Category: Across the Wire Vol. 4

By Chuckry Vengadam

Everybody at the pregame is white. Which is good. Spending most of my first two years of college exclusively with Indian people left my friend-diversity imbalanced, so it was time to step outside my ethnic comfort zone and into this frat brother’s living room. Around the room are dudes in pastel-colored button-up shirts, but it’s hard to see exactly what color they’re wearing, or even the details of their face, because the only light in the living room comes from a dim lamp in the corner. It’s unclear whether the guys around me are frat brothers or rushees like me. Guys file in and out of the fluorescent kitchen to refill their cups, temporarily exposed like a flash photograph before dissolving back into the party’s murky interior, and others stand around the room, making idle chatter or scrolling through their phones. As I notice I’m the only Indian person in the room, my heart jumps and I assume it’s just my social status rising, but nope—it’s the unfamiliar, frightening realization that I know nobody there.

I didn’t tell my roommates I was here. They wouldn’t understand. They’re brown like me, so the idea of joining the University of Michigan’s Greek life was a laughable aspiration. We’re simple folk. Our conversations are often complaints about class, dreams for the future, and stupid inside jokes, usually over ashed joints and late night games of Super Smash Bros. If I tried explaining to them why I’m rushing a frat, they’d laugh. Me, in a frat? This smooth-faced pothead bookworm rubbing shoulders with beer-chugging dudebros? “Are you okay?” they’d ask. “Just come watch a movie, dude.”

So yes, part of joining a frat was to become cool and attract women, but another part was the thrill. Rushing Pi Kappa Phi (affectionately called “Pi Kapps”) in secret made it fun, scandalous even, the idea of sneaking off to join white folk in the late evening for a nightcap or twelve, the exhilaration of leaving my normal life behind in favor of something new, even if only for a while, like clothes after a shopping spree. And besides, this was more of a tour for me than a serious commitment. I wouldn’t really get in, would I?

They’re blaring some generic pop music at this pregame. I knock back a few gulps of jungle juice to fuel my confidence. This other dude walks by, short brown hair, slanted eyes, sort of, and I recognize him from one of my classes. Marco. I wave. He looks Asian–or maybe half-Asian—so, thank God, I’m no longer the only cultural representative at this event. There’s another outsider, someone perhaps more out-of-place than me. He seems to recognize me and suppresses a smile as he waves, his mouth opening the bare minimum to signal communication from afar. He comes over.

I say, “Whattup?”

“Not much, man, just chilling,” I think his face is emotionless, but I don’t really see it because the pop music is so loud we have to yell into each other’s ears.

“You rushing?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

“You?”

“Yep.”

I’ve made a friend.

Which isn’t super surprising, because at the Pi Kapps meet-and-greet the previous week, I nailed it. I bro-high-fived several bulky frat bros on entrance, the kind where you slap palms and pull each other in, then half-hug with the other arm. I sat at their sticky dining table in a small room with walls of chipped paint. The brothers seated around the table were pink-faced and wore Timberlands, long hair stuffed under backwards caps, beer in or near their hands, like a dinner party for deadbeat dads. This one bigger guy asked me to tell him about my hometown in two words, so I said, “boredom and Republicans,” earning me some laughs and pats on the back. I knew I had a shot.

The thing was, the rush coordinator told me in his nasally voice, that pledging would take maybe fifteen to twenty hours a week. He listed some of the expected responsibilities. Cleaning up after parties, tutoring other frat members, cooking breakfast, and a bunch of other chores. I’m sure there was more left unspoken, like chugging a gallon of milk or running through a cornfield naked covered in lube or other equally clever hazing rituals. The problem is that I already spend an extra fifteen hours per week for Michigan Izzat, the competitive all-male Bollywood Fusion dance team I’m on, and there is no way I can do both. I’ll have to choose.

Minutes after I meet Marco, girls stride through the door. Short girls, tall girls, blonde girls, girls wearing yoga pants, girls wearing lipstick, girls with ponytails. A fantastic diversity of white girls. I’m excited. They’re half the reason I’m here. Fraternities grant you entire crowds of perfectly manufactured white women. You don’t find them at Bollywood dance competitions or Izzat parties. One of the girls approaches me. I clench, and my solo cup crinkles.

“Are you in my Chemistry class?” she asks.

“No.”

“Are you sure?” A little smile plays on her lips.

“Yeah, I’m not taking Chemistry, so definitely not,” I say, idiot that I am.

She excuses herself to talk to her friends, who gather in the kitchen to drain all the jungle juice from its vessel and oust me from my comfortable fortress. I’m in the living room, alone again. I search for people to talk to, but I’m not sure what to say. Most of the parties I go to have Indian people there, where everyone knows someone, and meeting new people’s easy because there’s always at least one mutual friend. Here, I’m on my own, searching for an entrance into the conversation.

My inspiration for rushing is my friend’s roommate from freshman year. Skinny, hunched over, daddy-longlegs-looking white kid. Always wore a hat as though preparing to go bald. When the three of us played video games in his dorm, he’d bless us with stories of how drunk or high he got while pledging. How many girls he’d hooked up with. He’d tell us this with a pinch of chewing tobacco tucked behind his lower lip, and then he’d throw a tantrum when he lost the game. But the thing was, he had good weed, dozens of friends, and a sex life, so I wanted—needed—to be like him, even if he and his frat brothers would get so cross-faded they’d pass out on bean bags in his dorm, their stupid mouths open as they held plastic cups full of their own dip spit.

My own plastic cup is, again, nearly empty as I stand in the corner of the living room trying to look casual. Some of the girls are perched on couches, pretending to be interested in what the collared-shirts standing above them have to say. By this point, considering my chug rate and smaller stature, I’m likely drunker than the rest. Cute white girl was a botched attempt. But that’s okay. The guys on Izzat would’ve gaped if I told them a white girl even talked to me. I could imagine them grabbing their hair, eyes bugging out, squatting on the ground in overdone displays of surprise. “Broooo, no wayyyy!” they’d say, and I’d just be like, “Yep.” Once the theatrics wore off, they’d circle me like sharks. “Why don’t you make some moves?” they’d say, the air thick with hoots and hollers.

To which I’d probably just smile and shrug, hands raised, because I was used to this. Bro-endorsed hookup culture is par for the course at a Bollywood collegiate dance team event: at the first night’s mixer, you find cute girls and “plant some seeds” by being boyishly charming and showing them attention; then, during your performance the next evening, you make repeated eye contact (especially during the sexy parts); and finally, at the afterparty, you pound five shots of tequila whose quality you severely overestimate before finding them and initiating a hot, sweaty grind session that would bring a proud tear to the eye of middle school you. Embarking on this journey was hard for me, though. I was a shy kid—a late bloomer, my parents said—so those first couple years of college, I had a hard enough time making friends, let alone romancing women, let alone drunkenly coordinating the loss of my virginity at national dance performances.

Half a cup of jungle juice later, I consider leaving this pregame until one fellow finally catches my eye: a big, bulky, WWE-champion-looking Indian dude talking to a couple of sorority girls in the corner. I approach, and he greets me with a, “Yo, what’s good, rushee!” He has an Indian accent. His shoulders are the size of helmets. He bro-high-fives me, which has now become a physically tiring greeting. His name is Yeshwanth. “Call me Yesh, though. How’s it going?”

“It’s good, man.” I suddenly have everything and nothing to say. What do I ask this fellow? What do I ask one who’s successfully infiltrated the whites so easily? His skin is dark and porous, his beard short but thick. He must be at least twice my weight, even though he isn’t much taller than me. Nothing about him matches the Pi Kapps brand of pimply pink faces and dip lip I’d grown accustomed to thus far, so I’m taken aback. “What do you like about Pi Kapps?”

He shakes his head and pauses for a moment, trying to wipe the drunkenness from his brain, and then looks at me with a kind of mentorly confidence. “This is where it’s at, dude. You don’t get this kind of brotherhood anywhere else.”

“Not even at other frats? What about OGP?” Omega Gamma Pi is our campus’s Indian fraternity, whose parties my brown friends and I would check out since they’d happily ply us with free booze and weed to convince us, a gaggle of wide-eyed Indian boys fresh from the suburbs, to join them next semester. “What about them?”

“Eh.” He waves dismissively and laughs. “Just a waste of your time, man.”

“I’m on Michigan Izzat,” I say, leaning right up to his ear as the music grows louder. “You know AJ Sarangi? Koushik Yadati?”

“Maybe?” He squints and nods his head with doubt. “That the dance team?”

I nod. “I wanna pledge Pi Kapps, but I don’t think I can do Izzat at the same time.”

“Listen, bro,” he slurs. He pulls me close, his wrestler arm wrapped around my shoulder, his other arm gesturing, like a big brother explaining how something worked. “I get why you wanna stay with them. They’re pretty tight knit. But you’re never really gonna have as much fun with that crew.”

My stomach sinks, but he has a point. The Indian community on our campus has a reputation for exclusivity. They don’t spend time with white people. Izzat boys would throw parties every other weekend, and the same people would go to each one, each browner than the last. Go to one and you’ll hear the same Bhangra songs mixed with hip hop beats. You’ll hear the same conversations about which girls on other dance teams are “down” and which aren’t. You won’t see a white face or hear “Sweet Caroline.” You won’t see the rest of the world.

Yesh’s eyes glaze over. I don’t believe him. He’s drunk and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But he’s honest and friendly. And he’s the real deal, though, plucked out of Mumbai and into Michigan on a student visa, accented heavily, a little wild in his gestures with his head tilting as he spoke, not like the knockoff desis I dance with, so why wouldn’t I listen to him?

I finish my drink and stumble over to the kitchen to negotiate with the sorority girls guarding the jungle juice for a few sips when the rush event coordinator, his face a concerning shade of hot pink, enters the room. “Rushees, get on the buses,” he yells. People pass confused looks to each other, in part, I’m sure, because they’re shocked to hear such a loud expulsion of air through nasal passageways alone. “I said, rushees, get on the fucking buses, now.”

He jogs out of the house towards the first bus before I can ask where we are going. I look around, where I’m alone at this dying party with no one except my new friend Marco, who’s so drunk he can talk about nothing besides how drunk he is, and my new cultural advisor Yesh, who’s so drunk he leans against the wall, alone, staring into space, like the last book on a bookshelf. These would be my new brothers. I check the time. It’s past 11pm, and part of me wants to call it a night. I’ve acquired enough satisfying experiences, and I don’t know where these mysterious school buses are going. If I leave now, I can get home, get a little high if there’s any weed left, maybe play Melee with my roommates for a few hours if they’re awake. Then, the bus engines start, the cool white boys tossing half-empty solo cups on the lawn and giving zero fucks file into the vehicles, and man they look cool, so I join.

The ride lasts almost fifty minutes, our buses lazily careening down an empty highway through bumfuck nowhere Michigan. Yelling and whooping fill the whole bus. Guys keep standing and pointing at each other across the aisle, everyone else says, “Ayyy,” and I have no idea what they’re talking about. All I have is stupid Marco slouched next to me. The most useful part about him is the plastic water bottle full of vodka he brought onto the bus. Before dance competitions, our liaisons would similarly bring us secret liquor in water bottles so we could get sloshed in the auditorium after our performance. A much more preferable experience to this, I think, and I fight the urge to reminisce.

Instead, I ask Marco, “Where do you think we’re going?” to which he replies, “I’m so fucked up.” I ask, “Why are you rushing?” to which he replies by spitting on the floor. He leans forward and presses his forehead into the back of the seat in front of us. It stretches, and his eyebrows peel upwards so that each time the bus hits a bump, his raised-eyebrow face bobbles up and down. I can imagine having to mop up his vomit from the frat house floor in a month. He starts snoring, and I take the water bottle from his limp hand and glug down the rest of the liquor.

The bus squeals when it pulls off the lonely highway and up to a small building surrounded by nothing but air and grass. It’s clear from the line of depressed sixty-year-olds at the cash machine inside that this is either a casino or an inconveniently located Wells Fargo. We push through the next door and see, under the glow of invasive fluorescent lights, a few tables for blackjack and poker, a few slot machines, and many more old people wordlessly playing cards. No one has their cell phones out; no one speaks to each other. It’s a peaceful communal gathering, until, like a tsunami of fresh testosterone, twenty-five frat bros and rushees whoop and holler their way inside.

Risk-averse in most ways, I pull up a seat at the blackjack table just to watch. No one else is around for me to talk to. Marco sits a few seats down, his face pressed into the green felt of the table as his arm somehow stays upright to hold his cards. Yesh was too drunk to come. The other frat bros have dispersed, most headed to the small bar against the far wall for cheap PBRs. No music plays. The building is dead silent, except for the shuffling of cards and the growls of white boys. The hollow-eyed dealer, resigned to his duty, says very few words. There are no girls here. They were just at the pregame to lube us up, I realize, to get us excited before the big event. It’s just us and the geriatrics taking turns losing money.

Here’s where I employ my superpower. Here’s where I Febreze a situation I “should” like even if it smells like shit. I scan each segment of the casino and excuse its degeneracy: the senior citizens stone-silent in line for the ATM probably just had a long week, the drunken frat bros howling at the poker tables are just blowing off steam, the owners of this establishment must be proud to serve such a diverse set of patrons late into the night. Forget that I hate gambling, that I don’t like anyone here, that I’m bored and tired. My gut churns, but I bury it. Everyone else is having fun, after all. It’s what I do when I explore something new. I make it my home and forget where I come from. I bury myself, and I lose everything.

“How’s it going?” asks the rush coordinator, his nasal voice snapping me out of my daze.

“I’m doing great,” I say. “This is…so cool.”

His long brown hair has stayed slicked back, and his lower lip protrudes with a chubby bump that I try not to stare at. He slaps a hand on my shoulder. “Listen, man, if you join, you can have great nights like this for the rest of college.”

I think about this. I think about having fantastic nights at this rural money dumpster for the remaining two most formative years of my life. I imagine myself arm in arm with the white girl whose Chemistry class I’m not in, leading her into a casino, softly slipping a pinch of chewing tobacco inside my cheek like a jewel stashed for safekeeping, and playing blackjack with expressionless retirees for three hours. My stomach drops, and I feel a slow-release shock, this cocktail of trepidation, panic, and thrill, the kind that comes when your parents tell you you’re moving to a town you’ve never visited. Then, the rush coordinator, eyes glazed over, speech slurred, seals the deal. In three throaty loogies, he spits tobacco into his own beer cup and drinks it back up with a smile.

Dear God. I have no more Febreze for this.

I used most of it on Izzat. Forget about the brutal practice schedule and wannabe frat culture; performing for an audience is sexy beyond imagination. We’d line up on stage, our hearts thumping, as beautiful college girls from Texas or Ohio or wherever eye us from their seats. The music would start. The voice in my head would stop, and, for the next eight minutes, I’d feel the clarity that machines must have when they’re turned on. Who my teammates were didn’t matter; it was just about giving myself completely to this beautiful routine. Afterwards, there’d be thunderous applause, and we’d hug and jump and scream before shuttling to our hotels, draining bottles, and heading to a late-night afterparty at some glitzy club.

Dancing with Izzat is like working at a startup, though: long hours, big risks, huge payoff, guaranteed burnout. I shouldn’t have been surprised—we are twenty testosterized dudes desperately looking for a spotlight. We spend hours making sure our arm and leg angles match and formations are symmetrical. Captains yell at us to push harder, to keep our facial expressions up, to stop socializing and focus. We push ourselves  four hours some nights, and I come home at two in the morning for a breath of fresh weed before sleeping like a corpse. Homework slips through the cracks. I wake up at noon and skip class. I lay around in bed worrying about school. It’s no wonder I wanted to quit Izzat to rush a frat, with its shinier status and fewer grueling athletics. It felt like, in the company of male friendships, a promotion from traveling consultant to senior associate. It felt like something I’d earned. But now here I am, nearly two years into college, watching a potential mentor figure silently ingest his own tobacco juice.

Since Uber doesn’t yet exist, I cannot make an Irish goodbye from the casino. Instead, I suffer while I wait for the buses to rev back up. Silently, I watch my comrades lose all their money at Blackjack to the older clientele, but they don’t seem to care. Their eyes are completely soulless. Some nod off right there at the table. Others hold their own, chatting up the other clientele, who mostly grunt in response. I imagine the Izzat boys here, and it’s a fun thought. I can see them pour into this establishment instead of Pi Kapps, can feel the frenzied looks we’d receive as we literally beat our chests after winning a round. They’d take control of the aux, blast Bollywood mashups, pat each other on the back, all of us laughing and dancing on the tabletops. It’d be fun, in another world.

Eventually, we board the buses again, this time without the rush coordinator commanding us, just marching in sullenly, like commuters before a work day. I can’t find Marco on the bus, but I imagine he went home the same way he came to the casino—snoring, forehead sticking to the seat in front of him and mouth loudly open. The buses reach the pregame house again, its lawn devastated with torn grass, plastic cups, and vomit. It’s dark, and the shadow splayed in front of the porch is either Yesh’s prone body or a huge shrub. I make it back home, where my roommates are asleep, and I slip into bed, thinking of how many cups I’d have to clean up off Pi Kapps’ lawn if I were to pledge, and what those cups might contain, and I shudder with relief, happy to be alone.

Chuckry Vengadam was born and raised near Detroit, Michigan. His work has been published in the El Portal literary magazine as well as a self-published essay collection, Late Bloomer, about a few of his life’s inflection points, which you can order here. He lives in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn.