I had a bad week. My name hadn't been associated with them, but videos of the naked, butt plug wearing, bunny hopping girl were being viewed and discussed incessantly all over campus. I forced myself to watch a few of them just to reassure myself that my identity was, in fact, well concealed. The tattoos were surprisingly convincing, so this no doubt helped.
Nevertheless, after seeing only a few of the videos that were circulating, I was paranoid that someone would identify me. I always kept my hair in a ponytail, I started making a point of wearing my glasses all the time and I even went as far as completely shaving my brunette pubes so I'd look different if someone saw me in a changing room.
By the next weekend, I was nowhere near ready to go back to Beta house to satisfy the remainder of the wager. I'm not proud, but I said I was feeling sick. They didn't challenge me, so it was that much easier to point to a Monday morning midterm one week later. The week after that, I went home for the weekend. I didn't have to go home, but that's not what I texted to Conrad at Beta house.
Beta house never called me on it. The longer it went, the more I began to think of this as a strategy, rather than just procrastinating the inevitable. I figured the longer it went, the more they'd be willing to renegotiate. Megan was right. As long as I agreed to get naked again at Beta house, it would be better for them than ruining my life by putting all those Polaroid photos of me up on the ENF Wall. It's not like everyone in the house couldn't look at them whenever they wanted.
The problem was, I really didn't want to get naked at Beta house again. The more time passed, the more desperate I felt to get out of it. I needed to have a senior negotiating in my corner. I needed to talk to Megan and form a strategy.
The fourth Friday after my third-level enfasis arrived and I still hadn't texted Conrad about the coming Sunday or made a plan with Megan.
For the whole four weeks, I'd been pulling away from sorority life in general. I'd been spending more time on campus and actually spending a bit of time with groups of students other than Sigmas or Betas. That Friday, I left my macroeconomics class and three of my classmates asked if I wanted to go for pizza and a movie. I'd been doing a project with Dan, Craig and Chelsea for the last couple of weeks.
They liked to talk about movies, books and music instead of gossiping about this boy or that girl. I didn't know the directors, the authors or the musicians, but it seemed like these were the people that I should be getting to know.
Besides that, Craig was really quite cute for such a nice nerdy guy. I absolutely wasn't ready to strip naked for all the boys at Beta house again, but the idea of getting naked with Craig was growing on me.
I smiled and said yes, pizza and a movie sounded great. Chelsea was dating Dan, but there was no suggestion that this was a double date. We had some pizza on campus and watched a movie. It was a bit of a high-brow snoozefest, but at least it wasn't yet another rom-com or superhero movie.
When we spilled out onto the sidewalk after the show, Dan, who was probably trying to be a wing man for Craig, asked if I wanted to come back to the dorm and have a few beers. I wondered if I'd be expected to say something intelligent about the movie, but I was thinking I'd say yes.
It was easy to see that Craig was working up the nerve to ask me out. He'd been smiling at me a lot and, well, I'd been smiling back. I needed something normal and dating a nerdy handsome guy like Craig seemed lovely and normal right then.
Then I looked at my phone, which I'd silenced for the movie.
There were a couple of messages from Sandy and several texts. This must be bad, I thought. Nobody actually calls. I read the first text.
"Come to Beta house now! They're going show the pictures!"
My new pals saw the look on my face. I told them sorry, another time. I had to go.
Beta house was halfway across campus. I walked in that direction as I read more texts and listened to Sandy's messages. Sandy, Nora and Lena had gone to the Beta house party and one of the Beta boys, Tim, had told them that the photos taken during my third level enfasis were going to be unveiled in a permanent display. They'd apparently scanned them all and were going to loop a slideshow on the projector starting at 9. Another text said that they'd probably show the video too.
It was 8:50. Sandy's last text said that they were going to try and stall them, but I had to get there right away. I started to sprint.
This was bad. Really bad. All the people at the party seeing those photos wasn't even the worst part. Don't get me wrong, that was a really bad part. No, the worst part was that my identity would be blown. Word would spread and everyone on campus would know that I was the dumb loser who got tricked into hopping along the sidewalk naked with a butt plug in her ass. Everyone.
Sandy was my best friend at Sigma house. Nora was her roommate and Lena was mine. Our rooms were side by side. I really wish that I felt a strong bond to these three girls. I thought of them all as friends, but if I was being honest, I knew that these were not lasting friendships.
What could they do to stall the Beta boys? What would they do? I hoped like hell they'd think of something, because I knew that I wasn't going to make it there by 9.
It was 9:10 by the time I ran up the steps to Beta house and was waved inside by the guy that collects "charitable donations" from the male attendees. I charged through the crush of all the usual suspects toward the stairs that climbed up to the ENF wall. Tim spotted me and grinned, waving me over.
"Why hello Ricky!" he greeted me. "Nice to see you, it's been a while."
I anxiously scanned the the landing to see if there was anything that looked like a new cluster of photos, or a cluster of people examining new photos. I looked over to where they usually set up the projector and there wasn't a slideshow going. "You haven't started showing the pictures yet," I said. It was a statement, but I looked Tim in the eyes looking for confirmation.
"Oh, you mean all those nice pictures we have of you?" He kept that smug grin on his face. "Yeah, no, we were going to, but we've come to a different arrangement."
Sandy, Nora and Lena had spotted me and made their way over. They were not grinning. I could see Megan heading over too.