The Size Sorority: 1.2

His breath clutched in his lungs and his body seized. He knew what it was. He knew what happened. His hands squeezed the armrests of his chair, and he tried to pull himself closer to the edge, wanting to sit up, not wanting to die like this laying back in a chair. He worked his way forward, his ears ringing now. "What picture?"

Mei said, “Mike, someone has been passing around a picture.”

This wasn’t new, he’d seen pictures before, too. In high school, pictures of girls when they were drunk, nothing too lewd, but enough to destroy someone’s life, enough to hurt someone’s feelings forever.

“No.”

“Yeah,” she said. “She—or whoever—didn’t show your face, but some other people are saying it’s you. There’re no other names, everyone’s just saying that the person in the picture is Michael Fallon,” she said.

“Did you… Did you see it?”

She chewed her lower lip, tried to look in his eyes, then looked away. She nodded.

"Do you… Wait, do you have it?"

"I do. Mike, I think there is . . . more.”

"More what?" he said, almost shouting now.

"No . . . I was mad, Mike, I was really mad that someone would do that to you. So, I… I did some digging, I found more… uh, more—”

"More pictures?" he exclaimed.

"No. Can I… Can I show you?"

He sat upright, avoiding her gaze now—hands tingling, wriggling his fingers and making fists. He looked at the ceiling. He breathed in and out, tried to calm himself, but nothing was working. He inched closer. "Let me, okay… Show me."

Mei regarded him kindly, drew closer to him and opened her laptop. She tapped a few keys and angled it so they both could look. She said, "Are you ready?"

"Mei, yeah, I’m ready—please…"

She held her hand up to block the screen, saying, "I have the picture…"

"Show me," he said.

Mei closed her blocking hand to a fist, then moved it away. On the screen, was a photo, and written in meme font it read below: WE HAVE A WINNER. The photo was of him as he lay on that girl’s bed. It was cropped close, showing from his nipples to his knees. No face. The central focus of this cruel art-piece was his penis. Very small, very shriveled; looking like a little bird’s egg in a hairy nest. He stared at it, eyes bulging, mouth agape. He didn’t know what to say.

Mei said, "So, that’s the picture."

He said, "That’s not me."

Mei said, "It doesn’t matter. People have been saying it’s you."

"I know," he said. "It’s… It’s just not me."

Mei rested a hand on his knee, and while he felt warmth in her friendship, he wanted to recoil. He didn’t though, just remained frozen, trying to remember how to breathe.

After a moment, Mei said, "Mike, I figured where it came from. It doesn’t take much to guess. So I got in their server. They have a private chat."

"Who?"

"You know who."

"Yeah. Omega Kappa Epsilon."

"So, I got into their server, and I found your picture. Sorry, I mean the picture. None of the pictures have your face. Or whoever’s face. But I’ve seen their chat logs. And it led me to a portal that they built."

"A portal?"

"Like an interface; some way to manage a database."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, like they’re building… It’s like they’re building a database of all the guys they sleep with. Now, no one has seen this… Except, I guess, all the girls in the sorority. But this isn’t what’s being passed around. Can I show you?"

He rubbed his face. "Show me."

Mei tapped more keys and drew up what looked like a Facebook interface. At the very top, in bold letters, was his name, Michael Fallon. Below that and on the left was his student ID photo. To the right of his photo, they listed his general identifying characteristics. Some of it gleaned from his records, and some of it gleaned from personal observance. Approximate height, approximate weight, eye color, hair color. Then body type. His said thin, wiry. Not fat. Not in shape. Not muscular. Below that it said penis size; in small capital letters it said TINY. Below that was a section for notes and then written in text speak were phrases like so fucking tiny, couldn’t wear a condom, slipping off. Tried to go down on me, fell asleep with his face between my legs. Disappointing. Not bad looking, was funny when he was drunk, seemed like a nice guy, too bad his cock was a thumb.

"Okay," he murmured, tightness raging through him again, knowing that Mei had read this. Read all of it.

Under that personal information were in-line comments with tiered responses. Things like Wait, how small? Then a tiny profile pic saying Like I mean little finger size. Following that were LOLs and laughing emojis. Someone else said, Can we get that verified? A response below that said I was too drunk. And under that were unintelligible comments, one ending with the word Points and followed by around twenty exclamation points and many gold medal emojis. When he read to the bottom of the screen, Mei closed her laptop and lay her hands over top of it again. Now the room seemed dimmer, the light that had washed both their faces extinguished. He sat straighter and stared across the room. One horrible and pervasive thought lingered in him like a spike embedded in his brain after a construction accident.

His voice a fragile croak, he said to no one in particular, "Vicky's at Omega Kappa Epsilon."

Mei said nothing, sitting motionless.

Vicky Stevens was an Omega Kappa Epsilon girl. His former one true love. Dated her in high school for an entire year. Didn’t lose his virginity to her, though she lost hers to him. It was an incredible love that he'd felt for her. Puppy love turning into infatuation, eventually becoming something deep and unending. Unending of course only for him. Vicky had ended it. Their relationship broken off before senior year. And he'd spent that last year in high school pining and mourning, avoiding seeing her in case she was with a new boyfriend. They’d always talked about coming to NHU together, and when it came time for him to apply and accept a college, he chose NHU specifically because it did something to his heart. Vicky had moved on; had tried to engage him a few times but given up when he failed to respond. Responding to her was too painful, so he suffered, and let her feel like he hated her. He didn’t hate her; he still loved her.

Mei said, "She is," then paused for a moment, and, resting a hand on his knee again, she said, "What do you want me to do about this?"

"What can you do?"

"I can break their system," Mei said. "Though, honestly, they would probably get it back up and running again. I think you should consider getting a lawyer. And even if you don’t, you should go to administration."

"I’m not going to do that, Mei."

"I think you should."

He said, "So they can know, too?" Subterfuge was pointless now, he could deny that photo was him, but Mei knew the truth. She was about the smartest person back at Meadowgrove. Mei knew it was his tiny penis in the photo.

*

On Wednesday night, after two more days of odd encounters with smirking college girls, Michael got a text from Alex, saying to come along for dinner with him and Phil and Jay. He’d gone to high school with Jay, and they were longtime best buds, and he knew Phil pretty well, enough to have hung out with him a few times with some of the guys playing video games all night. He needed the distraction.

The four of them met at the quad outside Maplewood Hall, dressed casually, all groomed nicely in the hope they might meet some girls tonight. Though, frankly, this crew wasn’t very good at that. Michael was about the best looking of them, and he was also the most confident. That wasn’t really saying that much. They walked together across campus, heading to the New Haven village along the main street. Dinner tonight had been agreed upon to be Mexican cuisine. So they went to Cousin Pepe’s, and found the place almost packed. They got a good table together, one that was out of the way, but not near the bathrooms.

He had a good time, getting acquainted with some of the guys he hardly got to see because he was so busy. They talked about the things they liked: movies, video games, girls, and RPGs.

From where he sat, he was angled to see the bar. New Haven was a college town, and Cousin Pepe’s was a college crowd. The bar area was separated from the restaurant by a waist-high brick wall. He could see that area populated by college guys and girls of drinking age, all laughing, getting loud, sharing pitchers of beer and nachos. The bar faced about ten tall bar tables and they were more popular than the bar itself. Pepe’s checked IDs, so the students in there were seniors. And he was unfamiliar with them. But while he talked with the guys, he noted one face in his periphery that seemed to always be watching him. Then the dread settled in, and while he tried to keep a calm demeanor with his friends his thoughts wandered to the secret horror of the last few days. Wondered if his friends knew, though it wouldn’t seem they didn't because everything was as it should be with Alex and Jay and Phil. But now he was being taken out of the fun this evening by worry that he was about to be embarrassed. He could imagine this girl that was watching him sitting by the bar with some other girls, coming over and laughing and pointing at him, identifying him as the man in the picture with the tiny dick. His stomach began to writhe and he squirmed in his seat.

The girl continued to watch him, face drifting from the conversation she held with her compatriots, eyes settling on his, then looking away. It was furtive and not predatory. After a while he began to hope that she was flirting. She was super pretty, and dressed, he believed, like a sorority girl, which worried him. She had shining brown hair, and an innocent, expressive face. Her eyes were dark, and from this distance he couldn’t help but imagine they were a deep chestnut brown. She had a pretty smile, and when someone at the table said something amusing, he liked to see her flash it, see the corners draw her cheeks wide, see the flashing white of her set of perfect teeth.

She hadn’t engaged any of her table mates to turn and glance over their shoulders, didn’t urge them to point and laugh, all of them saying, "Oh, my God, isn't that the guy?" So, in time, the tightness in his chest abated.

After three shared pitchers of Coke, he went to the bathroom to freshen up. Wanted the girl at the bar seating to see how tall he was. So he walked, let her get a look at him and his nice new threads he’d bought to go back to college this year. Went to the bathroom. When he came out he was shocked to find her waiting in the hall.

It was a narrow hall that led from the restaurant to the kitchen and two doors to the bathrooms along the way. When he exited, he came face-to-face with her as she leaned on the wall opposite the bathroom door. They were startlingly close. His head darted back and he made as if to say something, but didn’t know what to say. The girl smiled again, flashed him those teeth.

He said, "I knew your eyes were brown."

She said, "My eyes?"

He said, "Yeah. I was wondering. It was hard to tell from where I'm sitting. But I was pretty sure."

The girl smiled broader and cocked her head, surmising him. She said, "You were right." She batted her eyelashes.

He'd got away with that corny exchange, and he let her see his smile now, too, unsure of where to take this conversation on her eye color. He ventured, "Could have been green, but I see they're chestnut."

Now she smirked, cocked an eyebrow, some sort of joke passing across her mind. She said, "Boy, you really ran that one into the ground."

"I’m not very good at this," he admitted.

She eased herself from the wall and stepped towards him. "Well, they're brown, but what do you think of them?"