THE PIZZA GUY HALL OF FAME: CHAPTER 12 (Part one) Reindeer Games

"I wish I was like you, easily amused."

-Kurt Cobain

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Everyone wants to belong. Except maybe, Nietzsche, but his desire to be a man to himself was probably born of rejection. There was probably a person or a group that wouldn’t let him into their reindeer games, so he said, “Fine. I’ll make my own group, and I’ll call it Uberman Club, and no one but me can be part of it because I’m the only Uberman! It’s called the Uberman Club, not the Ubermen’s Club, so it’s just me, and I’m better than all you all.”

Nietzsche was known to use the phrase “all you all” to
excess. It actually got him excluded from The Correct Grammar
Club in high school. But he showed them. Who’s studying the work
of Sphen Weinerbraunshnat today? No one, that’s who! (Sphen was
president of the Correct Grammar Club.) Nietzsche 1,
Weinerbraunshnat 0. Loser.

We didn’t belong to any clubs. We tried. Gary tried the
water polo club. Did you know that you have to keep swimming the
entire time you’re playing water polo? Neither did Gary. Yeah,
it turns out its kind of like basketball mixed with soccer
except the court’s made of water. After he awoke to the coach
giving him mouth to mouth on the first day, Gary decided to
forego the rest of practice, and the rest of the season. When
asked about how he liked water polo, he replied, “You know how
some sports teams, like football, baseball, wrestling, they have
a heavyweight? A guy who’s carrying around a few spare calories,
some unburned energy? You know, a fat guy.” He paused and looked
at us.

“Yeah, but you’re not fat-fat, like sloppy fat.” I said in consolation.

“Yeah, You’re left guard fat.” Chuck said firmly. Both he
and Gary played high school football, and sometimes they still
thought that made them cool.

Gary latched onto Chuck’s comment, “Exactly! Fat, but you
still gotta be lithe enough to pull and shoot the gap! Anyways,
water polo.... They don’t have a fat guy. Not even a lithe fat
guy.” Then his face became dark and broken, “...But their coach
does have a very bristly mustache.”

None of us were ever really the joining types, but since
Miami’s student body was over seventy percent Greek, and as
freshman we were lonely morons, some of us had rushed
fraternities.

Rose and I didn’t rush a frat when we arrived freshman
year. We knew ourselves too well, so we were spared. Gary and
Chuck were not so lucky. They rushed three or four fraternities
each. They each got called back until the end of the week for at
least one of their choices, but in the end they received no
bids. Apparently, the chosen fraternities already had a lithe
fat guy and a young man from a 1940’s beach resort.

Secretly, I felt vindicated by the outcome of their
endeavors. They should have known better than to subject
themselves to such judgmental frivolities. Rose and I were
right, why even try to become part of something so stupid and
superficial. We were individuals, not sheep.

I waited until spring to rush. It’s funny how watching
girls flock to frat parties can test the courage of a young
man’s convictions.

Spring rush was for those holdouts that mistakenly thought
that they had already formed a solid identity. Maybe rushing
just one fraternity wouldn’t be so bad. Not that I wanted to
actually join or anything. You know, I just wanted to see what
it was all about. Hey, maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe it wasn’t all
chanting and chugging. Maybe, just maybe, these fraternity
gentlemen were of a higher caliber than I’d initially suspected.
After all, Dustin, my neighbor from across the hall was
pledging, and he was cool.

He had rushed in the fall and received bids from three Frat
houses. Dustin accepted the Sig Eps’s bid and was now their
pledge, but Dustin wasn’t a typical frat boy. In fact, he was
nothing like a frat boy. He was nothing like anybody.

Dustin existed on his own dimensional plain. So much so
that one often had to wonder if he had drank too much expired
milk as a kid. His social habits were borderline autistic. It
was as though, to him people were not so much puzzles, as they
were passing curiosities. He so much seemed to not be all there
that you were forced to suspect he was more there than anybody.
And your suspicions would be right. He was so far out he’d come
back around the other side. Dustin was brilliant, and cooler
than you, but you couldn’t explain quite why.

Tarzan was a man raised by wolves from the African jungle,
and Dustin was a rock star raised by preppy doctors from
Michigan. Tall, skinny, and broad shouldered, he wore horn
rimmed glasses, button up shirts, and his hair was cut like a
rich snot ball country clubbing tennis player. But his look was
an unintentional disguise. It was Tarzan’s city people fur,
remove it and he was someone else. Hand him a guitar and his
true identity was finally revealed. He was a space cadet. Major
Tom and Rocket man looked up to him. He knew the spiders from
Mars and laughed at Ziggy Stardust. He lived in the sunshine of
your love and taught the children of the sun how to fly. He
played his Gibson Les Paul so loud that your ears found
religion. And he’d often play in the middle of a weekday
afternoon, wandering into my room unannounced.

I’d be alone in my freshman dorm room, sitting at my desk
cramming for a chemistry exam. The door would fling open and
Dustin would saunter in without bothering to recognize my
presence, he had enough of his own. No glasses, no shirt, no
shoes, no excuse. His hair tangled and eyes glazed, he’d fondle
the Les Paul strung low at his hips. The cord stretched across
the hall, all the way back to his room where his tube amp
screamed like a siren.

My room became an arena stage and Dustin became the center.
His fingers flew up and down the fret board, picking the pockets
of guitar heroes, unlocking the serenades of soloists, and
finding the flickering flame fills that made Mama kin, Voodoo
Chile, and Sweet Chile O’ Mine burn like bonfires. That is,
until the ear piercing sound was cut short by an unsuspecting
passerby in the hall. The amp would abruptly silence, the cord
would whip through the air, and we’d hear someone in the hall
cursing as they fell, victim to Dustin’s mock trip-wire. But
Dustin would remain unfazed.

He’d continue to noodle away, creating a rhythmic tinga-
tinga-ting noise on the strings. His guitar castrated and near
silenced, Dustin would pick at the lifeless metal strings as
though trying to resuscitate the instrument’s heart. Then he’d
pause and address me as though we were mid-conversation and mid-
sentence. It was as though he assumed I’d been hearing his
thoughts as easily as he’d been hearing the rhythms of the
earth.

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