"Liz Baker has added you as a friend on Facebook. We need to confirm that you know Liz in order for you to be friends on Facebook."
Tom glanced at this subject line, halfway down a long list of unread emails that had accumulated on his laptop over the long weekend. He smiled. It had been almost thirteen years since he had met Liz at Duke. They had been in the same all-freshman coed dorm. Friendships born in that impressionable first college year seemed to him to be unlike those before or after. Though Tom and Liz had occupied rooms on opposite ends of the long straight hall spanning the second floor of the dorm, they had become good friends by the end of their first week at school. They bonded over the shared experiences of living on their own for the first time, of drinking too much for the first time, of staying up all night in the common room for the first time, and of rushing sororities and fraternities for the first and (thankfully, as Tom remembered it) last time.
For a brief time, they had been even more than good friends.
Their relationship gradually cooled after Liz won a berth at her pledged sorority, whereas Tom abandoned his pledged fraternity to join a more bohemian crowd.
Now married and living in Washington DC, Tom earned his living as a professor of Physics at Georgetown University. He was on the professorial fast track, recruited vigorously by competing universities while quietly promised an eventual Chairman's position at Georgetown in exchange for shunning such come-ons. His wife Jane, also a Duke alum, worked as a junior executive at a prominent DC advertising firm. They lived in an upscale Georgetown town house, and life was good.
Tom had ruminated about Liz occasionally over the years. Her cheerful outlook had profoundly affected him in that impressionable year of their friendship. OK, that _and_ she was drop-dead gorgeous. And taught him most of what he ever learned about sex.
They had had no contact since graduation. So this Facebook invitation was truly out of the blue. Tom had only recently signed up for a Facebook page, after reading in the New Yorker that 69% of Facebook users were under the age of 30. Tom felt anxious about having recently passed out of that demographic, and thought that signing up might yield a slice of youth. In the weeks since enrolling, he had Friended only one person, his former Duke freshman roommate James, who had since become a rising star in a nationally syndicated daytime soap opera.
Tom abandoned the work he had planned to do during his morning train commute, and opened the email from Facebook. In it he found an attached note from Liz explaining that she had found him through mutual Facebook friendship with James. Tom felt a pang of guilt about Friending her. His wife knew that Tom and Liz had had a fling. Even though it was before they met, he knew she would be less than pleased to see Liz on his short list of friends. Tom rationalized to himself that it was merely protocol to accept a Facebook friend offer. So he did. He avoided adding text to his Friend acceptance, hoping that she would take the lead if they were to get reacquainted (More guilt).
He did not have to wait long for a reply. Ten minutes later, a posting came to his wall from Liz:
"Long time, no see. I'm in NY. Law Associate at Franklin & Jordan. You look great in your picture. Still that warm smile I remember. I saw your website at Georgetown. Very professional! You married? Kids?"
Tom was deeply flattered, but knew that continuing this conversation had all the makings of a bad idea. And she had posted it on his wall! He still wasn't quite sure how to get such things off his Facebook wall, and did not want that flirty message hanging around for others to see. But, first things first, he went to her page to reply in a private message. He was surprised to find that she had no Friends listed at all on her page, not even James. Her personal photo was a head shot from the law firm.
"Liz, great to hear from you. And glad to hear you're doing well. I am married now (to Jane Warren, did you know her at Duke?) and living in Georgetown. No kids. You too look like quite the professional gal. What?s your status? Married? Kids? I'm a bit new to this Facebook thing, and so I hope this goes to your private inbox and not on your wall."
Tom pressed send. He was pleased with himself for finding a diplomatic way to offer her a hint about not posting publicly to his wall. He then found the pop-up delete button to erase her wall message. Then he looked around her page to see what he could find, and Googled her law firm. Sure enough, the same head shot appeared on the firm's web directory.
Later that morning, at his desk in the newly refurbished Physical Sciences building, Tom stared out the window while daydreaming about Liz. His thoughts were interrupted by a new email alert from his laptop. His inbox showed a message from LizBkr241@gmail.com with subject heading "Hey Blue Boy, nice to get reacquainted!"
---
Tom squirmed. "Blue Boy" was a reference to one of the last memories he shared with Liz, and it was not one he especially wanted to revisit with her.
Tom and Liz had both pledged to Greek organizations midway through their freshman year. Both were selected as pledges by their favorite houses, and both had endured some fairly intense hazing in the latter days of what was known affectionately as hell week. During hell week, a pledge was at the mercy of the upperclassmen of the house. The pledge class was forced to endure repeated humiliation and to perform silly, embarrassing, and even reckless tasks that were meant somehow to demonstrate loyalty. It was a ritual that each of the upper clansmen had endured, and that each was more than happy to continue from the side of power. Often, people thought that fraternities were more severe in their hazing than sororities, but Tom and Liz came to know that there was little difference. They had, in fact compared notes during the week despite a strict prohibition against discussing pledge activities. The only difference, as far as they could tell, was that the girls were more discreet. Tom had relayed to Liz, early in hell week, that the fraternity pledges had been forced to do an "elephant walk" in which they were forced to march naked throughout he frat house, each bent over the next in a long line. Each was required to use his "trunk" (arm) to grasp the "tail" (cock) of the pledge in front of him. While Tom considered himself far from homophobic he found this ritual unsettling. Liz replied with her own tale of a sorority "history quiz" where each pledge contestant was allowed to wear only a 35 gallon plastic garbage bag, with nothing on underneath. The bags were too short to provide even a hint of modesty. Worse, wrong answers earned a trip to a sawhorse, where the offending girl was asked to "assume the position" by bending over and lifting up the bag. Liz explained how she had been asked an impossible question early in the game, and was the first to take the punishment. She described, in vivid language that Tom would remember verbatim for years to come, the humiliation of putting her bare ass on display over the sawhorse and taking three swats with a paddle from a sophomore girl to the cheers of the entire house. That sophomore, Debbie, was the one who had recruited Liz to the sorority in the first place.
Blue Boy. That moniker came to Tom via the last night of hell week. Tom was awakened in the fraternity common room at 3AM by a throng of fraternity brothers in ski masks, who roughly tore him from his bed and demanded that he strip naked and stand at attention. Against his better judgment and exhausted from the week's activities, he complied. A brother put a blindfold on him, and another bound his hands in front of him using three plastic zip ties: one on each wrist and one connecting the pair. A third similarly bound his ankles. The leader of the group, a Junior named Steve, told Tom that this would be his last pledge task. The brothers wrapped him in a blanket and lifted him up, carrying him down the hall and, to his horror, outside. Tom was now fully awake, and dreading what would come next. The brothers kept up a brisk pace and after several hundred feet, entered the door of a building. They descended some stairs and entered a room, closing the door behind them.
Tom was completely disoriented. The brothers stripped off the blanket and stood Tom up, lifting his bound arms up and securing the tie straps to an eye-hook that was conveniently embedded in a beam spanning the room's low ceiling. Its height was such that Tom could just barely keep his feet flat on the ground, with his arms stretched high above. Steven said, "Your final task as a pledge is simple. Bring us a picture of you in this room, hanging from this beam. Since you are not in a position to take the picture yourself, you will have to ask someone to take it for you. In the picture, you've got to have at least one naked woman. Bonus points if she's touching you amorously. Oh, and your cock has to be painted Duke blue in the picture. We're headed home. Come join us when you can."
Tom was humiliated, and knew he was in a hopeless situation. He was completely exposed and at the mercy of his brothers. Yet as much as he loathed them, he was desperate for them not to leave. He was going to have to rely on _someone_ to help him and if not them, who?. He was naked, helpless, and strung up on display, who knew where, still unable to even see his surroundings.
"Are you going to take off the blindfold?" He asked, anticipating the response.
