"Wait 'til Otis sees us!"

The other day, I ran across a rerun of the MTV show Sorority Life. I watched for a few minutes, and in that short period of time was privy to backstabbing, in-fighting and general bitchiness. But, then again, it was about a sorority, so I turned the channel before they could show the girls having a pillow fight in their underwear. Because that's what it's like being in a sorority, right? Right? Sure, if Friends was an accurate depiction of how poor, twenty-somethings live in New York City. In other words...not at all.

I have mentioned obliquely, that both H and I were part of the Greek community at Colgate, or to use the vernacular, we were "Greek". H, for a much shorter period, living in his disgusting, beer-soaked, frat house sophomore year, before transferring to Georgetown our junior year, but for me, my college experience pretty much revolved around my sorority.

I knew I wanted to be Greek basically since driving down Fraternity Row right off campus and seeing the majestic homes that housed these exclusive social groups. Seeing the upper classmen walking around in their Champion letter sweatshirts, I couldn't wait for rush in the spring. And while that experience was mildly tortuous, enduring a series of thirty minute "parties" (if you can call various timed stops to drink punch at every sorority, trying to get to know a hundred girls, under the supervision of a senior chaperone to make sure no one was drinking, a "party") I did wind up joining a house that fit me like a glove.

So here's where you start getting an image of me in college with my blonde sorority sisters, where we'll all peppy, and perfect, and do nothing but party and gossip about boys and fight with each other. Well, we did talk an awful lot about guys, but rather than the Gamma Iota sisters, my friends and I were more the Deltas of Animal House.

That's right. If I had to describe my sorority, it would be the female equivalent of that fraternity full of misfits, that none but a few brave souls wanted to join, in that famous movie. When I first joined my house, we were not the low man on the Greek totem pole. A much smaller sorority, full of ver sweet girls, was given that distinction, and as is the case in social Darwinism, they went under a few years later due to lack of membership. That left us. Our campus already had other sororities full of blondes, who all seemed to come from Connecticut and were immune to the freshman fifteen. Or rather, there were two of those houses, one whose members were all sociology majors who would all eventually wind up working in fashion, and the other, full of athletes who would wind up working in PR. The third was full of girls who were, unfortunately, short brunettes (seriously, it was like I walked into Lilliput that first day of rush, needless to say I did not get invited back), and desperately wanted to be in the first two houses.

And then there was us - the Alpha Chis.

We were quite the mixed bag. My comparison to Animal House is apt, not just because we were the underdog in the Greek world, but because, in many ways we acted like guys. First of all, our sorority house had originally been a fraternity house, complete with a barroom in the basement and creepy mural of guys drinking beer in their underwear, left by the fraternity who had inhabited the house before us. Rather than paint over it, I think we were kind of inspired by it, hosting keg parties, which were verboten for sororities, in our basement. I'll never forget the panic-induced heart attack I nearly had as president, when the fire department showed up unexpectedly one day to check out an alarm that kept going off, and we had to stall them in the foyer in order to buy time to roll the keg out the back door.

Yes, you read that correctly I was president. While I see myself more as Boon in the AH scenario, trying to balance time between my boyfriend and my house, in truth, I was probably more Hoover - the poor president who is always trying to get his buddies out of trouble with the campus administration and represent his bag of nut jobs as a real fraternity. It was a great experience having to go to our sorority's national convention in Dallas, the heart of Serious Sorority Country, to represent our chapter. As the other presidents seated at tables around me got up to receive their chapter's philanthropic awards, I slunk low in my seat wondering if any of these girls had ever done a keg stand or jumped in Taylor Lake, fully-clothed, on a dare at two in the morning. Looking at their pastel twin sets, I seriously doubted it.

As you recall, I was also Pledge Master, and here too, we were more male than female. Yeah, yeah, we've all heard horror stories of female pledges forced to stand in their underwear while older sisters circled their fat with permanent marker, but we just wanted make our pledges bond over shared drunken foolery and mild hatred of us. While trying to operate under the administration's no-hazing radar, we made our pledges find a penny tossed on the gravel of the college president's house in the middle of the night after a round of shots. Or choreograph a dance to Right Said Fred's "I'm too Sexy" to be performed in front of the entire drunken sisterhood - well, OK, that was what my pledge class was made to do and I have to take credit for many of the moves. In fact, this is when B, decided we would be friends, so cool was my fake-driving-of-car move during that particular lyric.

We had our Otter, whose peach-colored, and smelling room, was like stepping into a Crabtree and Evelyn. We had our Flounder, who we had to let in, annoyed the shit out of us, and we eventually grew to love. We had our crazy D-Day and, yes, even a Bluto, and I dare any of my AXO readers to publicly identify yourselves as such. You know who you are, but you have husbands and children now so I will not publicly out you.

There are days I really miss living in that house. Sure, it was cramped and it sucked having to clean a community bathroom, but we had great times. I learned you can love a friend, but not always like her when she forgets it's her turn to stock the toilet paper. I learned how women can come together in a crisis, surrounded by girls I had chosen to be my sisters at the luncheon after my mother's funeral, not speaking, but comfortable in our silence. Watching Melrose Place in the TV room, or studying in the common room for my organic chemistry final with a fellow science nerd, or carrying our tiniest member across a field atop a mattress to win the Derby Day race, I learned how women can make a family no matter where we are, just because we're women.

So to all my sisters out there, those who I am in touch with and those I am not, to all of you Greeks out there who throw up a little in your mouths when you see the media's portrayal of female greek life, I raise a lukewarm Milwaukee's Best, in a red plastic cup to you. We all know sororities can be about more than clothes and boys and bitchy nonsense. They can teach you to be a better woman.

That and how to tap a keg.