“BISHOP. BISHOP. WAKE UP!”
I wake up in a panic—for a moment, still captured in my nightmare, reeling from its vivid entrapment. It takes a few more moments for me to shake the fog off.
“Bishop!” Ember says, hurriedly putting on her clothes.
“Sorry, what?” My head is dense, thoughts cloudy. It takes me some time to wake up in the morning, feeling like I’m coming out of a damn coma just about, and when I’m woken up in the wrong way—say, like Ember here, shrieking my name—well, it’s like a goddamn heart attack.
“You have to get out of here. Like, now. Our house mom is going to be here any minute, and I’ll get in big trouble if she catches you here.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” I sit up, stretching. “My head is killin’ me.” I slowly lumber out of bed and begin dressing.
“Um, Bishop,” she says, her voice calm for the first time this morning.
“Yeah?”
She looks nervous, a little pity in her features, and she points to the bed. “Your eye.”
I glance over and see my prosthetic eye on the pillow, staring back at the both of us. A sharp feeling of self-consciousness digs out my insides. I can feel it at the bottom of my throat like hot coals, but I keep the look off my face.
Facing her, I shrug. “Would you look at that. I must have been movin’ a lot last night.”
I retrieve my eye from the bed and turn away from her as I put it back in the socket where it belongs.
“You were. Kicking, arms flailing. Talking in your sleep. You were having a nightmare, I think. Does that happen a lot?” she asks.
“The eye fallin’ out or the nightmares?” I chuckle.
She shrugs. “Both.”
“Yeah, the nightmares come often. I don’t usually sleep with the eye in, but when I do, it can fall out sometimes, yeah.”
“Where do you usually keep it at night?”
“Weren’t you just in a panic about me bein’ here?”
She nods, smiling as the rising sun hits her from the bay window, painting her in rich oranges and yellows.
“It goes in a disinfecting solution,” I say, taking a few steps toward her. I wrap my arms around her, pulling her in and kissing her. The taste of her lips, their movement perfect with my own, makes me want to keep doing this all day. I reluctantly disconnect from her lips and smile. “I had a great time last night.”
“Ditto.” She grins and pecks me, adding, “And next time you stay over, you can just bring your solution with you.”
“Next time, huh?”
She nods, this adorable little nod where her bottom lip slips between her teeth, and she bats her eyes just a bit.
“I can’t wait.” I give her one last kiss for good measure, and then make my way out the bay window and onto the deck. There’s light movement around the front of the house—one girl smoking, a few with backpacks leaving for class—so I slink down the stairs to avoid detection. Once I’m on the street, heading back toward frat row, I glance back. Ember stands at the open window, watching me as I walk away. She waves, and I wave back and then I continue on. When I turn the corner, onto frat row, I’m overcome with a sense of disappointment because, at this moment, there’s nothing I’d rather do than sneak back over and cuddle her until noon. Who needs classes?
I head back home long enough to get cleaned up and brush my teeth, and then I’m back on the road toward Cradle Café, a quaint little coffee shop where I’m meeting the guys before our day’s classes. It’s something I’ve been meaning to start, at least once a week, but it took some convincing to get them to agree to an earlier wake-up. I’m not too happy about it myself.
I’m pleased to see all three of them standing out front, waiting on me, as I park my Jeep and hop out.
Jeremy says, “You look like dog shit,” as I approach.
Laughing, I shrug and slap hands with him, and then the others. “I don’t know about you boys, but I felt like fuckin’ death when I woke up.”
As we pile into the crowded restaurant and Carter checks us in, I notice a new pep in Mac’s step and a faint look of contentment on his face. He’s got that unmistakable look that says, ‘I just got laid.’
“So, how’d your night go, Mac?” I ask as the host seats us.
“You know, a little of this, a little of that.” He smiles from ear to ear.
“You got some ass, didn’t you, you little shit?”
“I don’t kiss and tell,” Mac says, shaking his head. “But yeah, I totally got my dick wet and met the girl of my dreams. Same night, what up?” He raises the roof and I laugh.
“That Spanish chick you were dancing with?”
“She’s Mexican,” he responds. “And fuck yeah. Future baby momma, right there. I’m for real.”
“I’m tellin’ y’all, my boy Red here was gettin’ down,” Jeremy says, laughing. “That girl was just twerkin’ on him, big ol’ booty all over his dick, and he’s back there like a kid on Christmas fuckin’ mornin’ with his hands on her butt cheeks.”
The four of us share a boisterous, and most likely bothersome, laugh.
“You should’ve seen that ass out of her dress,” Mac says, his eyebrows wriggling.
Jeremy shrugs. “Shit, I ain’t mad at ya. I like my women with some curves too.”
Mac takes a big sniff. “I can still smell her pussy juice in my beard.”
“Jesus, dude, that’s foul. Did you not bathe today? And what beard are you talkin’ abouut?” I ask, giving him the stink eye as I analyze the pubes on his face. “Because I’ve seen teens grow better shit than that.”
“No way.” Mac rubs his hands through his ginger face pubes. “This thing is beautiful. And hell no, I don’t want to wash her off me. You guys don’t understand. I met the love of my life last night. This is an important day. And I need to savor it.”
I point to his face. “I don’t see how that correlates with you collecting her juice in your fuckin’ beard, man.”
“You’re a dirty fuck, Mac,” Carter says, shaking his head. He then motions toward me. “What about you, Bishop? I noticed you and Ember disappeared around the same time.”
“We didn’t fuck, I can tell you that. Shit, I didn’t want to, as jacked up as I was. My dick wouldn’t have worked.”
“She’s so fuckin’ fine. Dear Lord, man,” Jeremy says, and Mac nods in agreement.
“You have to watch yourself with her, though,” Carter says. “Her thing with Brady has been on and off for a while now. Not really dating or anything like that, but fuck buddies,”
“He’s a big kid, you know? Nobody’s got a claim to her, or anybody else. The guy doesn’t really even like me anyway, so fuck it.” I shrug, my eyes shifting to the approaching waitress.
She pours us coffee and takes our order. After giving her my own, I dump heaps of sugar into my cup, stir it, and then take the sweet nectar down in big gulps.
“She is hot, though,” Carter admits. “Looks like Mila Kunis if she were a rocker chick.”
“Fuck yeah, she does,” I agree, taking another big drink of the much-needed coffee.
“So, what’s up with this next pledge event?” Mac asks. “Damien tell you anything yet?”
“Nothin’ about the next challenge. I know tonight we’ve got the Chapter Advisor visit,” I respond.
Jeremy points toward Carter with a judgmental look on his face. “He knows!”
“You know I can’t say anything,” Carter reminds us. “And I don’t know every detail either. I just know stories my dad told me and I put two and two together.”
“Alright, so, put two and two together for us and figure out what fuck-fuck game we’re playin’ next,” Jeremy says, chuckling.
Carter hesitates and then says, “We know Big Bro and Big Sis nights are coming up. If I had to guess, one of them is probably gonna be next, but seriously, I have no certainty on anything.”
“Do you know what we gotta do for them nights?” Jeremy asks.
Carter shakes his head. “Nope.”
The waitress returns and places our food down in front of us, topping our coffees off after, and the three of them are digging in already like vultures to a carcass.
“Do millennials not know table manners?” I ask, shaking my head.
Mac winks, his mouth full of food as he smacks his lips a few times.
I scoff. “It’s a miracle you get laid, Red. It truly is.”
“Do any of y’all know this advisor guy?” I ask as the four of us wait in the van parked outside a trailer, in a park on the outskirts of town. The evening sun hangs low, frosting the van’s windows as the temperature plummets. Trevor and Damian wait at the front door of the trailer, knocking periodically.
“No idea,” Jeremy responds.
Mac shakes his head and then breathes against the window, fingering ‘Suck me’ on the condensation left behind.
A smile tugs at Carter’s lips.
“What do you know?” I ask, arching an eyebrow and pointing a finger at him.
“He’s a fucking lunatic,” Carter responds bluntly. “Or so I’ve heard. I’ve never met him, but everyone knows about him here. He’s kind of a legend.”
“How old is he?” I ask.
“Pushing fifty, I think. Maybe forty-something. Who knows? He’s been the Chapter Advisor for DIK-Rho for a long time now. I know that. Maybe fifteen, twenty years.”
“And he’s crazy?” Mac asks.
Carter nods stiffly. “Batshit crazy.”
Trevor and Damian turn and make their way back, disappointment on their faces. Just as they’re about to reach the van, the trailer door swings open from behind them. Standing on the other side, a stocky man with a thick, disheveled mohawk holds a cigarette in one hand and a Busch in the other. He’s shirtless with a burgundy robe on, and the bags under his squinty eyes tell me he hasn’t been awake for long. That, or he’s just smoked some weed.
Damian waves us out of the vehicle as Trevor makes his introduction.
As we pile out, the man looks us over one by one, flicking his cigarette butt out toward the road and taking a long swig of his beer.
“Line up, pledges,” Damian says, and we do as we’re told.
The advisor takes a step out of his trailer, his eyes scanning our row back and forth, then he clears his throat. The cold begins to turn his bare stomach red, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
“Welcome to McGinnis Manor, my humble abode. I’m yer host fer today’s festivities, JD McGinnis. The JD stands fer Jack Daniels on account a’ I drink it so damn much.” He grunts, draining the last of the beer can and crumpling it. He tosses it to the ground and lights another cigarette.
“Does JD really stand for Jack Daniels?” Mac asks.
JD shakes his head, letting the smoke exit his mouth in little circles. “Naw, my given name was Jameson Decker, but ain’t nobody allowed to call me that.”
“Well, if you liked Jameson, that’d really work out well, huh?” I say, cracking a smile, and he shoots me a glare.
“Jameson?!” he barks. “I don’t drink that distilled horse piss!”
“It’s actually pretty good,” I argue.
“No, no, no … it’ll be JD to y’all, or Señor Advisor. Or Marky Mark.”
“Oh, were you an early nineties pop sensation?” I ask, smirking.
He shakes his head, taking a long draw from his cigarette, and looks at me through the smoke. Abruptly, he jumps up and does a full body twist. Landing unsteadily, he starts to grind his hips. “No … but I got his moves though. Ow!” He grabs his crotch with one hand and runs his other hand along the side of his head like he’s Fonzie. He then turns on his heel and motions for us to follow. “C’mon inside, boys. We’ve got some Jack to drink and some Principles to recite.”
Entering the trailer, I find weed is most definitely to blame for his fucked up eyes as the smell clings to the air.
After making each of us stand side by side to recite the Declaration of Principles—only Mac fucking it up, of course—he squeezes the four of us together on a musty couch across from him as he lounges in a recliner with his sandaled feet propped up. Trevor and Damian sit on the edge of his bed at the rear of the trailer, and well, isn’t that just cute.
The interior of his glorious single-wide looks like a museum for the fraternity. The official seal, color, and letters are everywhere, from the throw rug by the front door, to the lamp beside his recliner, to the wallpaper that lines the walls.
JD tilts his head, nodding toward me. “You the vet, I reckon?”
“That’d be me. Bishop.” I put my hand out and he leans forward, shaking it firmly, and then passes me a quick salute.
“88 Mike myself. Served in Desert Storm ’fore I came here. Yer in a long line of Army brethren here in DIK.”
“Happy to be a part of it.”
“And we’re happy to have ya.” His eyes trail the four of us. “All y’all. Welcome to my home, and to this night in the process. By the end of this night, y’all will’ve killed this bottle a’ Jack with me and told me all about DIK history. Tell me like I still got shit stains in my drawers.” He snaps his fingers toward Trevor and Damian. “One of y’all grab us some shot glasses. Top cabinet next to the fridge.”
The two of them argue in whispers before Damian huffs his way toward the kitchen.
“Delta Iota Kappa is a way of life, gentlemen. It’s a brotherhood,” JD continues. “It’s a family. We have each other’s backs—” He’s interrupted by Damian setting four shot glasses onto the coffee table. “Y’all are on the cusp of greatness. Ya gotta finish strong. Work together. And the whole world is at yer disposal.”
I fight the urge to scan his small trailer, judgment burgeoning.
He fills each of the shot glasses, and I wonder if he’s forgotten one for himself, but then he holds the bottle up in a cheers. “Grab yer shots, boys.”
We retrieve them from the table and meet the bottle in the air.
“I’m an asshole. I’m an asshole. I’m an asshole till I die. But I’d rather be an asshole, than a goddamned Beta Chi,” he chants, tossing the bottle back. We down our shots, and I fight the urge to vomit it back up as I slam the shotglass back down on the coffee table.
Nope, I haven’t missed Jack one bit.
“Let me tell y’all a story, boys … an important one,” JD says, leaning back in his recliner with the bottle, after filling our shot glasses back up. He waves toward them with his free hand. “Take yer time with those. We got plenty more waitin’ on ya.” He lets out a heavy breath and then continues, “I was stationed in Korea, back in ’89. On leave one time, I went down to the Philippines. Beautiful place, if ya ever catch yerselves around the area, but goddamn, is it hot. Hotter than the devil’s taint. I’m talkin’ sweatin’ like a whore in church, gentlemen. So, in the Philippines, they got these special kinda bars. Nice places. Cheap beer. Topless bitches. Great place for us military folk.”
He motions to me, and I nod.
“Let me tell y’all, if you’d a’ told me this story without me seein’ it fer myself, I’d a’ told ya to shove it where the sun don’t shine. But God as my witness, these women put goddamn bananas in their pussies.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “Bananas in their pussies, gentlemen, and they walk around with these bananas up inside ’em. They went from table to table, and if ya put yer hand out—”
“Oh no,” Mac groans.
“Oh yeah. Ya bet yer ginger ass. Ya put yer hand out, and she’d let that banana slide out just a little, and then she’d cut a piece off fer ya usin’ her snatch like a goddamn cigar cutter.”
“Oh no,” Mac repeats, shaking his head with his hands to his mouth.
“Oh yeah, Carrot Top. If ya decided to put yer hand out, you had to eat that piece of banana, no question.”
“Wait, so, like, you had to eat it? I mean, what, do they hold a gun to your head?” Mac asks.
JD leans in a little and responds, “Goddamnit, Richie Cunningham, it’s called tradition. Yer civilian ass just couldn’t understand.” He looks toward me. “Right, Bishop?”
I shrug. “I mean, I’m not puttin’ my fuckin’ hand out. Christ no. But, I can see the honor in eating the motherfucker if you have the stones to put your hand out.”
“Damn straight!” JD hollers. “It tasted like soured milk.”
Mac puts a hand to his mouth and groans.
“I can tell by y’all’s faces yer wonderin’ what the moral to the story is.”
I nod. “Absolutely,” I reply with a grin.
“The lesson learned here, my friends, is that when yer offered fruit from a woman’s puss, ya don’t eat it, or else ya may find yerself in a Filipino medical clinic fer gonorrhea of the mouth the next morning.”
There’s a still silence between us as we mull over what he’s just said before Jeremy cracks up laughing.
JD waves us off with a laugh of his own. “I’m just fuckin’ with y’all. But I sure as shit ate that banana. I don’t think I’d put my hand back out though.”
“Not that I don’t enjoy some overripe puss,” he adds, matter-of-factly. “Ya gotta enjoy the stinky stuff sometimes too. They need lovin’ just like the sweet ones do.”
“I don’t know if that’s true.” I laugh. “Seems unsanitary.”
“Let me tell ya, some of the best pussy I ever had smelled like Homeless Hank’s rotten asshole.”
“Hey, JD. Can we get some of that?” Damian asks.
JD side-eyes him. “None a’ this.” He cradles the bottle. “It’s fer me and the pledges. Y’all can grab Busch from the fridge.” He motions his head toward the kitchen.
“How nice of you,” Damian mutters as he crosses the room.
“I don’t like them two very much,” JD says, motioning toward Trevor and Damian, not being discreet about it in the slightest. “I’ve spent many a year here in Crescent Falls, gentlemen. I’ve seen hundreds of boys come through here and become men. The DIK way a’ life is a good one. It’s a proud one. It’s an honorable one. And goddamn, is there pussy aplenty!” He slaps his knee, cackling as he refills our shot glasses.
“You ever wonder how many STDs pass through this motherfucker?” I ask, laughing.
“More than ya know. I’ve had a few close calls myself. Lotta run-ins with the tainted pussy.”
I shake my head, a disgusted knot in my throat. “Is there a line where maybe too much has been said?” I ask.
He shrugs, tossing back the bottle before settling it back in his lap. “I don’t believe there is. Ask me in about an hour when I get real filthy.”
“Oh, I can’t wait.”
“Now listen, fellas. I ain’t talkin’ about regular ol’ butt play here. I’m talkin’ straight fist in the ass. Elbow deep.” JD grunts, the bottle, near empty, wobbling in his hands. “She had these rubber gloves in her nightstand. Big tube a’ Astroglide too. Took two fists most nights.”
I shake my head slowly, my eyes wide. I shouldn’t be shocked anymore by the shit that comes out of his mouth, but I am. “That’s fuckin’ disgusting, dude,” I say.
“Ya don’t know the half of it. When ya got two whole arms up inside a chick’s asshole, ticklin’ her small intestines, ya pull back out and that asshole’s all puckered up like some alien fuckin’ pod, man. All angry like. Y’all must a’ seen some of them videos.”
“Unfortunately,” I respond, shaking my head. “For the briefest of fuckin’ moments thanks to a dickhead in my squad. I’m not a fan like you. That shit grosses me out.”
“Oh, I get off on it, man. Seein’ that gapin’ butthole after I’ve worked the fuck out of it. Shit.”
“I feel like we’ve talked about ass stuff just so much tonight.” I laugh, feeling a heavy buzz after five or six shots.
“Welcome to my world,” JD says. Whatever that means.
“Did we pass the test?” Carter asks, and JD one-eyes the bottle.
He nods. “In about one more shot, y’all are good. Mac, ya need to study more. Everybody else, y’all are good in the history department.”
“Will do,” Mac says, his drunken eyes trained on the floor as he picks at his fingernail. “Sorry.”
“It’s all good, Rick Astley.” He points his finger at us. “Y’all are a team. The three of ya need to help him out.”
“Roger that,” I respond, nodding my head. “I should’ve kept up with it.”
“Well …” JD nods toward the bottle, a drunken gleam in his eyes. He pours the last four shots and holds the bottle up. “This is the last of it. I ain’t got nothin’ else for y’all. See ya again in about two weeks. Prepare yer livers and yer come control, gentlemen. It’s gonna be an epic fuckin’ night!”
Come control?