Chuck and His Brothers
Belmiget, Greg
Chuck and His Brothers by Greg Belmiget I've never gotten over the fact that Chuck didn't tell me he planned to join-a frat. After all; we kad grown up together, spending our summers...
...But he never came to, and like the socked freshman on the shower floor, he choked on his own' vomit...
...And Chuck 'sensed it...
...I understand the attraction now, in a way I didn't when I chose sides then...
...Saturday, I woke in the middle of the night to someone screaming my name from the bathroom THE WASHINGTON MONTHLY/NOVEMBER 1988 iaecart isnsgthe ahianIslt...
...connfortable joining the Greeks' around a tabfc fait of bee: than...
...Many young men enjoy the kind of close friendship Chuck and I had growing up...
...lag across the drain...
...About half the male stidents belong CO one of-the five fraternities...
...As if he were prepared for the question...
...He"hnd thrown up and choked on his own vomit...
...But Alfred is a small, ruralea* Pus and the ,Greek and non-Greek world dividessecial life...
...But when they leave for college they most often do it alone, without those childhood friends and that sense of shared experience...
...I-cleareti his throat, and a friend blew a few shots of air into his lungs, He began breathing,easily...
...I found my-sat rolling a cigarette butt back and forth under my foot...
...I learned later thatChuck had been struggling with hedeeiSio a to pledge the Klan Alpine fraternitY that vepub...
...We headed back to the pub...
...Ar ' 'd ythat the frat brothers had been...
...So what are your plans for school, asked and lifted a beer...
...pushing him hard to join, but he was anxious about the hazing and remained undecided until shortly before he climbed in that trunk...
...Chuck was struggling to make the transition to college life, one few "findeasy.: I made some fitful attempts to bring-him into fitly World of history majors and left-leaning political tivists, but more and more I'd see Chuck with the Ore* crowd...
...tIinteafsiiheowwearlisI...
...I ordered more beer:,,:' to celebrate...
...In Chuck's case, the loneliness and loss was compounded when he joined me at school and found I had changed in ways he couldn't understand...
...I was no More...
...I saw-his reply as a signal that he too look ing for new common ground...
...In the context of that horrible week, the incident didn't seem much crazier than what : I had already seen...
...explained he had decided to Major in history me...
...His buddies were too drunk to help...
...I had chosen sides...
...rWhen his brothers pulled him from the trunk of that car they too threw him in a shower to wake him...
...Before long Chuck returned to his friends at the table and I left Two days later, Chuck climbed into a car trunk during a fraternity hazing...
...I only wish that I could have talked it out with Chuck...
...Chuck was sitting with my :Friends: Just two days before he died I saw him itt the ,p Sensing the boundaries'as much as I; Chuckgot from a table of fraternity brothers and joined MO leaning,on his elbows with his back to the bar, wiry, six-foot frame tilting on his heels,like ash against a barn wall...
...His brothers-to-be locked him inside with two other pledges and a fifth of liafilipack of beer, and "a bottle of wine...
...An awkwardness crept into our meetings...
...Chuck never knew that story...
...fFoouunrd sthhoreweepr Iheedagideyss blasted a stream of water over a fo urth Pledge...
...I knew softie :Of them - _and-they knew me...
...We were childhood friends...
...But my thoughts were a ION way from the bay and outboardmothr oil...
...Soon,,,I, stopped talking...
...And so he turned to the fraternity...
...But as I carried on, recommending gasses .to take and professors to avoid, Chuck's eye-s;'-kept glancing back toward the Greeks...
...They -C:drink it while the brothers took a joy le en they opened the trunk about 40 minutes later, "Chuck was out of it," as one brother said...
...In the first weeks of school, wefell into thehabit of meeting in the union pub: We would stand at the end of the bar and talk about friends , back home, the boats, Me-price of clams...
...Within Minikes I ha him in my adviser's office filling in the paperwer As we bounded down the worn oak stairs Oft history building, I felt we had closed a gap between, us...
...The decision of pledging tore roommates apart from each other...
...Had we talked, maybe I would have told him of my experiences as a resident ,adviser in a freshman dorm, where I spent hours counseling the gays on my floor...
...The nightly ritual began about 10 p.m...
...patty...
...brothewrso1u d storm the halls, pounding the doors with baseball bats and itiglawaY dazed freshmen for a night of hazing that often involved heavy drinking...
...we kad grown up together, spending our summers clamming in open skiffs on Long Island's Great South Bay...
...Chuck said nothing...
...It's the kind of decision friends typically Sweat through together...
...Chuck enrolled at Alfred University in 1978 during my junior year, after taking time off to work and travel...
...But none of that compared with Hell Week...
...From the day I was shovedovera porch railing 'for flirting with a brother's girlfriend at aril greg Belanger is a reporter for the New Haven Register...
...In the eerie silence that followed, the, pledges pleaded with me not to report the incident, saying it might hurt their chances of joining the frat...
...It was the single biggest counseling problem I had...
...In one of the worst decisions of my life, I agreed to say nothing and returned to bed...
...In the morning, I'd roll, the stragglers to their rooms after they had spent a few hours resting their faces on a toilet seat, emptying their stomachs...
...staring down on the beer-soaked carpet...
...Vie` died sometime later that night...
...unbelievable as it seems now, it never occurred o me that Chuck would actually pledge...
...There was no one around that night saber enough to help...
...His body was blue and ma tiOnlesS...
...when the...
Vol. 20 • November 1988 • No. 10
