Equality Liberty Fraternity

Dedicated fondly to the inimitable Victoria Tuft.

Chad had a very successful first year on campus. He was one of the most popular guys to come through the school in a long time. Great grades, athletic prowess, throngs of worshipers (male and female) and great parties were the envy of every matriculating freshman, particularly Jason. Part of Chad's popularity had been due to his meteoric ascent through the ranks of the university's most revered fraternity: Alpha Phi Omega (APO).

At the beginning of the school year there were hundreds of guys eager to pledge for APO. For the first time that any of the fraternity brothers could recall, Chad - a sophomore - was given the highly desirable task of devising admission requirements for a subgroup of pledges. The process was formerly known as "hazing," but after some crazy stunts that drew attention from the local media, the boys could no longer refer to the process in that way. In fact the entire procedure to determine a pledge's right of entry evolved into something much more artistic. The traditions changed; there were fewer keg stands and more mind games that involved unknowing pledges drinking non-alcoholic beer and reacting like drunken fools, only to have the administering brother tell them it wasn't alcoholic. Such innovation spelled the making or breaking of many hopefuls; the highest ranking brothers were clearly the most creative.

It was Brian, the fraternity president, who held the keys that Chad sought. Chad knew Brian to prize ingenuity and creativity far above anything else when it came to testing the mettle of incoming pledges. "We don't want any pussies in the APO house unless they're attached to an x chromosome!" Originality ran in Chad's blood; he studied to be a copywriter and his professors from the first year extolled his work as being the finest that they'd ever seen. It was while smoking a cigarette from the back balcony of the frat house that he found his inspiration.

Jason had a dreadful senior year at high school and was pleased to have made it off the waiting-list and into a well-regarded private university. While the likes of Chad got a full ride for his perfect SAT score, Jason's father dished out $45,000 every year. Jason thankfully saw the whole college experience as a fresh start and was eager to begin again. Part of the re-invention for Jason meant being part of a fraternity; he never found the type of camaraderie that he sought in high school, so when he heard about the concept of a fraternity and what it meant he knew that he had to be a part of APO. It was all going smoothly until Jason arrived at the first pledge meeting to find Chad running the show.

Chad vaguely remembered Jason from more than a year ago when they competed in football. Jason was a second-string quarterback for the Beavers, a team that was mocked locally not only for it's inability to score. In fact, Jason vividly remembered being sacked again and again during every game against the Bulls, the team for which Chad starred as a nose-tackle.

Jason remembered Chad quite well; after each hit, Chad would smile through his face mask and laugh affably. "Sorry there, little beav." Jason couldn't stand it, and at the same time Chad was so polite without the slightest trace of sarcasm. Jason felt that he'd have a difficult time pledging. It wasn't that Chad was mean, on the contrary he was just too... good. He set the bar so high that reaching it would be more difficult than escaping his blitz on the field. Jason walked up to Chad to introduce himself and before he could gain a first-strike advantage, either with words or handshake, Chad flashed a handsome and reminiscent grin. "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

At that first meeting, Chad laid it out pretty simply. "Your first assignment, should you choose to accept..." A long thin crease split his stubbled chin. "Is to go and obtain a pair of panties." The pledges all looked confusedly at one-another. Pledge requirements were typically awful acts meant to forge life long bonds. What was so difficult about getting a pair of panties?

"The panties," Chad continued "cannot be just any pair of panties. They must be a pair of your mother's panties." The guys started to grumble.

"Used." The room exploded into an incredulous roar as the final requirement was stated with no more certainty the the previous two. "Well guys, if you don't want to be part of a fine fraternity that values tradition and brotherhood, perhaps there are some sororities that are still looking?"

That word tingled in the air: brotherhood. Getting a pair of his mother's worn panties would certainly not be a problem for Jason. He was one of the few guys that actually considered doing exactly what Chad had asked. A probing mind might have considered that the group of 14 guys was from all over the country and that the assignment was to be completed within a week. Were the guys going to call their mothers and ask them to send a pair of their used panties? All Jason needed to do was to go home that weekend, a feat easily accomplished by calling his mother and asking her to drive for forty-five minutes to pick him up. When she fretted over why he'd want to come back home after being away for only a couple of weeks, he replied "it's getting pretty hectic with all the parties and I have an important exam coming up. I could really use the peace and quiet back home to help me study." He was back to the campus by Monday morning, ready for class and strangely, almost excited for the pledge meeting.

Chad's pledge group narrowed by one, an acceptable attrition rate that more than passed muster. From his remaining stock of 13, only 9 of the hopefuls would call themselves brothers one day and Jason was still in it. The pledges lined up, and each handed over the pair as if they were trying to protect the answers on a quiz from prying eyes. Chad accepted thong after thong with a pleasant expression. Like a movie ticket usher tearing the ticket in half and admitting the corresponding patron to his seat, Chad put each pair gently into an opaque vertical cylinder. It had a crank on it's circular end and was similar to the type of device used in lotto drawings. When Jason handed over the pink sheer pair of panties that he'd nabbed from his mother's hamper, Chad smiled in the same way that he smiled to each other boy. After collecting them all, Chad began to furiously crank the handle and correspondingly whirl the cylinder. As his muscles flexed, it appeared as though he was winding up an antique phone and preparing to ask the operator to put him through. "OK guys. Round and round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows!"

The pledges watched anxiously. Jason tried to ask the tallest pledge "what's going on?" The guy, without looking at Jason just shrugged and watched Chad.

"Now fellas, the next step gets a little more involved." He brought the cylinder to a jarring halt and with it, each pledge's nerves. The delicates flopped to a standstill inside the thin metal drum like crash test dolls in a car accident. "Who's the lucky fella?" He proffered a flimsy pink garment outward for the 26 eager eyes. "Hey, it's a nice one. Petite!" He grinned. The guys all looked around and Jason felt a lump rising in his stomach. "Come on fellas, we don't have all night!"

"It... It's mine. Er, my mom's."

"Jason! It is Jason, right?"

"Yeah, Chad."

"Well, this part shouldn't bother you too much, I hope." He handed the panties down to a short muscled guy with a buzzed head. Time slowed as Jason recognized him to be the guy who sat in front of him during mathematics - he'd obtained a perfect score on his first two quizzes. His name was Brett. "Take a deep whiff, Studdebacker." The previously tense room fulminated in a roar of cheerful relief; a physics professor citing the law of conservation of energy might have graphically illustrated how the terror was instantly converted into machoism - the stuff from which college experiences were made. "Go on, get into a circle and pass it around. Everyone who wants to be a part of this frat must smell the crotch. Jase, you're in the middle, you just have to watch." A circle quickly formed around Jason. The guys hooted and as they passed the panties from hand to hand. Jason watched, astonished, particularly as the thin gusset was touched by so many young fingers. There were thick fingers that he'd watched gripping pencils and smudging graphite that was traced firmly onto multiple-choice test forms; thinner artistic fingers that delicately tickled piano keys up and down the scale; black fingers like the ones on his roommate that were perpetually hitting the "u" and "r" keys on a keyboard to ask "Where r u?" as they introduced themselves to married women over the internet; all of these fingers which had grasped cigarettes, wiped noses, and scratched armpits were now suggestively finessing the crotch of his mother's panties.

Jason was floored. His apparent inertia egged the cohort along. The tall guy, seeming to have forgotten that Jason was trying to ask him a question, brought the panties to his face with a near reverence that slowly and deeply inhaled; there was enough detail in the act for a keen writer to have chronicled a full chapter about such a simple action. The panties yielded his mother's essence through their smell.

"Jase, what vintage am I working with here?" His smile was more horizontal than Chad's. He pressed it again right into his nose, gently inhaling air through the gossamer membrane. "Nineteen seventy?" The guys began to guffaw. "Check this out!" He exposed the inside of the familiar crotch. "She's not one for waxing, is she? All natural!" Even though Jason stood several feet away, he could see what must have been the thickest, curliest brown pubic hair that he'd ever known. It was coiled in defense underneath this guy's lengthy finger. The panties continued their circuit until they'd made their way back to Chad.

"Don't worry bud, I've got enough for myself. I'd actually prefer not to ruin my dinner." He tucked the panties into his front pocket where they dangled helplessly.

Jason wasn't furious. He wasn't upset or humiliated. The moment felt bizarre - somehow the concept of brotherhood seemed to fit exactly as it should have with his mother's purloined and probed undergarment. It was like each of these guys now knew his mother better than he knew her, and there was a slight cringe that accompanied the thought of his mother dropping him off at the frat and talking to some of the brothers as he'd seen other moms do. "Yeah, no trouble Chad. I know that I'm pledging to the best frat around and that these traditions are to test my stuff. I can handle whatever you can throw at me."

"Awesome buddy, because that tricky part is still to come." The room was filled with a vacuum - a crashing wave that had already broken and was sucking its catch back out to sea. The lips on the pledges puckered into a prolonged "Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh!"

"Fate has selected you to get your hands on a naked photo of your mom." The requirement was delivered cooly and clinically. "Don't worry, we won't pass it around in the same way that we did with these." Chad thumbed the sheer pink that swayed out from his pocket like a damsel in distress pleading to Jason from a tall tower. "You just need to show the picture to Brian and me." The pledges exchanged disbelieving looks - none of which were shared with Jason.

Jason left the meeting in a daze. He wondered how he'd ever get a naked picture of his mother. On the face of it, he could catch his mom coming from the shower or even hide a camera in her closet to catch her changing. It was risky. It was wrong. To be accepted into the frat was something for which he ached. And it meant showing his mother's bare likeness to a jerk that had seemed to get off on tackling him and some other dude he didn't even know. Who was Brian? Would these guys really keep the picture quiet?

Wait! Why ask who Brian was? He didn't even know who he himself was! Would he do something that was so depraved? My god! He'd gone as far as to think about ways that he could do it! He'd been thinking about the consequences of what might happen if he took the picture! He'd been thinking about the consequences if he hadn't! And for what? Had he always been like this?

He ended up telling Chad that he didn't want to be a part of APO on Thursday. Chad nodded and told Jason that he understood.

On Friday the short pledge with the shaved head in Jason's math class turned around for the first time. "You're Jason, right?" No one on campus seemed to acknowledge Jason during those first couple of weeks. Jason had tried to make conversation with a couple of guys about the weather or about classes, though answers were always concise and questions unreciprocated. "Listen, man. I'm gonna lay this down easy for you, because I don't have anything personal against you and I know that you've been put into a tough situation." It figured - a motive. "Chad told us that if you don't get that picture of your mom, then we're all out - the entire pledge class." Jason's jaw hung a few centimeters off of his desk. "I mean, I just fudged the whole panty thing - got a pair from a girl I've been seeing. I'm sure that you did the same, right?"

Fuck. "Yeah, well, I mean..."

"I get it! You're not even seeing her, are you?" His two rows of teeth were stunning and symmetrically perfect. "Well, plenty of the guys in the pledge class are upset. I can only guess it's because they were stupid enough to go and snag a pair of their own mothers' drawers. A couple of them are looking for you."

"They are?"

"Yup. I guess it's easier for them to blame their stupidity on someone else. I think that they're idiots for giving Chad something like that to begin with. You have to know how to play this game, right? It was just shitty luck that he drew you in the lotto." It was by some miracle that Jason's weak lips held their smile. If the entire incident could be compressed into a sentence, it certainly would have been the sentence used by Webster's to describe sordid. It was all too bizarre.

"Well, what would you do? I don't want to take a picture of my naked mom!" The guy laughed. "Hey, what's your name by the way?"

"Oh, thought you knew. I'm Brett Studdebacker. My friends call me Studz. Nice to meet you, buddy."

"Cool. I'm Jason, but I guess you knew that." The two guys shook hands, Brett's handshake was stronger with less effort. It was conceivable that he'd spent many hours suspended in an iron cross formation between two rings. Jason continued to ask his question. "Seriously, man! What would you do?"

Brett's eyes traced the lines on the wall. "The way that I see it... Well, Chad only said a nude picture of your mom, right?"

"Yeah, yeah." Jason made a downward motion with flattened palms. Brett's volume was loud enough for the guys around them to hear the conversation.

"Sorry." His eyes apologized guiltily as he quickly turned to observe the proximity of his classmates. "I'm pretty sure that when you give them the picture, they will let you keep the portion that has her face, at least that's what Chad said. Don't get too strung out about this whole thing, Jase. It's really just a way to show that you are gonna be a bro' - right?" In spite of his already naturally bulbous pecs, Brett's chest seemed to puff out slightly.

"Yeah, yeah. I guess that you're right."

"I'd say just snap a photo of her when she's coming out of the shower. Does she shower with her door open?" Jason blushed.

"How the hell should I know?"

"Right, right." Brett laughed. "Well, even if she doesn't - she's probably distracted enough to not hear the door open with the water running. If it's not open, just put it slightly ajar and... I really can't stress this enough... Make sure that the flash is off!" Jason laughed at the way Brett interspersed humor into an otherwise serious matter.

"You'd do the same if it was your mom?"

"Ahhhh, look. I'm sure I can get into some other frat if things don't pan out, but APO is pretty cool. Can't really answer the question honestly since it's a tough one, but I think I probably would."

"Thanks for the advice, Brett, er, Studz." Jason looked down at his desk for a moment. "Hey, you don't need a study partner for class, do you? I'm really having trouble with the whole differential equations thing." Brett leaned-in.

"Look bud, I appreciate the offer. I'm doing pretty well. Got a 4.0 so far. I'd love to help you out, but there are some sticky situations going around with this whole APO 'hazing' thing, and I don't want to jeopardize my chances in case Chad changes his mind and says that we are still being considered. Of course, if you changed your mind and went ahead with the photo, you may want to tell him it was my idea. Certainly it could get me a few brownie points. If that happens... I'd freakin' do your homework for you." Brett's hands leapt the border between the end of his chair and the start of Jason's desk. Those fingers, the ones that had touched his mother's panties were eagerly splayed out before Jason.

"Alright, let me see about it. Of course you don't have to write my homework for me, just tutor me. What good am I if I can't do any of this stuff myself?" Despite the laughter, the question wasn't humorous.

"Right, right. Gotcha. Now if you don't mind..." Brett turned back around in his seat and busied himself with the homework assignment which he hadn't finished. Just as the glow was fading, he rapidly spun back around. "Oh! One other thing!"

Jason's effulgent smile had spread so far across his face that he felt kind of queer. "Yeah?"

"You know that pube that Michaels pointed out the other night in the pair of panties you snagged?" Jason could have pinpointed that moment down to one ten-thousandth of a second using GMT+X.

"Uh... Michaels is the tall guy, right?"

"Yeah, he's a jack-ass if you ask me. But you remember that pube?"

"Yeah..."

"Right, right... Well is she?"

"Is she what?"

"You know, is that pube hers? That girl you're doin'. Has she got a beav?" Was Brett joking around?

"Uh, well... yeah."

"Damnit! All the girls that I've come across on this campus keep it clean. It's like a bunch of pre-pubescent little ninnies. I'd love to get with a lady that was comfortable keepin' it real, ya know? A real woman! You lucky bastard!" Jason felt relieved and even a little flattered.

"Yeah, it's kinda hot that way, huh?"

"It's a wet fuckin' dream!" Brett leaned in closely again. "If you get tired of her and she wants some fun between the sheets with a tight gymnast," Brett winked. "Give her my e-mail, bud." Jason almost tripped over the last part.

"What is your e-mail?" Brett ripped an entire sheet of paper out of his notebook and began to scribble.

"Here ya go." Jason read the neat, angular blue print that stayed between the college-ruled lines.

studb@XXX.edu

Jason was well aware of Brett's last name being Studdebacker. It was by convention of the school's e-mail generation paradigm that he was revealed as a stud.

"God! Now I'm not even gonna be able to focus in class!" He spun back around in his chair. Jason was dying to ask him what he meant.

It was surprisingly simple to get a snapshot of his naked mother. Almost too simple. Jason did exactly what Brett suggested. The pixelated image showed his mother to be eerily old-fashioned - the look that someone like Brett preferred. Jesus! What would Brett say if he saw the photo? Since it had to be shown to Chad and Brian anyway, the niggling idea of Brett accidentally seeing it stuck in Jason's head.

Chad did what he could to clear his schedule when Jason requested a private meeting with him and Brian. All of them were wearing cargo shorts and t-shirts, and only Jason wore an additional button-down shirt to obscure the fact that his arms weren't nearly the size of Brian or Chad's.