The girls were slack jawed for a few seconds, when I heard Annette yelling when I got to the bottom of the steps -- our suite is on the second floor -- "Dana! You can't go out like that!" But I was already on my way, wearing my flip-flops, some fancy earrings, my dog-tag necklace with the suite keys added to it, and a smile!
They all ran down, and surrounded me, chattering all at once. "Dana, this is crazy! You'll get busted before we ever get there!" Sunset had passed about half an hour ago, and if it wasn't quite dark out, it was dusk, and the light was fading fast. It was only a three minute walk to the Phi Sig house, and if Danielle Keaton could walk around naked, in broad daylight, all day long, I ought to be able to make three minutes on a Saturday evening, even if it was in Pennsylvania.
I was smiling, and my heart was racing, and while I knew we made it in just those three minutes, it seemed like it took longer. A couple of cars passed by the sidewalk we were taking, and I saw a double-take through a car window, but that was it. There weren't any cars on the street we had to cross, so we didn't have to stand still and wait to cross, which was probably a good thing. I ran up the steps to the Phi Sig house, went right through the door, and challenged, "OK, I did it! Where's Butch?"
There was an immediate whooping and hollering from the guys in the Phi Sig house, and the girls who had already made it to the party before us. Larry, the chapter president, rushed up, "Oh my God, Dana, you really did it!"
"You knew that I didn't back down from challenges! Now, where's Butch? He was supposed to be at the door, ready to fill his end of the bargain, right then."
A couple of the frat guys I didn't know already had Butch in tow, and pushed him into the center of the room: "Here he is! Time to pay up, buddy!"
Larry had already said that if Butch tried to back out, the guys would make sure he fulfilled his end of the bargain, and while it would be interesting to see them strip him right there, that could have cause problems later; technically, it would be a sexual assault. Butch already had a red plastic cup of beer in his hand, and I don't think that it had been his first of the night; he was probably drinking up his courage.
"Strip! Strip! Strip!" everyone was yelling, the girls louder than the guys.
"OK, OK, I'll do it," he said, stepping into a circle that had cleared out in the big living room, "under one condition!" The din died down for a second. "If I have to strip, I get to pick one other girl who has to get naked right after I do." A lot more whooping and hollering, from both the girls and the guys, but I think that the men were louder than the women this time. A quick glance told me that Larry had stayed quiet on this. Annette, who was technically Butch's date had an "Oh, shit!" look on her face, followed by a "Oh, God, please don't pick me" look.
Well, Butch fulfilled his end of the bargain, to lots of cheers, especially from the girls, even Annette. Jamie had her arms over her head, dancing, which made me think Butch would pick her instead of his date, but once he had stripped, he walked right over to Annette . . . and picked the girl standing right next to her.
I'd never seen this girl before, but she was cute, really cute, the way the actress who plays Bernadette on Big Bang Theory is cute: blonde (bottle blonde), really short and with really big tits for her size. Butch grabbed her hand and pulled her into the center of the circle, and out came the chants again: "Take it off! Take it off! Take it off!"
This girl already had a half-empty plastic cup of beer in her hand, so she had some liquid courage to help her. She blushed really redly, but she didn't seem to blanch from the challenge. She handed her beer to some guy I didn't know, and yelled out, "I'll do it . . . but then I get to pick a guy to strip down!" More cheers, but it was easy to see where this party was going; pretty soon everybody would be naked!
Larry spotted it, too, and he pulled one of his fraternity brothers off to the side, another older-looking guy, and one who didn't have a beer in his hand. Larry quickly arranged to have the discarded clothes and purses and what-not stored off to the side safely. The man had some presence of mind, and acted coolly in a potentially tense situation. He had told me earlier than he had banned the brothers from having their cell phones -- meaning: their cameras! -- out when it was just Butch and me who were supposed to get naked, and now he was making sure that nobody's clothes or stuff got lost or stolen. I had wondered before if he might be a veteran -- he looked the part, but never said anything, even when he knew that I was in the Army -- and now he was acting exactly the way I'd expect an E-6 to act: strongly, responsibly, and with some real thought involved.
