Recollecting My Fraternal Past

"I was in a fraternity."
"GASP!! You!?! Why?"

More times than not, this is the reaction I got from people. The louder the "Gasp", the gayer the person I was telling. What was profoundly upsetting was that this reaction is purely based on what they believed to be, what fraternities were about. Like this. That's only part of the truth about fraternities and not necessarily the truth in my story.

The question of "Why?", it was because of a dream. Believe me, I'm not a nutcase where upon I act on the voices in my head when I'm sleeping. I've only had maybe three or four dreams which I have acted upon... none of them have included a living sacrifice.

Early on, my subconscious had the ability to tell me what I needed. I'd been a loner since HS, gay angst or something of the like, etc. I'd been in college for almost a year, going to class, then home and off to work. Pretty routine, pretty dull. I had some neighborhood friends with which I hung around with. We idled away the time walking about, catching movies and playing sports. *Yawn* I was not outgoing or eager to join any organization on campus. The thought never occured to me. So... my dream, I never did recall the details... but the feeling, when I awoke, was of intense sadness and the thought that "I have no real friends." I was shaken and vowed to fix it.
As fate would have it, Albert, a classmate had been pledging during that semester. He'd gotten in and asked me, "Why don't you pledge next semester?" I said "Sure."

My pledge name was Confucius, a fact with which I'm proud of. A suitable name, they would eventually learn. But I swear, I would have dropped on the spot if they called me "Eggroll."

I won't deny that I was "hazed", if you could really call it that. Thankfully, I didn't suffer at the end of a paddle. But I did wear a fair amount of food stuff, more than I would ever intend on my own. There were acts of humiliation, like belting out a pledge greeting for a Brother in a public place. I always did it nice and loud, since I was attracting attention to myself, sure as hell I was going to attract attention to the Brother too.

Any naughty sex acts during pledging? Alas, No. (Rats!) After I got in, well, I'll get back to that later.

My pledge class was made up of eight guys, including me. We were a motley crew. We could not have been any more different. Different in style, different in thinking, we were just completely mismatched. Somehow, after 8 weeks of pledging, we were in. Ideally, I should have been inseparable from my pledge brothers. It really didn't work. Being in a commuter school, pledging didn't foster the friendships, bound in misery like that of pledging at an away school. Regardless, I'd been accepted by group of men, from which I could build friendships from. This was when the rewards would be reaped and the hard work began.

Next: Unbroken Bonds, Reconnecting Today.