3. The Book of the Game

It wasn't a dream. The old book which John brought was actually something of a scrapbook of The Game since its inception in 1956, complete with participant lists, lists of winners, snapshots and, for the past few years, DVDs with pictures and movies. When my roommate came back about an hour after my unexpected guests left, The Book of the Game was the reading I was catching up on.

The 1950s

The earliest pictures in The Book were grainy black-and-white photos of young ladies with stiffly-sprayed hair lying about on the floor. They were mostly dressed in the kind of stuff you'd see on Happy Days reruns: poodle skirts, bobby socks, shoes which seem more appropriate these days for bowling than dating.

 

To be honest, there weren't many photos from that time period which really stand out. I did like one shot where a young woman identified as Priscilla. (No last names are given in The Book, in keeping with the "forbidden" nature of the game.)

 

In the photo I liked best, Priscilla lay dangling out of the driver's-side door of a very sweet looking 1955 Ford Sunliner. Priscilla's long blonde hair, softer than usual for these photos, trailed onto the dusty ground, her mouth was open, her arms were extended, and her fluffy sweater was showing just the tiniest bit of her midriff before her very dark skirt and the frame of the car obscured the rest.

The 1960s

In the early '60s, the ladies began to appear in less and less clothes. The occasional color shot also began to appear. In fact, the photos around 1965 show some of the ladies apparently nude (the quality of the shots was still not very good). A note in the 1966 entry says, "Nudity no longer allowed." I'm not sure why that happened, but I later heard rumors that someone's boyfriend had gotten jealous, and someone else had gotten in trouble with the national sorority. Ah, well.

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The best shot from this era, in my opinion, was a color shot from 1968, when the ladies apparently decided to play the game at a beach house during Spring Break. The color was kind of splotchy and not very realistic, like in an old postcard, but that added to the mystique, if you ask me. The principal subject was Daphne, a very attractive young lady with shoulder-length brown hair, a daisy stuck over her ear. She wore a tie-dye T-shirt and black bikini bottoms, and lay on her back on the sand, arms palms-up at her side, head turned to the right (toward the camera), lips parted, legs bent at the knee and turned at the waist. Her stomach was covered by the right arm of Phyllis, who lay face down perpendicular to Daphne, her short black hair in a permanent wave and her body clad in a red polka-dot bikini. Phyllis's other arm lay palm-up at her side, her legs together, her lovely bare feet pointed in the sand. These two: Daphne and Phyllis, were declared joint winners that year; it's easy to see why.

The 1970s

In the '70s, the picture quality got better, even if there were still a number of black-and-white shots. The yearly sections got longer here, including more pictures as the ladies were shown first fully dressed, then, with one less item, then two, then three. Many of the photos had a very big-haired victor blowing across the barrel of her water gun as her very big-haired victim lay beneath her foot, both often dressed in little more than bra and panties.

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My personal favorite from the '70s, though, was a set of color pictures from 1977 with a tall woman with thick black hair who wore a Wonder Woman costume, complete with gold tiara, gold bracelets, red boots, gold belt and gold lasso. It was not Lynda Carter (The Book says it was someone named Mary Kate.), but she looked a lot like her.

 

In the first photo in the set she is in full costume, laughingly deflecting the burst of water with her gold bracelets.

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The second photo shows her face down, a damp spot in her costume at the small of her back. Apparently, the bracelets don't keep you from being shot from behind. She lay on the floor, spread-eagle, her head turned to the side (again toward the camera), her long hair in her face. Magnificent.

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In the third photo, she was missing her bracelets. She lay arched on her back over an ottoman, her arms and legs extended, her head back and touching the floor, cushioned by her thick black hair. She was apparently shot in the chest. If you looked closely (and I did), you could see little rivers of water running from her chest to her shoulders and neck.

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In the fourth photo, she was sans tiara. In what seemed to be a twist on the famous chloroform scene from the "Fausta" episode of the TV series, she lay in someone's lap, her hair mussed, her legs spread, her arms out, a cloth on her chest. But she lay not in the lap of a male German spy. Instead she lay in the lap of a woman named Misty, who was dressed in hot pants and a bikini top. (Misty, it turns out, is Misty Lambert, Tina's mother.) She was limply lying against a wall, her head down, her very long very straight brown hair covering her face and some of "Wonder Woman" on its way down to a little pile on the floor. Her bare legs were akimbo beneath Mary Kate, her back bent, her right hand lying on Mary Kate's stomach, her left hidden behind her leg.

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In the final photo, clearly taken in the Sigma Sigma Gamma parlor, Mary Kate lies on her back on the floor, arms at her sides, tied loosely there by her golden lasso, her legs together, her boots removed to reveal stocking feet. Wish I'd been there, but I hadn't been born yet.

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I can never look at Tina's mom the same way anymore, by the way. There was a photo from the next year of Misty in a tank top and "Daisy Dukes" being carried by a fairly short man (possibly Tina's father -- no men are identified in The Book). He is shown in profile, walking down a hallway at the Sig house, Misty over his shoulder, her long hair trailing all the way down to the floor, sweeping along their path.

The 1980s

The 80s were apparently something of a troubled decade, both for Sigma Sigma Gamma and for the Game. There is no record of the Game being played in 1981 or 1982, and the sorority was placed on probation in the 1984-1985 academic year, so, while the Game was played in the summer of 1985, it is sparsely documented with only a single photo, a smiling head shot of the winner.

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That said, there were quite a few pictures in those pages which gave me pause, shall we say. Also, there were a few descriptions of exceptional, often un-photographed scenes. For example, this scene from 1983, when the Game was once again played at the beach:

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"Mary hunted Shannon down, finally catching her on this pier which jutted out over the water. Mary shot Shannon, and she fell off the side of the pier into the water, which was only a few feet deep. I'm not sure how she managed it (and she won't tell... grrr!), but we found her a couple of minutes later washed up on the beach, a few yards down from the pier. We were really scared there for a while!

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"Anyway, she completely ruined the cute little T-shirt and short shorts she was wearing when she hit the water, and the next morning, she had such awful tangles in her hair!"

 

The photos from the 80s were filled with girls in leg warmers and leotards, reminding me of the movie Flashdance, and a few who must have thought it was cool to feather their hair and dress like early Madonna. The best pictures, by far, were the body piles.

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In a lot of the pics before about 1983, the ladies appeared in their "final" photos lying side by side on their back. It was exciting because they were often wearing nothing but swimwear or lingerie, but still, the whole thing looked posed, not natural or spontaneous.

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Starting with 1986, however, the final image for each year was almost invariably a pile of ladies, still wearing next to nothing, but jumbled on top of one another, as if they were unceremoniously dumped in position. This seems to coincide with the introduction of the Sleep Spray, developed by a team of Sigma Sigma Gamma chemistry majors and pre-meds. (The recipe for Sleep Spray is a closely guarded secret, for obvious reasons, and is not in The Book.)

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Sleep Spray meant that when the women were finally out, they were completely out, and the Charons (male or female) could just pile them up, which they did. The resulting pictures are amazing. The 1987 pictures show the women all stacked up on the Sigma Sigma Gamma parlor floor, alternating face up and face down, all wearing swimwear of one kind or other. There are shots of the pile from a distance from a number of angles, and close-ups of individual women.

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In 1988, the Game was played in a motel about an hour outside of town, and the final pile is in one of the rooms. A short-haired blonde named Carole lay on one of the room's double beds under Londrelle, a dark-skinned beauty who lay face down over her, her head nearly buried in the pillow next to Carole's. Londrelle's long curls partly obscure Carole's face. Her bare feet are together, between Carole's. Londrelle wears a leopard-print bikini. It's difficult to see what Carole is wearing, since Londrelle covers her.

At the feet of Londrelle and Carole lay Stacy, also face-down, whose curly red locks spill over the edge of the bed and cover her face. She wears blue satin baby doll pajamas. Lying atop Stacy's feet is Cindy, on her back arched over Stacy, her head and short black hair hanging off the foot of the bed, her mouth wide open, her neck arched.

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On the floor beneath Stacy's hair lay three women, Amanda, Tanya, and Marsha (Cindy's twin), piled together such that it is difficult to see which leg or arm belongs to which woman. Amanda wears a red teddy, Tanya a white one, and Marsha a blue.

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The Game winner for that year (1988) was named Jackie, who, as it turns out, is my Tina's aunt. She lay alone and on her stomach on the other double bed. Pillows had been taken from the head of the bed and placed under her so that her silk-panty-clad rear end stuck up into the air. Placed on it was a little paper crown like they used to give away at Burger King. Closeups of her very lovely face show her mouth open and a little drool on the bedspread.

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But all of this was prelude to the 1989, and the woman who would revolutionize the Game the way Wilt Chamberlain revolutionized basketball.

The Caroline Years

While Caroline was a Sigma Sigma Gamma sister in 1988, she didn't participate in the Game that year. Also, curiously, when she did start competing the next year, she's listed in the book as "Eva". It's unmistakably her, though. Even all these years later, you can tell.

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Starting in 1989, "Eva" showed them all how to play. She introduced game innovations like furniture designed to harmlessly shatter beneath her as she fell, clothes designed to tear apart during her scenes, and co-operative multi-player "kills", where several women were shot at once. Starting in 1990, the word is that she took gymnastics, acrobatics and self-defense classes, partly to make her deaths more spectacular.

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There's an amazing photo from 1991 where she is shown hanging over the side of the Sigma Sigma Gamma staircase, one foot seemingly caught between two of the posts supporting the banister. Her arms and hair trail down toward the floor. She wore only a frilly white bra, white cotton panties, and a denim mini-skirt which hung down over her stomach.

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Needless to say, she won each year she played.

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The final picture from 1989 shows the 15 participants from that year piled up haphazardly on the parlor floor, as if they had been tossed in on top one another. Most of the girls had decided to wear bikinis that year, the bright colors jumbling with the various flesh tones and hair shades. Caroline, however, wore a very simple black leotard, which set off her stunning auburn hair, long then as now, but gently curled. She lay face down atop the pile, a little paper crown on her behind.

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In 1990, the ladies adjourned again to the beach for the Game, and the final shot shows the ladies laid out on the sand in the form of the uppercase Greek letters Sigma, Sigma, Gamma, all wearing identical red two piece tankinis. Caroline lay stretched out beneath them, again face down with her little crown.

 

In 1991, Caroline's senior year, the final shot had the ladies stacked in the bed of a pickup, parked behind the sorority house. Many of the women wore very lacy negligee, some wore leotards or bikinis. They were laid carefully down in the bed, each on their side, though twisted slightly at their hips, their knees just reaching the end of the extended tailgate, their bare feet hanging down like limbs on a willow. Caroline was not in the bed, however. Another picture shows the cab of the truck, with Caroline in the drivers seat, one hand limply on top the steering wheel, her head falling out the open window, her mouth open, her hair trailing down the side. The little paper crown sat on the dash.

The Late 1990s and Early 2000s - Tammy's Movie

Caroline's dominance of the Game the three years she played seemed to reinvigorate interest among the sisters. In 1999, there were 25 ladies playing the game. There are a number of great photos in The Book for this period, but the most amazing is the collective work of my friend Tammy Cohen. (Her last name's not in The Book of course, but it's clearly her.)

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Last year, Tammy apparently carried around a camcorder during her part, and burned the video to a DVD. It's included in an envelope in the book, and it's astounding, both for Tammy's beauty in her scenes, and in the originality with which she approached the game.

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Tammy made her part in the game into a story unto itself. The video begins with Tammy in her apartment, before The Game started. She is wearing jeans and a plain pink T-shirt, and she looks very worried.

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"Is this working?" she asks. "I hope so.

 

"Something weird is going on at Sigma Sigma Gamma this year, and I don't know if I'm going to make it through the next few hours. We usually play this game, see, where we all play dead. It's usually a lot of fun, but this year, well, people have been acting strangely. Caroline (She's the Death Mistress and Charon this year.) has been handing out these little rings... "

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She held a little plastic ring, like the kind you get from Cracker Jack boxes, up to the camera, and continued: " ... See? ... and everyone who's put theirs on, even for a second has been acting, well, odd. I can't really describe it."

 

Tammy held the ring up, examining it. She took off her glasses and held the ring closer.

 

"It's not like it's all that special a ring," she said. Then, as she looked closer, she added, "Wait a minute. There's some kind of writing here!" She squinted, "Gero mos somnus intemporaliter. Hmm. Looks like Lati..."

 

Just then, Tammy's voice trailed off, her head drooped down, and her glasses fell from her hand and onto the floor. The other hand (her right hand) still held the ring, and then slowly, almost as if it had a will of its own, moved over and slipped it onto the fourth finger of her left hand. As soon as the ring was on the limp left hand, the right hand also went limp at her side, and Tammy fell to her knees, and partly out of frame. Then, she woke up.

 

"What's the camera doing on?" she said, walked over, and, apparently, switched it off.

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There was a fast cut to another shot, this one with Tammy, standing in the hallway in the Sigma Sigma Gamma house leading from the front door to the parlor, wearing a sleeveless grey sweater and a very short denim skirt. She was barefoot. The picture wasn't framed as well as the earlier scene; she was kind of hunched down in front of the camera, and she was whispering.

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"Something strange has been happening to me," she started. "I found this ring on my finger, and I don't know where it's from, and I can't get it off." She tugged at the ring on her left hand. "The other girls have rings like it, but they can put them on or take them off whenever they want. They say they got the rings from me, but I don't remember..."

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Just then, she looked down the hall quickly, then nervously back to the camera. "I'm going to tape the Game tonight, or at least my part, just in case something happens. I want there to be evidence, so that someone can help me, so someone can know what's going..."

 

Her voice trailed off again, and her eyes grew blank. Then, she absentmindedly reached over to the camera and flipped it off.

 

Another fast, amateurish cut to a dimly lit room that I recognized as the sorority kitchen. Tammy stood next to the sink, the only light coming from the yard lights outside the window. "Watch!" she cried loudly, "Help me! Please!"

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Just then, another sorority sister ran into the room, blasted Tammy with three shots from her water pistol without breaking stride, and then ran out of frame. She was moving so fast, it's hard to tell who it was.

 

Tammy jerked back against the counter, violently flailing her arms, and tossing her hair. Her glasses flew from her face. She uttered a gasp, then the words, "Burns... not like before..." Then she fell forward, hitting the floor face down with a smack. After a moment, Caroline walked into the frame, knelt beside Tammy (obscuring her unfortunately), then stood and walked out of the room in the direction the assailant had fled.

 

"Arise, fair victim," she called (over her shoulder, from the sound of it).

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But Tammy did not arise. Her legs were now together, rather than spread like before, and her skirt was on the floor next to her very still body. She wore now the sleeveless gray sweater and a pair of white panties. She did not move for a very long time. Then, she twitched several times, as if jolted by electricity, rose almost mechanically to her feet, and walked over to the camera. Her eyes were blank, her mouth slack.

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She lifted the camera before her face, facing out. She then held out her water gun at arms length, so that it was on the video. She walked out of the kitchen and into the back yard. There, in the yard, a few yards from the hot tub stood my Tina, wearing a loose fitting men's shirt the tail extending down her bare legs. Her back was to the camera, to Tammy, to us. We walked mechanically over to Tina. Why didn't she hear us? Why didn't she turn around?

 

The water gun was now just inches from the back of Tina's neck, and the straight brown hair which covered it. We fired at the neck and the hair, and Tina's head kicked back, and she fell momentarily out of view.

 

We then looked down on her as she lay on her side, her head back, her legs bent, her arms bent, her mouth agape, her white panties just visible beneath her shirt tail. We fired on the still form, fired again and again and Tina jerked with each round, until she lay still and the remaining rounds merely dampened her hair, her shirt, her panties, her skin. We then lifted the gun, and walked mechanically back into the kitchen.

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Tammy then placed the camera where it had been before, walked back into frame, and lay down slowly onto the floor again, assuming the same position she had been in after she was shot. A moment of stillness, and then she jerked awake and pulled herself to her feet. She looked very confused. She searched around for her glasses, found them, and put them on. Then, she remembered the camera.

 

"I don't remember doing a scene," she said, almost in a whisper. "Am I going nuts?"

 

She looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. "I need to get to the lobby if I'm going to get the camera set up." And she switched the camera off again.

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Jump cut to the lobby, a big room at the front of the Gamma house which serves as a kind of common room, with a TV, several comfortable couches and chairs, a roll-top desk which these days houses the sound system, and a wooden card table against one wall. Tammy seems to have placed the camera on top the TV, and we see her sit down in a leather chair facing it.

 

"I feel so strange," she said. "My head's killing me, and I'm shivering. I really don't know what's going on. I don't..."

 

Then her mouth opened in a gasp, then, eyes wide, she slid off the chair down onto the floor. She lay there very still, her eyes open and unblinking. Tina was standing behind her holding the water gun. She must have hit Tammy in the back of the neck as well. Payback.

 

"Who were you talking to, Tammy?" Tina asked. Then, she noticed the camera and said, "Oh." and left the room. Tammy lay where she was, her legs spread, her sweater pulled up to just beneath her bra, her hair streaming in soft curls up the front of the leather chair, her eyes behind her glasses never blinking.

 

In a moment, Caroline walked into frame, removed Tammy's glasses, set them on the chair, then pulled her sweater over her head and arms, leaving Tammy now in only black bra and panties, lying on her side, her legs still spread, but not at quite the angle they were. Caroline placed Tammy's glasses back on her face. Tammy never blinked once.

 

"Girl," Caroline said. "Someday you've got to show me how you do that."

 

Then Caroline left, saying as she walked out of frame "Arise, fair victim."

 

Tammy lay there another few seconds, then rose, and, still unblinking, walked zombie-like over to the camera and shut it off.

 

Another quick cut and Tammy is back in front of the camera, which was still on the television in the lobby. After she moves her arm from turning the camera on, she does not return to the chair, but instead paces in front of the camera. Too close to the camera. We only see her from knees to shoulders as she walks two steps, turns, two steps, turns.

 

"It can't be," she's saying over and over. "It can't be. It can't be it can't be it can't be it..."

 

Then, she laughs a frighteningly empty laugh, and, finally, walks back to the chair and faces the camera. Her hair is now completely disheveled, frizzed and half in her face. She doesn't seem to notice. Her hands shake in her lap, fluttering like butterflies.

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She speaks then, too loudly, almost like a shout. "I killed them. It can't be. I killed them. Dorothy and Stephanie and Lisa and, oh, God, and Tina too." Then, very quietly and very quickly. "I didn't believe it until I saw the tape, saw the tape. I didn't believe I could do that. It can't be. But I saw the tape, saw the tape, saw the tape. It can't be. It can't..."

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Then, very softly and steadily, an otherworldly voice started chanting:

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Gero mos somnus intemporaliter.
Gero mos somnus intemporaliter.

 

Tammy jumps up and looks around. "Who said that?" she calls. "Can you hear it? Can you hear it?"

 

Gero mos somnus intemporaliter.
Gero mos somnus intemporaliter.
Gero mos somnus intemporaliter.
Gero mos somnus intemporaliter.

 

The chanting grew louder, and seemed to come from two voices, at some awfully dissonant interval.

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GERO MOS SOMNUS INTEMPORALITER.

 

"Oh God oh God oh God," Tammy was saying, louder and louder as the duet became a chorus, repeating the same refrain over and over again, louder and louder.

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GERO MOS SOMNUS INTEMPORALITER.
GERO MOS SOMNUS INTEMPORALITER.
GERO MOS SOMNUS INTEMPORALITER.
GERO MOS SOMNUS INTEMPORALITER.
GERO MOS SOMNUS INTEMPORALITER.

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Tammy sank to her knees in front of the chair, her hands on her ears, "No! No! No! NO! NO! NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!" And then she SCREAMED a high, piercing scream which cut off suddenly as she took her hands from her ears and gripped her stomach. She looked up at the camera with the most desperate expression possible, but her scream became only choking and gurgling. Then her eyes rolled up in her head, and she fell face first to the floor, her hands still on her stomach, her butt stuck up in the air, her feet against the chair. Instantly, the chanting stopped.

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Caroline walked into frame and kicked Tammy onto her side. "Bravo, dear," she said. She removed...

 

...the little plastic ring, still on Tammy's left hand. Tammy lay very still, her messy hair in her face, her glasses askew. Caroline pulled the little perfume bottle of Sleep Spray from a hip bag she was wearing, turned Tammy onto her back, and sprayed her full in the face, four, five times. She lightly slapped Tammy's face a few times, then stood, grabbed Tammy's ankles, and dragged her from the room, her arms and hair trailing behind her.

 

And that was the end. (I'm guessing Tammy edited out the time from then until the tape ran out.)

All in all, I was very enthusiastic about the weekend ahead.

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Continue The Game (4. The Pre-Game Party)

 

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