The Disappearing Fratboy
I don’t know if I ever told you, but the first job I got out of college was because of the fraternity I’d been in. That’s been about thirty years ago. I studied econ and finance with the goal of becoming a bank manager. I put together a resume after graduation and submitted to various banks around my hometown and in the town where I went to college. The first call that I got was from a bank in my college town, and I interviewed with them before I even got calls from anyone else. As luck would have it, the man who was doing the interviewing for the open position had been a member of my fraternity when he went through school. The interview had gone really well, already, but when he realized that I had been in his frat, he got really chummy with me. He told me a few anecdotes about his days in the house twenty years prior and I told him a couple of stories about my frat brothers. He warned me when we were done talking not to think that I was hired because of my fraternity affiliation if they hired me. He said he’d interviewed three other people for the job, and none seemed as intelligent or capable as I had. He told me that he would be giving one more interview on the following day and that I should expect to hear from him within two or three days. I received calls from two more banks the next day, one in my hometown and another in my college town, and I scheduled interviews with both. I left town immediately after the local interview to visit my hometown for the interview there.
When I returned the following day, after staying the night with my parents, I found a message on my answering machine from the man who’d been in my frat. He wanted me to come in to discuss the details of my employment. I picked up the phone immediately and dialed the bank’s number.
The secretary who answered was really quiet when I asked to speak to him. After a moment, she said, “I’m sorry; you won’t be able to speak to him. Last night he had a heart attack; he’s…he didn’t make it.” I was stunned and couldn’t think of anything to say. “Can I ask what your call is regarding?”
“Uh…I was calling about the business account management position. I interviewed with him the other day…”
She asked my name, and when I told her, she explained to me that he’d already made it clear to the board in a meeting yesterday that I was the only one suitable for the position. She told me that she would call me in a few days to let me know who I would need to meet with.
“I’m Sarah, by the way,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll be meeting you soon,” she said with a saddened smile in her voice before hanging up the phone. She sounded pretty.
And she was. I met her the following week, when I went into the bank to begin my training. She looked up at me and smiled as I approached the desk.
“I’m here to begin my training,” I stuttered, barely able to look at her beautiful face. She giggled, holding out her right hand over the desk.
“I talked to you on the phone last week. It’s nice to meet you in person,” she said.
“Absolutely,” I replied, casually glancing at the bare ring finger on her left hand.
She directed me to the office of my direct superior and I went along and got to work. I spent the next few weeks getting familiar with the bank’s specific procedures. It wasn’t too difficult to pick up, and most of the people I worked with seemed like really nice folks. I worked up the nerve to ask Sarah if she’d join me for lunch at the end of the week, and she blushed as she answered, “of course!”
Over the next year, I cruised through the work at the bank and dated Sarah frequently. We moved in together after six months, because her lease was ending and her roommate was leaving town. I had grown tired of my small apartment and was interested in settling down in a house of my own. We looked at houses together and I bought one that I liked a lot, and she liked it, too. We agreed that it would be best if she continued to pay something as rent, trying to be clear with each other that, if the relationship didn’t last, the house was not something that we’d done together, it was something I had done for myself, and she had been around for it. None of that really mattered anyway, because in three months time I was ready to propose marriage. I woke up early one spring morning and was overjoyed at how comfortable I was in bed next to her, with cool fresh air carrying the songs of birds into the house from our wonderful yard. I went downstairs and made breakfast. After we’d eaten, I told her that I was perfectly happy with my life and couldn’t imagine not sharing the rest of it with her. She smiled and I got down on one knee, asking, “Sarah, would you marry me?”
We called off work that day and made love on into the afternoon before having lunch with all of our parents. Her parents lived in town, and by a stroke of luck, my parents had come down to this part of the state to do some shopping, so they weren’t more than a half-hour away when I called to tell them the news. Rather than tell them over the phone, I begged and pleaded that they drive to town and meet us for lunch. We sat down and had a beautiful lunch and talked, joked, and laughed with each other. When everyone was silent for a moment, I took Sarah’s hand and said to the group: “listen, everyone, Sarah and I have something that we wanted to tell you.” Our mothers simultaneously took our fathers’ hands and held their breath. “We’re going to get married.” They began crying and laughing, and our fathers beamed with pride. We married and took an extravagant honeymoon in the Caribbean. After a year, we decided to have children.
Meanwhile, things were going very well at work. I was the manager of my specific department and had taken on a position much like the one the man who’d hired me held at his time of death. I routinely had to fill employment gaps by perusing resumes and conducting interviews, and I was surprised one day to meet a man who said he’d been in the same fraternity as me. I remembered the man who’d hired me, all of a sudden. I had hardly thought about him since those first few weeks of work. I recounted the story to the man I was interviewing, and he responded by asking: “So you think you’re gonna hire me, then?” I told him that I would get back to him.
I had some difficulty making a decision about who I would hire for probably the first time since I’d ever been in a position to hire anyone. Fraternity issue aside, I probably wouldn’t have considered the young man. His resume wasn’t that much less impressive than the other person I was considering, but I wasn’t terribly impressed with his personality in the interview. The other man had been a little more charming and graceful, but not so much so that he was a shoo-in. After deliberating for an entire week, I decided that I could not hesitate any longer, and I hired the frat-boy. I decided that perhaps his demeanor in the interview might’ve been a fluke, and hiring him would be a nice way to thank the man who hired me.
When I went to call the frat-boy, I couldn’t find his number, or any of his other paperwork. I searched my office, going through all of my papers two or three times, and finally I asked my secretary if she had any of the information. She gave me a confused look when I told her the name of the man. I tried to jog her memory by describing him, and I was growing a bit frustrated. Finally, I asked her if she had any contact information for the other man I’d interviewed. She didn’t seem to recognize his name, either.
“The two men who came in last Thursday for interviews. You don’t remember them?” I asked, nearly irate.
“You haven’t interviewed anyone in a month, sir, I’m sure of it!”
I stormed back into my office and sat down at my desk. What could be going on? I got an idea: I called the frat house. Surely they would have records of
his membership. When I dialed the number that I’d dialed so many times in college, I was met with a message from the phone company, saying that the number I was trying to reach was no longer in service. I dialed the University switchboard and asked them to direct me.
“That fraternity has never been on this campus, sir,” the operator calmly told me. “I have records of the Greek-system phone numbers going back to the University’s foundation. Not only have none of the frat house’s phone numbers ever changed, but the frat you’re asking about has never had a number.” Flustered, I got on the internet to look for the number myself.
No search engine provided any results for my searches. I couldn’t find evidence of any chapters of the fraternity, let alone the local chapter. I decided to look up my old frat brothers instead. I started with my closest friends, and finding no information, I began going by each room of the frat house, trying to remember the names of all the guys I’d lived with. No one. Nothing. I stormed out of work early and drove to the university campus.
I arrived at the spot where our house sat, a ray of hope shining down as I saw that it still stood in place. I’d thought I’d been going crazy! As I pulled closer on the street, though, looking for a parking place, I realized that it wasn’t exactly as I had remembered it. Where our Greek letters had once proudly been displayed on the lawn, a different sign announced to the world: “xxxx Hall: University Housing.” A fucking dorm!
I drove home and climbed into bed, looking for some relief. When Sarah came home and came into the bedroom, she quietly called out my name.
“Are you okay?”
I told her I wasn’t feeling so well. I asked her if she remembered my frat.
“Right…your frat,” she said, rolling her eyes impatiently. It was clear. I tried to remember the face of a single one of my frat brothers who’d come to the wedding and couldn’t. I apologized to my wife and told her my stomach had been bothering me.
To this day, I’ve never spoken of my fraternity to anyone else. It’s been thirty years since I’ve breathed a word of it, though I can remember all of my college years vividly, except of course, for those occasional drunken blackouts. I’ve never been able to find any evidence to support these memories. Whenever I start to think about it now, I instead ask myself what couples in New York fight about. It just gives me an opportunity to let my imagination go, you know?
The Golden Cucumber
Did I tell you about the time that I had to go to Tibet? It all started when I decided that I wanted to try out a structured approach to meditation. I grew up Catholic but had always been intrigued by Buddhism, particularly when I realized at the age of around sixteen or seventeen that I wasn’t a Christian. I made a lot of efforts at meditation on my own up to the age of twenty-three or so, but felt as though I’d hit a plateau. I got involved with a local Buddhist meditation group that met on Sunday mornings for meditation and tea.
I excelled at the meditation and developed a close relationship with the group leader, Master Song. He and I sometimes met during the week to talk over tea. At his suggestion, we began to meditate together in the evenings at his studio. In the process of meditation, I began to reach increasingly higher planes of consciousness, reaching levels of awareness that transcended the known Universe. I try to explain to people that this awareness is not a conscious thing, that I don’t “know” everything about the Universe; I simply have an intuitive connection to levels of existence that are greater than the universe in which we live. Master Song understood this, as he was able to reach similar levels of awareness.
After a year of intensive meditation with him, I found that I was consistently becoming a bird in my meditation. Almost immediately upon sitting in the lotus and beginning my mantra, the whole of the Universe would become my body, and I would soar across a sky of astral energy. The far reaches of the cosmos were my great white wings and our own galaxy was the heart that sustained my life energy. I decided that I should tell Master Song of my visions.
“I’ve never told you about the prophecy of the White Heron,” he said. “I had my suspicions when I first met you, and in our time together I’ve come to believe it more every day. This vision you’ve had proves it once and for all.”
He explained to me that just as the mother of the enlightened one had envisioned a white elephant descending into her womb, recent Lamas had begun to envision a white heron that would swoop low and take humanity, which would become an olive branch, into its mouth, carrying it into the peace of timelessness. This fit incredibly well with my insatiable taste for olives ever since I was a child.
“What must I do, Master,” I asked. It was then that he told me about the Golden Cucumber.
“When humanity was banished to life and suffering, it was decided that the banishment should be temporary. Birth and Death were necessary for the Great Spirit to know Joy and Suffering, and because the Universe has existed, Joy and Suffering now are a part of the Great Spirit. In the beginning, a Golden Cucumber was given to existence as the key to end Birth and Death. Only when the heights and depths of life and existence have been reached will an incarnation of peace be able to reach this Golden Cucumber. It is believed that the White Heron might be this incarnation. You must go to Tibet and make the journey to the mountain where the Golden Cucumber is believed to be hidden.”
I agreed to the task and set out a week later for a monastery in Tibet where I was expected. Everyone treated me very well, but no one told me what to do. I spent a week in the monastery meditating with Master Tanz. After a grueling thirty-six hours meditating together in the beautiful main temple, Master Tanz addressed me.
“Now is the time,” he said. “Your spirit has absorbed all that it can here, and now you must make your journey. No one may accompany you, as the Golden Cucumber will obliterate all of those who are not worthy to be in its presence.” Convenient that Master Song left that out before. “The path on the east side of the village will take you as far as anyone has been. Beyond that, you must meditate for guidance.”
The following morning, I set out on my journey. I took nothing with me. I followed the path for three days until I reached a dead-end. I was famished and thirsty, so I made for myself a meal of snow and various roots that I could pull from the hard ground. I fasted for twelve hours before beginning my meditation.
In meditation, I saw clearly the path that I would take to a great gate in the side of the mountain. The gate would open into a vault where I’d find the Golden Cucumber. Upon returning to consciousness, the path remained visible where there’d only been forest and brush before. I continued my journey.
After another five days’ hiking, I reached the spot I’d seen in my vision. At the end of the path, there was a small clearing by a large rocky wall on the side of the mountain. In my vision, this wall was where the gates had been. Again I broke my fast with roots and snow, wondering how I should proceed. I began my meditation twelve hours later. In my meditation, I saw the rock wall change shape until it became the gates of my previous vision. They were much larger than I’d expected, at least a half-mile high and a quarter-mile across. How do you open doors like that? I meditated on the intricately ornate shapes and figures on the doors. After three days of meditation, the symbols began to light in a seemingly random sequence. When all of the symbols had been illuminated, the great gates began to rumble. They slowly opened into the mountain, revealing a vast cave. I returned to consciousness to find that the mountain now resembled the open gates of my vision.
Within the cave, I found hordes of great treasure and riches. What use would the creators of the Universe have for all of this junk? I made my way through the cave until I was at least two miles below the Earth’s surface, deep within the mountain. There, propped against the wall of the cave in between two great golden tomatoes, was the Golden Cucumber. I sat to meditate and find the guidance that I needed in order to fulfill my purpose. Now that I’d arrived, what was I supposed to do with the cucumber? And what would happen when I did that? The Universe would cease to exist, all matter and energy returning to its true form—spirit? I hadn’t given my task a great deal of thought up to this point, as I had believed that I should simply follow the path set out before me, but now that I had nearly reached the end of that path, I wondered about the truth of the prophesy. It obviously hadn’t been completely false; the cucumber did, in fact, exist, and it didn’t seem like anyone had made it this far before. But I was troubled by the fact that I hardly felt as though I had completed my spiritual progress in this life; surely the countless other spirits in the Universe had further progress to make, as well. I let these questions float through my consciousness as I fell away from it, hoping that I might gain some clarity in this communion with the Spirit.
Once again, my body fell away from me as I began to transcend my own life. Something was different this time. Typically, through meditation, my sense of a distinct individual consciousness gives way to the universal consciousness, and I lose touch with the illusion of Self. Of course, it hadn’t always been like that—letting go of Self comes only after much practice and experience with heightened awareness. I wondered if the doubt that I experienced as I began to meditate had affected my willingness to let go, but unlike my early experiences with meditation, I was aware both of Self and of Universe; I was conscious both of my existence in space and time and of the timeless formless truth of spirit beyond the material Universe. I had never imagined that it was possible to experience Spirit and Self simultaneously. I recognized what I had seen before, the Universe from the perspective of Spirit, but had never been able to understand with human consciousness. No matter how I’d transcended space and time before, my knowledge of truth had always been limited to a sort of spiritual knowing that I could never comprehend mentally. Now
I could see clearly, and mentally grasp, the truth of the Golden Cucumber and my role in this lifetime. I slipped out of the Spirit and returned to space and time, and I eagerly began my return trip to the monastery, cucumber in hand.
Many were surprised to learn of my reappearance, especially because I had the cucumber in my possession. If I was not the White Heron, why hadn’t the cucumber destroyed me? And if the prophesy was false, then what had become of all of the others who went in search of the cucumber? Or why would the cucumber exist at all, if the prophesy had been a lie? Many renounced me as a fraud, insisting that the cucumber I brought back was a fake and that the real one either never existed or I wasn’t the White Heron and therefore couldn’t find it. I gently explained that my role as White Heron is not as the one who will liberate spirit from time and space, but as the messenger to all conscious beings that the Universe must follow its proper course according to the laws that created it. Matter and energy arose from spirit long before it gave birth to consciousness, and long after conscious beings have ceased to exist, matter and energy will return to Spirit. I now travel the world and carry this message to all who will listen, that consciousness is the gift by which we experience joy and suffering, and the spiritual journey of each individual consciousness, along with the material journey of every particle, is necessary for the Universe to reconcile itself with Spirit. Move forward, I preach, live and enjoy life. Receive the message of hope that the Golden Cucumber represents: we are all Spirit, and when our individual consciousness comes to an end, we will return to pure being, where we will be free to fully appreciate all of the joy and suffering of the Universe, from beginning to end.
The Coin Collection
Have I told you about when I had the world’s most valuable coin collection? I only had it for a few months, but it was nice to have.
It all started when I got my first half-dollar from my barber. It was the first time that I was old enough to go to get my hair cut by myself. Mom gave me seven dollars, but haircuts at Blake’s Barber Shop only cost six fifty at the time. Blake kept plenty of half dollar coins on hand to make change without having to deal with a bunch of quarters. He finished cutting my hair—it was the first time that I was able to choose my own haircut, as well, so I got a spike—and I dug into my pocket for the seven wadded bills Mom had given me. Blake unfolded them slowly and counted them out loud as I watched patiently. He smiled.
“You’re not trying to rip me off,” he said. “I never know if I can trust a kid with spiked hair, you know.” I grinned as he pulled out a stack of folded bills from his pocket and put the seven ones in with it. He reached into his other pocket and produced the half dollar. He held it in front of me between the tip of his index finger and thumb, and I marveled at its beauty. I extended my arm and watched as he carefully placed it in my open palm. I pulled my hand back in close to my face and inspected the intricacies of the rare and valuable treasure. I turned and began to walk out.
“Hey,” Blake yelled. I turned and looked, worried that he might try to change his mind about trusting me with the piece of metal that I still clutched tightly in my sweaty palm. “You almost forgot your gum,” he said, lobbing the Dubble Bubble in a great arc across the room. I snatched it with my free hand and yelled thanks as I walked out the door. I made my way quickly and eagerly down the street to the post office. Hewerdine’s Coin and Jewelry was upstairs at the post office, right next to Geerken’s Card Shop. I’d come to the card shop with my older brother once, and while he examined baseball and basketball cards, I wandered through Hewerdine’s, inspecting the pocket watches and rare coins through thick glass of the display cases. Mr. Hewerdine recognized me from Sunday Mass and humored me as I asked questions until my brother had finished his business in the card shop. I couldn’t think of a better person to show my new treasure than Mr. Hewerdine.
“Well that’s a half-dollar,” he said, inspecting the coin I’d handed him after waiting patiently for him to finish talking with some man about a watchband. “I’d say it’s worth about fifty cents.” My heart dropped. That’s all? I felt cheated. He hadn’t even consulted any of big coin books. How could he be so sure? I thanked him and walked home slowly, imagining ways that I could expand my coin collection. Can you call it a collection if you only have one?
A couple of years passed and I managed to build a small collection of my own. Mom and Dad were supportive of my new hobby and bought me books and coins for birthdays, Christmas, and whenever I could convince them that it’d been too long since the last gift. After those three years, my collection was probably worth a little over fifty dollars, if that; and the books I had on coin collecting were probably worth over forty.
In the course of those years, I’d begun hanging out with my next-door neighbor, Matt. We were in the same grade and recognized each other during recess one day, so I began going to his house to play Nintendo. Sometimes we’d look through his brother’s dirty magazines, each of us saying “Ewwww” and “Gross!” as we slowly turned the pages. Matt told me one day that his brother snuck out of the house at night sometimes.
“We should try it sometime!” he said. “We could see what it’s like when everyone’s sleeping.” I had to admit, it did sound intriguing. I remained resistant for a few weeks before finally caving in and agreeing to meet him at a certain time of the night.
I waited in bed and watched the numbers change slowly on the digital alarm clock. One o’clock finally came and I crept out of bed. Just as Matt had suggested, I dressed in black sweatpants and a black sweatshirt before sneaking down the back stairs. Matt was already waiting for me when I walked out the gate in the chain-link fence in the back yard.
“Follow me,” he said, as though he had some plan of where we should be going. We wandered down the alley, staying in the far edges of people’s yards, occasionally hiding behind trees or fences if we thought we heard something. I would’ve believed that he knew where we were going, but we actually circled one or two blocks a couple of times. Navigating a small Illinois town can be difficult at one in the morning, particularly when you’re ten years old and traveling only through back yards. We passed by the mansion. Paxton had one mansion, but it was split into two levels. The retired priest, Father Mahoney, lived upstairs and the Baier family lived downstairs. They weren’t Catholic, which didn’t seem right to me at the time. I assumed that they were renting from Father Mahoney. They didn’t need to rent; they owned the funeral home and the ambulance service and a furniture store. As we passed their back yard, I noticed that the gate was open. I said something to Matt, but he shushed me and continued down the alley to some unknown destination. As I followed ten or twelve paces behind him, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Baier house. Just about any time that I’d gone and visited Mr. Hewerdine, he would drop a reference to some rare coin or other that Mr. Baier had. He must have a huge collection, I thought. And here I could get into his yard if I wanted to. Matt eventually led us back home. I watched as he walked through his yard and slowly opened his back door. As soon as he was in, I waved good-night and watched him close the door. I turned around and bolted back toward the Baier home.
I entered their back yard through the open gate and walked up to the house. I peeked through the basement windows and tried to see what sort of setup they had. It was too dark inside, so I wandered up onto their deck. The pool was covered and I looked at the wine cooler bottles that sat by lawn chairs. They must’ve had people over to visit that night. I went to peek through the sliding glass door. The living room was huge! They ran a furniture store, so of course they only had the nicest couches and chairs. They didn’t sell home entertainment at the furniture store, but they still had a huge TV and speakers everywhere. What a place. What if…I put my hand on the handle of the sliding glass door and pulled ever so gently. It opened! I couldn’t believe it; my heart was racing. I walked in slowly, leaving the door open in case I had to make a quick escape, and made my way up and down the hallways. I peaked around the corner of any room with an open door, carefully checking to see if anyone was sleeping. I didn’t dare open any doors. I just wanted to see the coin collection, if I could, but I had no idea where someone would keep something like that, and all I found were bookshelves, paintings, and expensive-looking dishes. I found some stairs into the basement and decided to check that out. There was another big-screen TV down there and three or four couches in a semicircle around it. Surely no one was sleeping down here, so I could check behind the closed doors. The first that I ventured to open was a closet door in the corner of the room. It was a large closet, and I walked in to find boxes lining the walls. Built-in shelves lined one of the walls, and on the bottom shelf I saw a box labeled “coins.” Would someone really do this? I lifted the lid from the box and peeked inside. I couldn’t believe it. It was the collection I’d heard so much about. I closed the lid and slid the box slowly off the shelf. It was heavy, but I could lift it. I didn’t stop to think; I began walking, awkwardly lugging this big box out of the closet and up the stairs. I walked out the s
till-open sliding glass door and made my way down the alleys. I’m sure it would’ve been a sight to see, a four-foot tall boy carrying a box three-feet wide down the alley. I set the box down on the ground behind a tree in each yard and sat down to rest for a moment, looking around to make sure the coast was clear before moving on. When I reached my gate, I set the box down again, opened the gate, and picked up the box before walking into the yard. I walked the box over to our little tin shed and set it on the ground again. The door to the shed squeaked as I opened it. I found a spot behind a couple of other boxes and hid my new collection there. I snuck back into my bedroom exhausted and glanced at the alarm clock—4:10 am—before finally going to sleep.
In the following weeks, I kept an eye on the newspaper. There was a blurb a few days later about the Baier’s dog, a purebred sheltie that had gone missing on the night I took the coins, but no mention of the coin collection missing. I hadn’t even seen a dog when I was in their house. I moved the collection into my bedroom closet one afternoon and took it out often to look through all of the coins. There were a lot of really old ones. A bunch of them were gold. I knew it was a good collection, but now that I had it, I couldn’t really do anything with it. And the Baiers didn’t even seem to notice that it was missing. Until a few months later.
An article in the paper mentioned a break-in at the Baier home. The problem was, they didn’t know when it happened. The insurance company had problems with the whole thing because there were no signs of an actual break-in and the only thing missing was the collection. The Baiers would have a difficult time proving that it was actually missing. The newspaper said that the collection was among the most valuable in the world. I couldn’t believe it. And I couldn’t do anything with it. Until a few months later. An ad ran in the paper.
“Have coins? Send us a letter.” A California address was listed. I imagined that it might be a solicitation for this collection. What could it hurt to send a letter? So I wrote a letter, saying that I had a few coins that I might be interested in selling. I received a response a week later. The letter said specifically that he strongly suspected that I might have taken the collection, because I was the only one to respond to the ad. Don’t be worried, it said. That was all. I sent another letter, asking how much he might be willing to pay for my “few” coins. A week later, another letter. Five thousand dollars. What would I do with all of that money? I looked through the coin collection and took out a handful of my favorites. I wrote another letter. How will we exchange? A week later, meet me at the 102, August 21, 4pm. Whoever this was, he’d done his homework. The 102 was a restaurant downtown. I was there that day, with the box. A man walked in, looking around suspiciously. He sat down at a table by himself, placing a manila envelope on the table. It was him. He glanced at me briefly, but mostly was watching the door. I picked up my box and walked over to his table. I placed the box on the table, picked up the envelope, and walked out.
