Hi Sigma Chi

After my aborted attempt at being a Greek, I decided to give the frat life another try--nobody ever accused me of being a quick learner. The only problem the first time around, I figured, was the lack of estro-curricular activities. I just needed to find a cool fraternity whose name wasn't the torn ACL of trivial pursuits.

Sigma Chi had an informal rush, which is to say that you could just join without all the official fanfare. If they liked you, and you liked them, you became a sorta-pledge until you went through basic training with next year's recruits.

I'll have to give him a name, but for the life of me I can't and don't want to remember him. Let's call him Conrad. Conrad was about five ten and a 150 pounds soaking wet, but he had a smug confidence, a cool veneer that I longed to crack with brass knuckles. He was the runt of the litter, but was Rico Suave and boyishly handsome, with a built-in twist of evil that naturally made him irresistible to the fairer sex--at least he thought so.

Conrad represented the house during informal rush. He showed me around the three story affair, not much different than any other on frat row. It had a large kitchen and dining area on the first floor, bedrooms along long corridors on the second floor, and a sleeping porch on the third. And of course the ever-present smell of stale beer chemically fused into the floors and counters.

Conrad told me that Sigma Chi was having a "date" function, and I was invited. "You can get a date, right?"

I knew just the girl to ask. She had a boyfriend at home in Puyallup. Pronouncing Puyallup, by the way, is one of those insider things that only Washingtonians can do. So, for your edification, it goes like this: pew-AL-up. The accented syllable is pronounced like the name Al, as in short for Allen. But I digress. She was a nice mixture of pretty and cool, making her pretty damn cool, and she was delighted to help me out. She belonged to a sorority but lived in the dorms. When I told her it was Sigma Chi, her eyes lit like you see on Star Wars when C3PO wakes up from a nap. I brought her to the house and introduced her around. There really wasn't any sort of function that night, just a few guys in the TV room watching a video--and nobody else had a date. Mine, however, impressed the hell out of Conrad, who informed me that the guys in the house really liked me, and that if I chose, I was invited to join the house. I gladly accepted.

It was totally different than being a Fiji. Girls of a wholly different category just hung around, for the fun of it, needing no invitation whatsoever. The house had functions with the well-known sororities, and the house members had girlfriends that made me chew on my open palm. Of course I bought a shirt that advertised my house affiliation, and suddenly the girls were stopping me on the street to have a chat.

My dreams had come true, and I proved to myself that I was "cool" enough to bluff my way into the fold of a good house. But there was the pesky problem of paying the rent. But worst of all, I sucked at being a pledge.