This is a story about college and fraternity life. It contains explicit sexual activity between males. If such is offensive to you or if you are not of an age where reading such material is legal, please move on. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the story.
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DELTA IOTA KAPPA
by Macout Mann
Chapter 14
James and Max
As the fall term had progressed with James and George living together, James came to have more than just a sexual relationship with Max. So it was quite natural that James again offered to drive Max as far as Dallas come Christmas break. James also asked his dad if he would treat them to the Cotton Bowl Game on New Year's Day, that is, if Max would like to attend. Max was becoming a Sanderson football star after all.
Mr. Winthrop said that it had been a while since they'd been to a Cotton Bowl Game and it would be fun to take a football player to see a football game. So James extended the invitation to Max. He could come back to Dallas on New Year's Eve, spend a couple of days at the Winthrop's, and then they could drive back to Sanderson. Max was overjoyed.
On the long drive from Virginia to Texas, James raised the question he'd always wondered about Max. "You were so fucking hostile about gays, when I first met you," he said. "And now you can't get enough dick, man. What the score?"
Max responded very simply. "I wasn't myself."
He then related the story of his sexual odyssey beginning with the punishment he received when his father found him and his buddy jacking each other off and ending with his awakening at the hands of the radio disc jockey. "Shit," he ended, "if my dad knew anything that was going on he'd kill my motherfucking ass."
"I don't know what my folks would do, if they knew I was gay," James responded. "Until I got to Sanderson I was in the closet to everybody but my best friend. Now at least I can be honest to you and my fraternity brothers."
When they reached Dallas, as he had done before, James drove directly to DFW. This time he warmly embraced Max and promised to meet Max's plane on the thirty-first. Then he drove away to the totally different world that was Highland Park.
Christmas at the Winthrops followed the familiar pattern it always had. James arranged a couple of dates with proper girls to keep up his straight façade. He took one to a church function, another to a Christmas event at the country club. He talked to George by phone a couple of times.
He met Max at DFW on New Year's Eve as promised. The plane was almost an hour late due to holiday traffic, but they managed to arrive at the Winthrop's house in time to get Max settled before cocktail time.
Max was overwhelmed by the opulence of the Winthrop home, which wasn't all that opulent, but was grander than any house Max had ever been in. "What am I doing here?" Max whispered to James as he was shown his room.
"Don't sweat it, man," James answered. "Just be yourself." James had alerted his parents and Kimberly that Max might be short on social graces, so he knew that they wouldn't embarrass Max, if he were to commit a "faux pas".
"Let's go down and have a drink," he said
James' dad's easy-going manner made Max feel welcome. He was offered his choice of drinks. "We've got beer, bourbon, scotch, whatever you'd like, Max," Mr. Winthrop said. "James and I usually have a martini."
"I've never had one of those, Mr. Winthrop. I like to try one, if I can."
The Winthrops asked about Max's Christmas. His response was rather vague, blaming their meager celebration on his mother's religious beliefs. He said he spent most of his vacation playing with friends. He didn't elaborate on the type of sport they had engaged in.
Mrs. Winthrop explained that since they were all going to the game tomorrow, they were serving their traditional New Year's dinner tonight. She hoped Max liked duck. He replied that it was one of his favorites, thinking they would be serving wild duck.
When they went in to dinner, James whispered to Max that if he had a problem with which fork or spoon to use, just look at his mother and do what she did. But not to worry.
Dinner was a parade of dishes, which except for the carrots, Max had never eaten. First was an appetizer served in a puff pastry shell. "You're supposed to eat blackeyed peas on New Years," Mrs. Winthrop explained, "but I don't like blackeyed peas. Cook found—or maybe she made up—this recipe. It has blackeyed peas, but there are also green peppers, onions, and jalapenos in it, and she marinates them all in a French dressing."
"It sure is good," Max said.
The soup was Vichyssoise. "It's cold!" Max exclaimed.
"Oh you could eat it hot," Mrs. Winthrop responded. "Most people like it better this way, though. It's made of potatoes and leaks and was invented by a chef at The Ritz Carleton Hotel in New York."
"It sure is rich," Max commented.
The meal progressed with a mixed fruit salad with curry dressing. Max loved the combination of sweet and spicy. And then came the duck, which rather than being wild was a beautifully roasted Long Island Duckling, served with wild rice and glazed whole miniature carrots.
"We have duck back home," Max laughingly volunteered, "but nothing like this. And these rolls are something else. A lot better than buttermilk biscuits."
"Edward used to shoot duck," Mrs. Winthrop volunteered. "He'd go over to the Arkansas Delta, and we always had wild duck on New Year's. I always found them too strong. I like domestic duck a lot better."
"And these croissants are wonderful," James intervened, "but Deloris makes super biscuits too. We may have some at breakfast."
"I'll have more wine, please Hyrum," Mr. Winthrop said. "I know people say white wine goes with foul, Max, but with duck I like a really heavy red."
The dinner concluded with Black Bottom Pie in which Deloris hadn't spared the rum.
"I think we'll have coffee in the library, Hyrum," Mrs. Winthrop announced.
"That was the best meal I've ever had. Thank you," Max said.
James' mother and father were going to a New Year's Eve party at the country club. Kimberly had a date with one of the boys she had on her string. So James had arranged for Max and him to see the New Year in with Bill Hudson. They arrived at Bill's pad about ten-fifteen.
"Bout time you arrived," Bill said. "The folks left a pitcher of eggnog for us to greet the New Year with, but we can start on it right now, if you want."
"Suit yourself," James replied. "We've already had martinis, Burgundy, and Cognac. I can wait awhile."
"Me too," Max added. "I'm already half lit."
"Well, let's do something else then," said Bill. Reaching for Max's groin, he added, "James says you're into what we're into."
Max was properly spit-roasted, and so were Bill and James by the time distant fireworks announced it was time to pour the eggnog. 1980 had arrived.
The seventy-two thousand plus seats in the Cotton Bowl were sold out. Max, of course, was rooting for Nebraska, since Nebraska, like Oklahoma, was in the Big Eight. Everybody else was for Houston, and Mr. Winthrop had gotten six forty yard line seats on the Houston side. Kimberly was bringing her boyfriend from the night before.
For Max being there was one of the most exciting things he'd ever experienced. He drank in the ceremonial opening of what in 1980 was still one of the premiere events in the football universe. And in the first quarter, Nebraska went ahead 7-0. In the second, Houston evened the score. The halftime entertainment was spectacular with both bands playing their best routines of the season, but Max couldn't wait for Nebraska to take over in the third quarter. The game turned into a defensive duel, however, and it was not until late in the fourth quarter with six minutes left to play that Nebraska did score, settling for a field goal making the score 10-7. It seemed like a win for the Big Eight team, but with twelve seconds remaining in the game Houston scored a touchdown on a six yard pass and converted to make the final score 17-10 in Houston's favor.
Despite the loss, Max was effusive in his thanks to Mr. Winthrop and James for inviting him. He said it was the greatest!
Kimberly and her date headed off to a party being given by one of her high school friends. Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop, James, and Max went to dinner at Cattleman's Steak House downtown. It, along with its sister restaurant in Forth Worth, the Farmer's Daughter, was legendary.
The boys were off first thing the next morning. There would be the usual layover in Nashville and a late arrival at Sanderson on Thursday.
"Well what did Max think of the Cotton Bowl?" George asked. James had hardly had time to put down his luggage.
"He thought it was great, except the wrong team won," James laughed.
"And he navigated Dallas all right?"
"Don't be such a snob!" James cautioned. Then added, "I didn't expect him to be comfortable with a five course meal at the house, but I don't even think he'd ever been to a good restaurant before.
"Maybe we ought to..."
"Oh, you want to play Professor Higgins and do a Pygmalion, eh?" George interrupted. "Or maybe you just want to spend more time at the Clapboard Inn."
"I think we both really like the son-of-a-bitch," James responded. "It wouldn't hurt to try to give him a little couth."
"Sure, `Fold the toilet paper before you wipe your ass. Don't wad it up, boy.'"
In a flash the two of them were on the floor in a playful wrestling match. "And don't squeeze your opponent's balls," James cried. "That's uncouth."
"Ouch!" giggled George.
This was the first time since Freshman English that James and Max had been in a class together. Philosophy 203, Ethics. It was taught by a distinguished German philosopher, Dr. Heinrich Schmidt. James had taken the course, because he felt as a lawyer he would be faced with all sorts of ethical problems. Max had enrolled in the course, because it wasn't a lab science or a foreign language. He thought it would be a snap. It wasn't.
Professor Schmidt spoke in a heavy German accent in which "w" was often pronounced as a "v," sometimes as an "m," "d" usually as a "t," "g" a "k," and "ch" and "k" often contained a glottal stop. "Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "I begin with a show of hands. How many of you feel you always do the right thing?"
No hands were raised.
"How many feel your country always does the right thing?"
This time a couple of hands went up.
"How many feel the courts of justice always do the right thing?
More hands.
"How many feel that a person may be justified in killing another person?"
Almost as many.
"In killing an animal?
About every hand was in the air.
"And so we see the nature of the ethical problem," he continued. "Even here we thirty or so people can agree only that we, ourselves, do not always behave ethically, and that it is ethical to kill animals that are not human.
"Yet there are organizations across the world dedicated to the proposition that animals have the same or some of the same rights that humans have. What about that?"
So began a mind-bending discussion. Fifty minutes later the professor says, "So now, most of you are saying that it is always ethical to euthanize a terminally sick animal. Then, why not a terminally sick human? Think about that for next time."
As Max and James leave the classroom, Max said "Shit, what the hell have I got myself into?"
"Don't worry, it'll get clearer," James said. "He's just trying to show that making moral decisions isn't as easy as we think it is."
James and George did undertake the "civilizing" of Max, and they did begin with the Clapboard Inn. They enticed him to join them for dinner. The first time, George explained that fancy restaurants didn't like to do individual checks, so they'd just alternate paying. The third time they went, when it was Max's turn to pay, the other two boys were careful to order the less expensive entrees. But by now Max would have been able to go to The Four Seasons or the Plaza in Manhattan and be comfortable.
They convinced him to go to the Sanderson Symphony's performance of Beethoven's Fifth. He was shocked that he liked the whole concert. Afterward, he was singing "da'da' da' dah" and was wondering why just he and just a couple of others clapped after the first movement. George answered. "With a symphony or concerto," he said, "the custom is to applaud only after the whole thing."
"Then why did the fucker make such a big ending?"
"Well," James interjected, "it wasn't always that way. In Beethoven's time, the movements weren't always even played consecutively. Nowadays? We just go with the flow."
The three of them also went to the University Theatre's presentation of Sophocles' "Antigone". Max was transfixed. Although the violence occurred offstage, clever lighting seemed to bathe the stage in blood as the curtain fell.
So, James began to use his car more like he thought he would at the beginning. The three of them went to Norfolk to see Russell Stanger conduct his last concert as leader of their Symphony in Beethoven's Ninth. They returned to Chrysler Hall to watch "A Chorus Line" with a Broadway cast. And they all were hot to see Aerosmith at Scope Arena. They brought along Gary Higgins, DIKa's freshman football player, for the rock concert. They stayed over, of course; and it wasn't by chance that Max and Gary wound up sharing a room, and it was then that the two footballers found out they were both gay.
They talked about the concert for awhile, then Gary asked "How did you wind up at Sanderson, Max?"
"I wanted to get as far away from home as I could. This was the farthest place that offered me a football scholarship. What about you?"
"Well, I wasn't good enough to make the squad at Alabama or Auburn," Gary replied, "and since I couldn't do that, I figured I'd try to get the best education I could, where I could still get a scholarship. Vanderbilt or Duke would've been good, but I wasn't good enough for them either. But I was good enough for Sanderson. So here I am."
"Well I didn't give a shit about an education. But I do now," Max said.
"You're an independent, aren't you?" Gary continued.
"Well I pledged, but found out it wasn't for me."
"Funny you wound up such good friends with James and George."
"Sure is, especially after I dissed Delta Iota Kappa during rush last year." Max went on to relate how he'd carried on about being groped and had accused DIK of being a bunch of fairies. Then he'd had trouble with Shakespeare and George had helped him out. "Now, I'd love to be a DI Ka, but then..." He finished by saying, "I've become a whole lot more liberal than I was."
"Liberal? How?"
"Oh...about sex. About gays. About myself. I found out I'd been living a fucking lie."
Gary paused for the longest time. "Living a lie," the very words he had used to James during rush. He needed to tread very lightly, he felt. But finally he said, "You mean..."
"Yeah, I'm a fucking faggot."
"Me too," Gary smilingly admitted.
Now Gary Higgins was the image of what people think a quarterback should look like: Tall, photogenic, t-shaped. Sitting on the edge of one of the double beds, dressed only in briefs, he was perfect. Max had had the hots for him since the first day of practice. "Goddamn!" he whispered.
Max stood up. He was bare-chested, but still had on his jeans, since he free-balled. He stripped and crossed over to where Gary still sat, pulled the freshman to his feet and planted a kiss on first his right nipple, then his left. "You taste good, man," he mumbled.
He slipped his fingers under the band of Gary's briefs and forced them to the floor and licked his way from Gary's chest to his pubes. He was hairless above his groin. "Yes, yes," was all that Gary could say.
"I've wanted this dick since the first time I saw it in the locker room," Max gasped. He took it.
Max swallowed every drop of Gary's creamy gift. Gary gave unto Max as Max had given unto him. It was after two before they drifted to sleep in each others arms.
When they awoke, Gary suggested that he knew why Max and James were so close.
"Shit, man," Max responded. "James was so fucking pissed at me—and fuck it, I can't blame him—he'd hardly say `hello.' But—I guess it was because George was becoming my friend—James offered to drive me as far as Dallas. That was when we made our peace. And since, then—well, his family invited me to visit and go to the Cotton Bowl with them. Fuck it. I don't deserve friends like them."
"I'd like to be your friend," Gary said, "and not just because of what happened last night."
Simon Blaylock answered the letter in the formal, polite manner in which such offers are supposed to be rejected. "I am deeply honored, but..."
The response was, although not always to be expected, still formal and polite. "We understand...but please reconsider."
The response was supported by a telephone call from Brother Cockrell. "Simon, I know you think I'm weird for hanging on to the college and to the frat, and I'm still going to be active with DIKa; but we need men with wisdom to sit on the Sanderson Board. And we can't think of anyone more qualified than you."
The Honorable Simon Blaylock's wish list did include appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States, but certainly it did not include appointment to the Board of Trustees of Sanderson University. Nonetheless, he did send a second letter. "Unworthy as I am for this honor, I gratefully accept."
Mr. Schmidt was bringing his term-long argument to a close. "Mr. Paxton," he called out, "in your paper here, you say that we are justified in annihilating the Soviet Union, if they attack us. What if we attack them?"
"But we wouldn't do that," Max answered.
"But you see, Mr. Paxton, that is the ethical problem. What if we did? Does the justification you suggest go both ways?"
"I guess it does," Max replied.
"And the rest of you?" the professor queried.
There was some pro and con response.
James rose to the challenge. "I think what Mr. Paxton is saying," he began, "is that ethics cuts both ways. But that what is ethical in the final analysis depends upon the values that we bring to the problem."
"Mr. Paxton?"
"Mr. Winthrop said it a whole lot better than I could."
James and Max both got As. It was Max's first.
James and his partner, Rich Lovett, continued to excel at debate. They achieved intercollegiate honors. Rich was graduating, but Eric Jensen had joined the team and James hoped to have him as a partner next year. James became the rare sophomore to be admitted to the honorary fraternity, Delta Sigma Rho.
James also continued to excel at tennis. Sanderson achieved a place in the "top twenty-five" tennis listing, not solely because of James' prowess, but without him, Sanderson surely wouldn't have been there.
Sanderson also got a new football coach. Coach Barnwell was beloved but seemed content not to win. Upon his retirement the school brought in what most sportswriters would call a "has been." Wolfe Burger had coached teams to two national championships and now, it was said, he wanted an easy but dignified way to end his career.
Not so at the first Spring Practice. "You, motherfuckers," he yelled, "get used to winning! You aint goanna be in no bowl games, but you sure as hell are goanna get outa the fucking cellar!"
This time James didn't drop Max at the airport. He invited him to spend a couple of days with his family. The Professors Higgins had done their work.
Copyright 2012 by Macout Mann. All rights reserved.