Fall '86

By Craig Edward Amshel

Fall ‘86 brings you into the comedic and personal life of the author during his first quarter as a UCLA freshman.  Along the way are hilarious tales of what the author had to endure as a fraternity pledge, including strippers, beer-bongs, and road-trips.  There is also the author’s enrollment in a more conservative lifestyle: ROTC, which he tries desperately but sometimes fails to keep separated from the more outrageous fraternity way of life.  Mixed in with this is the author’s personal struggle to maintain decent grades, sanity in his dormatory, and a social existence outside of the fraternity.  If you are a fan of Animal House, then you will enjoy this true adventure of the start of one man’s college career.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 13, 2004
• ISBN: 9781418409166

Craig Edward Amshel

After years of studying the anatomies of frogs, rats, sheep brains and humans, Craig Edward Amshel is now a practicing general and colon & rectal surgeon.  Craig was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, graduated from North Hollywood High in 1986, attended UCLA on both an ROTC and fraternity scholarship, and then enjoyed BBQ and Blvd beer for four years while attaining his M.D. at Kansas University Medical Center.  Surgical residency has taken Craig all over the country, including Roanoke, VA, Waterbury, CT, Phoenix, AZ, and Miami FL.  During his free time, Craig enjoys surfing, biking, tennis, football, and karate.

Book preview

Fall ‘86

by

Craig Edward Amshel

© 2004 by Craig Edward Amshel. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 07/30/04

ISBN: 1-4184-0916-2 (e-book)

ISBN: 1-4184-0915-4 (Paperback)

Contents

Prologue

 I

II

III

IV

 V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

 X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

Epilogue

About the Author

I am grateful to dedicate

this story to my mom and wife

for their unrelenting devotion and support.

Prologue

I have never claimed to be a writer. I am a surgeon, a profession which I have worked extremely hard to obtain and which is something I love to do. These are the two main reasons why it has taken me so long to finish writing this book. This book became a quest, a quest to finish my outpouring of memories of the craziest, most fun-filled variety of experiences in my life that were compacted into a few short months.

The first third of the book was started toward the end of my surgical internship in the spring of 1996—ten years after these events took place. My first eight months of training left me little time to do anything else but live in the hospital and study. However, I didn’t realize that there were a few specialty rotations that didn’t consume my every waking moment, and these rotations occurred toward the end of my year. It was during this time that I found myself in the library putting my thoughts—the words you are about to read—into a computer.

The next few years were again, very busy, and it wasn’t until the end of my chief (final) year of residency that I picked up where I left off, only to be stopped for a few months here and there due to time constraints. However, this story and the adventures contained within, never left my mind and were relived over and over in my mind until I could type them out onto the computer screen. Now, after seven years from when I started writing, I have finished and am ready to share my experiences with you. Enjoy.

 I

Summer was almost over, and most of my friends had already started college the previous month. It was September, 1986. I was about to enter my freshman year at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and I just could not wait to get there.

Actually, that summer wasn’t too bad as anyone released from the confines of high school could attest. There would be no more of that bullshit-forced responsibility of getting up every damn morning, racing throughout the halls like a caged rat within the allotted six minutes to get to the next class before the bell should ring. God forbid you got caught in the hall without a damn hallpass; you might as well throw away your diploma right there.

No. That summer I was a camp counselor at a Boy Scout camp on Catalina Island, twenty-six miles offshore from southern California. Teaching younger scouts the skills that I had acquired throughout my six-plus years of scouting was a good way to while the summer away before I had to once again hit the books. You couldn’t beat the ocean activities: water skiing, fishing, snorkeling for abalone, and rowing. There were no waves to surf, but that was okay.

My camp experience was cut short, however, after a few harmless incidents such as running naked through a campfire skit and changing a bus ticket to save some money on a trip into Avalon had led the camp director to quietly send me on the NBH (next boat home). Of course, as punishment, the camp director had first stuck a hoe in my hands and put me to work during my free time. I had to clear away pristine fields of wild fennel and prickly pear cactus for new campsites until my hands bled. Bastard.

By the end of September I was more than ready to move into my dorm room. I lived only about twenty minutes away from campus (if I happened to be driving at four in the morning, otherwise it could be two hours in rush-hour LA traffic) in a nice suburb of North Hollywood, but I kept hearing the sounds of the warden’s steps and the clanging of her keys to release me. My mom and I packed all my things, including the TV, which took up the most room, into our cars and made the drive over the Hollywood Hills to my home for the next nine months: Hedrick Hall.

We drove in the day before the scheduled move-in date to beat the crowds and hassle of finding a parking space— a constant problem when in West Los Angeles. The move went smoothly. There were no hassles with the elevator, and there was plenty of room to unpack. I was excited about having a roommate as well because I am an only child and have never shared a room with anyone for more than a summer. Being the courteous roommate that I wanted to prove to be, I promptly took the closet with more space, the desk that had two outlets instead of one, bunked the beds so as to have more overall room, and took the upper bed. It was a good room. The fifteen extra dollars it took to move in one day early was well worth it. The room was the same on the inside as the other 249 rooms in the dorm, probably 10 X 15 X 12 feet with two built-in desks, two built-in desk lamps, two small closets, two small dressers, and carpet so slick you could slip and fall easily if you were just wearing socks, but it was a top-floor room on the side of the dorm that not only overlooked the intramural field and the rest of the campus, it also got great TV reception. That particular dorm floor was coed, and one entrance to the spacious men’s bathroom was directly across from my room. The women’s bathroom was down the hall. Between the two bathrooms were the washroom and another empty room used for studying, meetings, etc. On either side of the bathrooms was a narrow hallway which separated the bathrooms from the students’ rooms.

That evening I finished unpacking and decorating my half of the room with a Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar, a Psycho II movie poster, an Outlaw Josey Wales movie poster, and a few other pictures that seemed to follow me. I acquainted myself with a few of the other students on my floor who had moved in earlier that week, met my room assistant, Dave, and got ready for bed. I knew that the next day would be busy for it was the first day of fraternity rush.

II

Bright and early there were about sixty of us new freshmen, some with the look as though they had just rolled out of bed wearing the same clothes they had on the night before. After brief introductions from some of the interfraternity council members we were split into groups of about twelve and taken on tours of all the fraternities. There was never any compelling reason as to why I wanted to join a fraternity (never say frat; it just shows that you were never in a fraternity and frat-boys think it disrespectful). My father tried desperately to dissuade me from joining a fraternity. He had joined a local fraternity during his two-year stint at a community college and could not understand why I would want to join a group of immature guys who did nothing but waste their time getting drunk and laid. I didn’t really have one good reason. The combination of joining an older group of guys and taking part in social activities for the ultimate university experience had an appeal to me.

Our group went to every fraternity house where we were greeted by each house’s rush chairman and the rest of the brothers, who ranged from anyone who happened to be awake and hanging out on a couch watching TV to the entire fraternity dressed in clone-like outfits snapping their fingers in unison as we walked in. There was always a brief tour of the living room. Some houses were lucky enough to have other amenities, which were proudly showed off as well, such as a backyard with either a pool, a basketball court, or the trophy case where last year’s intramural whatever trophy was encased. After each tour there was a question-and-answer session, and we received a pamphlet or flier from each house describing what the week’s activities were going to be. UCLA had just imposed a dry rush in order to discourage under-aged drinking and to decrease the number of alcohol-related incidents. In order to recruit rushees, fraternities had to come up with ingenious methods to attract the masses without using alcohol. The task of enticing seventeen-to-nineteen-year-old males proved not to be too difficult by way of appealing to their stomachs and dicks.

It was about three hours later when we finally finished touring the last house, and I was tired. After ten or so houses everything kind of sounded the same. I just wanted to go buy my books for the fall classes and then lay out my plans for the week in order to hit the best attractions each house had to offer. I had to make myself accessible to as many houses as possible in order to reap as many bids (whereby you are asked to pledge the fraternity) as possible.

The first night of rush always started with a coat and tie dinner. Most houses were serving steak or prime rib, however the Delta Tau Delta house was serving lobster. I would start at Delta Tau Delta.

The ambiance at dinner was casual. There were many rushees, undoubtedly there for the sole reason I was: the lobster. The fraternity members, also called Delts, were cordial, and I tried to meet as many as I could. I also wanted to get a more in-depth tour of their house than the one that I received earlier in the day. The members’ rooms that I saw were pretty small but had that lived-in look filled with UCLA and Delta Tau Delta memorabilia. Most of the rooms had two occupants, and to save space the beds were either bunked or placed in lofts. Usually only the president or some member who had been at the house forever was fortunate enough to get a single room. The house itself was quite impressive and had been the setting for a party scene in the movie, The Sure Thing. I also got to review the social calendar for the upcoming quarter which included various beer-swilling bus excursions to the UCLA football games, a road trip to northern California for the UCLA-Berkeley football game, and other social mixers with various sororities. All in all I enjoyed myself and just had this intoxicating feeling of adventuring into unknown territories. I felt mature while carrying on conversations with these older college students who didn’t know me from Adam. I could have said anything I wanted. I could have been a descendant of Genghis Khan, and they would have believed me if I made my story plausible. I had to leave before the night’s festivities were to start because I had to head on over to the Delta Sigma Phi house.

During the morning tour at the Delt-Sig house, the rush chairman and some other dude greeted us. They promptly showed us the week’s activities that included dinner that night with Prince’s voluptuous ex-girlfriend, Apollonia. On their board of activities were the words: Tonight, five course meal with special ‘breast’ speaker. I have been called a chauvinist in the past, but even those words made me realize this house was not for me. Of course, I was not going to give up the opportunity to get a photo of myself with Apollonia.

By the time I arrived at the Delt-Sig house, the fraternity members were serenading Apollonia with what I suppose was their house song. I looked up on the activity board, and the word ‘breast’ was switched to ‘guest.’ As Apollonia was leaving from the dinner table, I stopped her, handed my camera, which I had carried around with me the entire evening, to her bodyguard and asked if I could have a picture taken with her. She obliged. The bodyguard gave me back my camera and the two of them left. I had felt and probably looked pretty lame carrying around a large camera throughout the dinner party, but after dinner I was the only guy to have his picture taken alone with a stunning model, and I have the picture to prove it. I didn’t stick around long enough to meet any of the fraternity members and promptly left the house to go next door to the Tau Kappa Epsilon house.

I had met the members of the UCLA chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE) the past May during a scholarship contest and dinner. All of them seemed to be very outgoing and friendly and, unlike some other fraternities, these guys did not all look alike. I had actually won their scholarship contest and was invited back over the summer for a couple of their parties. It was at these parties where I was introduced to several types of beer games such as Quarters, Thumper, and Three man. I realized that if you wanted to drink beer, you could make up a game from just about anything and drink to your heart’s content.

001.jpg

My experience during Rush Week.

Apollonia and myself. Picture taken by Apollonia’s bodyguard using my camera.

For the first night of rush the guys at TKE, otherwise known as Tekes, had rented a stripper for entertainment— another first for me. Needless to say I was quite excited, and I could sense that my list of rites into manhood was getting checked off at a much faster rate during this night alone.

The main living room area had been cleared away except for a ring of benches and chairs placed against the walls. When we were eventually seated with the fraternity members making sure that the rushees had front row-seats, the stripper’s manager came out to give us a little pep talk. He said that we could only touch the stripper (I don’t remember her name, not that it matters) with her permission, that tips were encouraged, and that if any unusual requests were made, they would probably be performed but would cost extra. All of us were sitting around waiting like a pack of hungry wolves. We were all wearing coat and ties with Hello, my name is… tags on. I saw some of the same rushees sitting around the room that I had seen at the Delts’ house. The tension was mounting, and when the music started and the lights were dimmed, I was ready for action.

That woman was spectacular: long legs, large breasts, and lots of hair. She did her routine and worked the crowd. Several Tekes waved dollar bills over the heads of unsuspecting rushees in order to entice the stripper to give them more attention. After awhile her manager brought out a can of whipped cream, so for five bucks we could suck the cream off her breasts. Several members indulged themselves or bought some action for their buddies or prospective members. Then came intermission. Intermission? The manager came back out (I was getting irritated seeing this dude) and explained how to play feed the kitty by rolling money (in this case it had to be at least ten dollars) and sticking it into your mouth like a cigarette. You then lay supine on the floor whereby the stripper squats down over your face and takes the money from your mouth; and she doesn’t use her hands. This act I had to see. When the music started up again, the stripper came out and one by one a few of the guys lay down on their backs in the middle of the floor and fed the kitty. One guy lay down with a credit card in his mouth. He didn’t get to feed. I was amazed at how a woman could attain such talent. At one point, the stripper pulled some older out of shape and very surprised dude to the floor and stuck some money in his mouth. While she was going through the antics of gyrating above this deliriously happy fellow, a member of the house leaned over and whispered something to her. She kind of looked embarrassed, pulled the dude up from the floor and led him back to his seat. She then came over to ME, took MY hand and led ME to the floor. I dutifully and dumbfoundedly lay on my back, and then she stuck a rolled-up dollar into MY mouth. I was in shock. No way could this be happening to me. What the hell was my dad thinking in trying to dissuade me from joining a house? As this erotic performance was taking place inches in front of my face I could only think of one thing: don’t get a boner! And then she was done. The money was gone.

Both members and other rushees duly congratulated me as I was led back to my seat by the stripper. I really don’t remember how much longer she performed. After she left for the final time, the lights came back on and several people cleared out. I stayed a bit longer to talk to some of the guys I had met previously, and eventually I meandered home. Although my dorm had an excellent view, it was a hell of a long walk up a hill, but that night I did not mind. My roommate had not yet arrived, but I met some more students who would be living on my floor. I was fortunate enough to have missed the confusion and congestion of move-in day. After showering, I reviewed the fraternity rush pamphlets and plotted the next day’s activities.

I ate lunch at the Sigma Pi house. These guys were outgoing and friendly, and after we ate, the fraternity members and those rushees that stuck around, including me, played three-on-three full-court basketball in the backyard. Those guys had put together a pretty good set-up using their entire backyard as a basketball court. The court was just about as long but more narrow than a regulation court hence no more than six players could play ball comfortably. As at every other house I had seen there was also a large barbeque pit in the backyard, which as did every house, needed a good cleaning. On the way back to my room I stopped at the Theta Delta Chi house. This house was cool. Like the Tekes, they had a pool in their backyard and a place to shoot baskets. There weren’t too many members