We Were Always the Fire

As our fraternity house enters a new chapter, I found myself thinking less about the building and more about the brotherhood that survived inside all of us.
These are for the brothers.
Past, present, and still to come.

THE RED DOOR

The house is coming down.
That sentence feels strange to say out loud.
Not because of the brick.
Not because of the stairs.
Not because of the couches that probably should have been condemned sometime around 1997.
But because for a little while,
inside those walls,
we were becoming men together.
The Red Door stood there through all of it.
Snowstorms.
Founders Day.
Body paint.
Cheap beer.
Tuxedos.
Heartbreak.
Laughter loud enough to shake old windows.
The Founding Fathers.
God,
we looked so young.
Like boys trying very hard
to pretend we already understood life.
We thought the important thing
was getting the charter.
Building the house.
Creating the chapter.
Learning the rituals.
Getting everything official.
But thirty years later,
that's not what matters most.
What matters is:
I still remember most of their names.
Not perfectly.
But enough.
Enough to remember voices.
Nicknames.
Road trips.
Arguments.
Who snored.
Who drank too much.
Who always showed up.
Who disappeared too soon.
Who became fathers.
Who became softer.
Who somehow still call me Hootie-Mack
like no time has passed at all.
The house was never really
brick and mortar.
The building was only the fireplace.
We were always the fire.
And somehow,
through all the chaos and stupidity and noise,
something real survived.
Not perfection.
Brotherhood.
Young men trying to become good men together.
Balanced men
or at least men trying to be.
Virtue to guide.
Diligence to endure.
Brotherly love to sustain.
At twenty,
those words felt ceremonial.
At fifty,
they feel earned.
The house is coming down now,
as all things eventually do.
Brick fades.
Wood rots.
Buildings disappear.
But brotherhood
real brotherhood
learns how to survive demolition.
It survives in old photos.
Late-night texts.
Stories repeated too many times.
Nicknames no one else understands.
Men who have not seen each other in years
still answering the phone like no time passed at all.
We do not mourn the bricks.
We cherish the fire.

⸻

HOOTIE-MACK

Somewhere along the way,
I stopped being Jeff for a while.
I became Hootie.
Hootie-Mack if you were yelling it across a crowded room.
Which happened often.
The thing about brotherhood is:
it gives you new names
before you fully know yourself yet.
And somehow,
those names survive longer
than the hairlines.
The Purple Hootie became a drink at some point.
An excellent drink, actually.
Which naturally made it tradition almost immediately.
Sorority girls requested it by name.
Leave it to the gay guy.
Everyone always wanted to wrestle me.
Apparently flexibility was threatening in Wyoming.
For reasons still unclear,
half the fraternity wanted to wrestle me at all times.
Which I mostly took as affection.
And honestly,
I was probably right.
We serenaded sororities.
Destroyed couches.
Stayed awake too late.
Argued loudly.
Loved loudly.
Laughed at absolutely inappropriate moments.
And somehow,
inside all that chaos,
people still found each other.
The older I get,
the more I realize
how rare it is
to be remembered by people
who knew you before adulthood finished shaping you.
Before careers.
Before grief.
Before illness.
Before everyone learned
how to become careful.
Back then,
we were loud.
Too loud.
Certain about everything.
Wrong about plenty.
Trying to build a fraternity
while simultaneously destroying several couches
and most reasonable decision-making.
And somehow,
inside all that ridiculousness,
people still felt seen.
Dallas once told me:
"You were always my president.
Even when you weren't."
That sentence hit me harder at fifty
than it ever could have at twenty.
Because by then,
we had all lived enough life
to understand what he really meant.
Not authority.
Steadiness.
Glue.
Balance.
The strange invisible labor
of trying to hold people together
while they are still learning themselves.
Every fraternity has:
the Wolfpack,
the floaters,
the politicians,
the fun haters,
the brothers who drive you crazy,
and the brothers you'd bleed for anyway.
Usually,
they become the same people eventually.
And every once in a while,
my phone still lights up
with someone calling me Hootie-Mack.
Immediately,
for one perfect second,
we are all young again.
Still behind the Red Door.
Still becoming.

⸻

ALWAYS BROTHERS

Here is to the Brothers
of the Purple and Red.
Always brothers—
alive or dead.
No handshake needed now.
No secret phrase.
Our hearts already know.
The skull and bones.
The pearls.
The diamond.
The red door.
Symbols once worn proudly
that slowly stopped becoming symbols at all.
They became memory.
They became identity.
We gathered as strangers.
We left as brothers.
And life carried us everywhere afterward.
Different cities.
Different politics.
Different paths.
Different griefs.
Some of us buried parents.
Some buried brothers.
Some buried marriages.
Some survived illness.
Some carried each other through darkness quietly.
And somehow,
the brotherhood remained.
Not because we stayed young.
Because we stayed connected.
That was the real fraternity.
Not parties.
Not slogans.
Not rituals.
Showing up.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Even decades later.
Especially then.
As I enter another difficult chapter of my own life,
I feel the love and support
of the brothers beside me still.
The founders.
The current brothers.
The future brothers still walking through the red door for the first time.
And someday,
when my own journey finally ends,
I know I will be welcomed by brothers gone before me.
Laughing somewhere just beyond sight.
Waiting.
And until then,
I will stand watch beside the fire
for the brothers still coming after us.
Of sound mind.
Of sound body.
Always brothers.
Of Purple and Red.
The building was only the fireplace.
We were always the fire.
We do not mourn the bricks.
We cherish the fire