I Become the First Dickless Deke

"Kerothen Philoi Aei" ("Friends from the Heart, Forever")

I may be the only female DKE. That is not a misspelling of a sexist slur. Delta Kappa Epsilon is the college fraternity of U.S. presidents, legendary CEOs, and Hollywood stars. It does not admit women. Baboon tribes do not adopt puppies; they love them, but only for lunch, with a side of tubers and grubs.

A couple years earlier, at my university, DKE came near to being shut down. A pledge had died during "Hell Night," the DKE initiation into manhood, and DKEs had upheld their reputation for maturity by deciding to bury the body in the woods. Pledge? Nah, we got all our pledges, don't we guys? They got caught sneaking the corpse across the quad.

If Franklin Delano Roosevelt, both Bushes, Gerald Ford, Potter Stewart, Howard Heinz, John Pierpont Morgan, Cole Porter, Dick Clark, and Dean Acheson—to name but a few famous DKEs—had not revered their old house, the university would have closed it. Possibly imploded it with the DKEs inside.

I, Ellen Pierce Melville, survived a DKE initiation—not "Hell night," more like the violation of the Sabine women--after the DKEs grasped that they weren't getting rid of me, that I was a compulsive dishwasher and toilet sanitizer, and always good for a consolation rub-and-tug—hey, I don't fuck just anybody--when the girlfriend was laid low with what we still called her "monthly." They never wondered if I had monthlies since no DKE ever did; I mean, that's just empiricism.

Back for junior year at the women's co-ordinate college, not yet absorbed into the big male amoeba. We did not have sororities. For the first two years, I had lived with roommates like Iowa Kathy and Alabama Sue-Ann. A broadening experience for a girl who attended a New England Academy in Connecticut, wearing a uniform every day. I can't, CANNOT, go into my sex life at the Academy. I am still in recovery from... No, I cannot go into it. Moving right on, now.

Junior year, the housing office assigned me a suite with another sweet girl. I think we could call her Kentucky Sadie. By then, I was a woman; I had had experiences. I dared lift my eyes above the trench to survey the landscape. Where the HELL was I, anyway? What were all these other people doing—I mean, outside of classes, the library, the lobby at Faunce Hall, the Blue Room...?

What was everyone keeping from me? That has been the question of my life. Why is everyone in on it but ME?

Then, Scotty, from geology—we had to take a science course, there were "distribution" requirements, then—took me to see DKE house. They had a full kitchen, living room with faux Persian rug, library with a beautiful antique globe, big rooms, a gym, and the foremost collection of male primates outside the San Diego Zoo or the NFL. I walked around, holding hands with Scotty—a step he had daringly taken as we walked through the doorway. This was the House of Testosterone.

But wait. How come the guys at this university, ambling along on their knuckles, inhabited these brick manor houses while the women bumped around their crowded hives and deposited their honey in cells described as "single" or "double"--with one bathroom for the hall that had curled pussy hair plastered to the toilet seats and with a ban on single-burner stoves as imperiling the dorm's electrical capacity? Making a cup of tea was a fire hazard.

Clear, now. I could be a second-class citizen or a DKE. I never am a second-class citizen; no woman ever has been a DKE. Did someone say this was an uneven struggle? DKE tradition and the Orangutan Centurion guard versus my smile, tits, and pussy. Now, who do you think wins? Of course I did.

Earlier, Scotty had invited me to a couple Saturday night parties at DKE. Oh, Scotty, how sweet, I was looking forward to getting alcohol poisoning and being gang-banged this year. What should I wear? Special tear-off clothing?

Poor Scotty seemed forlorn, standing on the time-worn granite steps of the Geo building, wondering why I used big words. He must have loved me. Or figured that with a kind of flat chest I would faint with joy at being invited to a DKE Saturday evening orgy. Well, I do have shapely legs rising in a long sigh up to my ass. Scotty needed a subtle hint. "Scotty, you're taking me to DKE at 2:30 today for a tour."

And thus the tour. Scotty escorted me into the DKE equivalent of a "front parlor," where virgins experienced their last moments with their hymens. He had sweetly taken my hand as we crossed the brick front terrace and passed beneath the Greek letters over the door. Scotty, will you die to defend my honor from future presidents, CEOs, and Hollywood stars?

He produced a little glass of Madeira. I listened carefully. No distant moans of protest, weeping of violated co-eds, ugly snap of the lash tracing red paths on the pale perfect butt. Coast was clear.

"Can you give me a tour, Scotty?"

"Of DKE?"

No, Place Victor Hugo.

"Well, there are areas off limits, you know."

I let my cheek fall against his. Accidentally, just a girl all tuckered out. My hand came to rest on his thigh not too far from IT. I mean, possibly the side of my breast pressed him, but that would not be a notable sensation.

"Sure, I guess," he said. "It's so quiet."

Not only was there a living room, dining room with crystal chandeliers, full kitchen, sitting room, and large bedrooms. There were more bathrooms—and bigger—and a gym with a steam room. What WAS this? Where was equality? Why were there no women DKEs? They had everything but bidets with perfumed rose water. Probably no demand for them. At the women's dorms, we were petitioning to replace the baskets of pine cones with real toilet paper. O Susan B. Anthony wert thou with us at this hour.

Scotty? I'm going to live here. Be the first woman DKE. Tell the brothers you have a new pledge who won't do 500 one-hand push-ups, but might do the dishes. Be happy to shower with the guys. Massage with happy ending, no problem.

I did not say that. Men around the world in offices of power and influence would have trembled. Do them good.

"Can I visit you, here, Scotty?" I murmured. I was slumping against him, full body block--cheek, butt, tit. My hand was farming the piedmont near his Blue Ridge Mountains. My small hand with nicely manicured fingernails makes any man feel big.

"Oh, Ellen...sure. SURE."

If we had been sitting on a couch, at that moment, he would have hit me like a leopard taking down a wapiti. But we were walking. I let him put his arm around my waist and smiled into his frustration-glazed eyes.

I sat in "Social and Intellectual History of the United States to the Civil War"—I think we were at Jonathan Edwards and the first Great Awakening—taking notes via "hope from beyond" automatic writing—but really strategizing the fall of the DKE fortress. What would appeal to the DKEs? A legal argument based on precedents of sex equality? An appeal to gender diversity as enriching fraternity life? Pussy?

I thought I had a plan. My notes later revealed that Jonathan Edwards was using a rhetorical technique called "qualified repetition," endless variations on saying you are a spider dangling from a thread over the famished fires of Hades. The guy was in sorrowful need of a hand job. Where was Mrs. Edwards? The Second Great Awakening might have come a lot sooner.

Am I ever, ever going to get on with this story? My readers have logged out and are rummaging in their basements for their old paperback copy of The Perils of Pauline. There is not so much sex in this story. I did not aspire to live in DKE House as a camp follower or Sallie Mae in her slip chained to the double bed.

I walked alone into DKE. A lanky girl with long, slender, pale legs revealed by a mini-skirt, tight black jersey over my 32-B breasts, uncharacteristically enhanced for battle, high heels, and my pixie face with brown eyes and short black hair in feathery bangs. And my book bag, of course, with a change of underwear and some things James Bond and I carry.

I stride beneath the letters, DKE, then down a short hall. How convenient, there is a table. I toss down my book bag. Time for milk and cookies. I'm home, Mom. Where is that kitchen?

"What the HELL are you doing in here?"

I had not had been introduced to the president and alpha primate of DKE, Ashley Bloker. Along the line, young "Ashley" had become "Tiny," weighing-in at six-foot-six inches and 250 pounds. Tiny was from Switzerland, trained in the Swiss armed forces—every single male is, he later told me—and aspired to be part of the Pope's Swiss Guard. I had not realized that that position required an Ivy League education, but, arguably, the DKEs did not get one.

Is there, or will there ever be, ANY sex in this story? I apologize, readers, on my knees, arms cruelly bound behind my back, breasts, such as they are, out-thrust tenderly at your mercy. Anyway, sorry. You aren't still sober, are you?

"What the HELL are you doing here?"

"I'm a friend of Scotty's," I say, as though this were not the first inter-species communication in man's recorded history. "I have to stay here, tonight. I can't go to my dorm."

Tiny plays chess one move at a time; he doesn't grasp that he will have to move again. He accepts the premise of my argument. He has lost already.

"Why not?"

Lowering my face, hesitating, I finally murmur, "My roommate, Kathy, has three guys sleeping there, tonight. Three. What am I going to do?" I grow indignant. "Just because she's a beautiful, big-breasted blond who will do anything...

"Anyway, I have nowhere to go." I glance up into his massive face, with the blunt features of a Viking, blond and virile, and my eyes are blinking back tears. Tiny is checking out my long, pale, flawless legs that rise shockingly high before the secret, just in time, is concealed.

"This is a guy's fraternity," he says, frowning, carefully grounding his argument.

"Oh, I know," I breathe. "I know." Time to drop down on my knees? No, much too soon. "I'm here as a girl." Let him parse that one. His hard drive may crash.

He is nodding, his rugged, handsome face dignified by an effort at thought.

"I could make dinner," I say.

Blew his bandwidth. He stares.

"And clean up," I add.

He needs a conceptual anchor, an image. "Like a maid," I suggest.

He gets this. The women of the co-ordinate college have SAT scores and academic records identical to Radcliffe girls. The guys are not up to Harvard. Tiny gets that I might be allowed to be a maid.

He lifts his face to gorgo, the moon, and emits the cry of the bull ape. "Scotty, get out here."

Scotty comes out, stumbling, a look of terror on his face. He stares at me.

"Hi, Scotty," my little manicured wave.

"Ellen..."

Score one point for visual identification of faces.

"She needs to stay," Tiny announces. "Some bombshell who rooms with her is having an orgy with three guys."

Concise summary. Maybe this guy has promise for promotion to seventh grade.

"She's making dinner, but she can't stay in your room. No way. University policy."

Scotty is an emergent homo sapiens. He says: "Buffy's room? Buffy is gone for three weeks to rehab. Why can't she stay in Buffy's room?"

"Okay, Buffy's room," says Tiny. "Don't touch nothing, though."

And then: "What's for dinner?"

Oh, that... Let's see. Carnivores. Momma's boys. Mostly New Englanders—except for Switzerland, of course.

"Beef stew," I announce. Take it or leave it.

"Oh, yeah," mutters Tiny, "my Mom made that."

"Mine, too," moans Scotty.

Beef stew. Cheap feed. Maybe a long, stiff, suggestive baguette. If I don't get serious, I'll be on the table myself with the stew and the baguette.

Speaking of serious. "I'll need money if we want Chianti."

These DKEs get big monthly checks from their mommas—they MUST. They each hand me 40 dollars. That should cover the chuck beef cubes and parsnips, plus my hair dresser and a manicure and pedicure. I might have my pussy waxed, too. I glance down at the money, a frowning expression of cool assessment on my face. Tiny tucks another 20 in my hand. Maybe I'll splurge on sirloin cubes.

I reward them with the grin on my gamin face, blinking up beneath my feathery black bangs. I weigh the advisability of a subtle, suggestive shaping of my lips into a blown kiss. Too soon. The larger primates are dangerously unpredictable when over excited.

Is anybody still reading? Wondering when, if ever, the dirty part begins? Don't you see that in this battle of Ellen and Goliath, my weapons of final resort are my tits, pussy, and mouth... Do I really have to be so graphic?

Bertazzoni stove, oak chopping-block island, Le Crueset pots and pans, silverware--literally... This is obscene. And the girls can't have a single-burner stove to heat their Campbell's chicken with rice soup? I am not going anywhere. Kill me.

I will not describe making the stew. Email me for the recipe. Or Google it. There's a package of spices you can buy. I opted for the sirloin cubes after all. Nothing too good for my boys and 82 bucks left over even after the wine.

Most of these guys have a meal contract at the refectory, which they call the "rat factory," the contract required for freshmen, who might starve before they grasp that mother no longer is making meals. Tonight, the word is out. I have 20 hulking DKEs waiting for beef stew, all seated around the grand table, which someone a half-century ago modeled after high table at Cambridge. The table looks that old, too; not sure every single DKE has craved his initials in it. A lot of character, though.

I walk into the dining room. Every head turns. None of them has seen a young woman, ever. What are these white things coming from her miniskirt to the floor? Is that a jersey? A sweater? Bat fur? They long to gather round and sniff at my crotch to see if I am friend or foe.

I bend over Tiny, flattering him with attention. He harkens like a CEO in a meeting receiving an urgent message. I whisper, my breath tickling his hairy ear, so he jerks his head: "I need servers."

He nods. Stentor addresses the troops on the fields of Troy. He thunders: "Pledges, get out there and do what she says. No wise-ass stuff or I'll bust your heads."

Almost before I can scurry back into the kitchen, they are streaming in. Solemn. Not so long since "Hell night." Glad to be alive and a DKE. It's how I like in a guy when I'm in charge: docile.

I fill the first bowl with steaming stew. "All right, dinner plate underneath, bowl on it. No slopping up the sides. Serve over the right shoulder... OMG. I hasten to add: I mean THEIR right shoulder, okay? That could have been a catastrophe. Say: 'She is very hot, sir.'"

Just kidding.

Nope, they are going to spill the first bowl, all grabbing for it at once.

I snap, "queue up." Stew bowls. Bread. Napkins. Red wine glasses. Christ, these are from Tiffany. What a farce this gurgling in class about egalitarianism.

I save the wine service for myself, entering with two bottles of Chianti. I smile, glide over to Tiny and serve him first. He lifts the glass, swirls, and sniffs as though the bottle cost more than three-and-half bucks. He nods. Tiny approves the vintage.

I start around, pouring. My boys are practically chugging their stew, ripping into the baguettes with their teeth. A calm feeding hour at the zoo.

Then, someone says, loudly, "Nude cocktail waitress."

There is the patter of clapping.

Don't get your hopes up, guys.

I straighten up with cold dignity, take the half-empty bottles, and head for the kitchen.

"No," cry those still not served their wine. "No. He didn't mean it."

From Tiny, a roar that sways the chandeliers, tinkling. "Who the fuck said that?" It is simply terrifying.

A shaking voice from the far end of the table. "Tiny, I'm sorry. Really, I apologize. Just a joke. A little..."

Tiny makes a considered judgment. "Asshole." He goes back to his stew.

After a shrewdly calculated minutes, I'm back with two full bottles that I leave on the table. With my chin lifted and my best posture, I sweep away into the kitchen.

As the door swings closed behind me, I hear, "WHO is THAT?"

"She will be staying in Buffy's room." Tiny's voice axes discussion. "There's an orgy in her dorm." Jeez, this orgy is becoming pandemic. DKE has saved the honor of a woman from ravaging barbarians with gold arm bands racing down the corridors of the women's co-ordinate college. Exciting image. Dragging women from their rooms by their hair. Wish I were there. I'll bet Mace on the tip of your dick is an experience.

"Wow," someone says. I think they will head over there after dinner.

My boy staff serves the ice cream and coffee. I assume DKEs don't do tea. I wasn't going to bake brownies.

Jeez, is Buffy a pasha? This is a real room. It's a bedroom, not a cell in the solitary confinement wing. Queen-sized bed. Bathroom with toilet, but not shower. Easy chairs, a coffee table.

I have stripped. A few hangers still available in Buffy's closet. It is scandalous. Like discovering Imelda's Marcos's shoes. I am staying, here.

I am only slightly startled, half expecting it. Someone is trying the door, which is locked. I call out, "Sorry, not dressed."

A key is turned in the lock. But the door does not move.

There are things I carry in my purse. A few condoms, Mace, a powerful little engineer's flashlight, and a rubber wedge. Each has a story. Not now, though.

Right now, the rubber wedge is doing its job. I don't trust locks. Locks and keys are head fakes. Maybe sometime I tell the story of when I decided to carry a rubber wedge for the rest of my life.

A great weight strikes the door. You know what that does to a rubber wedge? Right, wedges it tighter. I watch, curious.

I repeat, "I am not dressed. No clothes. You have to wait."

I hear Tiny's voice. "What is this? The key is working. What isn't working?"

Oh, Tiny. PLEASE don't make me spell it out. What isn't working? Your alpha baboon's proto cerebral cortex. May as well use your head to batter down the door, Tiny.

"I'm not dressed."

"Open up, we've got to talk."

But I'm sure he meant "fuck."

I'm going to have to give Tiny a free sample. But not tonight. He has to wait; it has to be special. I am not supposed to be a slut.

I approach the door, wearing my nightie, now. Yes, "nightie," my one-piece, soft, neck-to-shins, royal blue, cotton nightie. You thought I wore a red and black negligee to bed?

"Okay, I'll open the door. You're going to be a gentleman, aren't you?" I think the last recorded DKE gentleman might have been Calvin Coolidge.

"Yeah, sure."

I stoop, pull out the wedge, jump back. But the door doesn't blast open as the SWAT team crashes through. Tiny is there in his underwear pants, white, a lot of unruly lightish hair not quite covered.

Tiny is massive, but we knew that. Huge pecs, bulging arms, discernible abs beneath padding, nice legs, a bulge in his underwear that may be a good-sized iguana; its stirring a little. He stands there, in the doorway, for inspection. A future candidate for the Pope's Swiss guard. Does he realize he will have to wear a uniform?

Then, he walks in. No eye contact. Just another patient in his underwear who can't find his way back to the locked ward. "I got horny watching you," he announces.

Oh, well, then. Ashley "Tiny" Bloker has become aroused; no other explanation needed. Tries to break down my door.

"Oh, that's sweet," I say. A nice smile. "I like you, too."

"Yeah, so I figured..." He is pulling down his underwear. He is a sociopath. His dick is so thick my sphincter involutes in terror. I suppose I'm going to have to Mace him, after all.

Show no fear, Ellen. I lay a small hand on his huge biceps. Smile into his face. "You're a gorgeous man, Tiny. But I don't have sex like this. Only when I'm in love."