Another such event is “The Brides of March,” which has happened annually for the past eight years. Participants wear wedding dresses and parade the streets buying pregnancy kits, flirting with the clerks in formal-wear stores, shopping at Tiffany’s, and trying on lingerie at Victoria’s Secret. They finish by drinking champagne at a bar, where they plan to “proposition tourists until we get married or thrown out” (Brides of March Web site).
Club members have been known to spend entire weekends dressed as Santa Claus. The first “SantaCon”—also sometimes called “Santarchy”— was intended as a surreal celebration, a kind of holiday prank. It happened in 1994; people sang naughty versions of Christmas carols and paraded through the streets. It was such a success that its organizers thought it was too perfect to repeat, but they subsequently adopted the motto, “Anything worth doing is worth driving into the ground” (Santarchy Web site).
Now SantaCon is staged in approximately thirty cities; some of the events raise money for charity, others are more about barhopping. The main point is not a critique of the commercialization of Christmas, though some critics have viewed it as such. The main point is the same as that of the Suicide Club and the Cacophony Society: to create psychedelic moments in life, where the usual strictures of society melt away.
When the Portland Santas were evicted from a shopping mall, they chanted “Ho, ho, ho! We won’t go!” and “Being Santa is not a crime.” When the police threatened them, they cried, “One, two, three . . . Merry Christmas!” Then they ran away and hopped a train downtown, where they all went out for Chinese food (Palahnuik 142).
Many of the club’s adventures do go beyond the merely surreal or prankish, into social critique. One fairly recent event, Klowns Against Commerce, tested how much a clown could abuse business people in downtown Los Angeles before he was arrested or beaten up. Another event, a Pigeon Roast sponsored by the fictitious Bay Area Rotisserie Friends was promoted with a gag handout that nevertheless criticizes factory farming and genetic modification (Rotisserie Friends pamphlet).
Both Brides of March and SantaCon take sacred symbols of time-honored institutions— wedding gowns represent the institution of marriage, and Santa represents Christmas—and turn them upside down.
The urban explorations are challenges to those unwritten rules about the use of public buildings and services. You must not play in the cemetery. You must not climb the bridge. You must not enter the tunnels underneath the streets.
Members of the Suicide Club do all these things. And what is more of a social critique than that?
Frankie later burned her paper, for reasons that will become obvious. This time she was careful to do it in the dormitory shower, and she did not injure herself.
MONSTER
Frankie was deliberately a few minutes late to meet Porter for lunch on Wednesday. E-mailing him had brought back a wave of insecurity that she hadn’t felt since last year. In the first few days after the breakup, Frankie had been tormented by the idea that Bess must have been better than she was. Ordinary, pleasant Bess must be prettier, more charming, more experienced, smarter than Frankie—or Porter wouldn’t have cheated. It didn’t matter that Bess hadn’t become Porter’s girlfriend after the incident. It didn’t matter that in her heart Frankie knew she was smart and charming. What mattered was that feeling of being expendable. That to Porter, she was a nobody that could easily be replaced by a better model—and the better model wasn’t even so great.
Which meant that Frankie herself was nearly worthless.
It was a bad, inconsequential feeling, and every word of every e-mail Frankie had sent to Porter had been fighting against it. She had made him apologize in more ways than one, had flung neglected positives at him, criticized his grammar—and made him wait for her to accept his invitation. All because of how bad she felt when she remembered how little she’d mattered to him.
The Front Porch snack bar was a canteen for students who wanted to spend money rather than eat in the caf. It had an old-fashioned front porch, but inside, it was nothing but a burger shack; you could buy hamburgers, chicken patty sandwiches, fries, sodas, milk shakes, and ice-cream sundaes. There was a rack of candy bars and a cooling unit full of juice drinks. Every couple years, students would petition for a wider range of options both at the Front Porch and at the caf, requesting veggie burgers, fruit Popsicles, and baked potatoes at the Porch, and some actual vegetables in the salad bar at the caf—sometimes for health reasons, sometimes to promote sustainable agriculture. But the only concession made so far was a bowl of sad-looking apples near the cash register.
In any case, students could pick up a paper plate full of greasy food and either eat it inside with the heat and sizzle of the grill, or take it outside to the screened-in porch.
When Frankie got there, Porter was sitting out front with two orders of cheese fries. Of course it wasn’t the first time she’d seen him this year. She saw him all the time; she even had geometry with him. But it was the first time she’d done anything but try to avoid him, and when he stood, she felt small and childish next to his bulk.
“Hey, thanks for coming out,” he said.
“Sure, are these mine?” Frankie reached out and snagged a cheese fry, then took the seat opposite Porter.
“Yeah. I wasn’t sure what you’d want to drink.”
“Have they got that pink lemonade?”
“I’ll check.”
He popped indoors and came out a few minutes later carrying a bottle of pink lemonade and a can of Viva root beer.
Frankie wished she hadn’t ordered pink lemonade.
Pink lemonade was the most infantile drink she could have asked for.
“So what’s new?” Frankie asked.
Porter leaned back in his chair. He had a decidedly less geeky look than he’d had when they had started going out. New haircut. Shirt untucked. “Lacrosse is going good,” he said. “The Spy Club is deteriorating now that Buckingham graduated.”
Frankie nodded.
“You’re blowing off the Conglomerate party on Friday for your senior boyfriend, I hear,” Porter teased.
“How did you know I had a senior boyfriend?”
“Come on, Frankie, everyone knows.”
“Do they?”
“Sure. One of the geeks’ own lifted from obscurity by the big man on campus.”
“It’s not like that.” Porter’s description made Frankie feel defensive. Was that how people saw her? Lifted out of obscurity by a popular senior boy? Her entire social standing conferred upon her by Matthew?
It probably was.
Because of course, it was pretty much true.
But was that how Matthew saw her?
“So you and Livingston are serious?” Porter was asking.
“Yeah,” said Frankie. “I think so.”
“He’s a lot older.”
“So?”
“So.” Porter ate a fry and leaned back in his chair. “You look great this year, Frankie. Don’t let him take advantage of you.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know.”
“No, what?”
“Don’t let him take advantage.”
“Is this what you wanted to discuss?”
Porter scratched his neck. “Kind of. Yeah.”
“Tell me you’re not saying what I think you’re saying.”
“What?” His face looked innocent. “It’s not anything against you. Or against him. I’m a concerned citizen.”
“Why does the way I look make you think I’m suddenly going to let someone take advantage of me?” snapped Frankie. “You never used to think stuff like that about me. I never let you take advantage of me.”
“No, but—”
“Really, when have I ever been someone it was easy to take advantage of?”
“Um—”
“I mean, easy to cheat on, yes, I see that. You’ve given me ample evidence of that, thanks very much. But have I ever been easy to take advantage of?”
/> “Um—”
“Huh, Porter? Answer me.”
“Never.”
“So?”
“Livingston,” sputtered Porter. “He’s—”
“What?”
“Like I said, older. And you’re . . .”
“What? You sent me all those e-mails and made a plan and everything to tell me something you want to say, so out with it.”
“You’re so pretty now, Frankie. It’s a compliment.”
“And what do you mean when you say ‘take advantage,’ anyway? Like you’re assuming guys want something girls don’t want? Maybe we want it, too. Maybe Matthew should worry about me taking advantage of him.”
“Don’t jump all over me. I was trying to look out for you.”
“You think that you saying ‘be careful’ is going to make the difference between Matthew getting down my pants or not?” Frankie knew she was being harsh, but she was angry. “Like I’m going to be in the middle of making out with him and think, ‘Oh, wait, Porter reminded me that I might be getting taken advantage of right now, wow, what a big help, I think I’ll go home’?”
“Can you keep your voice down? People are looking at us.”
It was true. They were.
Frankie lowered her voice and spat out: “Porter. Let me break it to you. When I am fooling around with Matthew, I am not thinking about you. At all.”
“Whoa, Frankie. That is not what I meant.”
“So what did you mean?” barked Frankie. “Did you mean that because my bra size is bigger than it used to be, you think I’m not capable of taking care of myself? Or did you mean you think Matthew is a potential date rapist? Or did you mean to remind me that you’re a big man, too, you’ll protect me, because you’re just as big as Matthew—oooh!”
“What is up, Frankie?” Porter was upset now.
She barreled on. “Or were you telling me, in a roundabout way, that you think I’m slutty for going out with a senior? That I should watch my reputation? What is it you were really trying to say, Porter? Because I’d honestly like to hear it.”
“Frankie, I don’t know what I said to piss you off, but you are being way oversensitive. I started this off with an apology, if you don’t remember.”
“I’m not oversensitive. I’m just analyzing your supposedly innocent commentary.”
“You’re being crazy,” said Porter, standing. “I was trying to do you a good turn. For old time’s sake.”
“Well, don’t bother.”
Porter walked away. Down the steps, leaving his cheese fries half eaten and his root beer unopened.
When he was out of sight around the corner of a building, Frankie opened Porter’s soda and drank half of it without stopping. She fingered the Superman T-shirt underneath her cardigan.
Her mind felt alive, like she had used it in some electric way, uncovering all the nocuous layers in Porter’s seemingly innocuous statement. “You look great this year, Frankie. Don’t let him take advantage of you.”
She felt strangely proud of what she’d done. She had been right about what Porter had really meant, she was certain she had been.
But she also knew she’d acted like a monster.
Frankie hadn’t liked herself while she’d been yelling at Porter—but she had admired herself. For not being the littlest one at the table, like she had been all her childhood, depending on the big people (Senior, her mom, Zada) to make sense of the world for her.
For not pouting or grumbling, moping or whining, for not doing any of those behaviors a person engages in when she takes offense but doesn’t feel like she has any way to assert herself.
She admired herself for taking charge of the situation, for deciding which way it went. She admired her own verbal abilities, her courage, her dominance.
So I was a monster, she thought. At least I wasn’t someone’s little sister, someone’s girlfriend, some sophomore, some girl—someone whose opinions don’t matter.
Frankie walked to her next class, not looking out for Matthew or Trish or anyone. Just feeling the power surging through her, with all its accompanying guilt, righteousness, joy, and fear.
THE LOYAL ORDER
As is already no doubt clear to my readers, the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds was alive and well on the Alabaster campus. And in order to understand the events that follow, you will need to know more about its history.
Rumored to have been started by a young man who later would head the nation’s second-largest Irish-American crime syndicate, the Basset order was more benevolent than the Skull & Bones society at Yale, less intellectual and more secret than Phi Beta Kappa, and less goth than the Order of Gimghoul at UNC Chapel Hill. Its members, mostly seniors, were tapped by receiving a mysterious letter inviting them to a secret initiation ceremony.
The society’s presence was larger on campus some years than in others. Frankie had made it through her freshman year without ever noticing the small Basset Hound insignia that had decorated the seal on the golf course party invitation, though in truth it had been rubber-stamped on a number of flyers posted on the message kiosk—flyers written in code. 9/4/11/23/TOP meant that at nine o’clock, at meeting location #4 (the utility closet on the top floor of the Flaherty dorm), on November 23rd, there was a top-priority meeting.
(Of course the members of the Loyal Order could have used e-mail to communicate the times and locations of their meetings, but it was part of their mission as a secret society—as it is part of the mission of most secret societies, actually—not to be entirely secret. To be a mystery about which people know just enough to wonder what else there is to know, so that membership in the society holds a certain cachet. If no one knows anything about the society, it is infinitely less exciting to be a involved in it, right?)
The Basset insignia had also been rubber-stamped, somewhat menacingly, on the dorm room clipboards of several loudmouth senior girls who had sat together one day in the cafeteria, deriding the existence of an all-male secret society (if there was one; they didn’t know for certain) at an institution that had been coeducational since 1965.
One morning the previous May, Frankie herself had inadvertently stumbled upon a Basset meeting— but had misinterpreted it as a crew team bonding activity. Having walked in on Porter and Bess the night before, and having then spent most of the night sobbing on Trish’s shoulder and saying she hated Porter but also feeling lonely without him, Frankie had left her dorm at six a.m. to walk down by the pond, a small puddle of water decorated with a footbridge that stood on the edge of the Alabaster campus. There, at 6:14 in the morning, she had seen approximately twenty-five boys—half seniors and half juniors, plus one sophomore boy named Sam—standing on the bridge and dropping pennies into the water.
Frankie stood in the trees and watched them for a moment, wondering what on earth could motivate all those guys to be up before Sunday breakfast at nine. She hadn’t wanted to walk past them—she wished to be alone—so she was about to turn and walk away, when Matthew Livingston took his shirt off. Which stopped her.
Then he took the rest of his clothes off.
When he was completely naked, he threw himself into the pond. The rest of the boys followed, except the sophomore, who stayed on the bridge to guard the clothes.
Everyone was silent. If they spoke, they whispered, and mostly they paddled around for a minute, then hauled themselves out of the grubby pond onto land to collect their clothes.
They had forgotten to bring towels, and they swore and rubbed at their limbs with their T-shirts.
Frankie had watched them for a few more minutes. She couldn’t help herself.
As soon as one of the seniors glanced in her direction, she’d scurried back behind the trees and across campus to the library.
Most secret societies—at least those you can read about in books or on the Internet—are collegiate. Or adult. They are social clubs, or honor clubs, or clubs committed to some value system—chivalry or equality or excellence. They are like fraternitie
s, only they don’t have houses or public identities. In colleges, their memberships are usually local, not national, but the adult ones tend to be more serious and on a larger scale.
We don’t know what they actually do. Because they’re secret.
The Loyal Order of the Basset Hound had been conceived as a society for the elect among Alabaster students—“elect” meaning those from particularly loyal and moneyed Alabaster families, and meaning also those who were considered cool enough. Many collegiate societies have some notion of excellence that drives their selection process, and certainly no one who was not excellent was admitted as a Basset Hound. But it was a notion of excellence as determined by seventeen-year-old boys, not by teachers and parents, so the entertainment potential of your conversation counted considerably more than your ability to craft a decent essay on World War II, and your excellence on the playing field counted only if your ability to banter in the locker room was equally strong. Family wealth and social class didn’t count on the surface. What those factors did was to lend the boys who had them an almost intangible sense of security regarding their places in the world, which often (though not always) led to social dominance, which led to induction in the Loyal Order.
Of course, anything named after a floppy-eared dog with short legs isn’t deadly serious. The Skull & Bones society, whatever it does, is no doubt much less ridiculous than the Basset Hounds were. The Bassets did not claim to be fostering social change or academic success. Nor did they conceive of themselves as rebellious in any serious way. Bassets were more focused on how to get beer, how to exit and reenter the dorms without detection, and how to get girls to like them— and yet it would not be wrong to call them powerful.
Being a Basset was very important to these boys because it mediated their relationship to the other social institutions that shaped them—most importantly, Alabaster. Like Senior Banks, they thought of themselves as Bassets more than they thought of themselves, for example, as tennis players, TV watchers, Caucasians, Protestants, East-Coasters, decent skiers, heterosexuals, and attractive young men—all of which most of them were. The Loyal Order was important because the true agenda of the club, though its members didn’t exactly articulate it to themselves, was that it allowed them—they whose position in the world was so completely central—to experience the thrill of rebellion, a glimmer of unconventionality, and plain old naughtiness without risk.