-by Sailor Mur

The homoerotic mating dance of the fraternity brother is a wonder to behold. Let's back up a moment. My half sister and I have nothing in common, except the same mother. She is tall and blonde, blue eyes, thin, loves dancing, bar hopping, American beer, country music, and fly fishing. I am shorter, dark of hair and eyes, thin (but wider than her), love imported beer, dark, quiet bars with no dancing, They Might Be Giants, and kung fu and gaming. She has her fishing trips, I have marathon tabletop gaming sessions. She has frat boys drooling all over her, I have my beloved geek husband. Mary* came to town last spring to celebrate her birthday by going to a country music concert with Mom. Since I wouldn't get a chance to see her otherwise, I asked if I could go too. Both mom and Mary had coronaries, shocked that I would want to go to a country concert. I figured it would be good family time. I also figured it would be hell. I thought I left this fashion behind when I left high school. There was a lot of teased up hair that I remember from 1985. Many women were wearing halter tops, something that should be outlawed. How can you not feel utterly naked in a halter top? (Who knows, maybe that's the appeal) There were some cowboy hats, although not as many as I expected. The people wearing the hats were walking around importantly as if they were RealTM fans because they made the concert less fun for the unfortunates behind them. And, of course, there were the Frat Boy Hats. You've seen them. They started to come into fashion about 10 years ago. The cool thing became buying a perfectly good baseball cap and, through a long time of careful bending, turn the brim into a tunnel, with the sides of the brim almost touching your cheeks. Through research, I have discovered that some do this by constantly molding it with their hands, which gives a nice coating of grime on the sides of the brim. You don't have any idea how much shit is on your hands until you touch something over and over again and watch it turn black (stop thinking that - I'm talking about innocent things here!). Others cheat by buying a tool (they make a tool for this!), wrapping it around the brim, and washing the hat over and over, which not only molds it into shape, but as an added bonus it fades the cap, which is apparently a desired effect as well. My sister also informed me that you can skip all this and actually buy caps with the bent brims already installed. I don't know if the grime is included, though. I was able to observe all of these fashions, but mostly the Frat Boy Caps because soon after finding a good place to watch the musicians, a group of 5 Frat Boys moved into position in front of us. One of the Boys had a T-shirt with the logo of my sister's place of employment, a large national chain of sportsman stores. She told him that she was a manager at one of these stores, and he assumed she was aroused. She ignored his advances, and he turned to his friends to begin the odd homoerotic mating dance of the Frat Boy. You know how male birds flash their tail feathers? Think of that with the Frat Boy hats. The courtship is as subtle as a mallet, and involves several steps. First, the Frat Boys must be drunk. You may think that Frat Boys' body chemistry allows that this is a constant state, but they actually have to drink beer to attain it. These Boys in question had managed to sneak in several six packs of Icehouse and had it sitting by their feet. They would drink the beer, then put the can down and crush it. There were many little disks by their feet by the time the night was done. Second, they must be wearing baseball hats. Preferably of either their favorite NASCAR driver or college. Well, the "males" must be wearing hats. The "bitches" are apparently the ones who do not wear hats. The reason behind this will become clear in a moment. Thirdly, if they are enjoying a particular song, they must raise their hats in the air and point it towards the stage, offering their precious hat in salute to the yelping country star. "You are so talented, I would that you would wear my hat," the gesture seems to say. And Lastly, the frenzy of the beer and the exciting music gets the Boys all in a tizzy, and instead of putting the hat back on their own head after their salute, they put it on one of their friend's heads. My observation of this phenomenon led me to assume that this ceremony allowed Boys to claim other Boys. You leave wearing some Boy's hat, you're going back to his room. There were complications, of course. During a particularly (a)rousing song, one lucky Boy ended up with two hats on his head. I deducted that it was the hat that arrived there last that had the claim on the territory, much like a male dog's urination. Another interesting twist came when one Boy took off his hat to claim another Boy, and his head was now bare. He was, of course, claimed. (The Boy earlier mentioned also claimed my sister. His sweaty hat landed on her head, but she politely gave it back to him, so he claimed one of his friends instead. I am fully convinced that they all went back to their frat house for a night of rough sex.) Thank goodness the mating ritual was much more entertaining than the music, and I was able to watch the Dance of the Frat Boys without being detected, so I believe I didn't upset the delicate balance of nature. When the band finally finished playing (after playing a song about the party never ending, which made me want to chew my own leg off at its implications) I drove my sister home. I wanted to ask if she had observed the homosexual courting ritual danced by those stereotypically considered to be homophobes, but I refrained. The discussion could have gotten ugly, and we might have gotten on the subject of how she can listen to that music in the first place, and I couldn't handle that conversation.

* Not her real name. Not that she ever reads my stuff online, or even knows that I write online, or even fucking cares, but the name is changed to protect the innocent. Not that she's innocent...