There was an enthusiastic welcome. In fact there was more applause than seemed possible from the audience that I had roughly counted. And when I looked again, the empty seats had been filled, including the one next to me, which had been filled with a smiling Morris Chesney. The smile was a bad sign. After only a week in college I was able to deduce that much.
“Sit on the floor,” he said.
“What?”
“Big Brother Morris says sit on the floor, you pimple.”
I stood, folded up my chair seat, and dropped my stupid ass to the sticky floor. Why? Because Big Brother Morris had said so, and I had entered into this social system willingly for some reason and felt strangely compelled to abide by its rules. I sat, my sight just cresting the level of the seat back in front of me.
Cosby fumbled with a fat unlit cigar and adjusted his dark glasses. “You men think I’m going to take it easy on you. You think because you’re in college and sitting here in khakis and loafers that I’m all right with you. You think that because you’re not bopping your heads to rap music while sitting here that I’m going to embrace you. You’re wrong. You’re all pathetic. You’re pathetic until you’re not pathetic, until you do something strong and good and not until you do that. You think because you probably won’t be clad in an orange jumpsuit for stealing a piece of pound cake that I feel all warm and fuzzy about you. I sell Pudding Pops for the white man. I don’t know why I’m saying that, but I am. I make myself sick, but the white man is not to blame. He didn’t put the gun in the hands of the black kid down in juvenile hall. No, his missing father put it there. Pound cake. I’m on television. Black girls have babies by three or four fathers and why? Pudding Pops! That’s what I’m saying. Some of you are probably wondering how I can stand up here, call me high and mighty, talking about how I can stand here when I’m being sued for having babies with a woman other than my wife. Well, hell, I can afford to have babies. Pudding Pops! If you don’t know who your children’s friends are, then you’re not doing your job. Some of you have probably fathered children already. Babies having babies. Pound cake. Did you know that black girls graduating from high school outnumber men seventy to thirty? Where are these educated, fine young women going to find suitable partners? That’s why I have some babies on the side. Pudding Pops! Pants down around their cracks. What’s wrong with them? There’s something wrong with these people. When you put your clothes on backwards, there’s something wrong. Fifty percent dropout rate. Where are the parents? What kind of parents will you be? That’s the test. What kind of parents are you now? I’ve been on television since nineteen sixty-two. I kissed a Japanese woman on screen in nineteen sixty-six and managed not to have a baby with her. I want to thank you for having me here today, and I want you to know I will be more than happy to sign copies of my book, Fatherhood, which is on sale just outside at an attractive discount. Believe me, you need to read it. Thank you.”
Everyone stood to applaud. I didn’t know why. However, I saw it as an opportunity to get up off the filthy floor. Morris Chesney kicked me when I started to rise.
“Did Big Brother Morris tell you that you could get up?”
“No, Big Brother Morris.”
“Then keep your sorry ass down there on that floor.”
I looked down past the row of trousered legs to my right to see the filthy red T-shirt of another pledger, the smallest and meekest of us, Eugene Talbert. He was seated on the floor as well. I realized that though he was eight inches shorter than me, we were the same size.
I wouldn’t say that I had custodial, protective, or even particularly warm feelings for Eugene Talbert, but I wouldn’t say a lot of things that are true. He lived in DuBois Hall with many other freshmen, so I didn’t see him except for shared hours of humiliation and torture at the hands of the Big Brothers. He was from New Jersey, I knew that much. I also knew that he was a chemistry major with little or no interest in chemistry. He wanted to be an Omega as his father was an Omega, as his uncle was an Omega, as his brother was an Omega. They were all chemists and loved chemistry and worked in labs making flavor additives and enhancers for the fast-food industry. They were all tall. Small Eugene told me all of this while we stood side by side with pails of sand suspended up and away from our bodies. We were standing in a room with maroon, flocked wallpaper cleared of furniture while the Big Brothers watched a Spike Lee film in an adjacent room. Eugene was sweating profusely; his eyes were starting to roll back into his head. I told him to take deep breaths, to try to get into a zone, to visualize something peaceful, quiet, a place he loved, which was all bullshit. I was still holding my load up because I was stronger than the little guy. He collapsed and Big Brothers Morris and Maurice came slowly walking in, heads bobbing or nodding, I didn’t know the difference. They laid into Eugene without pause.
“Goddamn! What the fizzy fuck is wrong with you, EUgene?!” Morris shouted or maybe Maurice did; it didn’t matter which one. That was how they said his name, EUgene.
“I think little EUgene here thinks we just give instructions to smell our own breath!”
“Thinks we’re kidding!” The Big Brothers had a habit of echoing each other.
“Seems he thinks we didn’t mean for him to keep the pails in the motherfucking air! What should we do to you, you little maggot?!”
“What should we do?!”
“I don’t know, Big Brothers!” Eugene barked out.
“Do you really want to be an Omega, EU-fucking-gene?”
“Yes, Big Brother!”
“Then, tell me, you tiny worm, why did you drop those pails, the ones we told you to keep in the air?”
“My arms got tired, Big Brother.”
“His arms got tired.”
“Your daddy’s an Omega, isn’t he?”
“Yes, Big Brother!”
“But you don’t really want to be one.”
“Yes, I do, Big Brother!”
“No, you don’t!”
“I do, Big Brother!”
“You’d do anything to be an Omega?”
“Anything, Big Brother!”
“Would you let Big Brother Maurice punch you in the face as hard as he can with a fist full of quarters?”
“Yes, Big Brother!”
I stood there like an idiot holding up my pails of sand, watching them do that to little Eugene, watching them break him down. I hated myself for watching, for continuing to hold my load, for simply being there. When Maurice punched the small man my stomach turned, the hairs on the back of my neck rose. I watched the blood gush from Eugene’s nose and though my strength didn’t fail, my pails did lower. I concentrated my stare at Morris, one brow jacked up, leaning into it. Maurice was rubbing his knuckles, looking orgasmic after his blow, and Eugene was crumpled into a ball, blood from his nose everywhere. Morris caught me staring and opened his mouth to say something, but he turned out to be the most susceptible subject I had yet to encounter. I Fesmerized him so quickly that I was uncertain how to proceed. But his eyes glazed over in the textbook manner. Inside his head, he had fallen back on his heels and was awaiting my instructions.