www.nytimes.com
December 2, 2007
Modern Love
My Sorority Pledge? I Swore Off Sisterhood
By KELLY XXXXX
MY life's greatest sorrow stems from my inability to feel close to
other women. At 41, I've cautiously cultivated a few cherished female
friend****ps. But generally I feel a kind of skittish distrust and
discomfort when dealing with most women, particularly women in packs.
Recently I was forced to confront the genesis of my distrust when I
found myself face to face with a certain someone from my past, a past
I thought I had filed away long ago, or, more precisely, buried on the
ocean floor in a padlocked steamer trunk wrapped in layers of
industrial-strength chain.
It was Sunday. I had wandered into a Bay Area Gymboree with my 7-year-
old daughters and then loitered in the aisles for what proved to be
two minutes too long. A jarring parrotlike voice assaulted me from the
racks of leggings.
"Kelly Dick? Is that you?"
I figured I could plausibly ignore the summons. My unfortunate maiden
name hadn't saddled me in 14 years. And having aged in all the typical
ways, I told myself that technically it wasn't even me.
But the woman persisted, waving her arms as if signaling a cab in a
hailstorm. "Hey! Kelly Dick!"
It was my twins who ultimately exposed me. "Mama, she's calling you,"
they squealed, pointing. "That lady knows you. That lady right there.
That's you: Kelly Dick."
Smiling confidently, the woman charged toward me. I braced myself.
"Kelly! I knew it was you. Wow, it's been, like, 20 years. But I could
so tell it was you. Remember me? College? Oh, my God. How are you?"
She had been my sorority sister, and not just any sorority sister, but
one who had played a leading role in the unraveling of my young life.
During rush week, she had interrogated me about my parents' home and
father's profession, inexplicably wincing when I said "dentist." She
also was among the girls I found in my room one afternoon, rubbing my
pearl necklace against her teeth to determine its (and presumably my)
authenticity.
And it was this woman and her friends who taught me the hard way that
once a girl is made to feel dirty, it becomes her lot, in perpetuity,
like an invisible scarlet letter.
I walked through the sorority doors all those years ago as a "good
girl," an 18-year-old milkmaid from St. Paul. I wasn't a conformist.
But I thought a sorority might bestow upon me a sup****tive, manageable
community among the 40,000 students I would be joining 1,700 miles
from home. So I pledged.
I felt sophisticated and savvy going in, but quickly discovered I was
out of my league among the Rolex-clad Texas debutantes and new-moneyed
California beauties. Yet I reveled in the acceptance and status my
sorority instantly conferred. The attendant freedoms and social
op****tunities overwhelmed my tender brain. I indulged, partied hard
and, a scant two months into the semester, lost my virginity.
But not in the traditional way.
It happened after a fraternity barn dance. All I knew about my date
was that he was festively inclined and physically stunning. My sisters
considered him a catch. I felt lucky.
After the usual alcoholic overindulgence, I followed him upstairs,
where I soon passed out on his sofa. There, I assumed the starring
role in a garden-variety "ledge party," my deflowering on display for
anyone desiring a peek.
Ledge parties, for those of you who didn't attend party-school
universities, featured fraternity boys luring their unsuspecting
companions to a lair of choice, where they engineered some semblance
of *** for the viewing enjoyment of their voyeuristic brethren, who
watched from the window's ledge. Unlike typical fraternity houses,
these were contem****ary buildings with plate glass windows and wide
ledges that formed perfect viewing platforms.
I suspect mine was one of the duller productions, but, alas, I
remember none of it. I learned later that some sympathetic brothers
had objected to the spectacle and pulled me from the wreckage, which,
to me, was remarkable.
Ledge parties weren't merely tolerated in the fraternities -- they were
rewarded with knowing winks and backslaps. But my date had crossed a
line: Apparently the fraternal code of ethics only approved of the
performances when the girls were conscious (albeit still unaware they
were being watched).
In the days that followed, my date apologized to me and to his
brothers, but the fraternity blackballed him anyway; by semester's
end, he had dropped out of school. There was never talk of
criminality; for whatever reason, we simply didn't think of it that
way.
And I felt my own heavy burden of responsibility for getting drunk and
losing control. I thought the whole sordid episode would be a lesson
learned about both college and men. Little did I know that the more
searing lesson would be about women.
Among my sorority sisters, the fallout began as whispered gossip.
Then, after momentum of my condemnation built to a crescendo, they
confronted me directly, en masse, like a torch-wielding mob. Branding
the incident my fault, they said I deserved my fate and further
complained that I had brought shame upon them all. They laughed at me,
gossiped some more, then distanced themselves. I was dirty to them --
and dirtier to myself.
My sisters, of course, were hardly model citizens, either. Indeed,
some boasted a ***ual prowess that still makes me blush. They had ***
in our chapter room, in hot tubs, behind rocks. They participated in
communal bulimic binges and coordinated the termination of unwanted
pregnancies. Many, naturally, had been victimized by ledge parties as
well but had somehow managed to keep it quiet.
For weeks I coasted in a daze until one day my sisters placed me on
probation, ostensibly for failing to dress in "appropriate sorority
spirit." The sweat pants I preferred to de rigueur Laura Ashley
prairie dresses weren't cutting it, they said. Then I choreographed a
joke dance routine to a Prince song for our Greek Sing variety show,
but my sisters didn't laugh. They found my choice of repertory
inappropriate, the proverbial last straw, and called a meeting to
assess my transgressions.
I remember watching television alone in my room while they met about
me in the chapter room. Soon I heard the clicking of heels, then a
strident knock upon my door. When it opened, there she was, my future
Gymboree assailant, flanked by a cadre of perfumed compatriots.
S****ting cold self-righteous expressions, they explained that the
sisterhood had decided I was not sorority material. I would need to
contact university housing and move out.
In the wake of my expulsion, I withdrew socially and pretended it
didn't matter. I hid under my Sony Walkman, hit the books and donned a
defensive armor of sarcasm and cynicism. And I gave up on female
camaraderie.
I graduated, went to law school and jumped fast into court****p and
marriage. Still haunted by my college experience, I hoped that
marriage and parenthood would legitimize my life, loosen the barnacles
of shame and allow me to find closure. And until my Gymboree
encounter, I believed I had.
I had heard little about this particular sister over the years, only
that she had wed her college sweetheart and settled in a wealthy
California enclave. That this shrieking Bulgari-adorned stranger now
accorded me long-lost-friend status was at once surreal and
unsurprising. I smiled through clenched teeth, but my flushed chest
and forehead betrayed my inner turbulence.
"Gosh, I've thought of you often," she said. "I always felt bad about
the sorority thing. But I guess we can laugh now. I heard you went to
law school, right?"
She began reciting the misfortunes she had faced, her marital
separation and other ordeals, all of which she delivered with an
upbeat spin. But I couldn't listen. It was such a clich=E9: former
goddess turned caricature: too lacquered, too accessorized, too fit.
In hearing of her failures, I yearned to feel redeemed, even superior,
but no. She held the same eerie power over me. All I could think was
that to her, I was still Kelly Dick, the drunken slut who had
disgraced the sisterhood. Standing before her, I felt raw, exposed,
dirty again. The sisterhood's looming judgments, my stale
indiscretions: all of it engulfed me, threatening to cleave the marrow
of my being once more.
I cut her off and bid her farewell. It was all I could manage. Then I
tightly clasped my daughters' hands and fled the store.
BUT I could not shake the encounter. A morbid funk descended that day
and held fast. No longer could I deny the havoc that that night had
wrought on my self-image and relation****ps. At 18, I had bought into
the talk of sisterly solidarity. I adhered to their customs and mores,
relied on them for nurturing and intimacy, trusted them.
And they not only failed to sup****t me in crisis, they collectively
kicked me as I lay in the gutter, judged me from under a veil of
hypocrisy, then cast me out, leper-style. Their betrayal cut so deep
that it has left me anxious and cowering to this day.
For the last 20-odd years, I've slapped Band-Aids on my wounds while
avoiding any kind of group female intimacy. I begged off on baby
groups when my children were born and haven't been able to bear book
clubs, the charity circuit, women's fitness classes or the country
club scene. Even finding myself among a group of cheering and chatting
mothers at my children's s****ting events can trigger that familiar
anxiety.
But to my enduring wonder, I have never felt the same anxiety about
men. To be sure, their violence and misogynistic rituals stole my
innocence and triggered the demons of shame and repression that
shackle me still.
Yet their actions, however crude and criminal, ultimately hurt me far
less than the judgments, connivance and betrayal of women. The men in
my drama acknowledged wrongdoing, apologized, showed remorse.
Punishment, however minor, was meted out. They did not blame me, and
they shouldn't have. But the women shouldn't have, either, and they
did.
In the two decades since, I've been a full-time lawyer, a working
mother and a stay-at-home mother. In each role, I've found my fears
about women's covert competition and aggression to be frequently
validated: the gossip, the comparisons, the withering critiques of
career and mothering choices. We women swim in shark-infested waters
of our own design. Often we don't have a clue where we stand with one
another -- socially, as mothers, as colleagues -- because we're at once
allies and foes.
I want to remain optimistic. After all, here I am with three
daughters. What am I to teach them? Cautionary tales about men's
harmful proclivities abound. But how do we help our girls navigate the
duplicitous female maze? How do we ensure that they behave
authentically, respect humanity over fleeting alliances, and squash
the nasty tribal instincts that can inflict lifelong distress?
I don't know. I'm afraid I never will.
Kelly XXXXX, a lawyer, lives in Piedmont, CA
|
