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  I looked one last time to my left and right to make sure I was between Parsells and Rogers, and then stared up at the ceiling, trying to maintain composure as Mr. Weston and three others stomped into our midst. They slammed the door behind them, and I lost focus and glanced over at them. Big mistake. One of the cronies, Mr. Harris, locked eyes with me and sprung into action.

  Classic Hazing Tactic #1: If a pledge makes eye contact with you, tell him to stop eye-fucking you and shame him without remorse.

  “Did you just eye-fuck me, pledge?” asked Mr. Harris.

  He got right in my face like an angry MLB coach would to an umpire who just made the worst call of all time.

  “No sir, Mr. Harris, sir,” I quickly responded.

  His breath stunk like bourbon, and he slammed both hands into the wall on either side of my head.

  “This kid thinks he can look me in the eye. Look at me again, you sackless son of a bitch! Do it again!”

  I focused on one of the support beams on the ceiling and kept my face as straight as possible to hide my fear. He lowered his voice.

  “Don’t you ever, ever undress me with your eyes again, you horny little fuck.”

  The beauty of these hazing sessions is that they often become hilarious, whether intentional or not. Even during the darkest of times, some of the more creative insults make it hard not to crack a smile, and if you smile everyone pays. I bit my tongue to fight off a grin while Mr. Weston addressed us.

  “Since your pledge brother here is missing a chromosome, everyone take off your jackets and get on bows and toes NOW!”

  I took off my blazer and dropped to the ground instantly. The four of them started pulling beer bottle caps from their pockets and tossing them to the floor around us. Mr. Stevens, a five-foot-five sophomore with the beer gut of a senior, threw two bottle caps at me and bent down to bark in my face.

  “You better have those fucking bottle caps under your elbows, Prescott!”

  The bows-and-toes position is similar to push-up position, except you put your elbows on the ground instead of your hands. This becomes really fucking painful after a while, and the pain is obviously worse with bottle caps cutting into your elbows.

  I scrambled, quickly sliding one bottle cap under each elbow. As I was adjusting to lessen the pain, Mr. Harris’s boots stomped to a halt in front of me.

  “Not you, dumbass.” He yanked me up by my shirt and slammed me back against the wall. “You’re going to watch.”

  Classic Hazing Tactic #2: Make the guy who screwed up feel guilty by having the rest of the pledge class suffer from his mistake.

  Mr. Harris grabbed me by the back of my button-down and shoved me around the room.

  “Tell all of your pledge brothers what you did!”

  I had no idea what he meant.

  “Sir?”

  “Tell them! Tell them how you fucked them!”

  “Sir, I eye-fucked you, sir,” I responded.

  “Not me, you idiot!” he yelled. “God, you’re a fucking moron. I want you to get down and say, ‘I fucked you’ to each of your pledge brothers.”

  He dragged me directly over to Adams, the first person in line, who was already shaking from the pain in his elbows.

  “Tell him!” Mr. Harris demanded.

  I knelt down and said, “I fucked you” to the back of his head.

  “Louder!”

  “I FUCKED YOU!”

  Controlling me like a puppet by the back of my shirt, he led me around the room and forced me to tell all forty-one of my pledge brothers.

  “I fucked you!”

  He pulled me to the next person.

  “I fucked you!”

  I had to say it so many times that I started to genuinely believe that I had permanently fucked each of them; that everything that had ever happened to them was my fault; that when they died as old men in their beds, right before they took their last breath they’d gasp, “Prescott fucked me.”

  “Do you like that?” Mr. Weston asked the group. “Do you like the way Pledge Prescott fucks you? You guys are the worst fucking pledge class in the history of this fraternity.”

  Classic Hazing Tactic #3: Telling every single pledge class that they are the worst pledge class you’ve ever had.

  I stood there, panting and looking at the suffering my stupidity had caused, and then Mr. Harris grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me back toward my spot.

  I stumbled back against the wall and looked up at the ceiling, and suddenly all four drunken ball-hazers were slurring obscenities in my face. Their flurry of insults ran together.

  “You fucking shit-stick I swear to God…”

  “… schoolgirl fucking jerkoff jizz rag…”

  “… miniature donkey fuck doll!”

  Finally, over the shouting, I was able to decipher Mr. Weston giving me a chance at redemption to save my friends.

  “Give me the alphabet back-to-back without fucking up!”

  He was referring to the Greek alphabet, which we all had to memorize our first week of pledgeship. We weren’t just expected to know it; we were expected to be able to recite it at the speed of a cocaine-fueled auctioneer.

  “Sir! Alpha-Beta-Gamma-Delta-Epsilon-Zeta-Eta-Theta-Iota-Kappa-Lambda-Mu-Nu-Xi-Omicron-Pi-Rho-Sigma-Tau-Upsilon-Phi-Chi-Psi-Omega!”

  Pure adrenaline to save my pledge brothers from permanent elbow scarring had gifted me with a momentarily blazing intellect. Just when I was about to give birth to one happy thought, Mr. Weston violently aborted it.

  “Where the fuck was my sir sandwich, Prescott?”

  I had only given him one slice of bread.

  “I don’t want a poor man’s hot dog bun! Again!” he demanded.

  “Sir! Alpha-Beta-Gamma-Delta-Epsilon-Zeta-Eta-Theta-Iota-Kappa-Lambda-Mu-Nu-Xi-Omicron-Pi-Rho-Sigma… uh… Sigma—”

  “Stop!” Mr. Weston barked. I tried to continue: “Sigma, uh… Tau…”

  “Shut that fucking hole in your face!” Mr. Stevens shoved me in the chest.

  I was crestfallen. My friends were emitting loud grunts of pain and wobbling on their elbows as the muscles in their arms grew tired. Mr. Weston’s intuitive senses kicked in and he decided to switch up his twisted game plan of pain before any real injury occurred.

  “Everybody up!” he yelled. “Your pledge brother Prescott here doesn’t care enough about you to save you. Get back up against the wall and tune the goddamn TV!”

  Tuning the TV consists of squatting, knees bent at a ninety-degree angle, with your hands out in front of you moving back and forth as if you’re tuning an old-timey television. At first it’s a welcome change of pace to bows and toes, but in time it wears you down as your thighs start to burn. I hit the wall and Mr. Harris squatted in front of me, yelling up into my face.

  “What am I watching, pledge? What the fuck am I watching?”

  “Sir, uh, you’re watching Cinemax, sir!”

  “Why the fuck would I watch Skinemax, pledge? Do you think I have to slap my own ham? That’s what your little sister is for.”

  For a second I forgot that I don’t have a sister, and felt a great wave of depression come over me as I imagined Mr. Harris angrily pounding the innocence out of her nonexistent body. I tried for a better answer.

  “Sir, you’re watching SportsCenter, sir!”

  He threw his hands up in disgust and walked away. I kept rotating my hands as fast as I possibly could while my thighs ached, but another thirty seconds passed and I still wasn’t being verbally assaulted. The actives had grown silent.

  The booming sound of a single pair of boots echoed through the room. Someone was coming down the stairs toward us.

  “Holy shit, now you’re all really fucked!” said Mr. Harris in an almost reverent manner.

  “They’re so fucked,” said Mr. Stevens.

  “Fucking fucked!” said Mr. Weston with more joy than I’d ever heard him express.

  Classic Hazing Tactic #4: Constantly remind the pledges that they are, in
fact, fucked.

  “Everybody back against the wall! Line the fuck up!” Mr. Weston yelled.

  I fixed my eyes on the ceiling, and step by step the pair of heavy boots descended the stairs. The room went completely silent as he walked down the line. He didn’t say a word, and I didn’t have the slightest clue what we were dealing with.

  I heard the distinct sound of a zipper being unzipped. Mr. Harris started laughing. The splattering of piss on the dirt between Rogers’s legs made me cringe, and the laughter of all five actives filled the room. I felt urine splattering onto my boat shoes, but kept my eyes on the ceiling. His stream splashed with abnormal power against the hard ground. He just stood there, breathing hard with relief, and pissed, and pissed, and pissed.

  When the stream finally became a trickle, Mr. Weston stifled his laughter and delivered the bad news.

  “Looks like you boys have been blessed with a visit from The Maglite.”

  I had heard rumors of The Maglite during rush. He was a sixth-year senior on his second victory lap whose schedule was comprised of nonstop binge drinking and inhaling rails of blow as long as his fourteen-inch penis. The Maglite avoided graduation like the plague so he could continue jackhammering freshman girls with his God-given endowment. The guy was a fucking legend, but I had never met him. None of us had. It was at that moment, staring at the ceiling while I stood in my piss-filled loafers, that I realized he was the unknown Alpha I’d run into on campus. My heart rate ascended to an uncharted new level, and for a second I thought I was going to collapse.

  He reeked of whiskey and cigar smoke, and the mix of his stench and piss filled my nostrils. He zipped his pants back up and took two steps, positioning himself directly in front of me.

  “Take off your goddamn shoes,” he demanded, speaking slowly with a southern drawl.

  I bent down, slipped off one shoe and then the other, and heard the unrolling of duct tape. It sent chills down my spine. The Maglite hit me in the chest with two unopened cans of Grizzly Wintergreen dip.

  “Pack every fucking grain of dip from both of those fucking cans between your toes.”

  Classic Hazing Tactic #5: If you happen to be dipping while talking to a pledge, purposely violate the “say it don’t spray it” rule, firing tiny Stinger missiles of tobacco into said pledge’s eyeballs.

  In a display of double-dip hazing, The Maglite executed this move to perfection. My eyes stung from his spit as I frantically opened one can and then the other. What I was about to endure consists of filling the gaps between your toes with chewing tobacco and absorbing the nicotine through your feet, and it has many names: dip shoes, nicotine Nikes, snuff socks. All of them were being chanted by the other actives as they laughed and The Maglite hovered over me. He spiked his Miller Lite tallboy off the wall, missing my head by inches, and then crushed it beneath his boot.

  “Well, boys,” he yelled, “this fucking piece of shit ran into me on campus and didn’t even know my fucking name!”

  His voice echoed through the basement and the other actives started up the “oooooooooh shit” chorus we had grown to fear.

  “Look at my fucking face!” he screamed up and down the line. “Stop staring at the fucking ceiling and look at my face! My name is Jacob Delster, and the next time one of you doesn’t know my name I’ll make sure you never leave this fucking basement!”

  I knelt down and he leaned over me and slapped me on the back of the head repeatedly, yelling, “Now mix every goddamn piece of dip from those cans in with your fucking toe jam!”

  I took a giant, moist pinch between my fingers and thumb, squeezed it in between two toes, and then went on to the next gap. When I finished my right foot Mr. Stevens immediately wrapped it tightly with duct tape to make sure no dip fell out, and then forced my shoe back on. The intense smell of wintergreen that each can gave off made me nauseous as I moved to the left foot and repeated the process.

  I slid on my left shoe and reassumed my position on the wall. The nicotine immediately rushed through my veins like a freight train. I was in a daze, and The Maglite could smell weakness.

  “What’s my name, motherfucker?”

  My vision blurred, and I opened my mouth to speak, but all that came out was a line of drool. The Maglite leaned in toward me and screamed as loud as he could into my ear.

  “I said… what, is, my, name, motherfucker!”

  I couldn’t feel my face. My mouth hung open with my tongue lazily resting against my bottom lip, like a bulldog on tranquilizers.

  Then, in hazy slow motion, I watched The Maglite thrust his boulder-like head into mine with the power of a battering ram. I rocketed back into the wall and then collapsed to the floor. Mr. Weston and Mr. Harris restrained the violent legend as I felt my eyes flutter and pressed my hand to my forehead. When I pulled it back it was painted red.

  There is an unwritten rule that creates a line not to be crossed when it comes to physical abuse of pledges, and it had just been crossed. Mr. Stevens stood over me with two fistfuls of his own hair, staring down at the bloody mess that was my face.

  “Oh shit! Delster, you’ve got to get the fuck out of here.”

  He grabbed The Maglite by the arm and tried to pull him away as he kept shouting down at me.

  “I said what’s my fucking name, pledge! What’s my fucking name!?”

  Mr. Stevens pulled him harder, and as he stumbled toward the stairs The Maglite flung his half-finished beer inaccurately down the line to my left.

  “Remember my fucking name!” he yelled. “Next time there won’t be anyone to save you!”

  In my foggy state I glanced up the staircase and saw him point right at me.

  “I’m going to leave the imprint of my cock across your stupid fucking face!” Mr. Stevens slammed the door shut behind him, but I could still hear The Maglite shouting into the night.

  I felt blood pouring from my nose as Rogers and Parsells took me by the arm and stood me up, holding me against the wall. Trendall took one look at my forehead, turned to Mr. Weston, and had a total fucking meltdown.

  “Why are you doing this?” he cried out. “Look at his head!”

  “Calm the fuck down, Trendall,” said Mr. Weston. “Delster just had too much to drink, that’s all.”

  “Are you kidding me? He could have killed him! Look at him! Look!”

  Trendall started hyperventilating and dropped to the ground like a stone.

  “God damn it, drag him outside and make sure he’s okay,” said Mr. Weston.

  Monte picked Trendall up by his armpits and dragged him toward the stairs while Rogers and Parsells made sure I stayed awake. I heard Mr. Weston and Mr. Harris discussing what to do next.

  “Just get them the fuck out of here!” hissed Mr. Harris.

  “I’m going to, goddammit! Let me think!”

  Mr. Weston walked over to me and wiped the blood from my forehead and nose with his shirtsleeve.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes sir,” I responded.

  “Good. Keep your fucking mouth shut.”

  He stepped back and addressed the line.

  “Alpha business is Alpha business! If any of you tell anyone about what happened here tonight you will never come within a hundred feet of this house again! You don’t tell your mommies; you don’t tell your girlfriends; you don’t tell your fucking priest. Got it?”

  “Sir yes sir!” we rang out in unison.

  “Say it! Alpha business is Alpha business!”

  “SIR, ALPHA BUSINESS IS ALPHA BUSINESS, SIR!”

  “Good. Now get the fuck out of here,” he ordered.

  That’s when I learned the ironic fact that when hazing goes overboard—and it frequently does—it usually results in the end of the session. The actives don’t want things to escalate any further. Any chance of a violent mob mentality taking over on their side, or ours, ends badly for everyone.

  Parsells and Rogers supported me until we got outside and I started to regain my senses.


  “I’m all right,” I said as I shook them off and felt the gash on my head. “Do I need to go to the fucking emergency room?”

  Tim walked over and wiped my cut with the pocket linen from his blazer.

  “It’s not deep,” he said. “You’ll be fine, but I guess that’s what you get for fucking us.”

  Monte slapped me on the back. “Trendall came to, but I’m pretty sure he’s having a panic attack and headed to the dorm for some meds. Think you’ve got a concussion?”

  I shook my head no. As we filed toward the parking lot I remembered I still had two fresh cans of Grizzly contaminating my blood. I couldn’t even feel my forehead, because the nicotine had numbed my senses completely. I sat down on the curb and took my shoes off, and then Tim and Monte helped pull the duct tape from my feet.

  I threw up twice when I got back to my dorm, and pulled black dusty boogers from my nose the next morning. As stupid as it sounds, I felt a sense of accomplishment I had never known. I had survived.

  Pledgeship differs from chapter to chapter across the country, but houses that uphold the sacred traditions passed down from generation to generation go through very similar shit storms. These shit storms are what bond the pledges together with a shared experience that they will tell stories about, laugh about, and cry about for the rest of their lives…

  On Pledgeship and Hazing

  Hazing is like a taint. It separates the pussies from the assholes. TFM.

  Rudolph was the only reindeer that got hazed and look how well he turned out. TFM.

  Signing the anti-hazing agreement on a pledge’s back. TFM.

  Pledgerism—the art of having a pledge write your paper. TFM.

  Any sentence that starts with “pledge” is a command. TFM.

  Explaining to the Greek Life coordinator that the pledges that were blindfolded and walking through campus were actually participating in a visually impaired diversity exercise. TFM.