I want to preface this whole thing by first explaining how I became interested in Greek life.

I was in the foster care system from the ages of 14 to 18 1/2 years old. I had amazing staff members who were (mostly) associated with the "Divine Nine," the nine historically Black fraternities and sororities. These staff members taught me the true values of being involved with Greek life: service, paying it forward/giving back to the community, bonds of true friendship-turned-kinship, and most of all, the hard work and dedication it takes to be involved in a Greek organization.

So when I arrived at Appalachian State University, I was sorely disappointed with the organizations that represented our school. The fraternities were not as I was taught; instead, they were full of tools and douches, pretentious assholes who seemed to think their shit didn't stink. I rushed five times. Each time, I was rejected. Each time, friends involved in the specific fraternities I rushed came back and told me that the brothers perceived me as a threat to their organization because I was "too open" about my sexuality. This infuriated me.

So I reached out to the Head of Greek life here at ASU, and explained to her that her organizations seemed only interested in "the cool kids," of which I apparently was not due to my openness about who I am as a person. I told her of my upbringing, and the outstanding staff members who taught me everything I know about Greek life. She told me that I was repeating, verbatim, the words of the expansion director of a national fraternity who wanted to establish on App State's campus a brand-new colony, and she linked me up with him. I finally got to meet him and he told me that very day, "I'm going to give you a bid" because indeed, I was exactly the kind of personality he wanted to see helping Greek life return to its' former glory as the service-oriented organizations Greek life was designed to be.

I want to also state that being in a fraternity was a life-changing experience, one that I will never regret, one that was necessary for me to overcome the depression I felt after my first true love obliterated my heart and soul (to learn more about that, read "An Open Letter to the First Man I Ever Loved"). I love the guys I bonded with during the course of the year I was involved, even if they didn't see me the way they should have.

With that being said, let me begin.

Being in a fraternity in undergraduate school is hard to describe in words.

It's kind of like being in an independent country completely outside the jurisdiction of the United States and the university on which it resides, with an entirely independent, established democracy and court system, legislation and legislators, etc.

It is also like being in a dictatorship, where one person's opinion doesn't really matter, especially if that one voice disagrees with the rest of the collective, even if that opinion was the right one. The mantra for this is "brotherhood before self," which quite literally means "sacrifice your own morals and values for the 'good' of the rest."

For example, the topic of hazing the newbies was broached one night during chapter. Everyone was gung-ho and ready for that part of the chartering process to begin. Except me. I was the only one to stand up and tell them all that we were supposed to be that something different on campus - that we had been chosen to uphold the true, service-oriented beliefs of fraternities, and not this pop-culture torture bullcrap that seems to pervade every single organization on campus. It happens, I was told, even by organizations who have touted a "no hazing" rhetoric for years. It's necessary to form a true brotherhood, they argued.

Hazing is sick and disgusting, an unnecessary practice, and they better be glad they were rid of me before they started it, because I'd have reported them and shut my own fraternity down if I knew it was going on. Straight-up.

Another topic that was brought to my attention was the fact that many brothers seemingly did not like or agree with my political rantings on my own personal Facebook account. This election cycle was the first one many of these guys had ever participated in as legal-age, registered voting adults, and this one was particularly devoid of fact-checking on the Republican side of things, so I did a lot of that on my various social media platforms. My brothers told me I needed to cut that shit out, because "it made the fraternity look bad," although I never got an answer as to who was telling them my Facebook was making the fraternity look bad, which in and of itself is a laughable concept. The message that was subliminally being delivered was "the vast majority of us are Conservative Republicans, you're an outspoken Liberal Democrat. Conform to our beliefs and ideologies or get out." I said "Lol, k. Bye!" because I refused to abandon my morals and values as a decent human being just to please a few tools that hated my guts.

Let me be perfectly clear: the vast majority of these guys treated me right, at least to my face. There were a handful that hated me from the jump, and I'll be quite honest as to why they hated me so: I'm bisexual, and they (somehow) thought I was trying to hi-jack the fraternity and its goals and make it into something about my sexuality. It literally took a guy (whom eventually became our first President) to call out this little group of homophobes and he told them that they had known me for all of two weeks, and that they needed to take some time to get to know me before they judged me. Most of them took those words to heart and actually got to know me. Only a couple remained bitter towards my inclusion in the fraternity, all the way up to the day I was officially no longer associated with them.

Being in a fraternity exposed me to a hypermasculine frame of mind that I had never experienced before, due to the fact that I was raised by a single mother and her five sisters. It was intimidating and superfluous and quite unnecessary. To me, it seemed to be a pissing contest on how messed up you could get (and how fast), how many girls you could bang and how hot they were, and how ridiculously stupid you could act when you were schwasted. I don't miss any of that, because I never had much interest in those things. I was more interested in substantive conversations, like future goals and past experiences. In short, I wanted to know how these guys had gotten to where they are now, and why they wanted to do the things they dreamed of doing. Apparently, that wasn't what they wanted, either.

They wanted me to "be a bro," whatever the hell that meant.

Sorry, but I reckon I just didn't have what it took to "be a bro." And you know what? I'm a-okay with that. I got what I needed most from the organization and from the handful of guys who, to this day, still treat me like a human being. Other than that, I pass by the ones who resented my membership and act as if I have never met them in my life. Judging by the way they act towards me, they want it that way, too.

Being in a fraternity taught me the absolute worst things about being a stereotypical "man's man" in our screwed-up society, and I don't want to be perceived like any of it. It taught me that men are supposed to talk about women in terms of "dirty sloots" and "bad biddies," whose only purposes for existing were for plowing, fetching another brew, and making us men look good while they cling to our arms. I was told that I'm "too nice" for girls to be attracted to me, that I needed to be somewhat of an ass for them to notice me, but that isn't who I am in any way.

However much nastiness I learned from my fraternity, I also learned that listening to the people who care about me, taking their advice, and actually applying it to my life is something I need to learn post-haste. I learned that I've had it pretty rough compared to my peers, and that I can't rely on them to counsel me for everything. I learned that, even though I have had it rough, I can't keep using it to justify my lack of progression as a person; in fact, it taught me that because of my past, I have to work twice as hard to get half of what they have.

In short, being in a fraternity was the absolute best time of my life, accompanied by a few terrible experiences of betrayal and abandonment, feelings that I never thought I'd ever feel from those whom I considered blood.

And that, ladies and gents, is all that I learned from being involved in a fraternity.