God Has No Sex

I’ve read that Texas Republicans have attacked and mocked James Talarico because at some point he affirmed that God has no gender. Sympathizing with the spirit of what Talarico intends to convey, nevertheless I want to disagree with him a bit. As I see it, God does have a gender in the fundamental sense of “gender.” He is conceived to be male because in the social discourse in which we participate to be male is to be powerful and wise and protective—all the things we want to attribute to God. But I do not think that God has a sex. I take my argument from a general sense of Christian dogma, with John Milton as my guide in the process. However, I take the title of this post from a barber/beauty shop I used to go to when I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The shop was called “Mitchell’s Croppers—Hair Has No Sex.”

 

As it turns out, Mitchell, assuming that such a person was the proprietor of the place, was wrong. Hair does have a sex, marked by the XX or XY chromosomes or whatever variant of chromosomal sex markers an individual might have. But the spirit of the name was just right, I thought. Why distinguish one haircut artist from another just on the basis of the clients they served?

 

Spirit itself, almost by definition, seems to me rightly to have no sex. I’m not given to Platonic dualism as a general proposition, but Christianity seems on the whole to depend on a dualistic understanding of things. From that perspective, spirit is spirit precisely because it is not a physical phenomenon. Lord knows how many nineteenth century experimenters set out to discover the existence of spirit by weighing the body of a dying patient just before and just after the person died. The experimental design was crude, but its purpose clear: the difference in weight in the before-and-after weighing would indicate the mass of the substance that rose up to the heavenly or sank to the infernal. 

No experiment yielded a quantifiable result. The inference? Assuming that indeed there does exist a spirit that departs the body at death, then that spirit is entirely immaterial. It’s a bit of a tautology, I think, but the point is clear: spirit is disembodied. And since sex is an eminently embodied characteristic, it follows that spirit can have no sex.

 

In Paradise Lost Milton underscores the distinction between the material and the immaterial. When he has the archangel Raphael explain to still unfallen Adam the architecture of Creation, he celebrates the mutuality of the “two great sexes” that, he says, “animate the world.”

 

To my mind the poem makes it clear that the complicated relationship of male and female is the key to preserving Paradise. Unfortunately, Adam fails to understand the relationship, and his misapprehension leads directly to the fallen condition of humanity after he and Eve eat the forbidden fruit. The misunderstanding derives from Adam’s assumption of male superiority. When he affirms that superiority to Raphael, the archangel “with contracted brow” chastises him. He had asked the Son for an equal, and an equal is what the Son had created, says Raphael.

 

The point is subtly expressed and verges on the ambiguous: “Weigh with her thyself; / Then value.” In context, however, it seems to me that Raphael simply urges Adam to value in Eve exactly what he values in himself, the capacity to reason and to come to rational conclusions. Extolling her material beauty, enthralling himself to her body, is an error that

 

. . . attribut[es] overmuch to things

Less excellent, as thou thyself perceivest.

For, what admirest thou, what transports thee so,

An outside? fair, no doubt, and worthy well

Thy cherishing, thy honouring, and thy love;

Not thy subjection.

 

Although “half abashed,” Adam takes the correction well. He has been seeking knowledge from Raphael from the moment that Raphael arrives in Eden, and the archangel’s mild tongue lashing serves to further his knowledge. Nonetheless, to turn the conversation into a less confrontational path, Adam then asks, “Love not the heavenly Spirits, and how their love / Express they? by looks only? or do they mix / Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch?” In other words, what’s angelic intercourse all about?

 

Raphael blushes, “with a smile that glowed / Celestial rosy red,” but answers that

 

Whatever pure thou in the body enjoyest,

(And pure thou wert created) we enjoy

In eminence; and obstacle find none

Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars;

Easier than air with air, if Spirits embrace,

Total they mix, union of pure with pure

Desiring, nor restrained conveyance need,

As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul.

 

Spirit has no “membrane, joint, or limb.” It has no bodily parts because spirit is not embodied. Angelic coition is the complete interpenetration of spirit with spirit, more easily than air mixes with air.

 

It’s not until the nineteenth century romanticizes heaven that angels are presented as female. Before then, all the angels are gendered masculine, at least by name. Raphael. Michael. Gabriel. Uriel. Azrael. And so on. Since that’s the case, assuming that the names denote the angels’ sex and not their gender makes what Raphael contemplates in his blushing description of angelic coition into a rampant homosexual extravaganza in heaven. But, again, there are no body parts involved. Angels may be gendered, for the same reason that God is gendered. But like God, angels have no sex.

 

Keep in mind too that although angels may not be material, they do have substance. They are created beings, creatures of God’s prolific creativity. God himself—I use the gendered pronoun quite deliberately here—is not created, not a creature. To conceive of God in those terms is a bit like thinking about the universe that modern physics has constructed for us and trying to figure out what there was before the Big Bang. The conventional answer is that that is an illogical question because the Big Bang produced spacetime, which means that there was no time before the Big Bang and so to ask what came before makes no sense. Similarly, how can we conceive of a being who existed before there was substance, who is therefore not only immaterial but insubstantial, not a creature at all?

 

My imagination fails at that point. But it follows from that insubstantiality that the absence of sex applies a fortiori, as the logicians say, when it comes to God. The gendering of God’s insubstantiality is like the gendering of the angels, a matter of how we humans understand power and its adjuncts. But the gendering of angels or of God is about us, not about them.

East West

David Loy once said that communism is a heresy within the religion of capitalism. I’ll take that idea as a given in what follows here.

 

The great global divide between east and west that pits them vs. us, where “us” is the good capitalist west and the “them” is the evil communist east, seems to me to be nonsense. Europe gives birth to capitalism in the writings of Adam Smith. Europe also gives birth to communism in the writings of Karl Marx. Both economic systems, and the political universes that they produce, are equally European, “western.” So too is the geographical division usually defined as east vs. west. To be sure, Russia lies in the eastern part of Europe, but it is as European as Poland or Estonia or . . . pick your favorite east European country. And yes, Russia grew imperial by expanding into Asia, and the USSR maintained that empire while at the same time expanding westward via its Warsaw Pact “allies.” But to say that the Russian Empire, or the USSR, is an “eastern” power is as silly as saying that the British Empire and the French Empire were African powers because each one colonized so much of Africa.

 

What the common designation of east and west disguises is European suspicion of any part of the world not dominated by its own racial class. I’m perfectly aware that contemporary notions of racial difference derive from eighteenth and early nineteenth century theories designed to explain and justify Europe’s global empires. It begins just as those empires swing into high gear. J. F. Blumenbach’s De Generis Humani Varietati Nativa (1775), i. e. The Origin of Native Human Variety, gets the ball rolling. A century later, Ernst Haeckel’s Anthropogenie: oder Entwickelungsgeschichte des Menches (1874), which is to say, The Origins of Humanity, or the Developmental History of Men, makes the point is a profoundly racist image that, by emphasizing the continuity of species from orangutang to human, simultaneously reduces Africans to just one more variety of ape.

 

http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Gasman.htm

 

Arthur de Gobineau’s The Inequalities of Human Races (1853-55) is perhaps the apex of the proposition that Europeans are superior. There are others, both before and after de Gobineau, who contribute their two cents worth of despicable argument in support of the superiority of Europeans. But de Gobineau sets the standard. His argument is explicitly that “all civilizations derive from the white race, that none can exist without its help, and that a society is great and brilliant only so far as it preserves the blood of the noble group that created it.” De Gobineau makes it clear that as that noble “blood” mixes with other “bloods,” the superiority diminishes. Some of those marginal Europeans in the east and in the south of the continent are less worthy of superiority because of admixtures of Asian or African blood. In other words, the creators of racism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries understand European superiority to be equivalent to European whiteness. Those swarthies from Italy or Spain or Greece, or the Hunnish Hungarians or Albanians or Romanians clearly belong to a lesser race.

 

After WW II we think of Hitler as the nadir of racism, but in fact he is part of the continuum that starts with Blumenbach. As an instance of that continuity, here is Hitler in Mein Kampf (1925) making de Gobineau’s case explicit:

 

Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. . . .  The consequence of this racial purity, universally valid in Nature, is not only the sharp outward delimitation of the various races, but their uniform character in themselves. The fox is always a fox, the goose a goose, the tiger a tiger, etc., and the difference can lie at most in the varying measure of force, strength, intelligence, dexterity, endurance, etc., of the individual specimens.

 

If Hitler adds anything to the racist ideology it’s that he makes explicit the implications of Haeckel’s evolutionary tree. Hitler’s language is clear: racial differences are identical to differences in species.

 

The east/west divide, then, is about economic ideas only in the most marginal, and historically incorrect, of ways. Capitalism and communism are equally European. The political systems those economic practices engender also belong to Europe. That east/west divide, like the so-called “global south” and “global north,” simply disguises the fundamental racism that Europeans invent to justify their own imperial control of the planet. East/west focuses attention on the Asiatic; global south and global north focuses attention on the African, the Oceanic, and the American. In short, “east” vs. “west” disguises the division between whites, i. e. Europeans, and what nowadays we call “people of color.” Fear mongers’ warnings about civilizational collapse simply duplicate what racists from Blumenbach through Hitler argue. It’s not an economic nor a political system that’s the threat. It is, simply, people of color.

Never, part 1

Artie

            We stood in my dorm room, in the narrow slot between the two narrow single beds on either side of the equally narrow room. The doorway and built-in desks and closets, all in the same light brown fake wood paneling color, were to my left, the window to my right, facing out to the quad around which the four towers stood. I faced my roommate Sandy’s bed. Sandy was not there, thank god. She was, Artemis. Nothing else occupied the room, and as far as I was concerned nothing mattered other than her in front of me. I reached out to touch her face, to stroke it gently. I caressed her earlobe. Her head came down. In pleasure, I hoped. I took the movement as permission to continue, and with that ok in my eyes I cupped her face in both hands, moving my fingers on either side of her eyes, tracing her lips, moving down to her chin, her neck.

            She hummed—I don’t know what else to call it. Not a groan or a sigh, but something high pitched carried on top of an almost guttural exhalation. She reached for my face with her hands, brought my face up to hers, kissed me. It was a whisper of a kiss at first, but then she pressed more, opened her lips, licked my lips until they too opened. Our tongues came together, slipping over and under each other.

            We hugged so fiercely that even immaterial spirit would not have fit between us. I combed my fingers through her hair, the beautiful shoulder length chestnut hair that I had ogled for weeks. She turned her head upwards so I could kiss her neck and work my way down to the space at the top of her blouse where the breasts began to show above the rib cage. Her hands were at my waist, holding me close to her. And then down to my butt the hands came, grasping me tightly, forcing me even closer.

            We had met mid-week during a so-called orientation week that was so lackadaisical that most new students managed to avoid the boring official events. Instead we roamed a campus still missing all the upper-class kids, and we went to some of the big welcome-to-college parties hosted by the dormitory areas. It was at one of those, in Pushkin Halls, at what seemed a mile from our own dorms in Eliot Halls, that we met. She roomed in Hemingway Hall. I roomed in Tennyson. We went to the same dining hall, in Faulkner Union Building, the FUB. I had seen her—how could I not see that beauty?—in the dining hall and in the FUB but had not met her until that evening at Pushkin. She was gorgeous. I first noticed her hair. Then I saw the rest of her. She was small, about five foot three or four, with a body and face sculpted by Praxiteles. They say Praxiteles used Phryne to model the beauty of Aphrodite. Our Artemis would have served him as model for his Artemis, the goddess. We’ll never know, though. Praxiteles’s Artemis was lost long ago. Our Artemis was Greek, third generation American, with a face that would have launched whole carrier battle groups of ships.[1]

            She did not see me, not beyond saying hi when Ellen, her roommate, introduced us. Ellen had met Sandy already, and Sandy was the reason the introduction happened at all. Sandy was handsome in the easy, public way handsome people are: six feet two with eyes of blue, a good eight or nine inches taller than I was and many shades lighter than my mud-brown eyes, with thick blond curls that fell below his ears. I had very fine, very straight, very uninteresting light brown hair, still cut to meet the standards of the McDonald’s where I’d worked until school started. His arms were arms. My arms would’ve been spaghetti, except that moving furniture for the stepfather made them more like fettuccine. Something to be thankful for. He was comfortable in his own skin, unconsciously strutting when he walked, able to small talk with anyone, especially girls. I was introverted, not exactly the smoothest talker, shy as a tarsier in daylight, especially around women. I had been on one date in my life, and that had been for the senior prom at my high school. Some classmates in calculus class thought it would be funny to coerce me into going with a girl in the class whom I barely knew, Laurie. I was too shy to know anyone, male or female and too inept to sidestep the coercion.

            Laurie discovered the depths of my shyness on that long prom evening. She wanted to dance and partake of some of the hooch that kids had sneaked into the place. I sat and when my sitting became conspicuous, I crept into a hidden corner of the room and observed. At least I gave Laurie the chance to go off with some of her friends and to dance with other guys and to enjoy herself. Towards the end of my evening’s ordeal, I saw that Laurie had drunk so much of the liquor that she was woozy, more than woozy. Positively reeling. She was on the verge of upchucking when I got to her and eased her down next to a big old pot with a sickly palm-ish plant struggling to survive. Into the pot she deposited her dinner and munchies and lots of liquid. And then I stayed by her, bringing her water, wiping her sweaty face with some napkins, trying to get her as comfortable as I could. She never thanked me. Well, why should she.

            Sandy and Artemis, Temi as she called herself, danced and talked all evening. I was not surprised. People would say they made a cute couple. And they did make a cute couple. I knew Temi was far far beyond my orbit. A shining star in the freshman firmament.[2] And Sandy was the man to hitch his wagon to it.

            That was OK with me. Really. Truly. I had spent my high school years in not so splendid isolation. My shyness contributed, but then the shyness did not grow automatically from the dead soil of my personality. The stepfather that my mother graced me with helped. There was no way that I could make friends with anyone when I’d have to have them meet so nasty a man, so deeply into control that he kept tabs of the number of crackers in a sleeve of Saltines to see how many I had eaten. He had an easy time controlling my mother. He ground her down into nervous breakdown after nervous breakdown. With me he did not, maybe could not go so far, even though he used controlling me as a weapon against her. If I bucked him in the slightest, she suffered even more . He kept me isolated, under his thumb, often working for him in his home business fixing furniture. For no money, of course. He had moved us, first from Miami and then from the diverse inner city of Harrisburg to an all-WASP suburb when I was in eleventh grade. I barely knew the kids in the school. Put strangers under the stepfather’s thumb?[3] Even if the stepfather had allowed such a thing as guests, I could not possibly bring a friend to that house. I had no friends.

            I took advantage of the isolation in my own way. I’d always been a good student. The stepfather’s sequestration of poor old me turned me positively studious. When not working for the stepfather or at the McDonald’s, I spent my evenings and weekends doing homework and studying ahead and reading book after book, from Thucydides to Zinn and from Beo to Virginia Woolf, and more. I love math. In my senior year calculus class, I dazzled the teacher, Dr. Saunders, when I solved a problem that neither he nor any of his students for the last decade or two had been able to crack. He asked me to write out the solution on the blackboard. I took all the blackboard space, two broad panels worth, to display my achievement. And then a kid in the class, Rick, as popular and well-liked a boy as Biff Loman himself,[4] pointed out an error in a specific line. I’d written five, but it should have been seven. It was not a terrible thing. The solution still worked fine. I’d always been terrible at arithmetic.

            I’d call my studying dedication, except it was more like a response to despair. It was the only thing I could do that the stepfather could not or would not stop. It was also my future. Thanks to my schoolwork, I got a full-ride scholarship to the biggest, baddest state school in Pennsylvania. I thought of applying to ivies, but . . . too rich a broth for me, I thought. College too my stepfather could not stop. Nor could the manager at the McDonald’s. Near my last day there, he sidled up to me, put his arm around my shoulders—I shuddered but stood still—and whispered in my ear, “You don’t really want to go to college, do you? Why don’t you stay here and become an assistant manager?” I smiled. “Over my dead body.”

            College broke the isolation. Suddenly I had whole dorm buildings full of friends. On my first day in the dorm, as soon as the parents went away, I searched for and found someone, Bert, who would sell me some dope. That was one step in my rebellion against the stepfather’s imprisonment. I scored a big chunk of red Lebanese hash. And then Bert and I got as high as we could. The smell wafting through the floor in the dorm brought other kids in. By the time the dining hall opened for dinner, I had a high dozen new friends. Shyness? It just disappeared.

            Fortunately the RA in our dorm house, Tim, had a blind nose to such goings on. And anyways he liked to grease social interactions. That first Friday we were up at school, at the end of so-called orientation, a couple of days after the party at Pushkin, and the weekend before classes started, he hosted his own party in our dorm house’s common room, with a huge vat of hundred proof something or other to serve our needs. I had never had any alcohol at all in my whole life. Not even a sip of beer. That night I made up for it . . . and woke up the next morning in a bathroom stall with puke all over me. I remembered Laurie at the prom. I never got drunk again.

            Anyway, whether or not Temi was within my orbit, I told myself I did not need, wasn’t ready for a girlfriend. What I needed, I thought, was time and space to be the adolescent guy that I’d never been allowed to be. If I had luck and charisma—what a thought!—that might include some casual sex now and then, but it was hanging out with the guys that I’d missed in high school, and that’s what I longed for. Bert and I became good friends, and not just because he had a constant supply of good smoke. He was fun to be around and play cards with or just talk. He could tell a good joke, but had a serious side too. Sandy, my roomie, was OK. Not really. He was not really a friend and had horrible interests. He seemed full of himself and his manly beauty. He was for sure determined to get into as many girls’ panties as he could. I could understand the desire, but the way he thought of women bothered me. He also wanted to get into a fraternity. I’m not sure which was more important to him, panties or frats, but suspected the frat was top of the list. He would start rushing as soon as he could. I despised the very idea of a fraternity, from its inane selectivity to its vision of women as objects to screw. Never close, Sandy and I fractured completely when his true nature became obvious.

            Two older guys in our house, Dylan and Jake, roomed together. We used to mock Dylan mercilessly when he turned twenty-five. “You’re a quarter century old, man!” Jake was a few years younger. Dylan and Jake had served in the armed forces, in Vietnam. Thanks to Uncle Sam’s bounty, college was their way back into civilian life. They both became great friends. Dylan especially was a solid mate. We spent a lot of time together, playing cards, going to movies, sitting around and talking talking talking. Dylan was a philosophy major. Some of the talking got intense. We argued a lot about god. He was a theist. I was an atheist. Battles ensued.

            There were some little brown tablets of mescaline circulating the campus, and Dylan and I availed ourselves of those tabs as often as we could. The psychedelic experience brought me close to transcendence many times. Dylan insisted that what I called transcendence was really the presence of god. I demurred. Jake had an old-fashioned school-house clock on the wall above his bed. He’d taken the hands off, though. Right in the middle of the clock Jake had pasted a Mickey Mouse face. I grokked.[5] I saw clearly the absurd relativity of time thanks to that clock. Dylan insisted that what I grokked was god’s divine point of view, situated outside of time. I demurred. One night Dylan and I started climbing trees on campus. Sitting in the crotch of a huge magnolia, I melded with the life of the tree, with of all of nature. Dylan insisted that that sense of oneness was my coming close to god. I demurred. And then that sunset across the fields to the north of Eliot Halls. One slender cloud blazed with the light of the setting sun, golden and red and orange and even green. And verily it was the finger of god himself beckoning me to follow, Dylan insisted. I demurred.

            Not every trip was so heavy with significance. One night Dylan and I came across a little mound of dirt next to a dorm building, Baldwin Hall, one of the four dorm towers in our corner of Eliot. It was not huge. In fact, calling it a mound is an exaggeration. But we spent hours trying to get to the top of the little bulge in the ground. Halfway we’d get, and then slide right back down. Start over and the same thing. Over and over and over. We laughed so hard that we rolled on the ground laughing. One excuse: it was damned cold and the mound was covered with ice. Miraculously, no officious campus cop intervened. On another evening, walking through campus, we saw a flock of birds, I think they were swifts, dropping down to roost in the chimney of one of the campus buildings. They formed a perfect, beautiful spiral, the narrow end disappearing into the brick top of the chimney and the wide end winding inward, tightening and tightening as it went down into the chimney. That was just gorgeous. Our school had a pretty good gymnastics team, and hosted many excellent teams, including the USSR’s national team. Dylan and I, and other folks we knew, would take our mescaline and go to the meets. Lordy lordy lordy—talk about gorgeous! It gave “happy trails” a very exciting new meaning.

            There was also a lot of inanity. After dinner sometimes thirty or forty or fifty of us would gather on the court outside the FUB and play volleyball, however many were there divided equally, more or less as the psyche moved us, on two sides. Most of us were either tripping or very very high. Playing volleyball with one real and a myriad phantom polychromatic psychedelic balls was a hoot and a half.

            I was learning to be a friend, to have friends, to value friends. I was having a great time doing so. The bros were enough for me.

---

[1] I’ve made so many references to cultural artifacts, sometimes as in this case a slant reference, changing the terms of the passage I refer to, and often without acknowledging them in the text, that I feel obliged to note when I do. Here Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus is in the background.

[2] Paraphrased from that wonderful movie, Singing in the Rain.

[3] The Rolling Stones’ “Under My Thumb” in my mind.

[4] As in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

[5] The key word in Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land.

Never, part 2

Artemis

            God he’s fine! Sandy. I bet that’s short for Alexander. The great. Seems he thought so, anyway. A boyfriend would be nice. But not a kid who thinks he’s the great one. No way. Still, he is very very fine. He’s gorgeous.

            He talked my ear off that night we met at the party in Pushkin. “So where you from, Temi?”

            “We live in Pittsburgh. But I went to school in New York—a Catholic school for girls. Run by nuns. Booooring! Some good kids there, though.”

            “I’m a public-school kid. We live in a tiny town in mid nowhere. The closest city is . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . Scranton. Scranton! And that’s like seventy miles away.”

            I laughed. “Not much to do, I guess. You should try a Catholic school for girls!”

            “Hmmm . . . that sounds pretty alluring, don’t you know. How’d you end up in this school, coming from a private education and all?”

            “Well.” I hesitated. How much did I want to tell this dude I just met? “I like it here. It’s big. I can disappear if I want to. I can choose to disappear if I want to. Exactly the opposite of my high school. And it has so many different things to choose from. I have no idea what to major in and want to experiment as much as possible. Those nuns gave us a good grounding in the basics but left huge gaps in what’s possible to learn and do. Do you know what you want to do?” Turn the spotlight on him.

            Sandy did not hesitate. “I’m going to be a psychologist. I thought I’d be a doctor like my dad. He’s the only doctor in our town, you know. But the brain’s where it’s at nowadays. I’ve got it all planned out. Anyway, you want to dance before the night is done?”

            He grabbed my hand and pulled me out where a thousand kids were boogying the night away. He didn’t dance very well. Uncoordinated and a little clumsy, which was strange cause he walked with such assurance. But he was having fun, and I was having fun, and we got on, especially when we couldn’t talk because of the dancing. I lost track of Ellen and my friends from the dorm, Lonnie and Naomi. Who cared. I was in college and dancing with the hottest guy in the place. I think maybe that all-girls school left me lusting for male bodies. Yeah.

            Sandy walked with me back to Hemingway. He wanted to come up to the room and I said sure, why not. He had to sign in with the guy at the front desk of the building—boys’ dorms you didn’t have to do that, but we girls had to be protected. Right. At least the guy at the desk, Jake, was nice. Funny. He was a student, but older, maybe early twenties, like he’d been out in the world for a while. He had a little mustache. Cute.

            We got to my room, and Ellen was there, with some guy she’d met at the dance, Peter. We sat around talking. Peter was a sophomore, an art major. Ellen seemed to like him. They got closer and closer sitting on her bed. Maybe time to get out for a while, I thought.

            “Hey, Sandy,” I said, “want to show me your room?” I am so subtle.

            “Ah, sure, sure. Let’s go see if my roomie is in. Probably stoned out of his mind.”

            Tennyson was on the other side of the FUB, so we walked through Faulkner. There were some kids playing a piano—Sandy waved at one of them, “Hey, Eric,” he said—and hanging out, others playing cards or eating something at the café in the building, but we kept going on to Tennyson. Fifth floor. Sandy’s room was just around the corner from the elevator, and we went in. And there was his roommate. I remembered meeting him at the dance, but I’d forgotten his name.

            “Hey, Artie, what’s up,” said Sandy. Forgetting wasn’t such a bad thing.

            “I am.” The reply came with a wave in my direction. “You’re Temi, right?”

            “Yep.” Artie didn’t really look at me. His eyes wandered all over the place, only glancing askance at me every now and then. Insecure, shy, naïve, I thought to myself.

            “So what ya doing, roomie?” Sandy’s tone was fake buddy-buddy. He seemed to think he had to keep the conversational ball going.

            “Well I just smoked some hash,” said Artie. “Want some?”

            Before Sandy could reply, I said, “Jesus H, what about the RA?”

            “Not to worry, Tim’s cool,” Sandy said. “Would you like a toke or two, Temi?”

            “I’ve never done hash, you know, just some pot. Didn’t do anything for me. But sure, I’ll try it.”

            Artie brought out a little pipe and crumbled something into it. “It’s red Lebanese,” he said, still looking down. “Pretty good. And don’t worry about the high. It’s mellow. Not the hyper electric stuff, like kief, you know. You’ll like it.” He kept his eyes on the pipe, only still in the glancing mode as far as I was concerned. He handed me the pipe and said, “You’re the guest, so do it up for us.”

            Artie lit a match and looked at it as he held it to the bowl of the pipe. I put the business end in my mouth and sucked in a cloud of smoke. It made me cough and out the smoke went right away. “That’s what always happens when I smoke dope,” I said.

            “Well no wonder you never got high,” Artie muttered. And then, “Here, pass me the pipe and I’ll see if I can show you how to avoid coughing and spilling out all that good smoke.” I figured he just wanted to smoke the stuff himself, so I really wasn’t going to pay much attention to what he was doing. Teach me how to smoke—really! Until I noticed the way that he inhaled the smoke, slowly but deeply, and then held it. I thought that was neat. I could do it that way and see what happened.

            “Pass it back. Let me try your trick.” This time I didn’t cough. I held the smoke as I’d seen Artie do it.

            “Good job,” Artie said, and now he was looking at me. He smiled. It was a very sweet smile. In fact Artie was sweet all around. He was no fine stud like Sandy, that’s for sure. But he seemed . . . I don’t know . . . understanding, cool. And he was cute.

            “Hey,” interrupted Sandy, “how about passing it over this way!” I handed the pipe over to him and he toked, then passed it back to Artie, who then passed it back to me.

            By the third toke I was beginning to feel very good. I was actually getting high, I thought. Then I said it, “I think I’m getting high.”

            “Hurray!” cheered Artie. “Like it?”

            “Give me a minute. But yes, I think so.”

            Artie got up and went to a shelf where some records stood. “We need music.” He picked out Magical Mystery Tour and put it on a sad little record player.

            “I see your scorn, Temi, but the sound isn’t as bad as the machine looks—trust me.”

            “It’s not half bad,” Sandy agreed. “I forgot to bring my stereo. My parents promised to mail it up to me, though.” Who forgets to bring their stereo to college, I asked myself.

            “Lucky man with the caring parental unit,” said Artie, smiling as he put the needle on the vinyl.

            Artie put on the second side of the album. We listened to “Hello Goodbye,” and Artie started talking.

            “That’s like where we are right now, isn’t it—except backwards. You know, goodbye to the old life, hello to the new one. Thank the good god in whom I don’t believe!”

            Acting surprised, Sandy asked, “You don’t believe in God?” I could hear the lower case and the upper case in what the two guys said. I wasn’t sure about my own beliefs. That Catholic girls’ school, in fact my whole life from birth through this moment, assumed not just that there was a God, but that the God was a good Catholic. Not Eastern Orthodox, which always puzzled me. But there’s no accounting for these things. Those nuns made sure that we were catechized, that we prayed, that we went to chapel every single solitary boring day. But boredom didn’t seem to me a good cause for not believing. I just didn’t know.

            “No, no divinity to shape my ends, thanks,”[1] said Artie. He looked down at his behind. “What, you think it needs shaping?” I broke out laughing. Sandy not so much. Some silent minutes passed by. Although it coulda been a silent ten seconds. Who knew. Time was distorting badly for me.

            By this point “Strawberry Fields” was playing. Artie picked up again. “You know, like the song says, if there’s nothing to get hung about, then it’s hard to be someone. I want to be someone.”

            “What the hell do you mean,” demanded Sandy. “What the hell.”

            I interrupted. “Yeah, explain yourself young man.” I was enjoying the whole thing. Artie was funny. Sandy seemed more than a little peeved, though.

            “Explanations are hard for me. I know what I know, but my little world has let me go, and I see things . . . I don’t know, differently, like from the bottom of the sea.[2] What does it mean to have nothing to get hung about or that everything all works out so it doesn’t matter much? I hear that as being Strawberry Fields, you know, in a safe measly little world where nothing is real and some protective barrier keeps you far far far from reality. In the hand of god, I sorta mean. But that’s not real! Reality ain’t some safe space.”

            “You mean that Strawberry Fields is like a way for them to talk about God?” demanded Sandy.

            “Not exactly, no. It’s just my idea that god means comfort and safety for almost everyone who believes, a blankie to keep us safe and warm. Comfort is maybe a nice thing but not the real thing. Insulation is great in attics, but winter still roars like a lion. Listen, we’re in ‘Penny Lane’ now—the barber, banker, fireman, nurse, all those folks—how real are their lives? And yeah, I know they’re fictions of Paul’s imagination. At least the nurse sees that she’s in a play. And the little kids—love the little kids laughing. Seems to me they laugh because the damned banker is so fucking self-satisfied with what he’s got. Baby he’s a rich man! Yay for him.”

            “I see what you mean about comfort,” I said. “When my cousin died last year the only thing I could do was turn to God, to pray that he was in heaven. Strawberry Fields, I guess. But what’s wrong with comfort when you need it?”

            Sandy broke in. “None of that makes sense. God is not comfort. He is a righteous God. He gives us direction for what’s right to do and what’s not right to do. He overwhelms us with his righteousness and with his power. He is fearsome, not comforting.”

            “Yeah, well. I don’t like the stepdad either,” said Artie. I started to chuckle but a look from Sandy killed it. “You know, I always thought that ‘All Your Need Is Love’ was about what we lack—yeah, I still think that, but maybe it’s also about what that god you told us about lacks. And sure, I know about the infinite love of giving the only begotten son to die for us. But Jesus H—that had to happen in the story because god made it so in the story. Makes me think of the stepfather in some unheard of fit of kindness giving me five bucks to go to a movie but telling me which movie to see. Jerk. I think comfort is good, essential even, Temi. But not if it hides reality. I’m sorry you lost your cousin, and I’m glad you were comforted for your loss. But your cousin is lost. Sorry. That sounded harsh. Sorry.”

            I could see that Sandy was getting angrier and angrier and angrier. So I went back to what Artie had said before he turned to the nastiness of god. “How come you think ‘All You Need Is Love’ is about what we lack? I mean, the song says we have everything, you know, and that love is the way to all that.” I’d never gotten into discussions like this, ever. Beatles songs or any other songs were just . . . just songs. I wasn’t convinced by what Artie said, but I was liking the talk, the ideas, reaching into lyrics I’d never thought much about and finding something to think about. Back in English class we sometimes got into discussions like this. But that was about literature, and here it was about pop music lyrics. I was also feeling a little sorry for Sandy.

            “C’mon, Temi. What does the song say? There’s self-defeating statement after statement. Nothing you can do that can’t be done. Think about that. What does it say? If it can’t be done then you can’t do it, so if you can do it then it can be done. Donovan says that happiness—nothing to get hung about, dontchaknow—runs in a circular motion.[3]Well, ‘All You Need Is Love’ runs in a circular motion! All of it! Except it gives a way out. The only exit from that circle so you can learn how to be you in time—the only thing is love. That’s what’s missing, that’s what you lack, that’s what you need. To me ‘need’ and ‘lack’ are the same thing. Add ‘want’ too. What you lack is love and so you need it because you’re stuck in the circular motion of sappy happiness, what already is and what already can be done and sung and felt and you want a way out of it all. Move beyond that? You need love for chrissake.”

            “That’s nonsense,” Sandy yelled—well, not quite yelled, but louder than everything else that we’d been saying. “The song is clear—all you need to do all that can be done is love. Period.”

            “Yeah, ok. Different strokes.”

            Artie had been pretty sharp and lively during the rapping.[4] He didn’t seem so shy any more. Definitely not withdrawn. But now he lowered his eyes again, mumbled something, then said he was going to go out to Faulkner to get something to eat. The munchies, he giggled. And off he went.

            As soon as the door closed, “Lord he’s full of shit,” said Sandy. “What crap—and anyway, why should we pay any attention at all to what the Beatles say about anything? What do they know that’s so special? And good lord almighty what weird interpretations of those lyrics!”

            I didn’t respond. I didn’t think that Artie was full of shit or that the way he understood those songs was strange or weird or wrong. I just had never thought about any of this stuff and had to think about it. Right now, I didn’t know. By this point I was more than a little tired and droopy. The high had gone away. I was ready to go back to my room. I hoped that Ellen and Peter were ok with that. But I had to go back.

            When I said I was going to go, Sandy seemed put out. I thought maybe he’d had something in mind for the rest of the night. But I wasn’t ready for anything else. He was nice looking. A little bit of the stick up the butt maybe, a little bit full of himself. But OK to be with. Still, I’d just met him. And it wasn’t even a date, just an accident of the party. I wasn’t going to pick him for a boyfriend right now, anyways. And if he thought that a few dances at a party meant sex . . . well, not so much, dude.

            He didn’t offer to take me back to my room. That was . . . OK. But I wondered if he was miffed. What a strange little word, “miffed.” Anyways, Hemingway was close enough. I felt safe on campus. Maybe that was dumb of me, but I did. Not a big deal. But still, why hadn’t he even asked if I wanted company up to Hemingway? When I came out of the room, I saw Artie down the hall coming out of another room.

            “Hey Artie—good night!”

            “Oh, Temi. Yeah. Good night. It was nice talking with you.” Again he hadn’t been looking at me. But then he looked up and did a double take. “Sandy’s not taking you back?”

            “Nah. It’s only over at Hemingway.”

            “Still. I tell you what. I’m headed over to the FUB anyway. I’ll walk you back at least that far.”

            “OK. Just don’t feel obliged to be a nice guy or something.”

            “Me? A nice guy? Fat chance!” He looked at me when he said that.

            When we got to Faulkner Artie opened the door for me, let me go in first. And then he looked around to see if the café was still open. It was. I’d thought it was later than it really was. “Are you a little munchified?” he asked. He looked at me again.

            “Starving,” I said.

            “Come on. I’ll treat you to whatever they have. I got that hypothetical stepfather five bucks burning a hole in my pocket.”

            I had to laugh. “OK,” I said.

            We got a couple of slices of flaky pastry. Artie got a hot tea, and I got some water.

            “Just water?” he asked. “I mean, my five bucks will stretch to something else, you know. Maybe not molten pearls in gold sauce, but something.”

            “I don’t want any caffeine,” I said, “and what else is there? Milk? Nah. I don’t really like hot chocolate. I’d get a tea, but I’ve never had any and anyway tea has caffeine too.”

            “Not a whole lot of caffeine. Are you worried it’ll keep you awake? Cause the red leb will get you past that problem pronto.”

            “Yeah. Still, water’s fine. It’s my favorite drink, actually.”

            “I love water too. But with this pastry I want— need? lack?—something hot. I don’t much like coffee. In fact, I loathe coffee. The stepfather is addicted to the stuff. He makes three or four pots every day and drinks that shit constantly. He’s addicted to it. If he doesn’t drink it for a day or two, he gets headaches, withdrawal symptoms I call them. It’s pathetic. He’s pathetic. He can beat up on my mother—not physically cause he can do such a bang-up job messing with her mind. But that’s about all he has going for him. He can depress his wife and make her schizoid. Hurray for him.”

            “Hmmm . . . I guess you don’t much like your stepfather—maybe less than you like god!”

            “You could say that. I guess you did say that. And you’re right. The man’s an asshole. He thinks he’s the king of the little universe he commands in the house. And he does it with glee. A fucking tyrant. Sorry about the language, Temi. A sore spot, you know.”

            “Yeah, I see that. I know I’m being nosy, but how’d he end up in your life, anyway?”

            “Like any stepfather—my mother married him.”

            “I guess. I won’t nose any further.”

            “Not to worry. It’s not a secret. Before I got here to school I would never have said anything about him—hell, about anything at all. I wouldn’t have talked to you, or Sandy, or anyone. I wouldn’t have even looked at you because that might have made you look at me and maybe conversation would follow and who knows how to converse. I still find it hard to look at you. I mean, you’re great to look at but . . . oh fuck it. But like I said about getting out of Strawberry Fields, I’ve sort of found myself. Or I’m on the road there, anyway. All I lack is love, I guess. The friends I’ve made in four days, five days, they’re love. I now have things to get hung about. So I can look at you—now and then. And I can talk. Dylan says I talk too much. He should know cause he practices it so much. Talking that is.”

            I ignored the needing love thing. I didn’t know him well enough to tell how he meant it—just the friends he’d made?—and didn’t want to find out. “You know, Artie, you say you’ve never talked like this, and I have to say I’ve never taken song lyrics so seriously. It’s a new thing for me, entirely. And I’ve never been in any conversations remotely like the one we’ve been having.”

            “Sorry about all that stuff in the room. I know I was making Sandy uncomfortable—damned angry, it looked like. Funny how some theists get angry and other theists, like Dylan my buddy, get curious. And I have no doubt that you were bored out of your skull with all that god talk. But you know, I’ve decided that after all that silence in my high school years I’ll just speak what’s on my mind and to hell with the consequences. I’ve got to be me![5] Sandy’s a big boy. He can deal with it. I hope you did, anyway.”

            “Big boy indeed. And nossir not bored. And yessir I dealt with it.” I stopped. And then, “Forgive me for saying it, but you two are like Mutt and Jeff.”

            “He’s the mutt, then?”

            I laughed. “Yeah, I guess so. But you know I’m pretty short stuff myself, so I can speak about shortness without insult.”

            “Insult? Nah. Insult would be to give me tips on how to get taller. I yam what I yam. Popeye, that’s me, not Jeff. Just gimme some spinach and watch out![6] Anyway, what about you? Do you get along ok with your parents?”

            “More or less. They sent me off to boarding school with a bunch of nuns, so we didn’t have the daily rub to worry about. I know why they sent me away—good intentions and all. I’ll confess—oh father confessor!” I batted my eyes at him. He laughed. “It was all those boys ogling me from the time I hit puberty. Mom and dad wanted me safe. And to tell the truth, those kids were more than icky. I did not mind moving away from them. But I wish I’d stayed at home. I feel a little uprooted. I wish I knew my parents and my brothers better. Still, I’m liking it here.” The strange thing was that I didn’t mind a little self-revelation with Artie. With Sandy, not so much.

            “Me too. On both counts. Uprooted and liking it. Oh my—English is such a hard language. I mean that I like it here and that I like being uprooted.”

            We’d finished the pastry and the drinks. We got up to go. Artie offered to take me all the way to Hemingway, but I said I’d be OK. We said our good nights and went our separate ways. I was more than a little surprised by how Artie had opened up. He actually looked at me all the time we talked. And he was being so nice. I guess. . . . No. I won’t guess. But I didn’t feel any pressure. Not a hint of the predatory in him. Unlike Sandy. I know what Sandy wants, jealous god watching over him or not.

---

[1] Maybe this one doesn’t require a reference, but just in case, it’s from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

[2] There are two here, from Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced,” with a twist.

[3] In Donovan’s song, “Happiness Runs.”

[4] For contemporary readers: “rapping” used to mean the endless talk people indulge when they’re loose and in good company.

[5] That’s from Walter Marks’s “I’ve Gotta Be Me.” I know it from Sammy Davis, Jr.’s cover.

[6] Spinach powered Popeye’s muscles the way neutrons power atomic bombs.

Never, parts 3 and 4

Artie

            That night at the café at the FUB, after the party at Pushkin, was not our first date. It wasn’t a date at all. If anything, Sandy had been the one dating her, except that wasn’t a date either, just an accident of the dance. I’d definitely gone overboard in the rap about Magical Mystery Tour, but I love that record, the movie not so much, and had to say what I said. Sandy thought it was BS. I didn’t. I really hoped that Temi was OK with it. Like I said, she was a gorgeous girl. Truth is truth. But she also seemed interesting. Sure, she hadn’t said much about herself except at the end. But still, she followed the stuff about the songs and about god, asked a question or two till Sandy huffed and puffed. And she laughed at my jokes and took up the ball and threw it back my way. I think she was into it. And what she said about being sent off to a boarding school intrigued me. I wish I’d been sent away too. Maybe not—frying pan and fire kinda situation. I found my reaction to her—well, the way I acted while she was around—completely surprising. At first I’d been my usual shy, withdrawn little shit, barely looking at her because clearly she was way beyond me. And she came attached to Sandy. But that passed and then she seemed to be just another one of the guys that I’d begun to meet and befriend. I liked her. She was OK. I hoped she liked me. I put it all down to the red Lebanese. Better living through chemistry, after all.[1]

            When I got back to the room in Tennyson Sandy was lying on his bed reading something. “Hey, man, whatya doing?”

            Sandy didn’t respond. Then he said, “I can’t believe you laid down that line of pure bullshit. God is insulation from reality and the Beatles show the way from comfort to truth. Jesus!”

            I thought of not responding at all, and definitely not in kind. And then, “Well, Sandy—you take the high road and I’ll take the low road. I think I’ll be in Scotland afore ye, donchaknow.”[2]

            “Shit.”

            “That was good shit, though, wasn’t it. I’m running out. I hope Bert has some more I can buy.”

            The gambit paid off. “I’ll get some too if he’s got it. Let’s go see if he’s in his room.”

            Bert was one floor up and round the corner. We took the stairs in the common room that led to the second floor of our dorm house and knocked on Bert’s door. “Yeah,” we heard him say and went in. Bert was in a haze of smoke, mostly tobacco but we could smell some other stuff as well. Bert’s roomie, Dave, was there too. He didn’t smoke anything but was cool about Bert doing so. Dave saved my academic life that first semester. We were in the same section of calculus. By midterm time I’d stopped going to class because I’d learned all of that integral stuff in high school and didn’t need a refresher course. I’d exempted the first level of calc, plain old differentials, but missed exempting the second by a couple of points. Dave was faithful in attending the class, though, and on the night of the midterm he saw me lollygagging around getting high and asked if I was going to take the test. Shit—I’d lost track of when it was going to happen. But thanks to Dave I managed to get to the exam in time. I aced the sucker.

            That night, though, we sat in the room with Bert and Dave, and Bert broke out some hash and we toked some.

            Bert asked what we’d been up to. “We went to the party down at Pushkin Halls,” explained Sandy. “It was cool. You should have seen this chick I met there. She’s a piece of candy I’d like to lick all night. Right, Artie?”

            “Gorgeous she is, yessir. I don’t think she’ll let much licking take place, though. She’s got a mind and will of her own, I think.”

            “Just something to overcome, something to batter down. I love a challenge. I can’t wait to see her again and start . . . you know, start the process.”

            Dave wanted to know the girl’s name. “Artemis,” said Sandy. “She calls herself Temi.”

            “That’s a Greek name. Is she Greek?” Dave wanted to know. “I’m Greek, you know. Maybe I should take my chances with her.”

            “I think she’s Greek,” I answered. “But like I said, she’s got a mind of her own. Taking chances with her won’t work unless she’s into it off her own bat.”

            “Sounds like you’re pretty much into her yourself,” said Bert.

            “I liked her a lot. Sandy’s her first friend, though, so . . . .”

            “You got that right. I’m going to go chick hunting for Temi, and don’t want interference from anyone. Right, Dave? Artie?”

            “Whatever.” Sandy really depressed me. Arrogant SOB, I thought. Just cause he talked to her first . . . well, I’m not going to interfere. Whatever that means when so far it seems there’s nothing to interfere with. With that attitude, though, I have a feeling Sandy’s gonna be an SOL SOB. He deserves it.

            I’d never been, or even imagined that I could be in competition with a stud like Sandy—hell, with any guy!—for the favors of a girl. The idea of competing for a girl baffled me. I wasn’t sure that any competition was going to come to pass anyway, but I could now sort of imagine it just cause Sandy was such a dick. Still, I had no clue about how to go about it or if it was even right to compete for a girl anyway.

            “Favors of a girl.” Jesus! listen to yourself you fucking dope.

            I left the room and went back down to mine, got out my bathroom stuff and went to do my nightly routine. I’d had acne ever since I hit puberty. My routine involved washing my face three times with this stuff called PhisoHex. It worked better than anything else I’d tried. That meant that I still got zits but felt better about it. Halfway through my college career PhisoHex was pulled from the market. Apparently the chemicals in the stuff worked their way into the bloodstream and could cause brain damage. I guess that explains a lot. After the face washing I slathered on some stuff that was supposed to dry out whiteheads. That was as good as the PhisoHex. No shaving necessary. Puberty hadn’t reached my facial follicles quite yet. I brushed my teeth, packed all the bathroom stuff back up and went to bed.

            The next day, Sunday, was the last day before classes started. I wasn’t nervous about things. I was doing the calc, which should be easy, and the second class in comp cause I’d exempted the first one, and Russian. What the heck, I thought, if I was going to major in math, what better language to learn. Maybe German? I thought I’d do OK in Russian. I like to learn languages and already knew a little Latin, Spanish, and French, the Spanish much better than the French. The comp should be OK too—except that the damned section met on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Saturdays!!! At eight in the a. m. I was not looking forward to that. The only other thing I had was phys ed. We were required to do four units of phys ed to graduate. I had failed the fitness test, which was all about running a mile in less than seven minutes. Seriously. Smoking three or four packs a day, not to mention pot and hash, there was no way I could have done that. So I was in remedial phys ed. That was ok with me. I thought it would be a breeze because those who fail have nothing to prove. I’d never failed anything, but that seemed sensible to me.

            I missed breakfast, as usual. I’ve never been a morning person. That eight a. m. comp class was going to be a bitch. I did make it to lunch and joined the group of kids from Tennyson that I’d been hanging out with. Other kids joined the table. There was Ellen with that kid she’d met, Peter. And next to her was Sandy, with Temi on his other side, at the far end of the table. We all said howdy as I sat down next to Dylan.

            “Do you know these lovely ladies, Artie?” Jake asked. “They’re from Hemingway, where I work at the front desk at night. They’re nice folk.”

            “Yeah, I met Ellen and Temi last night at the dance over in Pushkin,” I said. “Howdy again.”

            Temi smiled at me and Ellen waved. “You don’t know Naomi, though, do you?” asked Ellen. Naomi was sitting down the table, across from Jake and next to Bert, with Dave next to him. She seemed all buzzed out, with square gold rimmed glasses and a huge smile. I said hi to her and Jake told her my name. “I like your glasses,” I said. She used her fingers to make two squares and then to make two circles. My glasses were also gold rimmed, but round. I laughed. She laughed.

            “That’s Lonnie,” Jake continued. She was next to Dave and across from Eric the piano guy. Not to be confused with Eric the sax guy. I waved to Lonnie and she waved back

            I couldn’t hear what was passing between Temi and Sandy. They were doing a private little conversation, Sandy turned towards Temi and away from the rest of us, while everyone else at the table talked to everyone else. There were twelve of us altogether, a good number to keep the talk lively. Hmmm . . . we did lack a Jesus figure.

            Dave wondered how people felt about classes starting. Jake said he was more than ready cause he was bored just sitting around. “I’m too old to do all that partying, you know.” We howled in laughter. Jake had brought a refined taste for good pot back from Vietnam and we boys all knew it, none better than his roomie, Dylan. The girls knew him only as the security guy at the front desk of Hemingway, so they were on the outside of the joke but still laughed. Jake did not look like someone who wasn’t into partying, so they knew what was what even though they didn’t know.

            “I’m a little nervous,” said Ellen. “I mean, I did ok in high school, but this is supposed to be a whole nother thing. I don’t know if I’m ready for it.”

            “Not to worry,” said the wise fool, sophomore Peter. “I’m around to help whenever you need help. Just call on me and I’ll send it along.”[3]

            “Those Beatles are everywhere, aren’t they,” Dylan said.

            “We were having a good rap about them last night,” I said. “You know, just before I came over to your room to say goodnight. Sandy and Temi were in it. I think I said things about Magical Mystery Tour that Sandy didn’t like. Temi seemed OK with it, though. We talked in the FUB after she left for her dorm.”

            Intent on Temi though he was, Sandy heard what I said. “You met with Temi in Faulkner?” he demanded to know.

            “Nah. I took her down from our floor through to the FUB. I’d have taken her all the way home, but Jake was going to be a good protector, so I didn’t.” I hadn’t known that Jake was the front desk guy at Hemingway, but a little white misrepresentation never hurt anyone.

            Sandy was not happy. He huffed, stood up, grabbed hold of Temi, forced her to stand up too, and off they went to dump their trash and bin their dishes. They left the dining hall together. I couldn’t see Temi’s face, so had no idea how she reacted to being manhandled—OK, not really manhandled. I’m exaggerating. A little.

            No doubt remembering last night and Sandy’s warning to stand clear of Temi, Bert and Dave looked at each other and smirked. Ellen seemed a bit peeved. “Well so much for my plans this afternoon. I was going to go downtown with Temi to get some munchies for our room. Peter—take me, please.”

            “Gladly!”

            “Why don’t we all go downtown?” asked Dylan. “Think of the excitement—all those shops closed on Sunday, all that asphalt and cement. So very groovy!”

            Eric and Lonnie said they were going to stay at the FUB and mess around on the piano. Everyone else said sure and went downtown.

Artemis

            Sandy was being a little more than a little pushy at lunch. He sorta cornered me off at the end of the table so I had no one else to talk to. He talked and talked, mostly about himself and what he wanted to do in his life and in his four years in college. He couldn’t wait to get into a fraternity and couldn’t understand why the school forced fraternities to delay their rush until well into the semester.

            “Don’t you think it’s so that new kids can have a running start with the classes, Sandy?”

            “Oh yeah, the nanny administration. We’re all grownups and can make our own decisions. I don’t need any dean of students telling me what to do and what not to do. It’s the same thing with the government. Why’s pot illegal? I mean, compared to alcohol pot’s just like the most benign drug ever. I want to smoke pot whenever I want, and I want to rush fraternities as soon as I can.”

            “Aren’t all laws like that, though? Why not make stealing legal? Or murder? Those laws limit you just as much as the dean of students does!”

            “Yeah, well, I remember thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not kill from the Bible. Nothing in there about rushing fraternities or smoking pot!”

            “True. True. So you think that if the Bible doesn’t say no, then it’s ok?”

            “More or less. You got to adjust things because of human nature, but for the most part it’s the Bible that lays out the rules. That’s why I want to be a psychologist, you know. I want to find out what’s humming and buzzing deep in human beings that makes rules make sense even if the Bible doesn’t state the rule right out loud. You know the Old Testament says nothing about limiting a man’s sexual appetite. Well, it gives rules for this and that situation, but it also says that you can have many wives and concubines and it’s all good. And then the New Testament put an end to that. The original Mormons went back to polygamy being OK, so there’s that, but I want to know why the Bible made that change. What about human brains makes the change necessary? Is it really necessary? Why can’t guys have as many women, wives, as they want? It doesn’t make biological sense, you know. A guy can impregnate a thousand women at a time. Well, you know what I mean. What in the human mind makes that not OK so that the New Testament stopped that freedom? I’m going to have a psychology practice like you’ve never seen. And I’m going to make a mint doing it.”

            I didn’t know what to say. Polygamy—ok. It sounded like females were property and the men had their property rights and no law should make that any different than it was in those Old Testament times except that Christ had changed his divine mind. That sucked. I decided to ask, “What’s the word for having many husbands? I mean, if polygamy is ok, or was ok or should be ok—I don’t know what way you’re headed on that—what about polywhatever, many hubbies?”

            “Oh no, no no. A man has got to know who’s the father of a kid. There’s two commandments about that, like no adultery and no coveting a neighbor’s wife. That’s the limits on sex that the Bible does have. And it’s because of knowing who the father is. I wouldn’t want to raise some other guy’s kid! And if one woman has a lot of husbands how’re you supposed to tell who the kid belongs to? No, you can’t have a stable society like that. No!”

            So kids were supposed to be property too? And clearly Sandy had no plans to adopt kids. I felt we were getting deeper into stuff I didn’t want to think about. “What classes are you signed up for, Sandy?” Am I smooth, or what?

            He listed the courses. Psych 101 at the top of the list naturally. Everything else was sort of expected—a comp class, a language class, German because psych and all, a math class, a phys ed. My classes were the same except for the psych. Instead I had biology. I’d always been interested in how critters worked. My high school had an easy elementary bio class, but that was it. I wanted to learn more. And I was taking Greek. I knew a little from my parents’ home use, but they didn’t know a whole lot of Greek themselves so that was limited. My grandparents on both sides were native speakers, but they’d died when I was pretty young, one after the other. So I thought I owed it to them, to my background, to learn.

            As we went through our classes, Sandy suddenly looked up and over to Artie. I hadn’t heard what Artie said, but Sandy had. And he was angry. The exchange between him and Artie ended with Sandy standing up, making me stand up too, and hauling us both off out of the dining hall.

            “What’s wrong, Sandy?”

            “Did you walk down to Faulkner with Artie last night?”

            “Yeah. He was nice enough to take me there. Should I say he escorted me?” The zing didn’t touch Sandy. “Anyway, we had some pastry and something to drink too. I was munchified, you know—that was Artie’s word for it. Funny guy.”

            Whatever it was that had set him off, what I said made him even angrier. He muttered to himself, grabbed my hand and made me walk next to him, real close. It wasn’t exactly walking hand in hand, at least from my angle, but I guess if anyone saw us they’d think we were holding hands. I didn’t like it, but I also didn’t feel I could just get loose and walk away.

            “Where are you going, Sandy? And could you please loosen up a little with the hand?”

            “Sure. Sure. Sorry. I’m just . . . you know, I’m just really happy to be with you and want to, you know, to be with you so you’re with me. Not making a whole lot of sense, am I?”

            “Not really. But whatever. Where are you taking me?”

            “I thought we’d go down to fraternity row and scout out the houses. I’ve looked at all of them before, but I’m not sure where I want to rush. Maybe you can help me decide.”

            “I have no clue at all about fraternities, or sororities. I’m not into that kind of thing.”

            “What do you mean by that kind of thing?”

            “Oh you know, the whole being judged worthy according to some entirely arbitrary set of policies and mandates and all that stuff. It seems to be a kind of fake exclusivity, you know.”

            “Hmmm . . . isn’t all exclusivity fake? What makes the Ritz exclusive? I know—it takes a lot of bucks to stay there. But the buck criteria is just as arbitrary as whatever a fraternity sets up as its standard. And what’s wrong with being exclusive anyway?”

            “Yeah, I can see that.” What I didn’t say was that I’d love to live in a world where there was no exclusive anything because everyone was equal. It’s not that I hate money or status—far from it. But I’d seen enough of the nuns choosing some girls to be their pets and giving them privileges and power over other girls, and I didn’t want any part of that, period.

            We got down to fraternity row, one of two in and around campus, and looked at the houses. Some of the buildings were huge, impressive—meant to impress, it seemed. I guess it would be nice to live in a place like that. But then I thought of the kind of people who would enjoy being a brother just to have all the privileges of their exclusive home. Nope. I’d rather not.

            Sandy seemed really interested in one house, one of the most impressive ones, TKE, Tau Kappa Epsilon. I was a little disappointed because the letters were no different from standard Roman ones. What’s the point of having a Greek name if you can’t use different Greek letters? But Sandy wasn’t interested in Greek. He was interested in exclusivity and selectivity and feeling special. Well, TKE house would work for that.

            We’d gone on to the other frat row after that. We must have been walking for more than an hour, Sandy holding onto my hand almost all the time, and I was getting thirsty. And hungry. “Hey,” I said, “we’re like two blocks from downtown. Wanna go get something to eat and drink?”

            “Sure. Where do you want to go?”

            “I don’t know. I’ve been down here just a couple of times. I have no idea where is good.”

            “I’ve been to a few places,” Sandy said. “There’s a nice coffee house I sorta like. Wanna go there?”

            “Sure. If you recommend it, it must be pretty exclusive.”

            I meant it as a joke, but Sandy took it seriously. He rolled his eyes and grabbed my hand a little harder. Off we went to the coffee house.

            There were a lot of kids walking around, including upper class kids who’d come up for the start of school the next day. We dodged and weaved around them. Until we ran into the group we’d eaten lunch with. Ellen waved and said “There you are—you abandoned me so I had all these guys replace you.”

            I laughed. “I am worth seven of you all. All right! I am hot stuff for sure!” Everyone laughed, including Sandy. “Where are you headed to? We’re trying to get to this coffee house that Sandy says is pretty nifty. Want to come hang out?”

            They all looked at each other, shrugged, and agreed to come along. The ten of us took up a lot of sidewalk space, and we plowed through the crowds of kids until we got to the coffee house.

            Artie was walking next to Naomi. She was a nice girl. A little weird, maybe, but nice. I think maybe she’d had one LSD trip too many or something. But she was nice. She and Artie were yucking it up, but everyone else was just strolling along enjoying the crowds. When we got to the coffee house we found that they didn’t have a table large enough to seat all ten of us, so we had to split off into two groups. Sandy and I sat with Bert and Dave and Jake. The other guys—Artie and Naomi and Dylan and Ellen and Peter—sat at the other table. At least the tables were right next to each other.

            The waitress came and we all ordered something to eat and drink. Separate bills, please. That didn’t make the waitress very happy. Our table didn’t have a lot of conversation going, but the other guys were talking up a storm. I eavesdropped. Peter and Naomi were hitting it off because Naomi was into art as much as Peter was. I heard her say that she’d been up at school for the summer semester and had taken an art class that let her mess around with the kilns making weird pottery. I’d seen some of it in her room. She loved working with clay and wanted to do a lot more of it. Peter was more into painting, he said, but also grooved on the kilns.

            Ellen didn’t seem too happy that Peter was paying more attention to Naomi than to her. But then Peter turned to her and got her involved in the art talk as well. I knew that Ellen was thinking of majoring in art history, so it was easy for her to get into it.

            Meanwhile Dylan and Artie were going at it over some philosophy thing. Dylan was taking a class in classical philosophy and Artie was giving him a hard time about Plato, of all things. “Ooohhh! The realm of abstract idea, dude—hope you don’t get a nosebleed.” That was Artie. I guess I wasn’t surprised to hear something like that coming from him. Dylan shot back defending idealism, and back and forth it went. I couldn’t follow it closely from our table, but it sounded like they were enjoying themselves royally.

            Sandy broke the silence at our table with something or other about fraternities. Jake didn’t exactly roll his eyes but did say that he’d had enough manly camaraderie in the Army. Bert said he had no interest in joining any group that would admit him as a member. Ha ha we all said. “Oh roomie, did you steal that from Groucho or what?”[4] Dave and Bert got into riff after riff of Marxisms. Pretty funny stuff.

            We ate our food and drank our drinks, and then we all ambled off to campus, slowly getting back to our dorms. In the FUB we parted company, the girls going one way, with Peter attached to Ellen of course, and the boys the other. We agreed to meet in the dining hall for dinner.

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[1] Dupont Chemicals’ long-running slogan.

[2] The line is from the traditional Scottish ballad, “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond.”

[3] The Beatles’ “From Me to You.”

[4] Borrowed, not stolen, from Groucho Marx.