WASHINGTON — Imagine a carefully fashioned coat hanger, slow-roasted over the blue-green flame of a Magic Chef range, heading for the fleshy expanse of your upper arm, your chest or the side of your behind.
For a fraction of a second, you can feel the heat before it touches your skin. Your heart races and instinctively you want to draw back. But you don't. Because you want your brand to be sweet. Or if you think you'll move, you brace yourself, holding onto a sink or table, or perhaps you get somebody else to hold you down.
Then comes the "hit," a quick "Pssssssst." Or maybe it's a "crackle" or "pop," not unlike the sound of Rice Krispies soaking in a bowl of milk. They say it doesn't really hurt. But the smell of burning flesh can be weird. Especially when it's yours.
Imagine being branded.
Many people watching this year's NCAA Final Four tournament caught sight of the big horseshoe-shaped scar on the left arm of University of North Carolina point guard Shammond Williams. Michael Jordan's brand, hidden on his chest, is more discreet. Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith sported a brand on his left arm for a 1993 cover of Sports Illustrated. Other folks have Greek letters melted into their calves or seared into their forearms.
Although doctors warn there can be complications--infection, excessive scarring, designs gone wrong--around the country lots of people get branded. For some black Greek fraternity members (and fewer white ones) it's a long-standing tradition, but experts say it's also become something of a fad.
Gang members brand themselves to claim their set, while for others, brands are an extension of green Mohawks and multiple nose rings. Branding can forge a connection. But while brands might be spiritual, sexual or ceremonial, they're always hot.
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As Myyucca Sherman strolls across the Howard University campus here, his baby dreadlocks standing at attention, he stops occasionally to slap hands with a buddy or trade barks with another "Que dog" who spots his bright purple sweat shirt emblazoned with gold Greek letters.
Sherman, 19, has been a "Que," a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity, since spring of last year, and he's got three brands--double, interlocking Omegas on his chest, and a large Omega with a small Greek A inside, for Alpha chapter, in the middle of his left arm. Of his initiation class of nine men, all chose to get branded.
