Chapter 7
Tuesday morning, I got a call from Marge.
"Did they give you the pitch about Saturday night?" she asked me.
"You mean, after the game?"
"That's right. The-club."
"Yeah," I said cautiously. "They told me all about it on Saturday."
"And what are you planning to do?"
"I don't know," I said, continuing to fence. "How about you?"
"I sort of wanted to check with you first."
I decided to grab the bull by the horns. "I guess I'm figuring to join," I said. "I mean, it looks like a lively outfit. Unless-"
"Unless what?"
"I don't know. What about you?"
"I figure I'll join too," Marge said. "That is, if you're going to. I wouldn't want to get mixed up with a bunch of total strangers."
I wondered privately whether there were any male upper-classmen in the whole damn university that Marge could consider a stranger. I said, "I'm not allowed to reveal names, but I can tell you that at least one of the brothers is someone you've dated in the past."
"Chuck Gordon?"
"I tell you, I can't name names."
"Don't worry about me, Jeff. I know Chuck's a member of this thing. He as much as told me."
"Okay then, Marge. As long as you know, I'm not really telling you anything. Chuck's the one who's sponsoring me. But I don't know who any of the other brothers are. Honest."
"I guess it's okay," Marge said. "Should I tell my sponsor that we'll be coming there after the football game on Saturday?"
"Yeah. And I'll call up Chuck and do the same," I told her.
When I got off the phone with Marge, I rang up the Alpha Gam house. Chuck wasn't there, but I left a message for him in four simple words: "Jeff Burnside says yes." I figured he'd catch on.
He called back that afternoon. "Got your message, Jeff. Good man. You hear from Marge?"
"Yeah. She's coming with me on Saturday."
"Good. Now, well do it this way-I'm coming to the game too, with one of the female members. Suppose I pick you up and well drive there, and then well come straight to the clubhouse after the game."
"Sounds okay."
"One thing I ought to tell you-act as though you don't know a thing about the organization, when you meet my girl. It isn't considered polite for members to indicate in public that they re in the know. Clear?"
"Clear," I said.
I spent the rest of that week in a state of fidgety impatience. I kept to myself mostly, doing my homework in my room, visiting the library sometimes when I needed a book. The load of classes was pretty stiff, and I was in a hurry for Saturday to come round.
The day of the game dawned bright and clear and crisp, the kind of day they call "good football weather." Well, it was. Personally, I find football an enormous drag to watch, but you don't really have to watch the game when you go to one; you sit in the stands and talk to people you know, and you munch sandwiches and frankfurters and soda pop (or rye, if you've brought a flask) and generally have a good time, and every now and then you look down at the field where Princeton or Dartmouth or Cornell is handing our alma mater its usual weekly shellacking.
I picked up Marge at Chesley before noon, and we walked down to 214th Street, where Chuck was supposed to meet us. He came along just around twelve, in his little Volkswagen. We were introduced to his date, who was a short, bouncy, cheerful little third-year girl named Helene. I ogled her melon-shaped breasts thrusting through her tight sweater with envy; and then I remembered that after I became a member of this club I would be entitled to fondle them and fornicate with Helene practically at will, and I burst out into a little sweat all over. And off we went, bouncing uptown to Lawrence Field.
Metropolitan's football stadium is way to hell and gone uptown, around 260th Street or so. Chuck drove up Broadway, weaving his car daringly in and out between the lumbering oil and beer trucks. Marge and I sat huddled in the back, thigh against thigh. I was thinking about the evening and I guess so was she.
We parked about five blocks from the field and joined the thick mass of humanity streaming toward the entrance gates. My seats weren't anywhere near Chuck's, but he did a bit of finagling inside the gate and the four of us wound up sitting together anyway. Quite an operator, Chuck was. Real slick.
The place was jammed, of course. It was Princeton's turn to batter our varsity this week, and across the way the Orange and Black rooters were already packed tight. I saw a lot of familiar faces around me in our section.
Once we were settled I volunteered to get hot dogs all round. Everybody was willing, and as I jostled my way toward the refreshment stand, I happened to bump into none other than Fred Lambert.
"Long time no see," he said. Always a good man with a cliche, was Fred. "Been busy."
"I'll bet. Especially living in that hotel room of yours. How are you coming with Marge?"
"No complaints," I said. "You here stag?"
"I came with Carol," Fred said proudly, pointing over my shoulder into the stands. I looked, and there was Carol West, her blonde hair fluttering prettily in the breeze, her lily-white body sheathed in a thick wool sweater in patriotic Metropolitan maroon. She was waving a pennant. A sweet kid, I thought.
"I brought Marge Halloran," I said.
"That figures." Fred frowned. "Look, Jeff, have you been seeing Chuck Gordon very much?"
"I came to the game with him today."
"Oh." He wet his lips. "He's been bothering Carol again. Wants to date her."
"It's a free country," I said.
"But you know what Chuck's like. There's no telling what he might do with her."
Indeed, I was thoroughly aware of the debauched nature of Chuck Gordon's character, and I knew damned well that no pretty little blonde-haired virgin would be safe in his paws very long. "But don't you trust Carol?" I said.
"Sure I do. But she's-kind of naive. A glib trickster like Gordon might be able to take advantage of her."
"So marry her fast," I suggested.
Fred made an impatient face. "Don't be silly. But since you and Chuck have become such good friends, I was wondering if you could talk to him and ask him subtly to leave Carol alone. Hell, he's got so many other girls he can run around with-"
I shook my head. "Sorry, but this is between you and Chuck and Carol. I'm not playing go-between."
"Okay, Jeff," Fred said thinly. "Forget it. Sorry I asked." And he wandered off into the crowd. I made my way to the refreshment stand, picked up four hot dogs, and threaded a path back to my seat.
Chuck was passing around a flash. I could see by the glow on her face that Marge had already had some. Remembering the effect that alcohol had on her, I wondered whether she was going to get the urge right here in the middle of Lawrence Field.
"Let's have some of that sauce," I said, handing out the franks. Helene gave me the flask. I took a good pull. "Bourbon," I guessed learnedly.
"Scotch," Chuck corrected. "But you were close. At least you knew it was alcoholic."
"I'm a beer drinker," I mumbled shamefacedly.
I settled down next to Marge, and a little while later the game began. Marge was pretty well lit up. I was sitting with my arm around her waist, and after a few minutes she moved my hand up under her jacket so I could cup her breast. From the softness of her bosom and from the way I could feel the stiff, hard nipple jutting into my palm, I knew that this time she hadn't bothered to wear a bra.
Football has never made much sense to me; I never was hot on games in general, but of all of them I generally preferred to play or watch basketball. All I knew here was that twenty-two over-padded empty-headed bruisers were battling up and down the field, and every now and then one of the Princeton mammoths would barge into the end zone and a loud roar would go up from the sons of Old Nassau across the way. By the end of the quarter the scoreboard read Princeton twenty-one, Metropolitan nothing. It got as bad as forty-nine-nothing in the second quarter, by which time Princeton was using its tenth-stringers, and by accident a Metropolitan man scored. Forty-nine-six. But by then I had lost even a token interest in the game. My right hand was inside Marge's sweater, gently kneading the heavy globe of her breast, and from the way she was snorting I knew she wouldn't mind being had under the stands or even right up here in the bleachers. Chuck had spread a lap robe over himself and Helene, and what he was doing under that robe I didn't know, except that his left hand was out of sight, and I was willing to place a considerable wager that it was not only under the robe but under Helene's skirt as well.
Halftime came. Still forty-nine-six. The Princeton band performed. I detached myself from Marge's bosom and bought some more frankfurters. The scotch was gone, so I got some beer too. In the third period nothing much happened. In the fourth, the score ran up to sixty-two-thirteen. That was where it ended. Chuck said, "I don't know why Metropolitan bothers to have a football team at all."
"The alumni want it," Helene suggested. "What the hell for?" I asked. "They can't be proud of it, can they?"
We moved along through the thick crowd, out the gate, down a side street, and back to Chuck's Volks. We piled in.
Chuck said, "There's a hamburger joint near here where we can have dinner. Then well go down to the clubhouse . We don't want to be the first ones there."
In the back seat, Marge and I nestled up closely. She pulled her long legs up; I put my cold hand between her thighs to warm it, and when she dropped her head on my shoulder I slipped my tongue between her lips. She began to pant and heave. Hastily I broke away from her. She looked up at me reproachfully and I whispered, "Don't get yourself heated up. Remember you've got to pass that initiation tonight."
She nodded gravely. She was afraid of the same thing I was-that she would be unable to resist for the full half hour. Certainly she would be in no shape for the initiation if I steamed her up beforehand.
So we rode a good distance apart in the back seat. In front, Chuck had one hand on the wheel and one in Helene's sweater. But he drove the Volkswagen as though he had special divine protection from accidents.
We had a good, cheap meal at the hamburger place. I sat across the table from Helene and noticed, with some small embarrassment, that she was giving me the eye. Well, I could understand why. In a few hours I might be making love to her, and she wanted to have a look at the merchandise beforehand. I gave her a good scrutinizing too. She was on the roly-poly side, probably carrying a little too much weight on her belly and buttocks, but I was sure she'd be fun in bed. She had sparkling brown eyes and short curly brown hair; with her pretty face and chubby body, she was about as much a contrast to Marge as could easily be imagined.
It was about seven o'clock when we finished eating. We loaded ourselves back into Chuck's vehicle and drove downtown. I began to feel a little nervous. This was if, after all. Only a couple of weeks ago I'd been the purest greenhorn, and now I was on my way to initiation in a secret campus sex club.
I had about half an hour to ask myself, Is this what I really want? And I kept telling myself, Yes, it is. I didn't have to worry about saving myself for my wife any more. I had already been to a whore, and also slept with a girl who was just the same as a whore except that she didn't charge a fee. So I was already pretty damn un-virtuous, and joining this club wouldn't make matters much worse.
Besides, I told myself, if I was going to go to medical school and become a doctor, I had six or eight or maybe even ten years of pretty lean living ahead of me. The rest of college, then four years of med school, internship, residency, a stint in the army. All those years I'd be earning peanuts, and keeping my nose to the grindstone. I probably wouldn't be able to marry till I was near thirty. So I'd be a damn fool to get pious now and miss out on all this fun, with so much hard plugging ahead of me.
Oh, I had half a dozen neat rationalizations all worked out. But I still had to admit that I was scared. At heart I guess I was still a good small-town kid. And I was plunging into real big-city vice, no denying it. I tried to look calm and cool and collected, but I wasn't. And I was worried about that initiation, too. Suppose I flunked it? I'd be having doubts about my masculinity for the rest of my life, if I did.
"Here we are," Chuck said suddenly.
He pulled up outside a two-story brownstone house on a side street near Broadway in the West Nineties. The windows of the house were covered by drawn Venetian blinds.
"Don't the people on the other floor object to what goes on here?" I asked.
"We have the whole place," Chuck said.
"That sounds expensive."
He grinned. "We get a subsidy from rich alumni. Well-to-do ex-members like to send little contributions to the organization that provided them with so many pleasant hours during college. Let's go in."
Stepping up to the door, he rang the bell. I could see by the way he was pressing it that he was giving a special signal. A moment later came the answering buzz from inside, two shorts, a long, and a short. Chuck pushed the door open and we went in, first Chuck and Helene, then Marge and myself. I stole a glance at Marge and saw that her face was pale and nervous-looking. I figured I probably looked the same way.
The first thing I was aware of was the booming sound of a loud hi-fi set, pounding out the rhythms of Ravel's Bolero. Chuck beckoned us forward. There was a big living room just to the left of the foyer, and we turned into it. It was quite a sight.
About fifteen or twenty people were in the living room. Seven or eight girls, about as many fellows. Most of them were completely naked. A few of the girls still had filmy underpants on, and one was wearing simply a garter-belt and long stockings. All the girls were bare above the waist, though. I had never seen so much bosom at once. It was a blinding sight. Some of the girls had heavy swinging breasts, some had small pointy ones, some had medium-sized gorgeous ones. Quite a sight.
I was even more stoned when I recognized some of the male members of the organization, sitting there in their birthday suits. The Editor-in-Chief of the Daily was there, Roy Burchard. So was Don Hammer, wearing only his eyeglasses and peering at me with amusement. And the president of the Student Council, Les Haberman. Three of the biggest men on campus. I also recognized Lome Byris, a junior active in campus dramatics, and two members of my own year, Ellis Dill and Charles Mason. Dill was the president of the Sophomore Class.
I stood there gaping at this assemblage of campus leaders and naked females. I felt out of place, fully-dressed as I was.
Everyone was arranged in a circle, and right in the middle of the group a couple was dancing. Both of them were stripped right down to the buff, and they were pressed as tightly together as two people can get. They were moving in time with the savage pounding of the music. I recognized the fellow as Ned Carter, a senior. The girl was facing the other way, and I couldn't recognize her from the curve of her buttocks or the slope of her back, but the view was pleasant all the same.
Chuck said, "Come upstairs and I'll show you where you can get undressed. Then we'll introduce you around to everyone."
We marched upstairs. There were a lot of bedrooms up there. The place was well furnished, just like any regular fraternity house that had been in business for a number of years.
Chuck pointed to a bedroom and said, "You two can peel in there. Take everything off and wait up here for me."
We went inside and began to undress. Although I had spent the night with Marge only a week ago, I felt foolishly self-conscious about taking off my clothes in front of her. But I sternly told myself not to funk out now. Marge was out of her clothes in a flash, and stood examining her bosom critically in a mirror. I could have told her therewas nothing at all wrong with it, nothing at all.
I deposited my clothes on a chair and, turning to Marge, said, "Ready?"
It was an obvious question, with an obvious answer. She couldn't have been any nuder.
Chuck stuck his head in the door. "Okay, you two. Let's go."
He and Helene stood outside, stripped. I glanced quickly at Helene, taking her in. She was stacked, all right. Her breasts were like swollen grapefruits. She was a little on the chunky side,-with ripples of fat around her hips and thighs.
Chuck said, "Well go downstairs first. You follow, side by side. And remember that the human body was made to be looked at. Don't mess things up now."
Marge said, "My sponsor isn't here yet."
"Shell be here. I'll introduce you with Jeff. But you'll have to wait till she comes to be initiated."
He and Helene started downstairs. I moistened my lips tensely. This was like one of those dreams were a formal dinner is going on below, and you descend the stairs in the nude. Only this time everybody below was naked too. Oh well, I thought. I didn't have any inhibitions about being seen by other members of my own sex, and I figured it was high time I got rid of any other inhibitions too. What the hell-I was reasonably muscular, and anatomically complete. I had no more to be ashamed of than the next guy.
On slightly wobbly legs, I started down the stairs.