eggwards | Past Times: Hard Fought Gains

Note: Past Time posts are long stories about my past that just shows a little of how I got here.

Ten years ago today, on a Sunday, I was lead, blindfolded into a room. It was a dark room, lit only by candles, with robed men and secrets. The ceremony was on, and with in an hour, I was officially initiated.

Today, in the hallway, there's a certificate that says that on this date, in 1994 I was initiated into Kappa Kappa Psi, but really it was a long process for me, a lot longer than the seven weeks of pledgeship that I had gone through.

You're probably thinking that pledging, or officially, joining (KKPsi doesn't want people to use the term "pledging" anymore, too negative), in 1994 seems a little late for someone who's now 36 years old, and you'd be right. My time in college wasn't a simple 4 and out. I took a long time going to school, trying to figure out what I wanted to do, being half way through a Drama degree before finding out I should try something else.

I switched to Journalism because I was already familiar with it from high school, and I had already been writing for the campus newspaper. Also during college I was an editor for the yearbook, worked behind the scenes for the theater, and played in the band. The band played for football and basketball games, and then there were parades, special events and the occasional rich alumni gig. I also worked part time, mostly for large department stores.

When I started with the Cougar Band coming from having played, and hating the saxophone. I had wanted to play a brass instrument, and this was my chance to change. I had been forced to go to sax in junior high when my band director was an idiot in teaching how to play brass, and I needed extra time to catch on. So he made an excuse that it was my braces, and told me to move to a woodwind instrument. Let me tell you, brass is where it's at, three keys lots of lip action and it's cold in the wintertime.

So, in changing I tried out the different instruments. Luckily, the band wasn't big enough to have things like tryouts. The University of Houston is a commuter school with no real school spirit. The band needed everybody they could get. So I tried the various instruments, and sort of settled on Tuba because it was easy to play, and Mike Allen was playing it. Mike Allen at that time looked like me, except five inches taller, with a big beard (I was clean shaven then) and long, flowing hair. He was also totally hairy, and tan from playing with the Madison Scouts Drum Corps all summer. He was really the first bear guy I really wanted.

I totally attribute my beard to Mike. We called him Ogre. I wanted to be like him, and be liked by him.

So I was terrible playing the Tuba. It was a new cleft, new music and having to get used to 60 pounds of metal on my shoulder. Eventually it caught on, but I was always more of a musical hack, not a musician.

Alright, then there's Kappa Kappa Psi, the National Honorary Fraternity for College Bandmembers. Note the word "honorary". It means that you are supposed to be good to join. The idea is that the best bandmembers, those that are good musicians, leaders and those that help move crap, would be asked to join. I, being the musical hack who was doing this for fun, I at first, wasn't asked to join.

I wanted to join. Heck, Ogre was in it. Ogre gave me my Tubad name, Egg. (The Tubads were what we called the Tuba section, it was much like a fraternity in it's own right). He and several others were cool folks. They were the backbone of the band, working on projects, building things, moving equipment. It's like equipment squad on steroids. There was a sorority too...yeah, whatever.

So, after going to all of the rush functions for a couple of years, I finally got a bid in 1989. I had one pledge brother, and six pledge sisters. The sisters did a lot better job in recruiting. By the end of the first week, my pledge brother had already given up. I kept going, but I quickly found that the program was really made for more than one pledge. All of the attention, and all of the hazing, and folks, there was hazing back then, was directed all on me.

I took what they dished out. There was one night that they nearly broke me. It was all a test to see how you would do when every answer you could provide to their questions would be wrong. They forced you to keep looking at one spot, never at the actives, while a spotlight was pointed at you. If I had pledge brothers, they would have had to work together with me to answer, Instead I had to have every bit of information memorized, all the right things, fraternity info, personal info about the members and the band. I think they expected me to break, but I was stronger than they thought.

Still, one week before I was to be initiated, I was told I was done. I had worked with my father to build my board, one of the last tests. Our chapter has a tradition that you build a board that looks like the fraternity pledge pin. It features a musical staff, raised above the board, and the greek letters above that. You build it tough enough to be tossed off a seven story building and not crack up. It's supposed to represent your efforts to build a strong bond with the fraternity, and because the frat often built things, it was good to know a member could be handy with a hammer and nails.

I never got to test that one. The brothers told me that they were terminating my pledgeship. While they spoke about my qualities in musicianship, and the fact that I was all alone in pledging, I knew that they were just bored with it, and didn't want to finish the whole thing. So they took my book, my paddle and my board, and told me that was it. My pledge sisters went on to join the sorority.

I was told i would be asked back. In fact, on the big interrogation night, a few weeks back, they asked me, "If we terminate your pledgeship tonight, would you do it again?" My answer was, yes, because I felt the organization was worth it. There was a lot of good to be done there, and I liked the camaraderie of it.

Of course, some of the folks had been absolute assholes. A few of them, years later actually apologized to me, saying that I was tough as nails, and I should have made it. I knew that, though. My big brother, Gene (who can be seen in an old issue of American Bear, strangely enough) eventually apologized that he was paying more attention to his color guard than to what was happening to me.

So five years pass. Five years of continuing to try. I had made friends with new people in the fraternity, even helping new members along the way. I had taken control of a jokey newsletter from the fraternity, and was productive, and even funny at times, made two video productions of the band, and taken control of the Tubads. i had really done well. Surprisingly, the sorority first came around.

During the years, the national fraternity and sorority had gone co-ed. You could be a female brother, or a male sister. It didn't matter anymore, unless you were our band director. He hated the idea. He had actually found a way to trump up charges of drinking on a band trip (which everyone did) to throw out the first girl trying to pledge the fraternity. The second one made it through. The sorority actually decided to take a try and gave me a bid. I was flattered, and actually thought about it.

The fraternity noticed, and gave me a bid, as well, for the 1994 class. I had to disappoint the girls, but they understood that I had wanted to join the frat. I found out later that the band director had not wanted me to join. he had actually told both groups not to give me a bid, and they both defied him. It lead to a deep distrust of the man over the next few years, and friction between the frat and him for some time. luckily he didn't know I was gay, because he was totally homophobic. Bad thing to be when your leading a marching band.

I started with 3 "membership candidates", since the word "pledge" had been outlawed. I ended with one brother, Geoff, or as we knew him by his Tubad name, Cabrito (little goat in spanish).

The process was similar, but with a lot less aggravation. Much of the old-style hazing was gone, with more of an emphasis on learning and brotherhood. I was unique, having seen both, and knowing a lot of what was coming. Geoff got a lot of info of what was coming, though I was told not to tell him about what would happen to the boards.

We got to the last week and we dropped our boards. These were new boards that Geoff, my dad and I made. They had to go about three times to get them to stay intact from the seven-story fall. Our big brothers tried helping to glue, nail and paint everything down. My big brother, Sean, who was both younger and shorter than I was, was very concerned about getting me through. Trust me, it was a breeze compared to 1989.

We got past the recital - yes, we actually had to play instruments, and the skit show, where we had to make up skits about the actives. The skit show was my favorite thing, both times because I got to "act" and make fun of people, using the same stuff we used in the "Band Aid" newsletter. One thing from 1989 was that one of the sorority actives was very prim and proper, and she gave demerits to anyone who said a swear word. I and my sorority sisters lined up and each just let out a big swear word. Mine was "tits'. For the 1994 edition, we imagined the whole Nancy Kerrigan incident, with Tank, who was the only member still around from the first time, even after being thrown out previously. Obviously he was framed, right? It was all a Gilooly.

So we get to the last week, and Geoff asks me what would come next. I turned to him and happily said "I don't know". This was before the "Hell Week" ceremony, which I gleefully performed a couple of years later when i was fraternity president. It's an unofficial thing, and it's all to set the mood, and has the president standing high above the candidates, telling them what their projects and responsibilities for the week, and then the candidates give their paddles over to their big brother (it's a gift, i have four of them).

The president's head almost touches the celling, and the candidates are crowded in by the actives in a small, dark room. The president then yells "Welcome to Hell Week", and with his hands stamps out the two candles. The candidates are pushed out of the room. After my performance, the candidates said to me, "damn, you scared the crap out of me!" They never expected it. It was all in good fun.

Well, the week went by, we finished our assignments. We got to hell night and were blindfolded and driven away into the woods. All about intimidation again. It was a watered-down version of the interrogation from years ago, so it wasn't a big deal, just outside, and with the members from Sam Houston State in Huntsville also in attendance. Tank came over and snidely asked me, if I'm so smart, where were we. I could tell as we were going that we had passed my parents house. The roads and directions were very familiar to me. I told him "We're about 10 miles west of Huntsville in Sam Houston National Forest, right?" He looked at me and grumbled, "bastard". I found later that the location was a big secret.

So, ten years ago tonight i had made it. Although I had gripes with the people who turned me down (or blackballed, as it used to be said), I still wanted to belong. It was important for me to accomplish this and prove to myself I could do it. As Sean pinned me with the active pin, I cried. Gene, who has come to the ceremony, congratulated me, as did a few others from the 1989 period. At the dinner afterwards, many of my pledge sisters from the first time were there. Egg had made it. I was finally a brother.

Oddly enough, the day before I had gotten the notice from the university that I could walk in the 1994 commencement. I was 26, just graduating and just joined a frat. Strange that the fraternity membership seemed more important, it affected me greater, then. The diploma was just a piece of paper. The fraternity was recognition, and friends, and responsibility. A few months later, George Bush Sr. spoke at commencement, and I got a piece of paper that I still don't think means much. Maybe because a journalism degree is a joke.

I decided to stay in school and go for an RTV degree. It was really more of a ploy to be a frat rat for a few years. In those years I was vice president, bringing in a new class, and president. I also was a district officer, traveling around the area, which put me in Oklahoma City when the Federal Building exploded. I'm most proud of being a big brother four times. By Summer 1996 I was out of money and needed to move on, so i left. Still, i've advised committees, helped with fundraisers, helped run and alumni chapter that i was president of for five years and helped new district officers.

My connections are diminishing, though. Even though I still attend rituals from time to time, I don't know the people very well. The band director changed as well. I won't be going to district convention this year either. It happens in tax season and it's in Fayetteville, Arkansas. If you've ever been there, not far from Wal-Mart country and the home of the Arkansas Razorbacks, than you know where hell is.

Still, I wear a ring that has the fraternity letters on it that I got when National Convention was in orlando. my fellow district officers also have them. Now i think i wear it more for luck than actual promotion of the frat, but it's still special.

The fraternity was the first group that i told I was gay. It was a group of support that helped me learn who I was, and let me try out my leadership skills, even though I had already started honing them before. it was like I was already a member except in official standing. I did so much with them already. It's also a place where several good friends has come from like the Blands, Dawn and John, whom John was a little brother, and Dawn I fought for without the band director's approval, just like me. Little power cub Hans was also one of my recruits.

After the ritual was over, I could go into the frat room with out having to ask. I could go into the archives and look at what was there. The first thing I went to find was my book and board from 1989. the paddle was on the "wall of shame" with others that had quit or been blackballed, but i hadn't quit, I was there. i had made it.

Some one asked me, "should we take that down?" I said "No. It should stay to be seen by others. I worked to hard to get here".