Dorm Chapter 14: Conspiracy
Despite the immensity of interest between Trey and I that developed since our initial hook-up, we both had totally unrelated social lives that we continued to feed. A couple of nights a week I would spend drinking and smoking up with guys from my frat, namely Marc, Alex and Dave. For the first time in a long while, I got a call from James and Brent, so I stopped by their apartment on campus. Invitations the "happy gay couple" that seemed to function as an almost separate branch of the frat were always welcome, as at the time they were pretty much my only non-breeder friends who were neither fooling around with me or in a state of painstaking self-denial. When I showed up mid-evening James was there to greet me with a beer-stocked fridge and a nice fat blunt.
"So where's your boy, Brent? He was the one who called me up yesterday."
"What are you telling me my company's no good?"
"Ha, you dick."
"Just fucking with you. Brent hasn't got cut from work yet, he might not be back for a couple of hours."
"That sucks."
"True, but hey, he can catch up when he gets here, because we have beer to drink and ganja to smoke. I hear you have been getting some pretty good shit pretty steady."
"Yeah, I've been kept comfortable lately. My hook-up gives me a good deal."
"Can't complain about that. Sounds like a good deal."
"More than you know..."
"Any new exciting encounters between you and that sexy room mate of yours?"
"Nah, not lately; I think I already told you all the best parts, like the time in the shower, but we hardly got time to chill during exams the past two weeks."
"Well, fuck, I'm sure you'll have something fun to share soon."
James and Brent were my confidants in recounting the random trysts with Sean, and they seemed to enjoy hearing about it as much as I reveled in telling them. Yet for some reason I kept quiet about Trey. I knew neither of them would say anything to anyone else but I didn't utter one word about our hook-ups.
"So, uh how have you and Alex been getting along these days?"
"Always improving, the awkwardness from our short-lived courting has pretty much left us be, and things are kind of like the way they were before that fateful night he and I stayed here during the last blizzard. But still, the same depth of how close we really are seem restrained a little; things like that don't always need to be discussed."
"I hear ya. That kid will wise up one day and accept what it is that will truly make him happy, its just too bad he couldn't handle his feelings for you."
"So how have you and Brent been getting along?"
"Pretty good; our total monogamy streak is going strong even though we toy with the idea of a three-some now and then. But he gives me nothing to complain about."
"How come you guys don't hang out with the frat at all lately?"
"Mostly we are just growing out of that whole scene, its too much like high school, but part of it has to do with shit that went down last fall."
"What happened?"
"You haven't heard about any of it yet?"
"Any of what? No, I don't know anything; none of the guys have mentioned anything, and the only time you or Brent ever brought it up you got pretty cryptic."
"Ah, well Brent doesn't like to talk about it; he's still a little embarrassed."
"Come on, fill me in."
"Well, okay I'll try to explain and tell you what I know but first you have to swear you won't spread this around because I don't know the general consensus about this all being made public to you new guys."
"Dude, you can trust me; so why all the cloak and dagger secrecy crap?"
"Seriously, you have to keep this tight-lipped. I mean it."
"I swear I'll keep my trap shut."
"I don't even know where to begin with this. Okay, about three, maybe four, years before I pledged this guy Seth joined the frat; nobody was ready for this kid. Seth might be physically perfect, I'm not kidding you, absolutely stunning, tall, with an electric personality but his mind is always cooking up some way to shake things up. I'm sure there were some gay guys in the frat before him, but Seth left the deepest mark. Fuck, where do I go from there? For one thing no one knew Seth was even gay, well it wasn't widely known, for over a year after he pledged. At that time he would do two things that would be major headings in his long list of devilish deeps. First of all, Seth loved to seduce the ex-girlfriends of brothers with in a week of them breaking-up; usually he did it to guys who pissed him off. The lesser-known past-time of Seth's was seducing some "straight" boys in the frat now and then. I don't know what it is, but if Seth set his sights on someone they usually find it hard to resist.
"That alone could take forever to get into, but if I do that I won't finish before Brent gets home, so I'll just continue along to the big news. Seth, ever the free-loving spirit, decided that a normal job wasn't for him so he eventually got a gig working with some amateur porn site."
"He did what now?"
"No, really, Seth was, quite literally, a porn star. He eventually did some of the technical shit with the web-site or something, but yeah he has more than a few precious moments immortalized in the red-light district of cyberspace."
"Wow. That's not what I was expecting to hear."
"You and everyone else, but that's not where it ends. Seth's big thing for the site was recruiting, and he seemed to be damn good at it. He was so good in fact that some of the straight boys in the frat got involved with the whole mess and more than a few guys from campus signed up to `model' too."
"So, hold up, there is actual footage of guys from our frat getting off out there on some internet wasteland?"
"Oh yeah, it gets better. So when Fall Rush begins Seth's Sophomore year he stacks the pledge class full of guys he met. Most, but not all, were gay or half way there and a handful were models' for the porn site he worked for. Since not all the guys he got to join were gay no one caught on, and the gay guys were not open or flamers so it was never suspected. After the guys who worked on the site crossed over, Seth and them had a "Frat Boy Orgy" video shot, it was Seth's idea and the dude who ran the site loved the concept. Eventually they gay guys he brought into the frat brought in more gays the next semester, and by then nearly half the frat was gay or some where between heterosexuality. Eventually it became all too obvious; brothers were dating, breaking up and hooking up left and right. Some guys were really pissed when the full weight of it all crashed down to reality. Seth was right at the heart of it all but there wasn't much the people complaining could really do about it, at first. Once the infestation' became widely known amongst the brothers, it wasn't long before people heard about the web-site. That just pissed people off even more, and finally they managed to tag Seth with something. Apparently he had shot several escapades in the fraternity house, and so the president of the frat and the alumni advisor got Seth booted from the house and put on full probation, meaning he couldn't go to any parties. That didn't stop Seth though; not only did he fuck the president's girlfriend and sister in retaliation, he got all the gay guys to stand behind him and at the end of the year they elected one of his favorite boy-toys, Chev, president."
"Wow, what a dick."
"Honestly if Seth hadn't been such a shallow and shady character the animosity between the gays and the gay-haters (i.e. closet-cases) would probably have been a fraction of what it was. Luckily Chev proved to be a good choice for president and could keep Seth more in line than the poor schmuck he replaced, so things really cooled off between the two factions that were previously butting heads. It also helped having Seth out of the frat house, so all the gay drama he brought down on everyone vanished. Chev also discouraged Seth from using the frat to recruit for the porno site, but he still managed to get a few more guys to `model' for the cameras.
"By the time Brent and I joined the frat wanted to forget the whole affair and put it behind them. However, Seth and his acolytes refused to stop intentionally planting the right kind' of gay guys in the pledge class. They would actively scour the campus for candidates and sort of rush them for a while before asking them if they would like to join the frat. They wanted attractive, straight-acting' dudes, who didn't show signs of melodramatic behavior, and of course possessed of healthy sexual appetites. To make an already long story short, Brent, and I am so goddamn serious you had better not repeat this, was one of the last guys to pledge and then do some... stuff, for Seth's web-site."
"Oh. Wow;" was all I managed to stammer out between blinks.
"Uh, yeah, so that's why all of this is `don't go there or I'll bitch' territory for Brent. He got shit from both sides after people found out Seth was still using the frat to find models and that Brent was one of them. But every one does stupid shit they regret, its part of being young."
The silence that passed between us for the next few moments was awkward at best.
"So, I have to ask, did this `gay-screening' thing go into my pledge-class?"
James squinted nervously for a split-second before he responded, verbally.
"Well, yes, and no. I'll just put it this way, we all knew there were a few gay boys in your class, but you were an accident, so what does that tell you?"
"The frat is just a beacon for gay boys even unintentionally?"
I went over the discussion with James in my head a million times or so in the days that followed. Hearing that there was some sort of "gay conspiracy" in the fraternity filled my mind with a typhoon of naughty thoughts, I mean, really, it was like having an erotic fantasy hurl itself right up against one's head in full force. This revelation mingled itself with the myriad of other sensual delights I had allowed myself to indulge in over the past year. I had not even finished my freshman year and already I had behaved like a major skank. I had tasted my first draught of love and its bitter aftertaste, regret, remorse and ultimately refinement, as well as having torn though the proverbial sexual gauntlets of activity with my room mate and my drug dealer, my fraternity brothers and a handful of their friends. Now the prospect of a rich and prosperous vein of gay boys in the frat set my mid afire with possibilities. Yet even amidst these thoughts of sensual bliss unlimited, the lingering doubt remained, it was all meaningless in the face of what I had with Alex, and in a way what I have/had with Sean. In a way the two were reflections of one another; Alex being the pure, monogamous symbol of love, and Sean being the wild, unbridled archetype of lust. Then there was Trey, who although I did feel a deep connection to him, I still felt as though he was as faithful as his options. So, fuck it.