Tau Beta Declares War Part 2

The big Tau Beta pledges dragged Two-Can and I inside the house so fast I barely got a chance to look around before they tossed us to the ground. Face down, I took a second to reflect on the nice carpet. “How the fuck… do you keep this so clean?” I sat, grabbing a handful and pulling myself into a crouch. “Do you guys ever party around here?” I looked up to see skinny, weaselly Dwight sitting on a massive chair--holy shit, was that thing made of gold? Was Dwight really sitting on a freaking throne?

“You two are lucky you’re not getting beaten into big stains on this ‘clean carpet,’” Dwight said. He was slumped to the side, resting his head on his fist like he was bored or something. The gorilla-sized pledges formed a wall between us and the door.

“Where are you guys getting your pledges?” I said, looking up at the 6 brick shithouses crossing their arms and flexing their wide shoulders. “You feeding growth hormone to chimps and getting them to rush or something?”

Dwight chuckled. “You know, you Phi Kapps aren’t the only ones with oversized steak-gnashers running around. You guys walk around like you’re the biggest on campus, but as you can see, you’re hardly that anymore. How is Mr. Moose doing, anyway?”

I gritted my teeth, ready to spit in this asshole’s face, but Two-Can grabbed my shoulder.

“Why did you do it?” Two-Can asked.

“More like HOW did you do it?” I added.

Dwight smirked at me, then stared at Two-Can. The two locked eyes for a long uncomfortable minute. Something was up between them, but I couldn’t find the words to ask.

“The ‘how’ is easy,” Dwight finally said. He winked at me. “I can do anything I fucking want to. But for the ‘why’? You really do think all your ‘brothers’ are totally accepting of people like you, don’t you Tony?”

I hadn’t heard Two-Can’s real name in so long I almost had to ask who Dwight was talking to. “What, you mean cuz he’s gay?” I said. Dwight just kept staring at Two-Can, who didn’t say a word. “We are totally accepting of him you ass.”

“You should have heard what your buddy ‘Moose’ said to me,” Dwight said as if I wasn’t even in the room. “The usual words like ‘cocksucker’ and a few delightful f-words, but he got really specific when he found out about the history between you and me.”

“He was just mouthing off,” Two-Can said. “Just tossing insults because you’re a Tau Beta. He’s just a big dopey guy. He doesn’t think too much about anything, let alone about me being gay or… the fact that we dated.”

Dwight shrugged. I did my best to act like this was something I already knew, even though I wanted to grab Two-Can by the ears and start screaming a list of questions at him.

“Undo it,” Two-Can said. “Put him back and we’ll be out of here. And call off this whole ‘war’ thing.”

Dwight bounced his eyebrows. I wanted to rip them off his smug fucking face. “You know, boys, you really need to commune with your house’s elders. I mean, back in the day, a declaration of war was taken seriously. You two would have been ripped apart just for walking by our house and had your entrails hung on display as a warning to others. But I’m a modern man, far more creative than the Tau Betas of yesteryear. I don’t have to resort to ‘violence’ to do damage to your pathetic little brotherhood.”

“Pathetic?” Two-Can asked.

“LITTLE?” I shouted.

“If you two turn around and walk out our front door with your tails between your legs, I’ll be merciful enough to let it happen,” Dwight said, “but because I don’t want that mercy misinterpreted as kindness, or surrender… I’m going to make a little statement.”

“Dwight, please--” Two-Can started.

“Two of your brothers are dating Alpha Chi sisters--women I’m friends with. And I happen to know that both of those scumbags are cheating on my friends.”

“No idea who you’re talking about,” I said, and I meant it.

“Juice, and Fabio,” Two-Can said quietly. I knew both of those guys had girlfriends but our house had kind of a revolving cast of female characters so I never paid too much attention to the ones who weren’t paying attention to me. I had no doubt both of those guys were cheating on their girls though. They were huge, pretty guys without a lot of smarts. They both let their big bull balls do the thinking for them.

“Trust me, these ladies are far above your kind, they just don’t know it yet. So allow me to make a little adjustment.” Dwight snapped his fingers. I felt something electric in the air when it happened, but then it was gone. “Your two ridiculously nicknamed brothers are going to get their own unique little punishments for what they’ve done to my friends. And let me make it clear that I’m not finished. This is far from over. By the time I’m done, every one of your brothers is going to get what’s coming to them. Now beat it.”

Suddenly Two-Can and I each found ourselves in the massive shadows of two of the Tau Beta pledges. The big bruisers sneered and pounded their huge fists together. My instincts told me to start kicking at balls but Two-Can grabbed my by the shirt and dragged me toward the door. If I wasn’t so hungry to grill him about this whole “dated a Tau Beta” thing I probably would have fought harder.

“Tell me he was fucking lying,” I said as we walked back to Phi Kappa. He had his hands in his pockets, staring at the ground. “No fucking way. You dated a Tau Beta?”

“He wasn’t a Tau Beta then,” Two-Can said. “And I wasn’t a Phi Kapp. It was before we pledged, freshman year. Neither of us was even out of the closet.”

“So what, you dated him for like the first two weeks of school until rush season?”

Two-Can was quiet for longer than I was comfortable with.

“Dude, your ex-boyfriend may have just shrunk two more of our bros into scrawny little wimps,” I said. “You really think you have the luxury of dodging questions right now?”

“Okay!” Two-Can said. “We dated almost the whole year. I ended it when things started getting serious. I hated the secrets and shit. He loved it, said it made it romantic, but I hated living a double life. I broke up with him, then a week later I got really hammered and… came out of the closet.”

I let those facts sink in. “You broke up with him but THEN came out to us? Man, that must have really stuck in old Dwight’s craw something fierce.”

Two-Can groaned as we approached Phi Kappa. “I know. It wasn’t planned that way, it just… happened. He and I never really talked after we broke up either.”

“Well, clearly he’s still dealing with some hurt feelings, dummy,” I said, punching in the combination to the front door.

We went to Fabio’s room first. All 6’6” of him was stretched out on his couch. Fabio was a rower on the crew team, a massive blonde slab of dude with abs you could grate cheese on and dimples most ladies went nuts on--plus that long romance-novel hair of his that earned him his named. Even straight guys had to agree: Fabio was a beautiful dude.

Crew practice must have been over, because Fabio had already polished off half a pizza and was quickly demolishing the other half.

“Fabio!” Two-Can said. “You… look fine.”

The big lug grinned and shrugged. “I mean, shouldn’t I? I feel totally wiped,” he said. “Practice was brutal today. But other than that I’m good. Why?”

“No reason,” I said. We went down the hall to Juice’s room. As usual he was shirtless, pumping out dozens of reps on a heavily loaded barbell. Juice wasn’t that tall but he was a meteor of muscles. Seriously, you could learn anatomy just by studying every one of his massive veiny bulges.

I had expected him to have shrunk down like Moose had, but if anything, he looked even bigger.

“Juice, you’re doing okay, right?” I asked. He grunted and busted out a good ten more reps before tossing the barbell to the ground with a slam.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “Why?”

“We’re just… curious,” Two-Can said awkwardly and we both backed out.

“So, Fabio is still enormous and a stone-cold stunner, and Juice is still an overgrown meat factory, so you think Dwight was bluffing?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” Two-Can said, shifting uneasily. “Dwight does NOT bluff.”

“Maybe it’s a different thing than Moose? Maybe it’s like… a mental change or something.” Not like there was much to change, to be honest. Juice and Fabio were literally trophy-winning guys but neither had ever won a contest thanks to brainpower.

“Dwight said they were getting a ‘unique punishment’ so I guess it could be anything, right?” Two-Can said. “Should we tell anyone else what happened?”

As much as I didn’t like to admit it, Phi Kappa was shaking in their boots over what happened with Moose. There was no way I was going to further that by letting them know that Tau Beta was slinging curses at us.

What we needed was a morale booster. As their leader, it was up to me to figure out what we could do.

“Two-Can, call Diesel and Taurus. I have an idea.”

An hour later Diesel, Taurus and I gathered outside Moose’s room with a packed gym bag. None of us had seen the big guy--or rather, what was left of him--in over a day, but that was about to end. I was tired of us Phi Kapps cowering while Dwight and his mega-pledges strutted around like they were in charge.

“Yo, Moose!” I said, banging hard on the door. “Open up buddy.” No response, so I backed up and shouldered it hard. It popped open easily (Moose had crashed through his own door a dozen times, every time he forgot his key, and despite the repairs it got easier to break down every time).

The first thing I noticed when I walked in was the smell--or the lack thereof. Big Moose had a pretty constant testosterone fog pouring off his body at all times. He dated a gymnast once and I used to tell her that licking his sweat would disqualify her from the Olympics. But now Moose’s room smelled different. Clean, but something extra, like balsa wood.

I thought the bed was empty until I turned on the light and realize that Moose was in it, but just didn’t make much of a lump under the covers anymore. I walked right up and yanked them back. Behind me, Diesel and Taurus both gasped.

Big Moose, who was practically a Mac Truck of a man for as long as I knew him, was a skinny little twig now. His body was totally hairless now, a big change from the hairy physique he’d sported since he was twelve years old. There wasn’t a teaspoon of muscle on his whole frame. I would have thought he was an underfed kid until I saw his face and realized he was certainly a full-grown man, just one with an almost entirely undeveloped body.

That was about to change. “Time to quit feeling sorry for yourself, Moose,” I said. He jumped at the sound of my voice. Moose had been a force of nature, the kind of guy who could get the wind to stop by growling at it.

His hands when to cover his junk but not before we saw. Guys--straight guys--who got a glimpse of Moose’s hose never stopped whispering about it. It was the kind of pelvis-wrecking unit that you usually only see on big farm animals, but now he just had a little acorn and two tic-tac balls in a wrinkly little sack.

But I was done comparing what Moose used to be to what he was. He was big before, he could be big again. I unzipped the gym bag and tossed Moose the clothes Diesel had borrowed from little Squeak. “Get dressed, Moose. It’s Back day and I know you’re dying to move some weight.”

“But--” he said in a voice so high I almost laughed. “--I can’t… I’m not going to the gym like this!” he said, examining Squeak’s little clothes (that were perfectly sized for him now).

“You can and you will,” I said. “If he’s not on his feet in five seconds, grab his little arms and yank him up,” I said as I turned to the door.