I had always wondered what would happen to frat guys. Occasionally, on the weekends in college, when I was bored of girls’ night and inspired by some sappy rom-com about finding love where you’d least expect, I would drag my friends to Vanderbilt’s frat row. The houses were adorned with signs to announce the theme “CEOs and Admin-hos” or “GI Joes and Barbie-Hos.” Really, anything “ho” related was deemed acceptable.
The floors were sticky with spilled Natty Light, the base would be throbbing, and people were either grinding or puking. I couldn’t decide which I preferred, so I often just stood, observing the mating rituals of the frat house, mentally composing my next sociology paper: “The frat boy adorns himself in a pastel polo, khaki shorts, and Ray Ban sunglasses to attract the attention of the opposite sex.”
I had always wondered what would happen to such creatures once we graduated. Now I knew. The country club was the new frat house and I would be serving them frozen coffee, asking if they wanted whip cream. Why? Because I wanted to help people.
At one point, I believed that my motivation was noble. At least I thought it was. Walking through the halls of my pristine university, I discussed the failings of society, hypothesizing the solution to poverty and food insecurity. If only more people were determined to help, to do something, maybe then things would be better. And that was the most concrete goal I had as I walked across the stage and accepted my diploma. I would do something.
I had dreams of meeting legislatures, giving rousing talks about inequality, writing editorials, what most first jobs look like.
But, I also had to pay rent. So, I accepted a position as an Assistant to the CEO at a Houston nonprofit. It was more removed and less prestigious than I had imagined. But, still, I was helping people that helped people and that was something.
Plus, the CEOs of nonprofits were often astounding and dedicated people. The summer after my sophomore year of college, I interned with the National Coalition for the Homeless. The CEO, Michael, had been homeless. He would stop to talk to every person on the street, giving away the majority of his salary.
The following summer, I interned with the AAUW. The leader of Policy and Government Relations Department did not eat, breathe, speak, and (I suspect) sleep without talking about women’s issues. Occasionally, she would offer to buy us lunch if we picked up Potbellys for her. The order was always the same, ham sandwich on white bread with a chocolate shake. She would eat at her desk, eyes jumping from her computer screen to the news, waiting for someone to mention paycheck fairness. Her hair was often tangled and her face was blotchy. She never looked healthy or even particularly happy, or, at least, not the type of happiness that most would understand.
But, Kyle was a different type of nonprofit CEO. As his assistant, I quickly learned his preferences. He loved young women, cameras, and talking with his hands. He disliked parking his own car, human resources, and providing raises.
After watching him present at an event during the first few weeks of the position, I mistook his passion for his audience as his passion for the mission. After a few more months, I quickly corrected this assumption.
Kyle had developed other schemes to crawl his way into the spotlight. We held unnecessary press conferences and bi-weekly lunches that would recycle our talking points. One of the staff’s least favorite ploys was the “human-trafficking reality show.” The basic premise was that Kyle would swarm a local strip club, flanked by a team of our policy and research staff, to rescue human-trafficking victims, with no legal authority. While he tried courting a number of television stations, this never really got further than staff meeting.
Once, we all watched a video of a young boy discussing his frustration with food insecurity. When we turned the lights on, Kyle’s eyes were moist and I questioned my understanding if his motivation. Maybe he did care. Maybe, beneath his desire to network and go to expensive restaurants with corporate CEOs, and be quoted in the newspaper, maybe he really did care, at least a little bit. A few weeks later, he mentioned that he had cried during “The Office” series finale and the whole experience became a bit more hallow.
Regardless of his motivation, Kyle was the CEO and Kyle would try to keep this organization afloat. So, on the day of our annual fundraising golf tournament, Kyle paced across the lobby, sporting his white embroidered polo shirt that barely shielded his fleshy abdomen from cascading over his cargo shorts, revealing his oddly hairless calves.
He was on a perpetual diet which was, from what I observed, eating a salad for lunch and anything any other time of day (and never exercising). This approach to improved his own health also opitimized how he approached managing, which was why, similar to his waistline, the organization’s debt was ever-expanding. So, while donors believed that were arriving to a sunny afternoon of golf, the organization was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and Kyle viewed this event as our route to survival.
Soon, his nervous pacing fueled his jubilation as the news stations arrived and, more importantly, their cameras.
After I fulfilled my duties at the registration table, I was assigned to Hole 18 to distribute frozen coffee. I sat under a tent with two of our staff attorneys and we tried to determine when the ideal time to remove the frozen coffee from the coolers, attempting to strike a balance between melted and totally frozen.
The first golf cart stopped. Two balding men with hairy knuckles got out to glower into the small cup. They mentioned the weather, that we were pretty, and made whip cream innuendo jokes that we were supposed to pretend that we didn’t understand.
As the afternoon wore on, the coffee began to melt and bugs swarmed. The jokes from the golfers got worse, or maybe they were simply worse because they were all the same. After the last golf cart passed us by, we packed up and returned to the clubhouse for the auction to begin.
The crowd was small, tired from a day in the sun, and Kyle was sweaty and desperate. The first few items went quickly. The beach house and Rockets tickets were snatched up. But the cellulose sucking gift certificate that Kyle positioned as “a great gift for the woman in your life” didn’t have any takers.
The golfers sat, sipping their whiskey and staring as Kyle paced across the dining room.
His exuberant speeches, verbose phrasing, and exaggerated hand motions could not penetrate the crowd. He called audience members out by name, trying to cash in on any personal connection or at least publicly embarrass them into bidding.
Half way through, one of the women in argyle knee socks, drunk off cosmos, and with a profile that most of us had hypothesized was a result of some charitable implants, grabbed the microphone. She turned to Kyle, exclaiming, “You’re not doing it right!” She stumbled into the middle of the dining room floor. “Can’t we all just give a little more to help?” She puffed out her lips in a pout.
“It’s for the children!” Kyle said from behind her, trying to determine how to reclaim the microphone. “What’s the next item?” She called back to Kyle, stumbling a bit. “A dinner and wine pairing at Mockingbird Bistro,” he said, it his best television announcer voice. “And to sweeten this a bit,” she said, circling the room, gently grazing her hand across the gray and white heads of hair. “I will join you for dinner.”
Kyle looked around the room at his staff. I wondered if he was calculating whether he should be embarrassed - or who should be auctioned off next.
There was an ongoing commentary within the nonprofit community in Houston. They called us Kyle’s harem. The staff was all under 35 and ninety-percent female. Even people in our building noticed. When I first started at the organization, an old man entered our office and asked, “how many girls are in here?” He had this look in his eyes as he glanced around the lobby, like he was staring into a jar of jellybeans, trying to guess the number. And we were like jellybeans. Perhaps we had different colors, but we generally had the same shape. We were indistinguishable.
Perhaps this was what was most upsetting about the day and really, my whole experience with nonprofits. Ultimately, it was about selling. It was about sitting in the thick Gulf Coast humidity, surrounded by insects. It was about laughing at jokes we didn’t want to hear, pretending this was the reason I had studied late into the night at college, that what we did mattered - that we could save the world with frozen coffee.
