Free American Fraternity Man by Nathan Holic Page B

speaking to the room, but really I was speaking to Jenn. Or I would be soon , at least.
    But the room continued to buzz in a hundred different conversations. I waved my arms for attention, a small table topped with a half-dozen engraved academic plaques waiting to be presented and distributed, and it was Jenn who smiled up at me and then placed her drink on the table to unleash a vigorous earthquake-clap that didn’t seem possible from such tiny hands.
    The room stopped, cups frozen at lips, mouths paused in mid-word, as if stuck in a Saved By the Bell time-out.
    And it was Jenn who kissed me on the cheek, who projected her voice to reach the entire fraternity house, inside and out, upstairs and down, 150 people in all, Jenn who introduced me—“ My boyfriend, the president of the fraternity, an amazing guy who planned this entire night, and he’s just got a few words to say”—and it was Jenn who gripped my hand, the sort of soft squeeze that you can’t misinterpret and you can’t fake.
    The room broke into polite applause, not nearly as loud as a single clap from Jenn.
    “I want to thank you all for making the trip to attend our Senior Send-Off,” I told the assembled crowd. I tried to keep my eye on my girlfriend. To let her slip away, back into the crowd, would be to dash my plans: she needed to be close so that I could bend casually to my knee and present her the charm. “This event took a lot of planning,” I said, “and we wanted to make sure that we used this opportunity to spotlight some of the great aspects of our fraternity.”
    But as I spoke, the faces and bodies were already un-freezing, hands stuffing into pockets and backs slumping against walls in anticipation of some long and exhausting speech . Please, do we have to listen to this ? “Diversity in our membership,” I was saying, “a commitment to service, a National Headquarters that strongly believes” —mothers taking sips of wine, glassy eyes glossing further— “depiction of fraternities in the media and in Hollywood is 100 percent wrong , and we wanted to show you that” —fathers whispering into the ears of their sons, my fraternity brothers patting their dads on the back and then slinking away to the bar to mix a couple more drinks. Cell phones out. Text messages.
    But I continued speaking, said something about the mission and about the socially responsible citizens we were creating, and how proud I’d been to represent them all as their president, and my father stood in the back of the room, water in hand, never failing to make eye contact as I recited my prepared speech about the importance of scholarship to the fraternity mission; he sipped the water just the same as he sipped his morning coffee, stared directly into my eyes, perhaps already thinking of how he would call bullshit on my convictions.
    “Enough from me,” I said, and I dabbed my sweaty forehead with a napkin. “It’s time to hand out the awards and the annual Nu Kappa Epsilon scholarships.”
    And then the room erupted into real applause, this time much heartier than the last, this time genuine. And before I could say another word, Todd Hampton—the newly elected president of our chapter, the man who would move into my presidential suite once I drove away to Indianapolis in two weeks—was beside me, arm around me, and he was saying “I’ll take over from here, Charles. Why don’t you step down?”
    “Um,” I said, but he nudged me back into the crowd. And from down here, surrounded by fraternity brothers and swaying mothers and 50-year-old men still chewing ribs, I could no longer see Jenn. She’d fallen to the thick of the crowd somehow, maybe all the way to the back of the room. And Todd passed out plaque after plaque, “Best G.P.A.” and “Most Improved G.P.A.” and “The Damon Jarred Memorial Scholarship,” and it was supposed to be me up there, soaking in the applause and offering my commentary on the brothers who meant so much to me, the