I asked.
"Well, I'm actually jumping the gun, but just suppose you were to be invited to join Kegs and you did so, then you can run for a frat office.", he told me.
"Like what? Chancellor?", I asked.
A hundred years ago, when Kegs had been invented by a bunch of drunken assholes at Amherst, they had created a bunch of positions and titles to run the place. What most frats called the President was named the Chancellor. The Vice-President was the Minister, the Treasurer was the Exchequer, the Secretary was the Scrivener, and the fifth guy, the tie breaker, was named the Provost. These five brothers were voted in every year by the brotherhood and was the Ruling Council, and their names and titles were on the pictures of the brothers in the Formal Room.
"No, the Steward runs the kitchen. There's all sorts of jobs around here."
"Like what?"
Bill shrugged. "You name it. The Chairman of the Social Committee runs the parties. Rush Chairman is in charge of recruiting you new guys. The Steward runs the kitchen. The House Manager keeps the heating system and stuff working. There's all sorts of shit that needs to be run."
"Freshmen can do this?"
He shook his head. "No, you have to live in, but we have elections for the following year in the late spring."
"I still have to get in first, don't I?", I said with a smile.
"There is that."
Dinner was a rousing success. I used the pan drippings from the bird and separated off the fat, to pour the remainder into the gravy base. I also whipped up a very quick white sauce for the green beans. I cooked the bird until it was quite thoroughly dead, but still juicy, and for the last half hour I had the tin foil tent removed so it would brown. Then, while the other guys set the table, I destuffed the bird and carved him up. By the time we were done, I was fairly certain I had cemented myself into the frat. It was late when we split up. We had gone through two-thirds of the wine, and I left three bottles behind me and drove back to the dorm with my last bottle.
Chapter 27: A Very Important Date
Two Mondays after Thanksgiving, Marty Adrianopolis showed up knocking on my door in Hall Hall. He had in his hand a large envelope in a creamy parchment sort of paper, and he told me to open it while he stood there. Inside it was a formal request to pledge Kegs, also done on the fancy paper. I read it over and asked, "What do I do now?"
"Are you accepting?"
I nodded. "Yeah, sure."
"That's good enough for me. Friday we'll have the induction, so make sure you're around for that.", he replied. We shook hands and he headed out.
That Friday night the incoming pledges were assembled in the basement, dressed in suits, while the brethren, dressed in black robes, swore us in as pledges. Then we were given our Pledge Books and we went upstairs, where we took off our coats and ties and got drunk.
Pledges had to learn all sorts of strange shit, like the frat's colors (magenta and gold), history (founded at Amherst College, otherwise known as the Oracle), and even the secret alphabet, a collection of stick figures. A century ago, those clowns at Amherst - excuse me, the Oracle - had way too much time on their hands! We were also taught proper attitudes for proper pledges, namely utter subservience to higher forms of life, like bacteria and viruses. For instance, when the pay phone in the lobby rang, it was a pledge who had to answer, even if he was upstairs in the bathroom, and even if a brother was sitting in a chair underneath the phone. Likewise, pledges were assigned duties helping in the kitchen and around the house.
Now, looking back, I can explain some of what was happening at the time. The Sunday after Thanksgiving, a week after the vacation, Kegs had a house meeting. These were usually held once a month and were supersecret burn-before-reading sorts of affairs. All non-brethren were thrown out onto the street. It was time to select pledges.
House meetings were brothers only. They were held either in the basement (dark, foreboding, formal) or in the formal room, which was a lot more comfortable. You only did basement meetings during the secret ceremonies. Upstairs in the formal room there were couches along all the walls and carpet to sprawl out on.
Selecting pledges was similar to the scene in Animal House, only with a few twists thrown in. They didn't have a projector with slides, but they did have Polaroids taken at parties that could be passed around. Generally the procedure was that the Rush Chairman would have a list of prospects, and one by one, would propose a name. Often there would be a discussion on the guy, but not always. Occasionally comments such as "We need the dues!" would be heard. Then they would pass the box around. The box was a clunky gizmo with a tray of white and black balls in it. You would reach in and grab a ball, and then drop the ball through a hole into the box. The whole thing was constructed so that nobody else could see what color ball you were grabbing. The box was then passed to the next brother. Generally only sophomores and juniors would vote, since they were the guys who would have to live with their choices. Traditionally seniors would allow the box to pass by, although technically they had the right to vote. A white ball signified acceptance, a black ball signified decline. It had to be unanimous. A single black ball killed the prospect.