I joined a fraternity when I was a junior in college.  Before that I’d bounced around for two years from Oklahoma State in my home town to the far north of Wisconsin for Marquette University (Jesuits.  God bless them) trying to figure out what the hell I wanted to do.  Upon my return from the frozen north (… and extremely expensive north.  Jesuits.  Damn them), I became a rushee, signee, and ultimately a pledge of Phi Gamma Delta which was introduced to me by several of my close high school friends.

I was 20 years old at the time of my signing.  That’s late to join said institution, the molder of fine, young men.  I was among the oldest of my pledge class of misfits and ne’er-do-wells.  Among them a US Army Ranger with 124 confirmed kills, a hockey goon, a gaggle of small town rednecks, an eight foot tall red-headed giant, an assortment of motley and colorful characters that could as likely be found in a federal prison or a Sunday school class, and …. the Pissing Bandit.

Our star-crossed pledge class, the Upsilons somehow scraped through our pledgeship and to initiation, but only after losing about 45% of our total numbers.  It was worse than Iwo Jima.  The full tale of the misadventures of the Mighty Upsilons is the topic for entirely separate column.  Anyways, we were now full brothers, initiates in the sacred circle, Fiji bad asses (kind of an oxymoron, I know).

It took most of us a full year of anti-social behavior to recover from the merciless beatings of our pledgeship (damn you, Slammer, and you too, Geib) and publishing all of the secrets on our exclusive website, FijiSecrets.com.  Of course, the big exception to that was Jasko, my Catholic brother, who’d had a purple boner from Day 1.  And still does.  I have photographic proof.

It was the start of my fifth year of college and third as a Fiji.  Yeah, yeah, so I graduated in 6.5 years with a History degree.  Screw you, I’m a slow starter!  Did I mention that afterwards I got my doctorate in just three semesters?  Well … that’s because that would be total bullshit.  Um … where was I … oh yeah … One of my best Upsilon pals, Glock (known to my non-frat high school friends as Lil Dirty), partnered up with me and two buddies from the previous fall pledge class, the Sigmas, and grabbed Two Beta.

Two Beta.

Say it in a whisper, a hushed tone of reverence.  Each room in the fraternity house is numbered with a combination of the floor (2 or 3) and a Greek letter.  Two Beta was the premier room in the house.  Since the dawn of time (or 1848, I forget which), the coolest brothers have inhabited the legendary domicile.  I was proud to carry on that tradition with TNT (aka Tony da Tank Ass), Glock (aka Mr. President), and Bo (aka … Bo).  We had our own weird and secret traditions, which primarily revolved around making someone drink warm beer.  We had a hidden liquor cabinet concealing shot glasses and Bacardi 151.  We had daily marathons of Good Will Hunting.

But most importantly, we partied our asses off.  Well … until Bo and Glock got girlfriends … but that was really second semester.  Notice I never said that I got a girlfriend?  That’s because I was a lone wolf.  You can’t fence in the wild maverick, cage the feral wolf.  In truth, it probably had something to do with the fact that my batting average with the ladies was on par with Stephen Hawking.  But … for the Fall of ‘99 we were beer guzzling, MarioCart morons with a penchant for self-destruction.

And in this inebriated oblivion, a strange occurrence began to unfold around the chapter house.  Random spots of midnight moisture began to appear, seemingly at random.  Large patches of wetness began to magically materialize.  First, it was in one of the closets of Two Alpha, across the hall from us.  Then it was the carpet of another room.  Then it was on the printer in the apartment bedroom of a Chi-O.  It was strange, baffling.

Further evidence pointed that this was not any normal liquid.  It was not water.  Though it had the smell of beer, it was not purely brew.  No, it had the acrid, salty smell of urine.  Pee.  Whiz.  Tinkle.  Pale Yellow.  There was no way to be fully sure, obviously we passed on the taste test given the circumstances, but it was quickly becoming evident that we were plagued by a … Pissing Bandit.

Theories abounded through the house – leaky bathroom pipes, yetis, Sigma Nu’s, but one theory rose above all others.  You see, there were two constants in each incident.  FIRST, witnesses reported that Glock, my pledge brother and room mate, was seen in each of these areas just before or just after the appearance of the waterspout.  SECOND, each time Glock had engaged in heavy … I mean heavy … drinking.

But honestly – who pees on a printer?  Glock steadfastly denied it saying that he’s never done that before and would surely remember sneaking about the house with wiener in hand.  But … there are instances of people being so drunk as to pee or vomit in their beds.  Could it be conceivable?  Could a human being get soooo drunk that he develops an odd fixation with urinating on inanimate objects as well as the cunning guile and subterfuge of a ninja to execute such diabolic desires with total stealth?

Well, my friends, I have the answer.  I saw it with my very own eyes.

One night, we were out drinking.  Heavy drinking as I’ve said before.  Pitchers of beer gladly bought and paid for with unsubsidized student loans … thank you Uncle Sam.  Maybe we were at the Wormy Dog.  Maybe JR Murphy’s.  Maybe at Brother Wheeler’s.  Who really remembers?  Regardless, Glock and I come back to the room and go to sleep.  We forgo the ritual of watching Good Will Hunting.  Bo and TNT are with their respective girlfriends, I presume.  Those Losers.

I’m on the top, top bunk (of three), which means I have about a pecker’s clearance from the ceiling.  Or if you’re me … two peckers.  I quickly fall asleep, lost in the reverie of dreams.  Inexplicably … in the middle of the night … I am awoken by a strange sound.  I open my eyes, adjusting to the darkness, listening intently.  It’s the sound of a super hard jet of piss resounding in a wide splatter off a stiff-back leather chair in the corner of my room.  Just like the Night Before Christmas, I lean over my bed to see what was a-matter!

There … wearing only a smoke-stained collared shirt and wool socks with his boxers around his knees … was Glock pissing in machine-gun like bursts into the chair.

Piss.  Stop.  Piss.  Piss.  Stop. Piss.

It was like he was blasting out Morse code with his urine.  Even more strange, as I reflect back on it now from the safety of another continent, Glock was going with the two-handed, hips forward shooter style as if he were a fourth grader aiming at a urinel from across the room.  Panic rises in my throat … the Pissing Bandit has been unmasked and he’s super soaking our fucking bedroom right before my very eyes!

“GLOCK!  WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?”

I yell and emphasize my point by hitting my mattress with my palm.  What happened next … I did not expect.  I guess I thought he would wake up and sheepishly waddle out of the room to the bathroom to finish.  Or perhaps continue with his arrhythmic yellow blasting at the leather chair.  No.  He did neither of those things.

Instead, he released his wiener and ran to the edge of the bunk beds, thrusting his face up towards mine.  I could see clearly in his eyes … this was someone else.  Dr. Glockel and Mr. Hyde?  What the fuck?  He possessed neither the vacant stare of a sleep walker or the groggy weariness of someone waking up.  No.  He had true ire, wrath daresay, burning in his face.  With his face just inches from mine, he pointed at me with an angry finger and said:

“FUCK YOU!  YOU KNOW YOU’D DO THE SAME THING!”

I recoiled with fright.  What Bizarro World had I woken up to?  I could have written down a thousand responses to my initial statement and I wouldn’t have come up with that one.  I couldn’t even stammer, I just pushed myself against the back wall of the room, hiding between my bunk and the ceiling.  Without pause, Glock resumed his pissing, gleefully unaware that he had just given me the strangest heart attack in human history.

I curled up in the fetal position, pulled the pillow over my head, and fell back asleep to the sounds of a blast and the resulting spray showering everything in the room.  I could only hope that Glock’s alter ego, the Pissing Bandit, did not have the means or the intentions to arc his yellow streams onto the top bunk.  I may have jumped out the window and ran.  Ran and never looked back.

The next day I woke up.  Somewhere in the back of my hung-over addled mind, I remembered the events of the previous night.  Was it all a dream?  Some terrible nightmare?  No.  The chair, the carpet, the clothes basket – soaked.  The room smelled like a New York subway.  I waited for Glock to wake up … to see which incarnation would surface … my pledge brother … or the dousing demon?

Thank God, the Holy Ghost, and Little Baby Jesus that it was Glock that awoke that day.

I recounted the story to his absolute and complete befuddlement.  An emotion that I equally shared.  He possessed not even a single memory of the event.  Of course, the tale spread quickly to the rest of the house and Glock, normally impervious behind his sharp wit, was rendered defenseless to the jokes of far less worthy adversaries.  More importantly – as if by serendipity or some other unknown cosmic reason – the terrors of the Pissing Bandit ended with that night.

Perhaps the list of urination targets had been exhausted.

Perhaps the demon just need to be confronted while in the act, exorcised in a way.

But in my heart … I never slept as soundly in Two Beta ever again.  I was always afraid of the return of the Pissing Bandit.